Speaker 1: The goal of a conversation is to understand what the
Speaker 1: other person is trying to tell you, and to speak
Speaker 1: in such a way that they can understand you. Then,
Speaker 1: by virtue of that, I'm gonna adopt some of your lens,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna at least see the world for your lens.
Speaker 1: That doesn't mean that I agree with your lens, and
Speaker 1: it doesn't mean that I'm gonna walk away and we're
Speaker 1: gonna have found common ground. But as long as I
Speaker 1: understand how you see the world, and I get you
Speaker 1: to understand how I see the world, then that conversation
Speaker 1: is a success.
Speaker 2: On this episode of the Psychology Podcast, I talk with
Speaker 2: Poultzer Prize winning reporter and best selling author Charles Duhig.
Speaker 2: The topic of this conversation is super communicators. Super Communicators
Speaker 2: are exactly what it sounds like, super communicators. Charles breaks
Speaker 2: down the characteristics of super communicators and teaches us how
Speaker 2: we can all become a better super communicator. We also
Speaker 2: discuss why some conversations succeed and some fail, and the
Speaker 2: three main types of conversations. I also enjoyed chatting about
Speaker 2: how we can connect with others who we disagree with,
Speaker 2: a topic I think is really important in this day
Speaker 2: and age. I really enjoyed this chat and learned a
Speaker 2: lot that I can apply in my life right away.
Speaker 2: So without further ado, I'll bring you Charles Douhig. Hey, Charles, Wow,
Speaker 2: welcome back to the Psychology Podcast.
Speaker 3: Thanks, thanks for having me back.
Speaker 2: I was checking the last time you were on was
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh. Yeah, so it's been a little while.
Speaker 2: That's it.
Speaker 3: Time flies.
Speaker 2: Imagine we both look different, at least a little bit,
Speaker 2: a little like mildly. I don't think you had that
Speaker 2: beard last time. Oh yeah, yeah, it's you know, the pandemic.
Speaker 2: It took a lot out of all of.
Speaker 3: Us, so so sure, yeah, but.
Speaker 2: I could be wrong. Don'tquote me in that you may
Speaker 2: have had a beard. It was a long time ago.
Speaker 2: But I am so proud of you and happy for
Speaker 2: you for this new book I think for communicators. Can
Speaker 2: you hold it up and show everyone, because I see
Speaker 2: it right behind you.
Speaker 3: Oh sure, this is actually that's actually.
Speaker 2: Okay, Sorry, I thought that was the book.
Speaker 3: No no, no, no no, it's like a blow up of
Speaker 3: the cover. But actually I have one to hear it too.
Speaker 2: Move it a little to that this way, yeah, great, excellent. Okay,
Speaker 2: so those in the YouTube you can see that. So
Speaker 2: let's just discuss the cover for a second. What was
Speaker 2: the logic behind behind uh that? And how does that
Speaker 2: tie to the topic of the book.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, we spend a lot of time, as
Speaker 1: you know, it takes a lot of time to figure
Speaker 1: out what the right cover is for a book. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that one of the things that happens with
Speaker 1: what we've learned about the science of communication is that
Speaker 1: these are skills that tend to build on each other. Right,
Speaker 1: that our brains are basically have evolved to be excellent
Speaker 1: communication because communication is Homo sapien superpower. It's the thing
Speaker 1: that has allowed our species to succeed so well. And
Speaker 1: so when with the cover, we thought it would be
Speaker 1: kind of fun to to signal this like building that
Speaker 1: the fact that that you know, we sort of we
Speaker 1: learned to communicate as children and as we get older,
Speaker 1: anyone can become a super communicator. It's just a set
Speaker 1: of skills that you just need to learn and allow
Speaker 1: to become habits, and once you do that, you you
Speaker 1: can connect with anyone.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love that, And it's just something that any
Speaker 2: of us can cultivate and the set of skills. But
Speaker 2: there are super communicators out there that maybe there's there.
Speaker 2: It's a talent for you know, because you can both
Speaker 2: can be doing at the same time. Something can be
Speaker 2: a source of variation. That's talent. And also we can
Speaker 2: all to some extent learn skills. These are their prodigies
Speaker 2: of supercommunicators. Maybe that's what I'm asking.
Speaker 1: No, not really, And you're right. There are some people
Speaker 1: who are consistent who are communicators. So we're all super
Speaker 1: communicators at one time or another. In fact, if I
Speaker 1: was to ask you, for instance, if you were having
Speaker 1: a bad day and you wanted to call someone who
Speaker 1: you know would make you feel better, the person who
Speaker 1: had called you, they pop into your head. Who is immediately.
Speaker 2: Jordan Feinegeld and Michael author from my prior book Choo
Speaker 2: His Growth. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so so Jordan, for you is a super communicator,
Speaker 1: and you're probably a super communicator right back to him.
Speaker 1: You know exactly what questions to ask, you know, you
Speaker 1: know her, Sorry, my apologies, you're a super communicator. Back
Speaker 1: to her, and you know what questions to ask and
Speaker 1: what you can hear the emotions underneath some of the
Speaker 1: things that she says that might not seem emotional on
Speaker 1: the surface. Yeah, and there's other times that you're super
Speaker 1: communicator when you walk into a meeting and you know
Speaker 1: exactly what to say to win the room over, or
Speaker 1: you you a friend calls and you know exactly what
Speaker 1: to ask them. But there are some people who can
Speaker 1: do this more consistently. People who can essentially be consistent
Speaker 1: super communicator can connect with anyone. And you're when I
Speaker 1: first started doing the reporting for supercommunicators, I assumed, kind
Speaker 1: of what you just said, that maybe these people were
Speaker 1: born with it, or maybe they're particularly charming or you know, extroverts.
Speaker 1: But it turns out that's not right at all. In fact,
Speaker 1: what the research tells us is that anyone can become
Speaker 1: a super communicator, and it's essentially a random, you know,
Speaker 1: a normal distribution through society. There's some super communicators, consistent
Speaker 1: supercommunicators or extroverts, and some who are introverts. There's some
Speaker 1: who are charming and some who are curmudgeonly. It's not
Speaker 1: about an innate capacity you have. Rather, it's about a
Speaker 1: set of skills that you can learn. And if you
Speaker 1: talk to those people who are consistent super communicators. One
Speaker 1: of the things they often say is there was a
Speaker 1: time in their life when they were bad at communication,
Speaker 1: when you know, they had trouble making friends in high school,
Speaker 1: or their parents got divorced and they had to play
Speaker 1: the peace maker between them. And it's thinking about communication
Speaker 1: just even half an inch deeper than everyone else than
Speaker 1: the average person that makes us into supercommunicators, because the
Speaker 1: more we pay attention to how conversation works, the better
Speaker 1: we are at it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, paying attention seems to be such an art. Carl Rogers,
Speaker 2: one of my heroes, wrote this wonderful book called Active Listening.
Speaker 2: I imagine that his technique to active listening would be
Speaker 2: quite relevant to being I bet he was a super communicator,
Speaker 2: is what.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: No, I think he probably was.
Speaker 1: And I think a lot of what what he wrote
Speaker 1: about in active listening and what others have expounded upon
Speaker 1: are at the core of these skills. And in many ways,
Speaker 1: what the skills are designed to do is to show
Speaker 1: the other person that you want to connect with them,
Speaker 1: because oftentimes showing someone we want to connect by listening,
Speaker 1: by asking follow up questions, by asking the right kinds
Speaker 1: of questions, by sharing things about ourselves and engaging in
Speaker 1: reciprocal authenticity and reciprocal vulnerability.
Speaker 3: Those are the things that show.
Speaker 1: The other person we want to connect with them, and
Speaker 1: that that demonstration is often the first and most important
Speaker 1: step to actually making a connection.
Speaker 2: Well, let's step back before we even get deeper in
Speaker 2: the weeds a second, and let's not in the weeds,
Speaker 2: but deeper into the topic. Let's step back a moment.
Speaker 2: Why you personally you know, because you're you're a Pulzer
Speaker 2: Prize winner, right first of all?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I mean that's.
Speaker 2: Amazing, and you've covered various topics across your life. When
Speaker 2: did you start to get inter this top in particular?
Speaker 2: How do they get on your radar? And while you
Speaker 2: personally interested in it? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I think there was two things that happened. The first
Speaker 1: is I was working I work at the New Yorker
Speaker 1: magazine now, but I was working at the New York
Speaker 1: Times and they made me a manager. And I was
Speaker 1: pretty good at like the logistics part and the strategy
Speaker 1: part of managing. And I figured I'd be a great
Speaker 1: manager because I've had lots of managers. I got an
Speaker 1: MBA from Harvard Business School, Like, I figured this is
Speaker 1: something that I'd be good at and I was just
Speaker 1: terrible at it. I was terrible at the communication part
Speaker 1: of it. You know that people would come to me
Speaker 1: and they would, you know, sort of bring me emotional problems,
Speaker 1: and I'd try and solve their problems right away by
Speaker 1: giving them practical solutions. I didn't hear what they were
Speaker 1: really saying to me, and so that was kind of
Speaker 1: bewildering to me to try and figure out why I
Speaker 1: was so bad at this, particularly because I'm a professional communicator,
Speaker 1: I'm a journalist. And then I also fell into this
Speaker 1: bad pattern with my wife at home, which is that
Speaker 1: I would come home from work after a long day
Speaker 1: and I would start complaining about my day, and you know,
Speaker 1: my boss is a jerk, he doesn't understand me. And Liz,
Speaker 1: my wife, very reasonable, would offer a practical suggestion like
Speaker 1: why don't you take them out to lunch and you
Speaker 1: guys can get to know each other a little bit better,
Speaker 1: and instead of being able to hear what she was saying,
Speaker 1: I would get even more upset, and I would say, like,
Speaker 1: why aren't you supporting me? You're supposed to be outraged
Speaker 1: on my behalf, and she would get upset because I
Speaker 1: was attacking her for giving me good advice, and so
Speaker 1: I didn't understand what was happening. I didn't understand why
Speaker 1: I was having these moments whereas bad at communication, And
Speaker 1: so I reached out to experts to ask them.
Speaker 3: And that was really the start of the book.
Speaker 2: I love that. Well, you write about three types of conversations,
Speaker 2: and yeah, what are they and why the distinction between
Speaker 2: them so important?
Speaker 1: Well, this is what the researchers told me when I
Speaker 1: called them. They said two things.
Speaker 2: I said.
Speaker 1: First of all, we're really glad you called because we're
Speaker 1: living through this golden age of understanding communication for really
Speaker 1: the first time.
Speaker 3: Because of advances.
Speaker 1: In neural imaging and in data collection, we can really
Speaker 1: study conversation like never before. And they said, and the
Speaker 1: big insight that we've had, or one of them, is
Speaker 1: we tend to think of a discussion as being about
Speaker 1: one thing. Right, We're talking about my day, or we're
Speaker 1: talking about grades or a new book that I had
Speaker 1: that just came out. But they said, actually, now every
Speaker 1: conversation is made up of different kinds of conversations, and
Speaker 1: in general, they tend to fall into one of three
Speaker 1: big buckets. There's these practical discussions we have where we
Speaker 1: talk about plans or you know, solve problems together. Then
Speaker 1: there's emotional conversations where I might tell you what I'm feeling,
Speaker 1: and I don't want you to solve my feelings, I
Speaker 1: want you to empathize. And then finally there's social conversations,
Speaker 1: which is about how we relate to each other in
Speaker 1: society and the social identities that are important to us.
Speaker 1: And what they said is, look, if you're not having
Speaker 1: the same kind of conversation at the same moment, it's
Speaker 1: very hard to hear each other, it's very hard to connect.
Speaker 1: And so this has become known as the matching principle,
Speaker 1: that communication relies on having the same kind of conversation
Speaker 1: at the same moment. And and I thought that was
Speaker 1: really interesting because as soon as they told me this,
Speaker 1: it made clear what was happening with my wife, for instance,
Speaker 1: like I was coming home and I was having an
Speaker 1: emotional conversation and she was responding with a practical conversation,
Speaker 1: and those are both legitimate forms of conversation communication, but
Speaker 1: because we weren't having the same kind of conversation at
Speaker 1: the same moment, it was really hard for us to
Speaker 1: hear each other, whereas if we had been aligned, if
Speaker 1: we were having the same kind of conversation, then we
Speaker 1: could move from emotional to practical to social back to
Speaker 1: emotional together.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I can clearly see how this is so important
Speaker 2: for relationships. Yeah, partnerships as zero describing, but any kind
Speaker 2: of relationship.
Speaker 1: At work, you know, with the kids, even you know
Speaker 1: the barista you see every day, there's there's some element
Speaker 1: of why we connect or why we failed to connect
Speaker 1: the draws on.
Speaker 2: This, Yeah, I mean the implications for this book are
Speaker 2: so wide ranging and relevant to the world today. I
Speaker 2: might mind. When I was reading your book, my mind
Speaker 2: kept going back towards how can we use this in
Speaker 2: politics for politicians to be better super communicators as opposed
Speaker 2: to dividers. I don't know what another word for it
Speaker 2: could be, but I just see so many divisions right now,
Speaker 2: and so many instances of people approaching conversations or relationships
Speaker 2: with their own frame of mind, with their own worldview lens.
Speaker 2: So do you think being part of a super communicator
Speaker 2: is being able suspend maybe your your narrow lens for
Speaker 2: a moment, to be able to kind of incorporate and
Speaker 2: allow for an openness of a different perspective.
Speaker 3: Well, the way I.
Speaker 1: Think about it is this that I think super communicators
Speaker 1: understand the goal of a conversation. And the goal of
Speaker 1: a conversation is not necessarily to like convince you that
Speaker 1: you're wrong and I'm right, or to get you to
Speaker 1: agree with me, or even to convince you that I'm
Speaker 1: smarter you should like me. The goal all of a
Speaker 1: conversation is to understand what the other person is trying
Speaker 1: to tell you and to speak in such a way
Speaker 1: that they can understand you. And and once we establish
Speaker 1: that as our goal, it changes a lot of those
Speaker 1: things you were just talking about, right, Because I don't
Speaker 1: know if you need to be more open minded or
Speaker 1: if you need to. But but if I come and
Speaker 1: I say, like, look, my my goal in this conversation,
Speaker 1: the way I'm going to evaluate if this is a
Speaker 1: success or not is to understand what you're trying to
Speaker 1: tell me. Then by virtue of that, I'm gonna I'm
Speaker 1: gonna adopt some of your lens. I'm gonna at least
Speaker 1: see the world through your lens. That doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: I agree with your lens, and it doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: I'm going to walk away and we're gonna we're gonna
Speaker 1: found common ground. But as long as I understand what
Speaker 1: you're how you see the world, and I get you
Speaker 1: to understand how I see the world, then that conversation
Speaker 1: is a success.
Speaker 3: And I think there is.
Speaker 1: A kind of open mindedness that has to accompany that
Speaker 1: because because it means that when I come into the
Speaker 1: conversation and you're saying things I disagree with, I'm not
Speaker 1: I'm not coming up the rebuttals in my head. That's
Speaker 1: not really listening. Rather, I'm coming up with questions. I'm
Speaker 1: coming up with with trying to understand what you're saying,
Speaker 1: rather than tell you how wrong you are. And we
Speaker 1: know that actually people people agree with each other more
Speaker 1: when they adopt this approach.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it also doesn't mean that you there's gonna
Speaker 2: be a lot of double negatives in this. But it
Speaker 2: also doesn't mean that there's not that you can't disagree.
Speaker 1: Oh, absolutely absolutely, That's part of helping you understand how
Speaker 1: I see the world to say, like, Okay, what I
Speaker 1: hear you saying is you think that your candidate is
Speaker 1: the best for security and I and I hear am
Speaker 1: I getting that right? And I'm hearing that. From my perspective,
Speaker 1: what's more important than security is justice. And so I'm
Speaker 1: choosing a candidate who I think, who I think brings more.
Speaker 3: Justice to the world.
Speaker 1: But these are both legitimate ways of looking at the world.
Speaker 1: And let me ask you some questions about how you
Speaker 1: think about security and justice.
Speaker 2: Now, that is very idealistic. I love I love that
Speaker 2: what you said. But with emotionally charged issues, I mean,
Speaker 2: I don't think people really think the other view is legitimate,
Speaker 2: you know, like, you know, if there's a conversation about
Speaker 2: reproductive rights, I couldn't imagine a conversation with something like, well,
Speaker 2: your view is, you know, legitimate. But I just can't
Speaker 2: see that. I wish, I wish people could have more
Speaker 2: of a level headed conversation. But the second you bring
Speaker 2: in emotions. But we do this all the time, right,
Speaker 2: I mean I imagine that there are probably some things that
Speaker 2: you you right, no, no, I mean humans disagreement. Are
Speaker 2: you married?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: No, okay, okay, but are do you have a partner
Speaker 1: or are you in like any relationship, Like do you
Speaker 1: have close friends anyone that you like talk to on
Speaker 1: aga basis?
Speaker 4: You're like, what can I ask that would be not
Speaker 4: too personal. Yes, okay, okay? And so do you agree
Speaker 4: one hundred percent with your friends on everything? No? No, no,
Speaker 4: of course not.
Speaker 1: And yet and yet you manage to be friends, You
Speaker 1: managed to navigate, and and if one of your friends says,
Speaker 1: look like, I think that Star Wars is much better
Speaker 1: than Star Trek and you disagree, that doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: doesn't mean you can't hear his reasons or her reasons
Speaker 1: for arguing that. And the same is true with reproductive rights. Oftentimes,
Speaker 1: when we're having a conversation about something where we do
Speaker 1: feel very passionate about it, the fact that we feel
Speaker 1: passionate about it does not mean that we can't hear
Speaker 1: what the other person is saying. We can't try and
Speaker 1: hear what the other person is saying. Now, it does
Speaker 1: mean that sometimes we have to quiet that voice within
Speaker 1: our head and say, my goal here is to listen
Speaker 1: and understand. It's not to come up with counter arguments
Speaker 1: and like you know, browbeat or bully this person into
Speaker 1: agreeing with me. But if you want to have a conversation,
Speaker 1: then you can absolutely have that conversation, even on things
Speaker 1: that you disagree with about that you feel very passionate
Speaker 1: about because the goal again is if you go in
Speaker 1: and you decide like I'm just going to like bowl
Speaker 1: this person over with my arguments, we know that's not
Speaker 1: going to work. You're you're kind of just wasting your time,
Speaker 1: but understanding what they're saying and helping them understand what
Speaker 1: you're saying. That's actually a conversation, that's a communication.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm all for this kind of very productive way forward,
Speaker 2: but it does take I'm going to just say some
Speaker 2: trite things. It takes two to tango and good and
Speaker 2: it takes I feel like there's a requirement here with
Speaker 2: two good faith actors, and I feel like that's just
Speaker 2: like a requirement for this to work. Like if I'm
Speaker 2: having a conversation with a neo Nazi who's not good faith,
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't know if it's going to work.
Speaker 1: To be honest, I don't know that you're having a
Speaker 1: conversation in that case, to be totally honest, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: if you go into that conversation you say I want
Speaker 1: to have a conversation with the neo Nazi, you can
Speaker 1: probably do it, but I think what you're actually saying,
Speaker 1: and tell me if you think I'm getting this wrong
Speaker 1: is when I talk to a neo Nazi, I don't
Speaker 1: want to have a conversation. I want to tell them
Speaker 1: how wrong they are. And that's totally fine. You don't
Speaker 1: have to have a conversation. Like you know, there are
Speaker 1: many times that I tell say to my kids, I
Speaker 1: want to have a conversation about your room, and I
Speaker 1: don't actually want to have a conversation about their room.
Speaker 1: I want them to go clean up their room. So
Speaker 1: it's fine not to have a conversation. But if you
Speaker 1: actually want to have a conversation with a neo Nazi,
Speaker 1: if you want, if you're going into this and you're saying,
Speaker 1: I'd like to understand how they see the world, because
Speaker 1: understanding how they see the world might help me figure
Speaker 1: out how to make my arguments more compelling to them,
Speaker 1: or it just might be might give me some insights
Speaker 1: on what's going on within the nation. You can do that, right,
Speaker 1: You have that capacity, even if even if they don't
Speaker 1: necessarily want to listen to you, you have the capacity
Speaker 1: to listen to them. And here's the thing is that
Speaker 1: we know this from studies. If you prove that you're listening,
Speaker 1: if you demonstrate that you are listening in good faith,
Speaker 1: they become much more likely to listen to you. In fact,
Speaker 1: we know that this like reciprocity of listening is such
Speaker 1: a strong soul norm that people almost can't avoid it.
Speaker 1: So if you engage in this thing looping for understanding,
Speaker 1: where you ask a question, you repeat back what the
Speaker 1: person told you in your own words to show that
Speaker 1: you're really paying attention, you're processing it. You ask them
Speaker 1: if you got it right, which is them giving you
Speaker 1: permission to acknowledge that you've listened to them. The odds
Speaker 1: of them listening back to you go up astronomically.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I wasn't even thinking in this scenario that I
Speaker 2: wasn't the one open to the conversation. I was thinking
Speaker 2: they would be the one not open to the conversation,
Speaker 2: whereas your default was the think that I wasn't the
Speaker 2: one anyway. So it's interesting. I think that what you're
Speaker 2: saying is true to an extent. If someone isn't you know,
Speaker 2: you can you can really try, or you can be
Speaker 2: the best super communicator in the world, and there's still
Speaker 2: going to be people who are not open to having
Speaker 2: a conversation. And that's just that's just the way the world.
Speaker 2: That's just what it is. You can't connect with everyone, Yeah,
Speaker 2: you can't.
Speaker 3: Can to someone who doesn't want to connect with you.
Speaker 1: But I'm just going to point out that if we
Speaker 1: look at history, or if we look at social sciences,
Speaker 1: what we see is overwhelming evidence of the alternative of
Speaker 1: people who disagree about things coming together and figuring out
Speaker 1: how to live with each other peacefully and how to
Speaker 1: have conversations. I mean, think about the founding of America.
Speaker 1: The Constitutional Convention was essentially a group of people who
Speaker 1: hated each other coming together and disagreeing and figuring out
Speaker 1: how to have conversations so that they can write a constitution.
Speaker 1: I mean, the history of this nation is, and the
Speaker 1: history of the world in large part, at least the
Speaker 1: parts of the history of the world that we feel
Speaker 1: good about are about how we can come together despite
Speaker 1: our differences and we can have conversations. So you're right,
Speaker 1: there are some people out there who just want to
Speaker 1: get on Twitter and they just want to scream, and
Speaker 1: they don't want to have a conversation. But the truth
Speaker 1: of the matter is that most of the people listening
Speaker 1: to this, they want to have a relationship with their neighbor,
Speaker 1: regardless of what lawn sign for which politician they have
Speaker 1: on their lawn. Right, so they want to be able
Speaker 1: to go over and say like, hey, Jim, you know,
Speaker 1: what do you think about that's pothole on the street?
Speaker 1: Can I borrow a hammer? And we are very very
Speaker 1: good at connecting with each other even when we disagree
Speaker 1: about some things, and in fact that's essential to human evolution.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, well it's a really good point, and the
Speaker 2: psychologist doctor Keltner would agree with you.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So what are what are some common mistakes then that
Speaker 2: people make when talking with each other? Well, I think
Speaker 2: there's a couple of things, right, So first of all,
Speaker 2: is not trying to figure out what kind of conversation
Speaker 2: we're in. So, and this is a mistake that I've
Speaker 2: made regularly. Right when I was at the New York Times,
Speaker 2: someone would come to me and they would they would clearly.
Speaker 1: Be wanting to have an emotional conversation. They would want
Speaker 1: to talk about how they felt that they were set
Speaker 1: or felt disrespected, or were frustrated.
Speaker 3: And instead of having.
Speaker 1: That emotional conversation, I would often launch into a practical
Speaker 1: conversation and come up with all these practical solutions, and
Speaker 1: that's that's not what they wanted to talk about. They
Speaker 1: wanted to know that I understood what they were telling
Speaker 1: me before we moved on to before we moved together,
Speaker 1: to a practical conversation. And one of the best ways
Speaker 1: to figure out what kind of conversation is happening is
Speaker 1: to ask questions, right and in particular to ask deep questions.
Speaker 1: And a lot of this comes from Nick Eppley at
Speaker 1: the University of Chicago and the research he's done. A
Speaker 1: deep question is something that asks someone about their values,
Speaker 1: or their beliefs, or their experiences, which can sound kind
Speaker 1: of hard and intimidating, but it's actually very very easy.
Speaker 1: Right if you bump into someone who's a you know,
Speaker 1: who's a lawyer, instead of asking like, oh, where do
Speaker 1: you practice law, you can ask, oh, what made you
Speaker 1: decide to go to law school? Like what do you
Speaker 1: love about practicing the law? What's your what's your favorite case?
Speaker 1: Those are questions that are deep questions that don't sing
Speaker 1: hard to ask, They're not overly intrusive, but they invite
Speaker 1: the person the other person to tell us something about themselves,
Speaker 1: how they see the world, what the experiences are that
Speaker 1: made them who they are. Those are really powerful and
Speaker 1: so one of the big mistakes we make is that
Speaker 1: we don't ask questions, and if we ask questions, we
Speaker 1: tend to ask questions about facts, which are often dead ends.
Speaker 1: And a lot of this work comes from Mike Yeomans,
Speaker 1: who's an Imperial College right now, that when we ask
Speaker 1: about facts, oftentimes it's very hard to ask follow up questions.
Speaker 1: We get into a dead end very quickly. But when
Speaker 1: we ask people how they feel about their life rather
Speaker 1: than the facts of their life, oftentimes they tell they
Speaker 1: tell us something that's revealing about who they are. That's
Speaker 1: very easy to ask a follow up question, and equally importantly,
Speaker 1: very natural for us to answer our own question, Oh,
Speaker 1: you became a doctor because you know, or you became
Speaker 1: a lawyer because you saw your uncle get arrested. It's funny,
Speaker 1: I became a physician because my dad got sick when
Speaker 1: I was a kid. Then we're engaging in that reciprocity
Speaker 1: right where that back and forth it's so key to conversations.
Speaker 1: And so the top thing people can do is ask
Speaker 1: more questions and ask the right kinds of questions.
Speaker 2: Do you think a good therapist is a good super communicator.
Speaker 1: I think that can be right. I mean, we both
Speaker 1: know enough. There are some great therapists out there, and
Speaker 1: there's some therapists who are less good at being super communicators.
Speaker 1: But there's also some super communicator lawyers out there, and
Speaker 1: professors and doctors and accountants, and there's some people who
Speaker 1: are less good at really trying to connect with other people.
Speaker 1: So I would say in general, people who are therapists
Speaker 1: probably care more about connection. They're probably spending more time
Speaker 1: thinking about it, which is good. That's one of the
Speaker 1: things that we know super communicators do is they think
Speaker 1: just half an inch deeper about communication. But being a therapist,
Speaker 1: I think does not guarantee that you're a super communicator.
Speaker 1: If you if you don't sort of remember some of
Speaker 1: the skills that are important.
Speaker 2: But but therapists could benefit from reading your book.
Speaker 1: Oh absolutely, absolutely a lot of I mean I think
Speaker 1: a lot of what a good therapist does in a
Speaker 1: session is the same skills that we describe in the book.
Speaker 1: And hopefully this gives people additional tools to use, you know,
Speaker 1: particularly when there's a there's a there's a portion of
Speaker 1: the book there's a couple of stories in the book,
Speaker 1: Like one of the stories is about the CIA officer
Speaker 1: who's trying to recruit overseas assets and it's terrible at it.
Speaker 1: And another another portion of the book is about this
Speaker 1: conversation between gun advocates, gun rights advocates and gun control
Speaker 1: activists that goes very well in person and then falls
Speaker 1: apart when they when they go online, and some of
Speaker 1: the principles that allow for the online communication to be better.
Speaker 1: And so I think anyone therapist or or not can
Speaker 1: benefit from sort of seeing these examples and thinking a
Speaker 1: little bit more deeply about how our communication has to
Speaker 1: change as we move into different channels.
Speaker 2: Well, I love I love the stories you bring. They're
Speaker 2: very wide ranging. Can we tell do you mind if
Speaker 2: we discuss some of this?
Speaker 3: Of course, of course, yeah.
Speaker 2: Some of my favorites, some of my favorites. I liked
Speaker 2: the one about the Big Bang writer a theory, The
Speaker 2: Big Bang Theory Writer's Room, can you talk.
Speaker 1: About Yeah, it's really fun and just for anyone listening,
Speaker 1: it's the sitcom the Big Bang Theory, not the actual
Speaker 1: theory the Big Bang Theory.
Speaker 3: So what's interesting about the So Big.
Speaker 1: Bang theory is like the most popular sitcom in history,
Speaker 1: Like it's more popular than Mash than Cheers, it's had
Speaker 1: more people watch it, it's lasted.
Speaker 3: Longer, it's one more awards.
Speaker 1: And what's funny is that when they first created that show,
Speaker 1: it was a total flop, Like they actually created a
Speaker 1: pilot and the pilot was terrible. Nobody thought liked the
Speaker 1: show at all. And the basic problem they had was
Speaker 1: the concept of the show is, we are going to
Speaker 1: introduce all these characters who are physicists, except for one
Speaker 1: engineer right, everyone looks down as knows of him. But
Speaker 1: the rest of them are physicists who are really really
Speaker 1: bad at communication, Like they're really bad at explaining their feelings,
Speaker 1: they're really bad at understanding other people's feelings. They're really
Speaker 1: bad at like just communicating men. Most of them were
Speaker 1: male communicating with women, and and so the humor came
Speaker 1: from this miscommunication. The problem for a sitcom, though, is
Speaker 1: that the way that a stcon works, the audience needs
Speaker 1: to understand what someone is feeling, like literally the second
Speaker 1: they appear on the screen, and if you're not clear
Speaker 1: on what each character is feeling, it's very confusing for
Speaker 1: you as an audience member. That's why that's why sitcoms
Speaker 1: fail and so, and just to give an example, like
Speaker 1: we all know when we're watching a show, the difference
Speaker 1: between two people who love each other and two people
Speaker 1: who hate each other and two people who are pretending
Speaker 1: to hate each other because they actually love each other
Speaker 1: and they haven't admitted it to themselves yet, right. We
Speaker 1: know that's that's like the premise of every single like sitcom,
Speaker 1: and we know within seconds of the person getting on
Speaker 1: the screen what's going on. So the question for the
Speaker 1: Big Bang Theory writers was, how do we write a
Speaker 1: show where our characters are terrible at communication, but we
Speaker 1: need to communicate what they're feeling immediately. And they actually
Speaker 1: went to this research that had been done about how
Speaker 1: we display emotions and how we judge emotions, some of
Speaker 1: which had ended up influencing how NASA chose astronauts, which.
Speaker 3: The little diversion.
Speaker 1: But when in the nineteen eighties NASA decided they needed
Speaker 1: to start finding astronauts who had more emotional intelligence because
Speaker 1: they were going to start building the space station and
Speaker 1: the missions were going to get longer six months or
Speaker 1: twelve months, and so they said, like, look, we need
Speaker 1: astronauts who actually can connect with each other and if not,
Speaker 1: they're going to drive each other crazy in this tin
Speaker 1: can in space for six months at a time, and.
Speaker 3: They couldn't fit.
Speaker 1: But the problem is they couldn't figure out how to
Speaker 1: tell the difference between people who had emotional intelligence from
Speaker 1: people who who faked it really, really well. Because when
Speaker 1: you make it to the final rounds of an astronaut interview,
Speaker 1: you're just like amazing, right, you have like a PhD.
Speaker 1: And you're handsome, and you're in great physical shape and
Speaker 1: you know how to answer every single question exactly the
Speaker 1: right way. So by the time you make it to
Speaker 1: the final rounds of astronaut NASA interviews, you're really good
Speaker 1: at faking emotional intelligence even if you don't have it.
Speaker 3: But they need to invite people.
Speaker 1: Who actually had emotional intelligence because you can't fake it
Speaker 1: for like six months at a time, and they had
Speaker 1: had these bad experiences during some missions. So this one guy,
Speaker 1: Terry Maguire, who's the lead psychiatrist for manned spaceflight, he
Speaker 1: comes up with a new way to interview people. When
Speaker 1: he walks into a room for the interview, he's carrying
Speaker 1: a big stack of papers and he spills them as
Speaker 1: if on accident, and then he laughs this huge boisterous
Speaker 1: laugh like haha, I'm such a good I cannot believe I, like,
Speaker 1: you know, dropped all these papers. And then he pays
Speaker 1: very close attention to how the astronaut candidate reacts because
Speaker 1: everybody laughs back, right, that's just social.
Speaker 3: Politeness, we know that.
Speaker 1: But some astronaut candidates would laugh like this, that's really
Speaker 1: silly here, let me give you a hand. And some
Speaker 1: of the candidates would go, oh my gosh, that's really
Speaker 1: that's crazy.
Speaker 3: Let me give you a hand.
Speaker 1: And what he realized is that the candidates who matched
Speaker 1: his emotional intensity, they were the ones who were emotionally intelligent.
Speaker 1: They were showing him that they want to connect, they
Speaker 1: were making this awkward moment feel easier for him, and
Speaker 1: they were the ones who ended up getting chosen. And
Speaker 1: that's writers of The Big Bang Theory figured out is
Speaker 1: that as long as the characters came on and they
Speaker 1: matched each other's energy and intensity and mood, it didn't
Speaker 1: matter what they said. The audience could tell whether these
Speaker 1: people were feeling connected with each other or weren't feeling connected.
Speaker 1: And that's all it took to make the show work, and.
Speaker 2: That's spirit I'm gonna respond to you. Yes, Yes, I'll
Speaker 2: match you. I'll match you. Can I just tell you
Speaker 2: personally why I love that out of all your stories
Speaker 2: the best. Yeah, I love that story the best out
Speaker 2: of all your stories. You know. I think that a
Speaker 2: big problem with a lot of people on the autism spectrum,
Speaker 2: which I am a little bit on that spectrum myself,
Speaker 2: there can be a real problem in that matching because
Speaker 2: we almost really just there's not an automatic sort of
Speaker 2: you know, we're very truthful, you know, I don't know
Speaker 2: when we put a positive spin on it, because a
Speaker 2: lot of people put a negative spin on it. We
Speaker 2: don't like bullshit, we don't like you know, fat around things.
Speaker 2: You know. We love to just get I'm very direct, right,
Speaker 2: And I think that I have had to learn over
Speaker 2: the years, and doing this podcast for ten years, every
Speaker 2: week for ten years, by the way, Charles, I've done
Speaker 2: this ten years for every week with no break, has
Speaker 2: taught me these skills that just you know, maybe don't
Speaker 2: don't come as naturally to me when I was born
Speaker 2: out of the gate, you know. Yeah, So I think
Speaker 2: that the whole show is about these guys on the
Speaker 2: autim the spectrum.
Speaker 1: And and and it's important to note that the writers
Speaker 1: I actually like I brought that up with the writers.
Speaker 1: I was like, well, you know, the main character, he
Speaker 1: seems like he's on the spectrum. And they were like, no,
Speaker 1: and one of the writers is actually on the spectrum himself,
Speaker 1: and and sort of very very sort of proud of it.
Speaker 1: Not proud, but he is very open about being on
Speaker 1: the spectrum. And when when when I mentioned this character
Speaker 1: being on the spectrum, he was like, no, he's never
Speaker 1: been tested, Like, we don't know if he's on the spectrum.
Speaker 1: You shouldn't you shouldn't put that on him. But I
Speaker 1: think to your point, yeah, Like, and the thing I
Speaker 1: would say is, you know, for for we tend to
Speaker 1: be able to identify in neuro divergent individuals having to
Speaker 1: learn skills very clearly. But the truth of the matter
Speaker 1: is learning these skills is important even if you're not neurodivergent,
Speaker 1: because nobody is born with them. Some people are definitely
Speaker 1: born where it's harder for them to visualize the skills,
Speaker 1: it's harder for them to infer the skills from talking
Speaker 1: to others and pick them up socially. They need more
Speaker 1: explicit instruction about, you know, to identify that skill. But
Speaker 1: nobody is born a super communicator. It's just that if
Speaker 1: we pay attention to communication, if it's something that we
Speaker 1: we study a little bit and we see these skills,
Speaker 1: then we start to learn them and they become habits.
Speaker 1: And I would actually argue that folks who are neurodivergent
Speaker 1: that in some respects they pay more attention to conversations
Speaker 1: because those conversations are harder for them. And as a result,
Speaker 1: I think when when you when the skills are made
Speaker 1: clear to them, When when when they get a chance
Speaker 1: to identify what they ought to be doing, much like
Speaker 1: you with this podcast, Yeah, they become very very good
Speaker 1: at it because it matters so much to them.
Speaker 2: Well, that just gave me a chill. Might be cold,
Speaker 2: I don't know. I I love that. And I really
Speaker 2: am a firm believer in that principle that sometimes the
Speaker 2: people who lack the naturalness of certain things can end
Speaker 2: up far surpassing you know.
Speaker 3: Oh absolutely, we know that.
Speaker 1: Like people who are consistent super communicators, they say there
Speaker 1: was a time in their life when they were bad
Speaker 1: at communication. Wow, when they were bad at making friends
Speaker 1: in high school when their parents got divorced and they
Speaker 1: had to play the peacemaker between them, they had to
Speaker 1: think about conversation a little bit more deeply, and that's
Speaker 1: what made them a super communicator.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Along similar lines,
Speaker 2: I liked in the book how you talked about shy people. Yeah,
Speaker 2: thank you for including them. If you're a shy or
Speaker 2: you struggle, you know, just let's say introverted. Introversion is
Speaker 2: not the same thing as shy. But let's say you're
Speaker 2: someone who you don't articulate your thoughts out loud quickly,
Speaker 2: you like to step back and pause and think a
Speaker 2: little more. How can you still improve your odds of connection?
Speaker 2: You know, I'm a big fan of Susan Kine and
Speaker 2: all her work in that whole community. So any advice
Speaker 2: for that community.
Speaker 3: Absolutely.
Speaker 1: There's been some really interesting research on this, And there's
Speaker 1: two things that I think. The first is, you know,
Speaker 1: part of communication is telling people how we best communicate.
Speaker 1: And so I've definitely been in conversations with people where they,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm talking a mile a minute and I'm
Speaker 1: coming up with all these ideas and they say, this
Speaker 1: is really really interesting.
Speaker 3: I need.
Speaker 1: I think I probably process a little bit differently than you.
Speaker 1: I just need a second to think through kind of
Speaker 1: what you're saying before I respond. And that's such a
Speaker 1: wonderful thing for people to say, right because because they're
Speaker 1: telling me how they like to communicate, how they're most
Speaker 1: comfortable communicating. And when they do that, it not only
Speaker 1: helps help see other person communicate with them.
Speaker 3: But it it helps.
Speaker 1: Us see something about that about them.
Speaker 3: Right. It's it's.
Speaker 1: It's an expression of authenticity and potentially vulnerability that that
Speaker 1: gives us a chance to reciprocate. But then the second
Speaker 1: thing that often happens, and this is there's some research
Speaker 1: that has been done by these Harvard Busess School professors.
Speaker 3: It's really interesting, is.
Speaker 1: They they told the students, Look, you're about to have
Speaker 1: a conversation with a stranger, okay, someone from your class
Speaker 1: who you haven't met yet, which is like the most
Speaker 1: anxiety producing thing you can tell someone to do. Right, Like,
Speaker 1: people hate being told they have to have a conversation
Speaker 1: with a stranger. And they said, Okay, before you do it, though,
Speaker 1: we want you to to just take like seven or
Speaker 1: ten seconds and write down three topics you might want
Speaker 1: to discuss like dumb stuff like, you know, like have
Speaker 1: you seen the new Dune movie? Are you going to
Speaker 1: the to the football game this weekend? You know, things
Speaker 1: like that, Just little little things. And they said, okay,
Speaker 1: just write these down. Literally takes seven to seconds. Write
Speaker 1: these down, and then go have your conversation. And so
Speaker 1: people would write these down, they'd stick them in their pocket,
Speaker 1: and they'd go have the conversations, and the topics that
Speaker 1: they wrote down almost never came up. But afterwards when
Speaker 1: they when the researchers asked the students how the conversations went,
Speaker 1: inevitably they would say things like, so much better than
Speaker 1: I expected. I felt so much more calm and like
Speaker 1: confident and like less anxious. And because I knew that,
Speaker 1: like if there was an awkward silence, I had this
Speaker 1: thing in my pocket, right, I had this backup topic
Speaker 1: that I could revert to. And as a result, because
Speaker 1: I was more less anxious, the conversation went a lot better.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I.
Speaker 1: Think for introverts, or actually for any of us, there's
Speaker 1: kind of a lesson here, which is, if we just
Speaker 1: take seven or ten seconds before a conversation to think
Speaker 1: about what we might want to talk about. And in
Speaker 1: doing so, we're probably going to figure out for ourselves, like,
Speaker 1: you know a little bit, what's our goal.
Speaker 3: In this conversation.
Speaker 1: Is it to like learn something or is it just
Speaker 1: to kind of like get to know someone. What's the
Speaker 1: mood that we hope to establish? Do we want this
Speaker 1: to be formal or informal? If we just take a
Speaker 1: little bit of time to think about a conversation before
Speaker 1: that conversation starts, research shows the conversation goes much much better.
Speaker 1: And I think particularly for people who are shy, this
Speaker 1: is something that helps helps helps manage that social anxiety
Speaker 1: a little bit.
Speaker 2: Yes, what about for people who they're so they have
Speaker 2: trouble social cues with the what is unsaid? You know,
Speaker 2: like that may seem like that's like a panic attack.
Speaker 2: For some people to say, well you have to pay
Speaker 2: attention to what's unsaid, it's like, well, how do I
Speaker 2: know what's unsaid? Right? Right? Well?
Speaker 1: Oftentimes so so oftentimes simply saying that I want to
Speaker 1: pay attention to what goes un said. I want to
Speaker 1: pay attention to someone's expressions. I want to pay attention
Speaker 1: to their gestures, how they're holding their body, their tone
Speaker 1: of voice, simply telling ourselves like, this is something you
Speaker 1: should you should remember to do, actually makes us much
Speaker 1: much better at it. So so it's it's not that
Speaker 1: every that there's some people who are just bad at
Speaker 1: picking up on nonverbal or non linguistic cues. It's just
Speaker 1: that there are people who have not prioritized that and
Speaker 1: haven't practiced it. But then the second thing is I
Speaker 1: think again asking those questions. You know Nick Happley, I
Speaker 1: mentioned him from the University of Chicago. He does this
Speaker 1: thing where he'll like get on buses and he'll go
Speaker 1: and talk to strangers, and his goal is to get
Speaker 1: people to people's hopes and dreams and like two or
Speaker 1: three questions, And so we'll ask them like, what do
Speaker 1: you do for a living? I'm an accountant? Oh, did
Speaker 1: you always want to be an accountant? Was that your
Speaker 1: dream when you were a kid. And I think that
Speaker 1: when we ask questions like that, what we do is
Speaker 1: we give the other person an opportunity to say the
Speaker 1: things that might go and set right. If someone's like,
Speaker 1: I'm an accountant and we asked did you always want
Speaker 1: to be an accountant? Then like what we're doing is
Speaker 1: we're gonna have a chance to say like, no, no,
Speaker 1: I actually wanted to become like a movie star, or
Speaker 1: to say or if they're like an accountant, we're like,
Speaker 1: did you always want to be an accountant?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I love numbers.
Speaker 1: I love helping people like I think that that we
Speaker 1: often expect that people should be able to hear what
Speaker 1: goes unsaid without also the collary, which is oftentimes you
Speaker 1: can simply ask people to say with his unsaid, and
Speaker 1: that helps illustrate for you. And by the way, they
Speaker 1: love being asked.
Speaker 2: It's great. That's great tangible advice. So a lot of
Speaker 2: this is learning the ways that you can talk so
Speaker 2: that people want to listen to you. You know, like
Speaker 2: if if they're tuning out or whatever, that's not a
Speaker 2: good start for a uh, for a conversation, for a conversation.
Speaker 2: But you know, in a lot of ways, I like
Speaker 2: your framing. I mean, you could have called this book
Speaker 2: how to Win friends and influence people.
Speaker 3: But first of all, that.
Speaker 2: Title is taken already, and second of all, and second
Speaker 2: of all, that's not the spirit of the book. You know,
Speaker 2: it's you know what I mean. But but a lot
Speaker 2: of these skills, you know, are you know, there's some overlap.
Speaker 1: You know, yeah, no, absolutely, and we know I mean
Speaker 1: and you know this this research literature, Like, if your
Speaker 1: goal is to win friends and influence people, let's take
Speaker 1: you know, politics, There's been a bunch of really interesting
Speaker 1: research lately and how to how to change people's opinions
Speaker 1: on politics. And for a long time, the conventional wisdom
Speaker 1: was just give them the facts, right, Like, if I
Speaker 1: can go in and I can just show them that,
Speaker 1: you know, same sex marriage is as stable as mixed
Speaker 1: gender marriage. If I can show them that the vaccines
Speaker 1: are safe and they have nothing to worry about, then
Speaker 1: they'll change their mind. And of course that isn't actually true, right.
Speaker 1: We saw that during the pandemic. The NIH at the
Speaker 1: beginning of the pandemic said, for vaccine resistant individuals, what
Speaker 1: you should do is you should just give them the evidence.
Speaker 1: And all the doctors who work with these populations are like,
Speaker 1: are you crazy? Like these people have more evidence than
Speaker 1: they know what to do with. They spend days research
Speaker 1: online and like reading studies. It's not that they're they're
Speaker 1: lacking evidence or data. It's that that's the wrong conversation
Speaker 1: to have, and so the right way to have that conversation,
Speaker 1: whether it be political issues or whether it be you know, vaccinations,
Speaker 1: is to engage in this thing known as motivational interviewing,
Speaker 1: right where I go to you and I say like, look,
Speaker 1: I'm wondering, I'm going from door to door talking about
Speaker 1: same sex marriage. I'm wondering if you could tell me
Speaker 1: what you think about same sex marriage and then just
Speaker 1: let the person talk and then prove that you're listening,
Speaker 1: say like, what I hear you saying is this, And
Speaker 1: I want to make sure I'm getting this right. That
Speaker 1: doesn't mean I agree with them, but I want to
Speaker 1: make sure I'm getting this right. Did I understand you correctly?
Speaker 1: And when we hear their story, when we hear how
Speaker 1: they see the world, and then we're able to share
Speaker 1: how we see the world alongside it. Very often what
Speaker 1: we find are things where we're in we're in agreement
Speaker 1: with each other, where there's commonalities you know you care about,
Speaker 1: Like you're against same sex marriage because you think that
Speaker 1: you know, marriage is so important to society and that
Speaker 1: that stability is important. And it's interesting because my uncle
Speaker 1: is gay and he's been with his partner for thirty years,
Speaker 1: and all they want is that same stability they want.
Speaker 1: They want to be able to be seen as stable
Speaker 1: by the people around them, and that doesn't again that
Speaker 1: what we know is that if you, if you engage
Speaker 1: in this, if you ask questions, if you listen, if
Speaker 1: you try and understand, if you put your own experiences
Speaker 1: alongside someone else's experiences, you only end up changing their
Speaker 1: mind like three to five percent of the time. But
Speaker 1: in politics, changing someone's mind three to five percent of
Speaker 1: the time is astronomical, right, most races are decided by
Speaker 1: three to five percent totally, totally. And the same thing
Speaker 1: is true with vaccine rates. We've seen again and again
Speaker 1: and again that the best way to take people who
Speaker 1: are vaccine resistant and make them and help them consider
Speaker 1: the vaccine and get a vaccine is simply to listen
Speaker 1: and understand why they're resistant, and rather than telling them
Speaker 1: that they're dumb or wrong, to explain how we see
Speaker 1: the world.
Speaker 2: Charles, we got to get you on Rogan. How do
Speaker 2: we get you on Rogan? Oh my man, it is
Speaker 2: such a delight to chat with you. Let's not go
Speaker 2: another eight years without talking to each other.
Speaker 3: I love it, I love it. Let's absolutely do it
Speaker 3: again soon.
Speaker 2: Love the vibe love. I just love the positivity of
Speaker 2: it that we all thank you, yeah, and congratulations on
Speaker 2: the show. I mean, I didn't realize it's been ten years.
Speaker 2: Like that's that's a real accomplishment. That's a lot of
Speaker 2: knowledge brought into the world. Thank you so much. I
Speaker 2: started in twenty fourteen, so we're coming up on the
Speaker 2: tenth year anniversary this year, and you were on it again,
Speaker 2: I suppose to the second year. Was it twenty sixteen,
Speaker 2: you're the second year. Well, thanks again, Charles and all
Speaker 2: the best with the book tour.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much. Take care,