126. How to Have Great Conversations

Speaker 1 A rich life isn't a straight line to a destination on the horizon. Sometimes it takes an unexpected turn with detours, new possibilities,

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Speaker 4 Two or three.

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Speaker 5 Honey, do not make plans Saturday, September 13th, okay?

Speaker 7 Why, what's happening?

Speaker 6 The Walmart Wellness Event.

Speaker 8 Flu shots, health screenings, free samples from those brands you like.

Speaker 7 All that at Walmart.

Speaker 9 We can just walk right in. No appointment needed.

Speaker 10 Who knew we could cover our health and wellness needs at Walmart?

Speaker 4 Check the calendar Saturday, September 13th.

Speaker 5 Walmart Wellness Event.

Speaker 11 You knew.

Speaker 7 I knew.

Speaker 3 Check in on your health at the same place you already shop.

Speaker 12 Visit Walmart Saturday, September 13th for our semi-annual wellness event.

Speaker 14 Flu shots subject to availability and applicable state law.

Speaker 15 Age restrictions apply. Free samples while supplies last.

Speaker 16 My guest today, Charles Doohig, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and the author of Blockbuster Bestsellers, including The Power of Habit.

Speaker 19 He's got a new book out entitled Super Communicators, How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection.

Speaker 21 And I found out that we're actually living through a golden age of understanding the neurology and psychology of communication. So there's a lot of insights that can help us.

Speaker 2 Welcome to People I Mostly Admire with Steve Levitt.

Speaker 16 I honestly believe that understanding how to have great conversations is one of the most valuable and underappreciated skills a person can develop.

Speaker 16 I wouldn't have said that three years ago, but having this podcast has led me to think a lot about conversation.

Speaker 16 In the two weeks since I read Charles Duhigg's book, I've tried hard to put the book's ideas into practice, and I have to say, it has been shocking to me how powerful these tools are.

Speaker 29 So you've got a brand new book, and it's called Super Communicators, How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection.

Speaker 35 I'm just imagining that if I'd written that book, I would feel tremendous pressure to be an amazing conversation partner.

Speaker 37 And I would hate to have that expectation always hang over me.

Speaker 25 Do you feel the pressure I'm describing?

Speaker 21 Only in one context, which is that ever so often now my wife during a dinner time conversation when I've like monologued for the last seven or eight minutes will say, you know, there's this book about communication that I think you could read that would really help you a lot.

Speaker 21 No, I think the answer is that I don't feel that because one of the big insights from this book and from doing this reporting and this research is that we all have these instincts, many of them created by evolution, to help us figure out how to connect with other people.

Speaker 21 And so part of what I tried to do with the book is to explain how conversations work so that in some sense, people can stop thinking about having those conversations.

Speaker 21 They can let their natural instincts take over. Because the truth of the matter is, you are a great conversationalist.
You've literally spent your entire life practicing being a conversationalist.

Speaker 21 And once we understand how conversations work, we can converse and connect with really anyone.

Speaker 41 So this is essentially a how-to book, how to have great conversations.

Speaker 41 But it differs in one important way from most how-to books, which is that most authors of how-to books are really great at whatever the book is about.

Speaker 45 So Dale Carnegie was really good at winning friends and influencing people, I'm sure.

Speaker 30 And Tiger Woods and Jack Nicholas, they write books about how to golf.

Speaker 33 But your motivation for researching and writing this book was that you felt like you were bad at communicating.

Speaker 42 You wanted to get better.

Speaker 21 Absolutely. It's a how-to book, but it's also self-help.
And by self-help, I mean help myself, right?

Speaker 21 So I had these two experiences the first is that i was made this manager at the new york times and was really good at everything that did not involve communication and was terrible at communication and it totally caught me off guard like i have an mba i've had bosses my entire life and yet i kept on screwing up at this and it was really driven home for me when i would come home and talk to my wife and i'd tell her like my bosses don't understand me and my colleagues don't appreciate me and i'd start complaining and she would have this really good practical advice she would say like why don't you take your boss out to lunch so you guys can get to know each other a little bit better but instead of being able to hear her i would react as if i'd been attacked and be like i don't understand why you're not supporting me i want you to be outraged on my behalf and she would be frustrated because she was trying to give me good advice and it made me realize there's something going on with communication that I'm just not getting because sometimes I can have great conversations and sometimes I can't and I can't figure out what the difference is.

Speaker 21 And so that's why I got interested in this was just trying to learn. What do we know about conversation?

Speaker 26 So one of the most basic insights in the book, and it sounds totally obvious once you present it, but it's something that I personally was completely oblivious to for the first 40 plus years of my life is that the person you're talking to can have various different goals from a conversation.

Speaker 29 You just alluded to it.

Speaker 32 You were talking to your wife and you wanted empathy.

Speaker 22 But for most of my life, I thought that the purpose of every meaningful conversation was to find a solution to a problem.

Speaker 46 Yeah. But I was so wrong.

Speaker 17 I learned along the way, and it was reinforced by your book, that there are all sorts of things people want out of conversations.

Speaker 36 And one of the most fundamental aspects of being able to talk to people is recognizing that and figuring out what the point is of any given conversation.

Speaker 21 The problem that you cite is not an uncommon one, particularly for men, particularly I'll say for economists.

Speaker 21 Oftentimes, economists or people who are rationally minded see the world as a series of puzzles to be solved.

Speaker 21 And you're exactly right that oftentimes when someone comes into a conversation, they have a problem and they don't want you to solve it.

Speaker 21 They want you just to listen to their problem and emote with them and comfort them.

Speaker 21 We think of a discussion as one thing, but actually every discussion contains multiple conversations, many different kinds of conversations.

Speaker 21 And in general, those different kinds of conversations fall into one of three buckets.

Speaker 21 There's these practical conversations, which is when we want to solve a problem, or perhaps we want to make a plan.

Speaker 21 But then there's other conversations, as you pointed out, where I come in and I talk about a problem I'm having, like my boss, I think, is a jerk.

Speaker 21 And I don't want the other person to solve my problem. I just want them to understand me, to tell me that my emotions are valid.
Those are emotional conversations.

Speaker 21 And then there's another basket, which are conversations about how we relate to each other and and how do we see ourselves in the context of society. And those are social conversations.

Speaker 21 And so these three big buckets of conversation, practical, emotional, and social, they're really useful because they tell us what the goal is.

Speaker 21 And if we're having a different kind of conversation than someone else, then we're probably failing to connect.

Speaker 42 So you're saying if I'm having a practical conversation and you're having an...

Speaker 36 emotive conversation, it's a disaster, right? Because I'm trying to solve your problems.

Speaker 32 You're asking for something different and we don't connect.

Speaker 21 That's exactly what happened with my wife and me. I came home and I was in an emotional frame of mind.
I wanted to have an emotional conversation.

Speaker 21 She responded with practical advice, which was really wise. But because we were having a different kind of conversation, neither of us could hear the other person.

Speaker 32 You know, what's been hard for me conversationally is that I never have conversations where I seek empathy.

Speaker 27 I literally cannot remember a conversation where I was seeking empathy from a person.

Speaker 29 And so it never occurs to me to pause and consider whether the person I'm talking to is looking for that.

Speaker 32 And I'd say if there's one thing that has transformed my conversations, it's being attuned to that very simple idea.

Speaker 29 And in the last few weeks since I read your book, I've really been practicing that just in conversations at home, but also with baristas at coffee shops.

Speaker 27 And my God, it is incredible.

Speaker 29 It is so shocking to me.

Speaker 27 It's like magic watching people melt when you acknowledge a little bit of emotion.

Speaker 21 Does one come to mind?

Speaker 33 I'll tell you about one with a barreach.

Speaker 35 So I was at a coffee shop and she said, how's your day going?

Speaker 53 And I said, pretty good.

Speaker 18 How's your day?

Speaker 44 She said, oh, it's been busy.

Speaker 18 And I said, what's it been busy with?

Speaker 42 And she said, well, I'm applying to schools and I'm going to college.

Speaker 38 And we ended up having a long talk about her college preferences and why she was a little nervous about it.

Speaker 54 And it was a weirdly intimate conversation that came in 30 seconds that she made a coffee.

Speaker 35 And then I went and sat back down with my wife.

Speaker 18 And I said, oh, that was a really nice young lady that I think she's going to go to Michigan Tech, but if she gets into Purdue, it's going to be a really hard choice.

Speaker 44 My wife looked at me like, what are you talking about?

Speaker 10 Who replaced my husband with this person?

Speaker 45 I really feel like I'm on a stage acting when I do it because isn't it all natural?

Speaker 38 And I always expect, well, people are going to see how completely artificial what I'm doing is, but they don't.

Speaker 18 They melt.

Speaker 29 It's really strange.

Speaker 21 It's totally natural that when we start to do this, it does feel like we're performing because all of conversation is a performance. And we've just gotten habituated to some kinds of it.

Speaker 21 But what I heard you saying is that you asked her a question. that's known as a deep question.

Speaker 21 You asked this barisa something about her values or her beliefs or her experiences. Where are you going to school? Why are you thinking about this school versus that school?

Speaker 21 Those all seem like normal questions, but they're actually deep questions because they're inviting the other person to reveal something about themselves, to bring her authentic self into the conversation.

Speaker 21 And that always feels wonderful.

Speaker 36 I think we take for granted that conversation is so natural that it isn't a learned skill, but obviously it is a learned skill.

Speaker 28 I have a two-year-old and I can see how he's learning to have conversations.

Speaker 48 My own natural inclination is to think that I don't want to talk to anybody about anything.

Speaker 36 So whenever anyone tries to engage me, I feel a sense of panic and I try to close off as quickly as possible.

Speaker 28 Now, what's so strange about it is I don't actually mind talking to people.

Speaker 33 And I do often have really wonderful conversations with complete strangers.

Speaker 35 And when you're done talking to them, you just say, hey, I got to go.

Speaker 44 But I think that's my problem.

Speaker 32 I fear that I can't escape when strangers talk to me.

Speaker 21 So when you know that you have to have that tough conversation, or you're saying to yourself, okay, I'm going to go and I'm going to talk to the barista.

Speaker 21 What are you doing to make that easier for yourself and the other person? How do you manage that?

Speaker 53 So it's interesting you say that because this podcast is the best example of that.

Speaker 51 So

Speaker 36 I have completely different conversations with people on this podcast than I do in any other setting.

Speaker 45 And the best example is my own daughters.

Speaker 27 So I have these grown daughters who I never have meaningful conversations with. We do what a lot of parents and kids do, which is just to talk, but never about anything important.

Speaker 27 But for the podcast, I think I do a lot of the things that you recommend in your book, which is I think ahead of time very carefully about what I'm trying to do, why I'm talking to the person.

Speaker 27 I learn a lot about the people I'm going to talk to.

Speaker 50 I think about their perspective, and I try to create a set of topics we can talk about.

Speaker 17 And I ask what you call these deep questions, right?

Speaker 27 I have a whole bunch of deep questions in my head to ask them.

Speaker 20 And I have to say, many people, maybe most of the people who've listened to my podcast who have heard that one have said it is the best one.

Speaker 18 Oh, that's interesting.

Speaker 44 And yet if they were a fly in the wall and watched me talking to my daughters outside of that context, they would be horrified at how little we have to say to one another.

Speaker 56 If I prepare for conversation and I'm ready to go, I don't want to admit it, but I can pretend to be empathetic.

Speaker 27 If I have my mindset, I can act like I'm empathetic, even though I think in a deep level, I'm not a very empathetic person, but I know what it feels like to be empathetic and I can go through the motions.

Speaker 21 I think it's actually synonymous, to be honest with you. Acting empathy and feeling empathy.
I don't think your empathy is any less true if you act it and you don't feel it yet because you will.

Speaker 21 What I hear you saying, and this makes a lot of sense to me, is

Speaker 21 two things. Number one, preparing for a conversation helps that conversation go better.
Study after study shows that's true.

Speaker 21 And by preparing, it can be as little as just saying, oh, here's two topics I could talk about. That preparation actually reduces our anxiety significantly.

Speaker 21 But the other thing I heard you say, and I think this is actually a more important thing, is that when you're having that conversation with your daughters on the podcast, one of the things that's happening is that you're giving yourself permission to ask them questions that you might not ask them if you're just like watching TV together.

Speaker 21 And you're also giving them permission to tell you. what they want to tell you about their life.

Speaker 21 One of the ways that this is used in schools is that teachers are taught, if a student comes up and they need to talk to you about something, particularly if they're upset, ask them, do you want to be heard?

Speaker 21 Do you want to be helped? Or do you want to be hugged? And those are just the three kinds of conversations, the practical, emotional, and the social.

Speaker 21 At the core of how we communicate is giving each other permission. When we ask a question, we're giving the other person permission to tell us about who they are.

Speaker 21 And when they ask that question back, they're giving us permission to listen and to share.

Speaker 27 Noting successes, many of my best conversations have come

Speaker 49 because I don't have very refined social skills.

Speaker 27 I will ask people questions that other people will never ask them because they would seem like they cross over some boundary.

Speaker 36 When my kids' friends come over and they'll say something like, I'm going to my dad's house.

Speaker 49 after I leave here.

Speaker 58 I sometimes will ask them, has it been hard for you going through your parents getting divorced?

Speaker 46 And my daughters roll their eyes at me.

Speaker 50 They say, don't ask questions like that.

Speaker 33 But every time their friend will really give a very honest answer.

Speaker 27 Another example, I had a son who died when he was one.

Speaker 44 People were so awkward about talking about it.

Speaker 17 And I guess they thought that if they brought up his life or his death, it would feel bad to me.

Speaker 41 But what you know if you've had a son die is you think about that constantly.

Speaker 36 It's always in your mind.

Speaker 50 It's never gone.

Speaker 27 And to talk about it doesn't make it worse. It only makes it better.

Speaker 21 After my father passed away about five years ago now, this was the most meaningful and in some ways the most interesting and the most complicated and the most

Speaker 21 revealing and powerful experience, one of them of my life. And I was desperate to talk about it.
Like I would have loved if someone had said like, tell me about your dad. What was he like?

Speaker 21 Or what was it like to go to the funeral and hear the eulogies? But you're right. People would say, oh, my condolences.
And then they would never ask about it again.

Speaker 21 And the few people who did ask me about it, the same way that I'm sure the kids whom you asked about what it's like to go through the divorce, they treasure that moment because it shows that A, someone cares, but B, we learn about ourselves by talking.

Speaker 21 We get to figure out how we actually feel about a divorce or about our father or about death by explaining it to other people. And when someone gives us that gift, it's enormous.

Speaker 27 Now, you didn't talk about it in your book, but one thing that has got me thinking about

Speaker 36 is that I'm especially likely to default into problem-solving mode in situations where there's a power differential where I'm in power.

Speaker 36 So when I'm a professor talking to a student or when I'm talking to someone who works for me.

Speaker 33 But I think in those rare cases where there is this power differential, but where I can recognize that a person I'm talking to wants empathy, these are some of my most rewarding conversations.

Speaker 47 Maybe because empathy from someone in a position of power is particularly soothing.

Speaker 50 Is there any research on that?

Speaker 21 There's a ton. And, you know, the book is filled with all these stories.
And one of them is about this surgeon in New York, a surgeon named Bafar Adai. His specialty is prostate tumors.

Speaker 21 And he had the exact same experience. because when you're a patient, even if you're a very successful person, if you walk into a doctor's office, you're at a power disadvantage.
And Dr.

Speaker 21 Adai, he just assumed his job was to give people advice. And so patients would come in and he would tell them, look, here's the options you have and here's what I suggest.

Speaker 21 And he found that again and again and again, not only did they not take his advice, it was as if they could not hear his advice. It just failed to register with them.

Speaker 21 And so he started talking to some communication experts, including some folks at Harvard Business School.

Speaker 21 And they said, look, the problem is that you're assuming what the other person wants from this conversation. You need to actually ask them what they want.
So here's the question you should ask.

Speaker 21 It's a deep question, but it's an easy one. What does this diagnosis mean to you?

Speaker 21 And they're going to tell you whether they want to have an emotional conversation or a social conversation or a practical conversation. It worked.
It worked amazingly.

Speaker 21 It's an interesting situation because the problem is that the prostate's located really closely to the nerves that control urination and sexual function.

Speaker 21 And so there's this real risk of lifelong consequences if you get the surgery. And the cancer is very slow growing.
So oftentimes people will die of old age before they die of prostate cancer.

Speaker 21 So for the vast majority of patients, what Dr. Adai and other physicians recommend is active surveillance.
Like don't do anything. We'll biopsy it every two years.

Speaker 21 We'll do some blood tests every six months. But don't do surgery.
Don't do radiation. Don't do chemotherapy.
And Dr.

Speaker 21 Adai figured everyone would love having this conversation because they're being told you don't have to do a risky surgery. Absolutely.

Speaker 21 But again and again, the patients would say, okay, they'd go home, they'd talk it over with their spouse, they'd come in the next day and they'd say, nope, I want the surgery, cut me open.

Speaker 21 They just completely failed to hear what he was saying. So he changed how he was conversing to ask this question, tell me what this means to you.

Speaker 21 And he found some people would answer that question by asking him about different treatments. They were interested in a practical conversation.
They wanted medical advice.

Speaker 21 But the vast majority of other people, they would start talking about illnesses their parents had or a divorce that their dad had gone through or a bankruptcy in the past or their worries for their kids about the future and climate change.

Speaker 21 They would talk about all this stuff that had nothing to do with the tumor on their prostate. And what he realized was, oh, actually, They're not here to ask me for advice.

Speaker 21 They're here to help me, help them understand how to make sense of being sick. How do you think about yourself as someone with cancer? Will other people see me differently if they learn I have cancer?

Speaker 21 That's a social conversation, not a practical conversation, or it could be an emotional conversation.

Speaker 16 We'll be right back with more of my conversation with journalist Charles Duhigg after this short break.

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Speaker 5 Honey, do not make plans Saturday, September 13th, okay?

Speaker 7 Why, what's happening?

Speaker 6 The Walmart Wellness Event.

Speaker 8 Flu shots, health screenings, free samples from those brands you like.

Speaker 7 All that at Walmart.

Speaker 9 We can just walk right in. No appointment needed.

Speaker 10 Who knew we could cover our health and wellness needs at Walmart?

Speaker 4 Check the calendar Saturday, September 13th.

Speaker 5 Walmart Wellness Event.

Speaker 11 You knew.

Speaker 40 I knew.

Speaker 3 Check in on your health at the same place you already shop.

Speaker 12 Visit Walmart Saturday, September 13th for our semi-annual wellness event.

Speaker 14 Flu shots subject to availability and applicable state law.

Speaker 15 Age restrictions apply. Free samples while supplies last.

Speaker 43 There's this professor at the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago, and his name is Nick Epley.

Speaker 32 And I've known him for 20 years.

Speaker 30 I talk to him maybe once a year when we run into each other by accident on campus.

Speaker 46 I don't think I've ever done anything with him socially.

Speaker 45 Certainly I've never been to his house or had him over to my house.

Speaker 35 But when people ask me, hey, do you know Nick Epley?

Speaker 30 I always have the same knee-jerk response. And I say, oh, yeah, I love Nick Epley.

Speaker 46 It's kind of strange because I barely know him.

Speaker 31 But now it all makes sense to me because he shows up in your book as an example of a super communicator.

Speaker 35 You had that same experience talking with Nick, right?

Speaker 27 Of you met him and you loved him.

Speaker 48 I feel so close to this guy.

Speaker 40 I've talked to him three times in my life.

Speaker 21 And the thing is, it's funny, you know, and I'm curious. if this has been your experience too, it's not like Nick is a super dynamic guy.

Speaker 21 Like if you were to ask people, who's the most charismatic person you have ever met? Who's like the Bill Clinton at the University of Chicago? No one would say Nick. He's not this gladhander.

Speaker 21 He's not outgoing. Instead, I think actually the reason we both feel so close to him is because he asks deep questions.
And then, and this is the most important part, he reciprocates.

Speaker 21 So if you tell him something about yourself, he tells you something about himself. And oftentimes he'll tell you something about himself before he asks you a question.

Speaker 21 I mean, again, I've only talked to the guy a couple times. I know about his children.
I know that he's adopted. I know that his wife lost a child, that they have a child who's sick right now.

Speaker 21 Like, I know so much intimate stuff about Nick's life.

Speaker 21 And I know that because Nick volunteered it. And when he does, it makes it feel so natural to talk about my life and how I'm feeling.

Speaker 56 Now, you didn't.

Speaker 27 put Nick into your book because he's a wonderful person.

Speaker 62 You put him in because he does amazing research.

Speaker 30 Yes.

Speaker 51 Could you talk about what he subjects the hedge fund guys to?

Speaker 48 I love that story.

Speaker 34 Absolutely.

Speaker 21 So he was invited to go speak at this hedge fund. And these are like masters of the universe, people who like earn billions of dollars.
And they think they invited him to learn how to listen better.

Speaker 21 They want tips on listening. But he walks in and what he says is, look, what I'm going to do is I'm going to pair you with someone you don't know, basically a stranger.

Speaker 21 And you're going to ask and answer a series of questions, just three questions. And the last question is, when is the last time you cried in front of another person?

Speaker 21 Then he goes, how many of you think this is going to be a great conversation?

Speaker 34 And everyone's like, no.

Speaker 21 In fact, one guy is like, oh, shit, this is going to be terrible. Like, these people don't want to talk about when they cried with a stranger.
These are like high-powered type A personalities.

Speaker 21 And so then he does the experiment. And the questions he drew were from this thing called the fast friends procedure.
Sometimes it's referred to as the 36 questions that make you fall in love.

Speaker 21 These two researchers tried to figure out how can we make two strangers into friends.

Speaker 21 They found that the only method that they could really use was to come up with these questions of escalating what they called personalness.

Speaker 21 Like, if you could have a dinner party with anyone, who would you invite? Or when's the last time you cried in front of another person?

Speaker 21 And what they found was that if people took about 45 minutes to ask and answer these questions, then then afterwards we can't help but feel closer to each other so this is what epley is trying to tie into so he tells these hedge funders okay you're going to have to have this conversation you're going to ask this question that you're dreading asking and answering and then he sets them loose he says we've got five minutes go ahead and start he sees like after a minute and a half one person they're like wiping the tears off their face in another part of the room these two women are hugging each other who like were strangers minutes ago and then eventually he gets everyone to quiet down.

Speaker 21 It takes him like 25 minutes to get everyone to stop talking to each other. And he says to them, okay, tell me what that experience was like.

Speaker 21 And people shoot up their hands and they're like, that's the best conversation I've had in years.

Speaker 21 And again, it's because they were invited to ask a deep question and to answer a deep question. And because they gave each other permission to say something real.

Speaker 21 And I think what Nick proves, as we've experienced just in talking to him, is that you can give that permission to someone else. You can give that permission to yourself.

Speaker 21 And it's a lot easier than we think it is.

Speaker 27 Okay, so I have a permission giving example.

Speaker 45 I was at a conference with a set of incredibly high achieving people.

Speaker 30 These were all folks who had received funding from an organization called Schmidt Futures, which is the most innovative philanthropic organization that I've ever seen.

Speaker 41 So shortly before dinner, One of the organizers pulls me aside and asks me if I could be responsible for facilitating the dinner conversation at my table.

Speaker 44 Okay, anyone who knows me knows that this is roughly the last thing that I would ever do, but I didn't really feel like I have a choice because they give me money.

Speaker 35 And so I thought I had to say yes.

Speaker 29 So then she hands me a piece of paper that lays out some kind of team building exercise I was supposed to lead.

Speaker 44 It involved role play.

Speaker 33 And oh my God, I thought this is going to be torture.

Speaker 54 So without asking permission, I decided I would just do something completely different.

Speaker 50 And when the eight of us sat down at the table, I didn't want people to make their standard introduction.

Speaker 18 I wanted each of us to tell our life story with one simple rule that you couldn't show any modesty.

Speaker 17 Oh, interesting.

Speaker 50 And I even used the word permission.

Speaker 38 I said, I'm not only giving you permission to brag about how amazing you are.

Speaker 35 I'm insisting that you do it.

Speaker 41 I want you to tell your story in a way that breaks every social norm about restraint, about saying all the good things happen to you because of luck.

Speaker 33 I want to hear the unfiltered version of your greatest hits.

Speaker 36 So sitting next to me was a woman named Marina Nitza.

Speaker 41 She's awesome.

Speaker 36 She later came on my podcast as a guest and I'd only known her for a few hours and she's the nicest, most self-deprecating person you'll ever meet.

Speaker 27 So we went around the table and we told our secrets, not our embarrassing secrets, but the things we're secretly proud of, but we don't want to admit we're proud of.

Speaker 41 I'm sure I must have talked about my SAT scores.

Speaker 44 I have literally not mentioned my SAT scores in my adult life to anyone, but at this table, I told people I had really high SAT scores because I'm secretly kind of proud of it.

Speaker 26 But after we finished, one of the men at the table, he said something like, well, I've told you my whitewash story where everything's perfect.

Speaker 33 Would it be okay if I also tell you about my deepest regret?

Speaker 41 And then we ended up, eight strangers at a business dinner having one of the most wonderful and intimate group conversations I've ever had in my entire life.

Speaker 50 I've never seen anyone cry at a work dinner.

Speaker 47 Every single person at the table cried that night.

Speaker 33 Oh my gosh.

Speaker 44 So what do you make of that?

Speaker 21 So I think two things are happening here. The first thing is

Speaker 21 that you are inviting a social conversation. How do I see myself? How do I believe that the world sees me? And you're inviting people to talk about that, which can feel incredibly intimate.

Speaker 21 When I tell you how I want you to see me by sharing a story with you that I'm proud of and kind of ashamed that I'm proud of it, it's enormously powerful.

Speaker 21 And then my guess is that what's happening next is that everyone else at the table is proving that they're listening. through their emotions, through how they react.

Speaker 21 Not only would they match the candor and the intimacy of the person who had gone before them, but they might actually also referenced other people.

Speaker 21 They probably said like, you mentioned X and that made me think in my own life of Y.

Speaker 21 And this proving that we're listening is really, really important.

Speaker 21 And in fact, there's a technique in the book referred to as looping for understanding, where in a conflict situation, oftentimes what you should do is you should ask a question, repeat back in your own words what the person just said.

Speaker 21 and then ask them if you got it right. And that third step is often the one that people forget.

Speaker 27 But by asking them if you got it right you're giving them permission to correct you or to say yes you understand me so i've tried the looping technique that you have in your book and i did it with some trepidation because i have to admit when i fight with my wife i often don't understand what we're fighting about and what she's upset about so i was afraid that i'd get it wrong i'd try to repeat back to her what she said And if I got it wrong, I was really going to be in the doghouse.

Speaker 29 And so what was interesting is the first time I tried it, I said what I thought she had said.

Speaker 38 And she's like, no, that's not it at all.

Speaker 36 And then she told me again, actually, in a way that was much clearer what was wrong. My expectation was by getting it wrong, it would show where I wasn't listening.

Speaker 37 But consistent with how you've described it, by repeating back through what she said, even though I got it wrong, she felt heard.

Speaker 21 And more importantly, she probably realized that you genuinely wanted to understand what she was saying.

Speaker 21 Sometimes when we say something and the other person doesn't hear us, because they don't want to hear us, right? And we suspect they don't want to hear us.

Speaker 21 They're just waiting their turn to speak or they're taking the most uncharitable perspective possible. But when you say to her, like, here's what I heard you say, and then you screw it all up.

Speaker 21 And then you say, did I get that right? What you're really saying is, no, I really want to understand what you're saying. I am not smart enough right now to figure it out based on what you said.

Speaker 21 But that intent, that desire, once we show that, then a lot of people will give us the benefit of the doubt and they'll help us understand what they're saying.

Speaker 44 I could talk with you all day about super communicators, but I'm really curious to talk about the other things you've done. Like your first book, The Power of Habit.

Speaker 50 That came out back in 2012.

Speaker 44 And my God, it was an unbelievable success.

Speaker 20 Great reviews.

Speaker 41 It sold sold a zillion copies. It spent three years on the bestseller list.

Speaker 44 But the origin of that book was pretty humble.

Speaker 63 You just wanted to break a few bad habits, right?

Speaker 21 Oh, totally. I wanted to lose weight.
I had this basic question.

Speaker 21 It's the same question that kind of motivated this book, which is like, if I'm so smart and successful, why am I 20 pounds overweight and I can't make myself go running in the morning?

Speaker 21 I honestly just wanted an excuse to call experts and ask them how to improve my own habits, like how to make it easier to exercise and eat less.

Speaker 21 And the only way, as you know, you can do that as an author is that you have to write a book about it because otherwise nobody wants to talk to you.

Speaker 21 But if you tell them you're writing a book, they'll talk to you for like an hour.

Speaker 44 So the core idea in the power of habit, it's really simple, that there's something called a habit loop.

Speaker 17 And understanding that loop helps people devise strategies for breaking bad habits and building good habits.

Speaker 26 Absolutely.

Speaker 21 Every habit functions the same way within our brain. And every habit has three components.
There's a cue, which is a trigger for an automatic behavior.

Speaker 21 The routine itself, which is the behavior, and that's usually what we think of.

Speaker 40 And then a reward.

Speaker 21 Every habit in our life has a reward, whether we're aware of it or not. And this is the habit loop.

Speaker 21 And once you know how to diagnose the cues and the rewards in your life, then you can start shaping these new behaviors that become more and more automatic.

Speaker 21 And that's really powerful because it basically says there's no behavior that's beyond your grasp if you just try and like do the routine just try and do the behavior it's not going to get easier but if you think about the cues and you think about giving yourself rewards then your brain eventually is going to make that into a habit that happens almost automatically i know that at one point you were keeping a running tally of the number of readers who wrote to you about their experiences applying the tools.

Speaker 36 And it was a big number, right?

Speaker 21 Yeah, it's in excess of 26,000 emails at this point. And it's been a decade.
Didn't all happen overnight.

Speaker 21 But every week, I get three or four emails from someone who says, I struggled with procrastination and now I have a system, a plan to not procrastinate.

Speaker 21 And I respond to every single email a reader sends.

Speaker 27 No, not really. Yeah.

Speaker 21 Yeah. Every single one.

Speaker 53 Wait, let me think about this. You said 26,000, right?

Speaker 45 Yeah. So let's say you spend five minutes.

Speaker 36 That's 130,000 minutes, roughly.

Speaker 40 You're kind of bad.

Speaker 45 That's 2,000 hours.

Speaker 30 And it probably takes you more than five minutes.

Speaker 21 Well, first of all, it's over 10 years, right?

Speaker 33 That's literally a year's full-time job.

Speaker 21 And it probably doesn't take me five minutes per email because a lot of them, it's just a matter of reading email and then saying like, thank you for sharing that with me.

Speaker 21 It's really inspiring to hear that you can change.

Speaker 48 And it's very rewarding, right?

Speaker 21 Like I get to talk to these people who spent time writing me and whose lives are changed. There's all these things.
that we can change in our life about how we behave.

Speaker 21 But most of my happiness, most of my sense of satisfaction and success, it comes from how I interact with other people. And habits are all about me.
They're all about changing myself.

Speaker 21 But if I want to focus on getting better with other people, then that's all about communication.

Speaker 21 I'm really hopeful that, you know, a couple of years from now, I'm getting those same emails from people who are saying,

Speaker 21 I had trouble connecting with my sister for a decade. And then I used one of the ideas that I found in the book.
And now we feel closer than ever before.

Speaker 21 As a journalist, you basically just steal other people's ideas and then try and explain them in entertaining ways.

Speaker 21 Like, I can't think of something more meaningful or a way to pay homage to these ideas better than to help people connect with the people that they love the most.

Speaker 2 You're listening to People I Mostly Admire with Steve Levitt and his conversation with journalist Charles Duhig.

Speaker 2 After this short break, he'll return to talk about what we can learn from the movie Frozen.

Speaker 21 I don't mean to interrupt your meal, but I saw you from across a cafe and you're the Geico Gecko, right?

Speaker 64 In the flesh. Oh, my goodness.

Speaker 11 This is huge to finally meet you.

Speaker 65 I love Geico's fast and friendly claim service.

Speaker 52 Well, that's how Geico gets 97% customer satisfaction.

Speaker 64 Anyway, that's all.

Speaker 65 Enjoy the rest of your food.

Speaker 52 No worries. Uh, so are you just gonna watch me eat?

Speaker 64 Oh, sorry. Just a little starstruck.
I'll be on my way.

Speaker 52 If you're gonna stick around, just pull up a chair.

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Speaker 5 Honey, do not make plans Saturday, September 13th, okay?

Speaker 7 Why, what's happening?

Speaker 6 The Walmart Wellness Event.

Speaker 8 Flu shots, health screenings, free samples from those brands you like.

Speaker 7 All that at Walmart.

Speaker 9 We can just walk right in. No appointment needed.

Speaker 10 Who knew we could cover our health and wellness needs at Walmart?

Speaker 4 Check the calendar Saturday, September 13th.

Speaker 5 Walmart Wellness Event.

Speaker 11 You knew.

Speaker 7 I knew.

Speaker 3 Check in on your health at the same place you already already shop.

Speaker 12 Visit Walmart Saturday, September 13th for our semi-annual wellness event.

Speaker 14 Flu shots subject to availability and applicable state law.

Speaker 15 Age restrictions apply. Free samples while supplies last.

Speaker 16 Charles Duhigg has one more big book that we haven't talked about yet.

Speaker 67 It's called Smarter, Faster, Better.

Speaker 24 It tackles productivity and it uses great storytelling to make its point.

Speaker 17 So you followed up the power of habit with another book, I think, four years later on productivity.

Speaker 31 There was a story, though, in the book that I actually wish I had never read.

Speaker 34 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 36 Because it shattered my innocence.

Speaker 17 So, just as background, I have a lot of kids.

Speaker 31 I have seven kids, and five of them are girls.

Speaker 49 And that means that I've spent a lot of time with the movie Frozen.

Speaker 44 And it's come to occupy a really special place in my heart.

Speaker 22 And it's funny because I've always thought of Frozen as just being hatched, fully grown.

Speaker 21 That there's only one way that frozen could be and frozen is that way but then in the book you tell the real story of the making of frozen and i couldn't believe the circuitous path that it took the creators to come up with what frozen was it's amazing isn't it it hurts me a little bit to know it one of my favorite details of that is that they finished the script for frozen months before it was released they literally didn't know what the end of the movie was as they were doing the animation for the beginning of it.

Speaker 21 And you're exactly right. There were all these different things.
Like when Frozen was first born, there was a character, Anna, and then a snow queen that came and kind of bullied Anna.

Speaker 21 And they played with that and they couldn't get it to work. And so then they were like, what if we have two sisters, but one is a good sister and one is an evil sister, still the snow queen.

Speaker 21 They just happen to be sisters. And again, it just didn't work.
They spent years trying to figure out how to make that script work and failing again and again.

Speaker 41 One thing I was shocked by is it sounds like they actually had made a movie with that theme and screened it.

Speaker 28 Yeah.

Speaker 46 And everyone hated it and they threw it out there.

Speaker 50 It wasn't like they just talked about this and discarded it.

Speaker 25 They literally made a movie that was terrible, that had a completely different story.

Speaker 53 And then somehow at the last minute managed to salvage something amazing out of something that was awful.

Speaker 21 And like this was bewildering to them because they couldn't figure out why they couldn't crack this code. And they're like, this is a big problem.
We're already on the books for a release date.

Speaker 21 And so they sit down and they say, okay, look, let's go around and let's just talk about some of our favorite stories. Like, why do some stories work?

Speaker 21 And I'll mention there's an unusually large number of women working on Frozen. In fact, one of the directors was the first female director in Disney's history.

Speaker 21 And they would say things like, my favorite book when I was a kid was Little Women. And I like stories.
that are about how women relate to each other and how girls relate to each other.

Speaker 21 And then there was this other thing that they started talking about, like, how are the stories that you use to define yourself?

Speaker 21 And a lot of people in that room said, one important way I define myself is through my siblings, particularly relationships between sisters.

Speaker 21 And so what they said is, okay, look, we have this snow queen narrative. What if we were to take a little bit of little women?

Speaker 21 and a little bit of these stories that we all know about sisters and how complicated our relationships are with our siblings, and we were to just mix these three stories together. That is frozen.

Speaker 21 That's why it works. It's this idea known as being a innovation broker, that oftentimes creativity comes not from a brainstorm.

Speaker 21 Creativity comes from being like in the import-export business of ideas and just mixing ideas together in new ways.

Speaker 21 Behavioral economics is pointed to as the apex of innovation brokerage because it takes some basic questions from economics and some basic questions from psychology.

Speaker 21 which at that point weren't necessarily seen as exciting, but mixing them together suddenly made them really exciting.

Speaker 51 Is that fair?

Speaker 20 I think it is fair.

Speaker 33 And it's really a one-way journey.

Speaker 35 What has happened is psychologists and economists have found things in psychology and imported them into economics.

Speaker 17 The opposite just hasn't happened.

Speaker 39 There hasn't been this reverse transference.

Speaker 35 Honestly, thinking about now, I'm not exactly sure why that is the case.

Speaker 45 It'd be good to ask somebody like Danny Kahn or Richard Thaler why that is.

Speaker 27 But I think it is a fair statement that it has been purely a one-way transfer.

Speaker 41 I mean, one of the things that I always say to everyone when they're talking about ideas is that it is so much easier to steal, call borrow, maybe to borrow an idea than to come up with something new.

Speaker 27 I mean, speaking of Danny Kahneman, he and I used to work together in a consulting firm.

Speaker 30 And I don't think Danny and I, in the entire time we worked in consulting, ever created something from scratch, something new.

Speaker 27 It was always something that we managed to take from others or maybe take from our own work in the past.

Speaker 21 One of the things that I love about your career is that you've never felt constrained by the orthodoxies or the boundaries that other people just accept unquestioningly.

Speaker 21 Like you're willing to ask new questions in different ways. Where does that come from? Because in a sense, it's an act of courage.

Speaker 44 Well, I wouldn't call it courage.

Speaker 38 I think more desperation is where it came from in the first place.

Speaker 31 Because I was so ill-equipped to be a regular economist.

Speaker 17 And in graduate school, it became apparent to me and it was apparent to everyone around me that if I played by the regular rules, I was going to have a very short career in economics.

Speaker 37 And I made a very conscious choice that I wouldn't play by the regular rules.

Speaker 36 And I figured I was still going to have a very short career in economics because if you don't play by the rules, usually things don't go well.

Speaker 42 All I did was I was myself.

Speaker 39 I just...

Speaker 41 actually tried to pay attention to what was interesting to me and didn't worry about whether it would be interesting to other people or whether it would easily fit into what economists are doing.

Speaker 58 So about real estate agents, look, I was actually buying houses and I was experiencing the fact that the real estate agents were ripping me off and they were lying to me.

Speaker 54 And so

Speaker 44 with a little bit of curiosity, a little bit of willingness to be childlike and to actually dive deeper into these situations, that's all I did.

Speaker 21 One thing I hear you saying, and this is, I think, really meaningful, is that you pay attention to yourself. Like you pay attention to your own emotional reactions and intellectual reactions.

Speaker 21 There's a writer, George Saunders, who's a wonderful short story writer and novelist.

Speaker 21 And one of the things that he says is that if you want to be a writer, you really have to learn to be able to observe yourself as you read.

Speaker 21 So when I read something new, I'm experiencing it, but I'm also observing like when I feel happy or when I feel sad, like why is this particular passage making me feel this way?

Speaker 21 And in some respects, that's what communication is too, right?

Speaker 21 When we're communicating with someone, we're trying to to share an idea with them, but we're also observing, if we're a good communicator, if we're a super communicator, we're observing ourselves a little bit.

Speaker 21 Like we're observing when we feel emotional and trying to share that with the other person. This capacity for sort of meta-observation of ourselves and others, I think that's a really powerful tool.

Speaker 67 It means that our own experiences become a data set that we can learn from.

Speaker 22 You know what I find so amazing about this conversation with Charles Duhigg?

Speaker 16 I just read his book, so I'm hypersensitive to the tools he lays out for having great conversations.

Speaker 18 At various points, as we talked, I could even name the particular technique he was implementing as he was saying something.

Speaker 16 You would think that would make me cynical, that I would feel like he was just manipulating me.

Speaker 20 But the crazy thing is, my reaction is completely the opposite.

Speaker 63 I can't stop thinking about how much I love Charles Duhig, how he feels like a close friend, even though this is the first time we've ever spoken.

Speaker 41 It's almost like he cast a spell over me.

Speaker 43 That's how powerful these conversational tools are.

Speaker 16 To learn more about the nuts and bolts of having great conversations, and to increase the chance you will cast a spell over me if we meet, pick up the book, Super Communicators.

Speaker 63 And now it's the part of the show where I invite my producer Morgan on, and we take a listener question.

Speaker 68 Hi, Steve. So a listener named Sean wrote to us about the word inshittification.
It was the American Dialect Society's word of the year for 2023.

Speaker 63 Now, I have to say, when Sean wrote that, I felt old and out of touch because that is not a word that I was familiar with.

Speaker 68 You're not that old, Steve, because I have not heard of it either.

Speaker 44 Okay, really?

Speaker 68 So listeners, inshittification was coined by a journalist named Corey Doctorow.

Speaker 68 And he describes it as the process through which internet platforms die. So first, platforms are good to their users.
Then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers.

Speaker 68 Finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then the last stage is that they die.

Speaker 68 So Sean wants to know why the market hasn't punished these bad actors. Or is the fall of these internet platforms coming, do you think?

Speaker 63 I admit, when I heard the concept described, it certainly has a ring of truth to it. Although my own feeling is that the spirit isn't quite right.

Speaker 63 But let me just tell an anecdote to capture some of what's going on here. So Facebook was founded in 2004.

Speaker 63 So eight years later, I remember visiting Facebook. Facebook had four or five thousand employees at that time.
And we were meeting with the team that was in charge of generating revenue.

Speaker 63 It turned out out of the four to five thousand employees they had, there was maybe 12 to 20, it was a handful of people whose actual job was to make money.

Speaker 63 And that's exactly in the spirit of this was a social network that had developed without the idea of making money.

Speaker 16 And at that time, I think the revenues might have been $5 billion a year.

Speaker 63 Now the revenues are over $100 billion a year. And it's exactly by the process that Corey Doctorow describes, I think, that they generate those revenues.
Okay.

Speaker 63 But all that being said, it's kind of sensible and normal.

Speaker 63 And I think there's something off in the consumer mindset that we've come to believe that the internet should provide us with amazing products, which bring us joy and happiness and we spend hours of the day on and should ask nothing back in return.

Speaker 63 I just feel like consumers are spoiled by the fact that the networks start out by taking huge losses in an attempt to grow and become big.

Speaker 63 And then later on, they do the sensible thing, which is to find a way to get some of the value for themselves.

Speaker 68 So is there anything to be done or are internet platforms just doomed to inshidification?

Speaker 63 Everything would change and would change for the better if people owned their own data. It wouldn't be worth anything to you on your own.
There's no way for you to take your data and monetize it.

Speaker 63 You need the big platforms to work as a partner with you to try to monetize it.

Speaker 17 And I think what would be so amazing about data ownership is that people would have a menu of choices.

Speaker 63 They could cooperate not at all with the platforms and probably get very little service in return.

Speaker 22 They could cooperate at the exact same level they do now.

Speaker 63 They essentially just get to share a little bit in the flow of the revenues.

Speaker 63 Or you could actually become a partner and work side by side with the network, providing extra information, providing exactly the kind of things that these third-party advertisers want to know about you.

Speaker 63 And because you're sharing in some of the revenue, you'd be eager to do it. It would just be a very different ecosystem.
It would be one that might be able to escape the phenomenon of incidification.

Speaker 63 It would be fun to watch that unfold.

Speaker 68 If you have a question or comment for us, our email is pima at freakonomics.com. That's p-im-m-a at freakonomics.com.
We read every email that's sent and we look forward to reading yours.

Speaker 24 In two weeks, we're back with a brand new episode featuring Raj Shah.

Speaker 19 He's the president of the Rockefeller Foundation, the former head of USAID, and the author of a fantastic new book entitled Big Bets, How Large-Scale Change Really Happens.

Speaker 69 I wrote this book, Big Bets, to make the case that precisely at these moments of catastrophe and crisis, you have to be bold and you have to be highly aspirational and you have to be incredibly data-driven in order to have any chance at success, however you define it.

Speaker 23 As always, thanks for listening and we'll see you back soon.

Speaker 2 People I mostly admire is part of the Freakonomics Radio Network, which also includes Freakonomics Radio, No Stupid Questions, and The Economics of Everyday Things.

Speaker 2 All our shows are produced by Stitcher and Renbud Radio. This episode was produced by Julie Canfer and Morgan Levy, with help from Lyric Boudich.
It was mixed by Jasmine Klinger.

Speaker 2 We had research assistance from Daniel Moritz Rabson. Our theme music was composed by Luis Guerra.
We can be reached at pima at freakonomics.com. That's P-I-M-A at freakonomics.com.

Speaker 2 Thanks for listening.

Speaker 21 Do you want me to go on and tell you the end of the story?

Speaker 42 Yeah,

Speaker 58 I want to hear what he does.

Speaker 51 Yeah.

Speaker 40 We're going to end it there.

Speaker 3 The Freakonomics Radio Network, the hidden side of everything.

Speaker 12 Stitcher.

Speaker 65 I don't mean to interrupt your meal, but I love Geico's fast-and-friendly claim service.

Speaker 52 Well, that's how Geico gets 97% customer satisfaction.

Speaker 65 Yeah, I'll let you get back to your food.

Speaker 52 Uh, so are you just gonna watch me eat?

Speaker 62 Get more than just savings, get more with Geico.

Speaker 70 I'm gonna put you on, nephew. I don't.

Speaker 12 Welcome to McDonald's. Can I take your order?

Speaker 62 Miss, I've been hitting up McDonald's for years.

Speaker 70 Now it's back.

Speaker 62 We need snack wraps.

Speaker 70 What's a snack wrap?

Speaker 21 It's the return of something great.

Speaker 51 Snack wrap is back.

Speaker 5 Honey, do not make plans Saturday, September 13th, okay?

Speaker 7 Why, what's happening?

Speaker 6 The Walmart wellness event.

Speaker 8 Flu shots, health screenings, free samples from those brands you like.

Speaker 7 All that at Walmart.

Speaker 9 We can just walk right in. No appointment needed.

Speaker 10 Who knew we could cover our health and wellness needs at Walmart?

Speaker 4 Check the calendar Saturday, September 13th.

Speaker 5 Walmart Wellness Event.

Speaker 11 You knew.

Speaker 7 I knew.

Speaker 3 Check in on your health at the same place you already shop.

Speaker 12 Visit Walmart Saturday, September 13th for our semi-annual wellness event.

Speaker 14 Flu shots subject to availability and applicable state law.

Speaker 15 Age restrictions apply. Free samples while supplies last.