Speaker 1: No, really, really no real Hello, and welcome to really
Speaker 1: know really with Jason Alexander and Peter Tilden, who are
Speaker 1: using the magic word to ask you to please, please,
Speaker 1: pretty please subscribe. Speaking of magic words, you'll discover that
Speaker 1: there are actual magic words that salespeople use to convince
Speaker 1: clients to buy, the customer service reps used to increase satisfaction,
Speaker 1: that lawyers used to persuade juries, and that you can
Speaker 1: use to motivate people to do things they otherwise wouldn't do.
Speaker 1: Really no Really. Our guest doctor Joonah Berger is a
Speaker 1: Wharton School professor, best selling author, and world renowned expert
Speaker 1: on word of mouth and consumer behavior. He discusses how
Speaker 1: his cutting edge research revealed the six types of words
Speaker 1: that can increase your impact in every area of your life,
Speaker 1: and how by simply altering your words, you can increase
Speaker 1: your persuasiveness by thirty Now here are two guys whose
Speaker 1: words have persuaded me to look for other employment. Jason
Speaker 1: and Peter.
Speaker 2: First, only, if you're watching on video, it's like we've
Speaker 2: traded souls. Suddenly. You used to have the long hair
Speaker 2: and the beard, and I was clean and bald. I'm
Speaker 2: I'm still managing bald. But what's there is long and
Speaker 2: I have this Tavia beard going. You're clean shaven. You
Speaker 2: took a flow be to yourself. You look you almost
Speaker 2: look dare I say young?
Speaker 3: Oh no, oh no, that means you have cataract and
Speaker 3: you should check with your doctor. You look very thank you,
Speaker 3: thank you, you're very smart. Look very you look Smi'm
Speaker 3: very tedd You're very tell how's it going?
Speaker 2: Who's the show going? We just opened. The reviews are spectacular.
Speaker 2: Show seems very good. You sold out. Very proud of you. Man,
Speaker 2: it's a magnificent show. It's a great company. You know,
Speaker 2: if you're an actor, you got DNA for this stuff.
Speaker 2: So it it. It does make you rise to the
Speaker 2: occasion as.
Speaker 3: You as you get all speaking of it older and
Speaker 3: we looking younger?
Speaker 2: Or is it hard? Do you find all the It's hard,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm sixty five years of stuff hurts. This
Speaker 2: is a role that you know, if you crunch the
Speaker 2: numbers internally, the guy should be forty really yeah, And
Speaker 2: it's been played by actors in their late forties and
Speaker 2: then their fifties, but the ages rapidly. Yeah, but no,
Speaker 2: it's all good. It's all good. It's all good, and
Speaker 2: today we're talking about you weird magic words. I got
Speaker 2: excited because I thought it was going to be, oh,
Speaker 2: the derivation of alec exam and abra cadabra, and that's
Speaker 2: a college street credit course. No, this is magic words.
Speaker 2: I read it wrong. You know me.
Speaker 3: I'm looking at stuff all the time, and I see
Speaker 3: the magic words that you can use to get people
Speaker 3: to do what you want. So I check this professor out.
Speaker 3: He's been called a persuasion expert. What to say to
Speaker 3: get people to give you your way? What are those words?
Speaker 3: And I started watching some of his stutis can I
Speaker 3: guess sat unseen?
Speaker 2: Can I guess? No? Please, You'll never know wrong? May
Speaker 2: not wrong? Should I wrong? With a cherry wrong?
Speaker 3: What you find out is you change one word in
Speaker 3: a sentence when you're writing or asking.
Speaker 2: Some of my agency has magic words. You didn't get it.
Speaker 2: Those are the four magic words.
Speaker 3: So there are ways to change one word or part
Speaker 3: of a phrase to get a thirty percent increase in
Speaker 3: people responding.
Speaker 2: And really you want, let's open with that every episode.
Speaker 3: So this is used in sales, it's used in politics.
Speaker 3: It's also used for scammers. They know how to manipulate
Speaker 3: words to motivate people to do things.
Speaker 2: So where we could we could be unintentionally yes, enhancing the.
Speaker 3: Life of a He's also written books by the Way
Speaker 3: Magic Words. What to Say to Get Your Way is
Speaker 3: his newest book. He also wrote Why Things Catch On.
Speaker 3: He's an expert on why things get sticky and why
Speaker 3: why contagious stuff spreads like on the internet, Why things
Speaker 3: take on?
Speaker 2: I don't know why. This reminds me of the books
Speaker 2: we came up with for our motivational character. I know
Speaker 2: more than you, well you know more than you, so
Speaker 2: we don't always know more.
Speaker 3: We didn't prep. We didn't prep. We didn't get the
Speaker 3: prep like we always do. The bit I wanted to
Speaker 3: do with you with him is the five I think
Speaker 3: one of these sort of like the five magic words
Speaker 3: to get you anything you want. I was we were
Speaker 3: going to write the new book titles with five more
Speaker 3: magic words, three magic words. I forgot three secret magic words.
Speaker 3: Oh look, there are more words like the series of
Speaker 3: books that we can do that with him anyway.
Speaker 2: But that's we would have prepared. Sure, yes, that would
Speaker 2: have been that would have been comedy, would have but
Speaker 2: we we didn't do it because you had the rest
Speaker 2: of your voice to play this thing. It now all right? So.
Speaker 3: Professor Jonah Berger is a Wharton School professor, internationally best
Speaker 3: selling author of Magic Words, Contagious, Invisible Influence, The Catalyst,
Speaker 3: world renowned expert on word of mouth, social influence, consumer behavior.
Speaker 3: He's published over eighty articles in top tier academic journals.
Speaker 3: Teaches one of the world's most popular online courses. One
Speaker 3: of the world's most popular online courses, obviously bigger than
Speaker 3: the Taylor Swift Course. I think it's pretty It's right
Speaker 3: up there with Doublin. The most created people in business
Speaker 3: by Fast Company. He works with Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, the
Speaker 3: Gates Foundation, and now really.
Speaker 2: No, really, First of all, do you prefer doctor Burger
Speaker 2: or Jonah? How should we? This will tell me a
Speaker 2: lot about the words how he answers this question. Look,
Speaker 2: do you preferred doctor Burger A Jonah?
Speaker 4: Absolutely, no preference. Whatever, whatever you want to do is fine.
Speaker 2: I like I like he's playing you see what he did.
Speaker 2: He lured me write in Jonah, what led you to
Speaker 2: the revelation of these sort of magical words that you
Speaker 2: talk about?
Speaker 4: You know, it's so interesting, almost everything we do, it
Speaker 4: involves language. Right, You and I are talking right now
Speaker 4: using language. At the end of this, if you press
Speaker 4: a magic button, it might stript out transcript and written language.
Speaker 4: Language is how salespeople sell, or how leaders lead, the
Speaker 4: how teachers teach. We'd read newspapers using language, we watch
Speaker 4: movies using language. All these things involve language. And I
Speaker 4: slowly started realizing, Wow, you know, while we think a
Speaker 4: lot about the ideas we want to communicate, right, what
Speaker 4: are the big picture things I want to get across,
Speaker 4: we think a lot less about the specific words we
Speaker 4: use when we communicate those ideas. And I started realizing, well,
Speaker 4: that's unfortunately mistake, right, because subtle shifts in the language
Speaker 4: we use can have a big impact. We had a
Speaker 4: young son and he would often use the word pease
Speaker 4: peas meant please. He didn't have his l's yet, trying
Speaker 4: to figure it out, and so he'd say, for example,
Speaker 4: he'd want a certain food, so we'd say, you know,
Speaker 4: peace whatever food or peace browbear, which was his brown bear.
Speaker 4: And what I started realizing is, wow, this is the
Speaker 4: first time he rised that. He realized, you know, if
Speaker 4: I asked for something and you don't give it to me,
Speaker 4: and then I say please, I'm more likely to get
Speaker 4: it right, I'm more likely to get what I want.
Speaker 4: And so we realized language has power. And I think
Speaker 4: we all at some point in our lives have realized
Speaker 4: language has power. And I became interested in, well, what
Speaker 4: are those powers, what are those magic words? And how
Speaker 4: can we take advantage of that power?
Speaker 3: And one of the areas which is really really interesting
Speaker 3: is words that attach you to an identity and how
Speaker 3: they work better. One of the examples was you get
Speaker 3: a thirty percent better response rate when you present something
Speaker 3: a certain way as opposed to another.
Speaker 2: So why do you talk about that?
Speaker 4: So let me tell you got a great old research
Speaker 4: study that was done and this is out in California
Speaker 4: a number of decades ago, and they went into a
Speaker 4: local preschool and they were trying to get kids to
Speaker 4: do something kids don't want to do is clean up.
Speaker 4: And so for some of the kids, they said, hey,
Speaker 4: can you help clean up? It's a mess, Crayon's on
Speaker 4: the floor of their blocks everywhere, can you help me up?
Speaker 4: But for a different group of kids, they try to
Speaker 4: subtle but importantly different strategy, said hey can you be
Speaker 4: a helper, not can you help clean up? But can
Speaker 4: you be a helper? Now, the difference between help and
Speaker 4: helper is really small. It's only a couple of letters
Speaker 4: adding er to the end of help. Yet that led
Speaker 4: to about a thirty percent increase in kids cleaning up
Speaker 4: the classroom. And you could say, well, that's cute, but
Speaker 4: those are just kids, like why don't we care about
Speaker 4: cleaning up? What about bigger, important things with adults? And
Speaker 4: so more recently someone did a study applying these ideas
Speaker 4: to voting. So for some people they sent them a
Speaker 4: note saying, hey, please go vote, and for other people
Speaker 4: they said, hey, please be a voter. And again the
Speaker 4: difference between vote and voter is even smaller. It's only
Speaker 4: one letter there, right, adding an R to the end
Speaker 4: of vote. Yet that led to about a fifteen percent
Speaker 4: increase in people's likelihood of turning out polls. And so
Speaker 4: you might ask, well, why, right, why is helper more
Speaker 4: impactful help? Why is voter more impactful with vote? And
Speaker 4: it turns out it comes down to the difference between
Speaker 4: actions and identities. Right, we all know that we should
Speaker 4: do certain things. We should exercise, and we should read
Speaker 4: the news, and we should eat healthy, and we should vote,
Speaker 4: and we should help, but we're busy, we don't have
Speaker 4: the time, right, But we care more about than certain
Speaker 4: actions are holding desired identities. We all want to see
Speaker 4: ourselves as smart, knowledgeable, and at least maybe a little
Speaker 4: bit athletic, and all those different things, and so we
Speaker 4: engage in actions to support those identities. I want to
Speaker 4: see myself as athletic, I better go for a run.
Speaker 4: If I want to see myself as healthy, I better
Speaker 4: eat salad once in a while. And so if we
Speaker 4: turn actions like voting into identities like being a voter,
Speaker 4: it makes people much more likely to take those actions. Right, voting, Oh,
Speaker 4: I know I should do it, but I'm busy. But
Speaker 4: hold on. If voting is an opportunity to be a voter, now,
Speaker 4: I'm much more likely to do it. And so by
Speaker 4: turning those actions into identities, we can make people more
Speaker 4: likely to take the desired actions now.
Speaker 2: And John, we really we avoid politics on the show
Speaker 2: pretty stringently, so I'm not trying to get us into
Speaker 2: a political conversation. I'm just fascinated based on what you said.
Speaker 2: By changing your language of invitation to identify with a
Speaker 2: group or to self identify you're able to create an action.
Speaker 2: Do you feel that it is then possible. I'm going
Speaker 2: to keep it in the voting world, that language alone
Speaker 2: could have made a voter identify with a particular party,
Speaker 2: or a particular cause, or a particular candidate. Are we
Speaker 2: that malleable and susceptible to language that you could take
Speaker 2: it a step further?
Speaker 4: You know, I want to be careful here. I'm not
Speaker 4: saying that, you know, one word makes everybody do everything
Speaker 4: in any way, shape or form. But on the margins,
Speaker 4: these things matter. Right. Let's say, you know, I asked
Speaker 4: you which is worse, losing or being a loser. That's
Speaker 4: an easy thing to answer, right, you say, well, being
Speaker 4: a loser is much worse. A terrible version of this.
Speaker 4: There's recently something that press where somebody said, you know,
Speaker 4: a certain actor didn't just had not just farted on set,
Speaker 4: but they were a farther right. They called them a farter.
Speaker 4: Oh I know, And now farther's like right, It's like, oh,
Speaker 4: I am a farther. That's a stable part of that
Speaker 4: would be the worst thing ever, And so you're much
Speaker 4: more likely to avoid negative things if they would lead
Speaker 4: you to hold that identity. And so it's a subtle difference,
Speaker 4: but the difference between actions and identities is an important.
Speaker 3: So what pops out to me too is we have
Speaker 3: a whole generation now people who don't just influence their
Speaker 3: influencer exactly.
Speaker 2: How does that sit with you?
Speaker 4: You know, I think that was a really smart branding
Speaker 4: move from whether you think about it, is these platforms
Speaker 4: that have created these things, or the individuals themselves. Right,
Speaker 4: people don't just create, they are creators. They don't just
Speaker 4: influence their influencers suddenly. Now it doesn't sound just like
Speaker 4: a side hustle, sounds like a full time job, right,
Speaker 4: It sounds like an ingrained part of who people are.
Speaker 4: And so I think these subtle shifts can have a
Speaker 4: big impact. Right, if you want to help someone get
Speaker 4: a job, right, rather than saying, oh they lead or
Speaker 4: they're innovative, saying they are an innovator or they are
Speaker 4: a leader's going to make it seem like it's a
Speaker 4: more stable part of who they are. And so these
Speaker 4: small shifts can actually make a big difference.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, also for me, as I as I
Speaker 2: listened to that explanation, I could feel this thing come
Speaker 2: up in me which was pushback against that because if
Speaker 2: someone says to me, listen, I'm representing this thing and
Speaker 2: I'd like to try and influence you to see if
Speaker 2: you if it works for you, I'd like to try
Speaker 2: and do that. I'm I feel like I'm immediately more
Speaker 2: open to it. If they say, well, this person's an influencer.
Speaker 2: This is what they do is they bring people over
Speaker 2: to their influence. I go now, I'm immediately resisting. You
Speaker 2: can I jump? Can I jump to something else? From that?
Speaker 3: And again, influencer, you're pushing back because there's there's there's
Speaker 3: a certainty implied there that they know what's okay.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, my brother once said to me, the best leaders,
Speaker 3: the biggest guys in the world, is one thing they
Speaker 3: all have in common. They speak with certainty and certainty works.
Speaker 3: And I know you use Trump and you you predicated
Speaker 3: by doesn't matter if you hate them or love them.
Speaker 2: Explain the certainty there and why certainty works. Yeah.
Speaker 4: So again, I don't I don't want to get into
Speaker 4: politics either, but whether you like Trump or not, you
Speaker 4: can't disagree that he's done a pretty amazing job of
Speaker 4: getting people to adopt his ideas. If you like those ideas,
Speaker 4: you're probably pretty happy about it. You hate those ideas,
Speaker 4: you're probably pretty unhappy about it. But one question, an
Speaker 4: interesting question, is why has it worked? Right, even if
Speaker 4: you don't like it, you can't deny that it's working
Speaker 4: for at least some set of people. And so why
Speaker 4: And so if you look at the way he speaks,
Speaker 4: it's not actually unique to him.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: He speaks the same way that's so called guru speak
Speaker 4: that startup founders often speak. He speaks with a great
Speaker 4: deal of certainty.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: He doesn't say, oh, you know, this might happen, this
Speaker 4: may be a good idea. I think this. He speaks
Speaker 4: in absolutes.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: He doesn't speak in grays shades of gray, speaks in
Speaker 4: black and white. Right, I'm going to build a great wall,
Speaker 4: the best wall that's ever been built. America doesn't have
Speaker 4: victories anymore. We used to, but we don't have them.
Speaker 4: He speaks that sort of this is exactly how it is.
Speaker 4: And contrast that with a how a lot of us speak. Right,
Speaker 4: I'll pick on myself for an example. I'm an academic,
Speaker 4: and so we tend to use a lot of hedges.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 5: Oh, well, maybe in some situations this might be and
Speaker 5: I think this, and this is possible, and it's not
Speaker 5: surprising then that other people sit there going wow, if
Speaker 5: you're not even sure yourself, why should I listen to you?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 4: There's a lot of research, for example, in the context
Speaker 4: of financial advisors, that shows that the more certainty someone
Speaker 4: speaks with, even by the way, if they're wrong, the
Speaker 4: more certainty they speak with, the more likely people are
Speaker 4: to pick them as a financial adviser. Because people are
Speaker 4: sitting there going, wow, you seem so confident you must
Speaker 4: be right.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 4: I want to be careful here. I don't mean to
Speaker 4: suggest that we should never hedge.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: There are certainly cases where we may want a hedge.
Speaker 4: We may want to step back, We may want to
Speaker 4: say this might be true, or I think or things
Speaker 4: along those lines. But we certainly shouldn't just say those
Speaker 4: things because it's easy.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: Some of us do that because it's a simple verbal tick. Right.
Speaker 4: We're sitting there, Oh, I'm not sure. I want to
Speaker 4: buy myself time, and so I'm going to hedge to
Speaker 4: give myself a chance to think about what I want
Speaker 4: to say. But when we're doing that, we're subtly undermining
Speaker 4: our own impact, right, and they're better and worse ways
Speaker 4: to hedge. So there's a difference between saying if someone
Speaker 4: asks you for your opinion, saying, oh, you know, I
Speaker 4: don't know, versus I think, hey, this is a great idea,
Speaker 4: but there are three things that need to happen for
Speaker 4: this to work.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: That's a situation where yes, I'm not saying it's for
Speaker 4: sure it's going to happen. I'm calling out the uncertain right.
Speaker 4: I'm saying I think it's a good idea, but for
Speaker 4: it to work, these things need to happen. And so
Speaker 4: what I'm suggesting is not that we should or never
Speaker 4: use certainty, but we should strategically speak with when you.
Speaker 3: A consult, because you consult some of the biggest companies
Speaker 3: in the world, the more certainty you can put in
Speaker 3: your cell that you're legally allowed to say. A lot
Speaker 3: of them have asterisks because you can't say guaranteed to
Speaker 3: make your dog live longer. Is that come up about
Speaker 3: pushing the envelope as close to certainty in messaging as
Speaker 3: you pos possibly can.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So I want to be careful here. I'm not
Speaker 4: advocating that people lie, and I'm not advocating that people
Speaker 4: be over confident, right, because there's certainly situations where when
Speaker 4: we say something with certainty and then later on someone
Speaker 4: realizes that what we said isn't true, it hurts us right.
Speaker 4: And by the way, there are even times you want
Speaker 4: to express out right. So if I'm on a team
Speaker 4: or I'm a leader walking into a meeting and I
Speaker 4: say this is how it is, it's going to make
Speaker 4: everyone else feel like they shouldn't share their opinions because
Speaker 4: I'm already so certain. But if I walk in right
Speaker 4: and I so I'm not sure, and I use language
Speaker 4: that indicates I'm not sure, now, it's going to make
Speaker 4: other people feel more comfortable sharing their own opinion. Again,
Speaker 4: it's a strategic tool, right, just like any other tool.
Speaker 4: There are times for a hammer, there are times for
Speaker 4: a saw. Same thing here, there are times to be certain,
Speaker 4: and there are times to express out.
Speaker 3: Can I jump around a little ajournal and give you
Speaker 3: because this is what blew me away that you asked
Speaker 3: the question did the dog go out? Or did you
Speaker 3: take the dog out? And you point out, oh, all
Speaker 3: of a sudden, this is my job to take the
Speaker 3: dog out.
Speaker 2: So you add you in.
Speaker 3: There and it completely becomes a whole different attitude.
Speaker 2: Correct.
Speaker 4: So this is something I found interesting. So, you know,
Speaker 4: I work with different companies organizations. Someone asked me, hey,
Speaker 4: can you figure out what's working on our social media?
Speaker 4: So I went out there, analyzed all their social media posts,
Speaker 4: looks at what's in getting engagement, what's not found? One word,
Speaker 4: the word you, had a big impact on engage right
Speaker 4: on social media. When you say you know, rather than
Speaker 4: here are five tips to save money, you say, here
Speaker 4: are five tips to save you money, or if I
Speaker 4: said you know ways to be healthier, these are ways
Speaker 4: for you to be healthier. Adding you increases engagement. It's
Speaker 4: almost like a stop sign. Right When people see that word,
Speaker 4: their attention draws and they go, oh, this is speaking
Speaker 4: more to me than it might have been otherwise. And
Speaker 4: so then the company said, fantastic, that's really wonderful. Can
Speaker 4: you do the same thing for our help pages. So
Speaker 4: imagine you have an issue with your iPhone, your watch
Speaker 4: isn't working, your printer's not doing whatever. You go to
Speaker 4: their site to figure out why, and so there we
Speaker 4: actually found that you had the opposite effect. You wasn't helpful.
Speaker 4: You didn't make those pages better. It made people feel
Speaker 4: like they were less helpful. And so I was sitting
Speaker 4: there going, well, why right, why is you good on
Speaker 4: social media? But you is not so good on help pages?
Speaker 4: And I realized two things. First, you was good for
Speaker 4: grabbing attention, but on help pages things like help but
Speaker 4: you don't need to grab people's attention people already there.
Speaker 4: But second, you can make people feel like, well, you're
Speaker 4: blaming your phone. I'm responsible for this. If I say, hey,
Speaker 4: if your phone is broken, you need to do X,
Speaker 4: Y and z, you're sitting there ground, why is it
Speaker 4: my phone? Right, it's your phone. Your phone is broken?
Speaker 4: Why do I have to do something about it? And
Speaker 4: so these are what can be called accusatory use, right,
Speaker 4: and these often happen in our personal lives. Right, you
Speaker 4: get home and someone says, hey, did you walk the dog?
Speaker 4: Did you make dinner? At the office, someone said did
Speaker 4: you finish that report? And what that person really means is, hey,
Speaker 4: did the report get done? Did the dog get walked?
Speaker 4: Is their dinner available? But they feel right, you feel
Speaker 4: like you're being a taught.
Speaker 2: You know this is an on track, but off track.
Speaker 2: I get fascinated by this stuff. So I assume in
Speaker 2: your personal relationships with your significant other, spouse, whatever it
Speaker 2: may be, that you know, we drag therapy speak into
Speaker 2: our relationships. You have a professional understanding of this. I'm
Speaker 2: sure you are able to employ some of these techniques
Speaker 2: in your interpersonal relationships. Does your significant significant other ever
Speaker 2: go stop doing that to me? I know what you're doing?
Speaker 2: Does it ever come up?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 4: It turns out.
Speaker 2: We drag therapy speak into our relationships. You have a
Speaker 2: professional understanding of this. I'm sure you are able to
Speaker 2: employ some of these techniques and your into personal relationships.
Speaker 2: Does your significant significant other ever go stop doing that
Speaker 2: to I know what you're doing that? Does it ever
Speaker 2: come up?
Speaker 4: You know? It turns out my spouse is also behavioral scientists,
Speaker 4: and so she's even more aware of this. Well then
Speaker 4: one might be in a usual situation. But the nice
Speaker 4: thing is we can both sort of sit there and
Speaker 4: analyze it, right. We can be well, oh why did
Speaker 4: I why did I feel that way? Or oh did
Speaker 4: you did you mean.
Speaker 1: It that way?
Speaker 4: Or maybe that's this, and so it's almost like a
Speaker 4: little mini experiment going on every day in our own lives.
Speaker 2: Well, to that end, if everybody because what you're doing
Speaker 2: is you're you know, you're educating people as to how
Speaker 2: language can have this effect. Do you feel like if
Speaker 2: everybody understood and was able to some degree adopt some
Speaker 2: of the techniques you're talking about, would it make communication
Speaker 2: work better or would we all go Now that we
Speaker 2: all know it, none of us are being influenced by it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, it's tough. And sometimes people also say
Speaker 4: things like, oh, is this manipulation, right? Are you just
Speaker 4: you know, you're just getting people to do something they
Speaker 4: wouldn't do otherwise. And I think what's tough, right is
Speaker 4: manipulation depends a little bit on the eye of the beholder.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: So, if you're using certain words to get people to
Speaker 4: eat more fruits and vegetables and exercise more and support
Speaker 4: good causes and take better care of the planet, people say, great,
Speaker 4: you know, keep doing it right. And if instead you're
Speaker 4: using language to get people to buy junk and destroy
Speaker 4: the planet and treat their bodies badly, then you'd say
Speaker 4: it's not so good. And so I think with many
Speaker 4: of these tools, you know, it often happens without our awareness,
Speaker 4: particularly in spoken communication.
Speaker 3: Jona, we're in writers' rooms, we create shows, and you
Speaker 3: want people to be creative. How to engage somebody with
Speaker 3: solutions to problems? Different ways to say it, which could
Speaker 3: yield a more creative result.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So there's a great old study again that looked
Speaker 4: at this experiment where they ask people to solve a
Speaker 4: variety of tough problems, difficult things, making choices, coming up
Speaker 4: with creative solutions, all the things you might do in
Speaker 4: a writer's room. And for some people, they ask them
Speaker 4: to use the traditional approach to solving a problem, to
Speaker 4: being think about what you should do right, think about
Speaker 4: what you should do in this situation. For another set
Speaker 4: of people, they ask them to do something very slightly different.
Speaker 4: Rather than ask them to think about what they should do,
Speaker 4: they ask them to think about what they could do.
Speaker 4: And again, the difference between should and could is very small,
Speaker 4: it's only a few letters different. Yet that had a
Speaker 4: big impact on how good a problem solver they were
Speaker 4: and how creative they became. Talking thinking in terms of
Speaker 4: colds made people come up with a lot better and
Speaker 4: more creative. So reason why though it makes a lot
Speaker 4: of sense right when we think about shoulds, it makes
Speaker 4: us think there's one right answer, what should I do?
Speaker 4: There's one right thing, and I just have to discover it.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna think and think and think till I get there.
Speaker 4: Whereas what I'm thinking colds, I open my blinders a
Speaker 4: little bit. Right now, I'm looking around to think about
Speaker 4: what's possible. Right, we've all done brainstorming where not everything
Speaker 4: is possible is a good idea. So I'm not saying
Speaker 4: all of those things you come up with, but by
Speaker 4: thinking about what you could do, you think about a
Speaker 4: broader set of things which helps you come up with
Speaker 4: the better solution.
Speaker 3: It took me right out, as a guy who's always
Speaker 3: tasked with that writing and thinking of solutions, all of
Speaker 3: a sudden it opened up. Yeah, free, just that one word.
Speaker 3: If I say, what could we do? What could the
Speaker 3: character du He could mountain? We can go as big
Speaker 3: as we want to pull it back. So it just
Speaker 3: it hit me.
Speaker 2: And my question is, now that you've had this revelation,
Speaker 2: how could it serve me? And should it serve you?
Speaker 3: And should should it come back? Should could can't? Whatever
Speaker 3: you don't of the books are fascinating. I would love
Speaker 3: to have you back on you know what I.
Speaker 2: Want to ask before we say goodbye to you? I
Speaker 2: know initially when when Peter first told me about you
Speaker 2: and your work, he said, four magic words for magic words,
Speaker 2: I don't know that we've laid them out. There are
Speaker 2: there really four magic words that that would change communication instantly.
Speaker 4: So I would say there there are a number of
Speaker 4: buckets of magic words, these types of magic words. Okay,
Speaker 4: I put them in a framework I like to call
Speaker 4: the speak framework. Yes, For the ASS is the language
Speaker 4: of similarity and difference. The HE is the language of
Speaker 4: posing questions. We didn't get a chance to talk about it,
Speaker 4: but questions are so so powerful they do a lot
Speaker 4: of interesting work in communication. The E is for the
Speaker 4: language of emotion. The A is for the language of
Speaker 4: agency and identity. We talked about some of those, right,
Speaker 4: being a voter rather than voting, helper rather than help.
Speaker 4: And then the last two letters of the language of
Speaker 4: confidence and the language of concreteness, And we talked a
Speaker 4: little about that language of concreteness, so the language of certainty, sorry,
Speaker 4: talking about fillers and talking about hedges and those sorts
Speaker 4: of things. And so each of those six buckets are
Speaker 4: a type of language that aren't just for magic words.
Speaker 4: I wish, I wish there were but there's types of
Speaker 4: language that we can use in a variety of situations.
Speaker 3: While we're on that, because you brought up questions, and
Speaker 3: I love questions, because they.
Speaker 2: Asked some questions I was going to say, I just
Speaker 2: had an example of one at a talk back that
Speaker 2: I did where I do an entertainment Q and a show,
Speaker 2: but it was before the election. Then somebody asked me
Speaker 2: if they're allowed to ask me anything, but we usually
Speaker 2: keep it to show business stuff, but they said, who
Speaker 2: are you voting for? And what I did is I said,
Speaker 2: you know what, let me answer that question with a question,
Speaker 2: what do you care about? What are the things you
Speaker 2: care about most. I'll tell you what I care about,
Speaker 2: and you tell me what you care about, and then
Speaker 2: you know, here we go, but we'll see what we are.
Speaker 2: But it was a much more interesting way because I
Speaker 2: think that what I found in my conversation with people,
Speaker 2: particularly on politics and identification, is the minute you say
Speaker 2: i'm I'm of this party or I'm of this candidate
Speaker 2: or I'm of the communication stops. But if I say, well,
Speaker 2: you know, here's what I care about. I care that
Speaker 2: you know, people get seen and heard and treated fairly.
Speaker 2: I care about people feeling safe in their homes and
Speaker 2: their communities. Oh I do too, Okay, Well, so we
Speaker 2: all care about the same thing. So now it's just
Speaker 2: a question of how do we make as many people
Speaker 2: as possible. I have that right, and it becomes a
Speaker 2: very different compet.
Speaker 4: I mean, I think Jason's example shows a number of
Speaker 4: things that I like a lot.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: One is, you can use questions almost to deflect things. Right,
Speaker 4: someone asks you a question you either don't want to
Speaker 4: answer you don't think is appropriate, you can ask them
Speaker 4: a question back. Questions almost like spotlights, Right. They shine
Speaker 4: attention on something in a conversation in one's mind, and
Speaker 4: you can use them to direct the focus of conversations.
Speaker 4: But they can also be really nicely switched the field
Speaker 4: of something.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: Politics is, as you said, often feels like this field
Speaker 4: where Democrats are on run end and Republicans are on
Speaker 4: the other, and there's sort of no middle ground. But
Speaker 4: there's a different field on which we're all on the
Speaker 4: same spot, right, a different dimension. We all care about
Speaker 4: our families, we all want the country to better off,
Speaker 4: we all want the best for our children. All these
Speaker 4: things that we have in common, and sometimes starting with
Speaker 4: what we have in common. And this is actually a
Speaker 4: lot of what I talk about in a different book
Speaker 4: called The Catalyst, which is all about changing people's minds,
Speaker 4: but really starting with that understanding, starting with understanding who
Speaker 4: you're talking to and what they care about, and starting
Speaker 4: on the same page rather than starting at a place
Speaker 4: of difference, can make you more likely to listen to
Speaker 4: one another's There's this great old Heineken sort of campaign
Speaker 4: or skit that's online you can watch where they take
Speaker 4: people that you think would hate each other, so like
Speaker 4: misogynists and women, or people that hate transgender people and
Speaker 4: someone who's transgendered, and they have them have a conversation.
Speaker 4: Except rather than starting by realizing they hate each other,
Speaker 4: they start by doing something in common.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: They start by having a conversation about something else. They
Speaker 4: start by building a bar together. They start by doing
Speaker 4: something that connects them, and then along the way they realize, well, wait,
Speaker 4: this is a person who in theory I wouldn't like,
Speaker 4: But now once I've gotten to know them, they're not
Speaker 4: so one dimensional, right, They're not just this category. They're
Speaker 4: a person, and once they're a person, that category is
Speaker 4: part of who they are. But it's not the only
Speaker 4: part of that. They are now much more interested in
Speaker 4: keeping that conversation.
Speaker 3: Also, you point out that asking a question in the
Speaker 3: workplace reflects well on you because we are a narcissist.
Speaker 3: So the fact that you were smart enough to come
Speaker 3: to me to ask me the question makes you, right,
Speaker 3: isn't that kind.
Speaker 4: Of This is a really a simple, a simple point,
Speaker 4: but a good We all think about asking for advice.
Speaker 4: We all know someone who knows more about something than
Speaker 4: we do, right, maybe it's a colleague, a peer, a boss, somebody.
Speaker 4: But often we're afraid to ask for advice. Maybe that
Speaker 4: person won't know the answer, or they'll be busy. We
Speaker 4: don't want to bother them. But even worse, they'll think
Speaker 4: less of us right by asking them for advice. They'll
Speaker 4: think we don't know what we're doing, and so we
Speaker 4: don't want to ask. Turns out that intuition is completely wrong.
Speaker 4: It's not that asking for advice makes you seem worse.
Speaker 4: It's not that it has no effect. In fact, just
Speaker 4: the opposite. It makes you seem more competent and more knowledgeable.
Speaker 4: And if if you wonder why, it's not just because
Speaker 4: asking for advice makes you seem curious, which is a
Speaker 4: good thing, but it also takes advantage of other people's egocentrics. Right.
Speaker 4: We all love to think that we give it good advice.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 4: If I ask you, guys, do you give good advice?
Speaker 4: You wouldn't sit. They're going no, I don't give good advice, right,
Speaker 4: and say, oh me, of course I give good advice, right,
Speaker 4: I give great advice. And so when someone comes us
Speaker 4: to us and ask us for our advice, we sit.
Speaker 4: They're going, Wow, that person's so smart. Out of all
Speaker 4: the people they could have they asked me, they must
Speaker 4: have a really good taste, right, and so we think
Speaker 4: positively about them as a results. So the clear take
Speaker 4: home is just ask for advice. Not only do we
Speaker 4: get that useful information, but it'll make you seem smart.
Speaker 2: But you're sucking up. You're sucking up. No, I get it.
Speaker 2: It's a dope.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I've had I'm doing a show out with a bunch
Speaker 2: of younger actors and several of them have come up
Speaker 2: and said, hey, you know, how do you find yourself
Speaker 2: doing this or that or the other thing? And you
Speaker 2: know it is one of those things where you go, well,
Speaker 2: it feel really good if I'm able to pass into
Speaker 2: my experience on It's very sweeter than to ask me.
Speaker 2: You know, I totally get what he said.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, but you never think about it until also
Speaker 3: you point, and I know I could keep you on
Speaker 3: all day long. Tense movie was good, movie is good, huge, huge, different.
Speaker 3: I mean these are like catasclismic. You don't even realize
Speaker 3: what that says when you ask that question and you
Speaker 3: just change that thing, right, just tense, tense can be huge.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Well, think about it. When you say the movie
Speaker 4: was good, it suggests that when I saw it that time,
Speaker 4: it was good. When you say the movie is good,
Speaker 4: it suggests that for everyone, for all time, it will
Speaker 4: be fantastic. Right, when you say the food was good,
Speaker 4: it sounds like on the Tuesday you went to the
Speaker 4: restaurant it was decent. But if you say the food
Speaker 4: is good, it suggests that everyone will love it whenever
Speaker 4: they go.
Speaker 3: Fascinating, And again we just scratched the surface. Jona's book, Jela,
Speaker 3: I am, I'm serious. I'm a terrible reader, but I'm
Speaker 3: so fascinated by this conversation.
Speaker 2: I'm running out. I'm gonna whis the first book I
Speaker 2: should get? If you, guys, what's the one I would
Speaker 2: enjoy the most?
Speaker 4: Oh goodness, what it sounds? What what kind of problem do
Speaker 4: you want to solve? Right? So, if you're interested in language, yeah,
Speaker 4: magic words is good.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: If you're interested in why things catch on, word of mouth,
Speaker 4: why things go viral, contagious is the best one. You're
Speaker 4: interested in changing someone's mind, how to do that? Removing
Speaker 4: barriers to change the catalyst is best. And they're sort
Speaker 4: of the The Ugly step Child or the Four Books,
Speaker 4: which is called Invisible Influence, which guess let's do but
Speaker 4: is all about influence and how it often happens without
Speaker 4: our work.
Speaker 3: And again we've just scratched the surface. It just goes
Speaker 3: on and on and on, and white bulbs keep going off.
Speaker 3: Thank you, thanks for coming on, Thanks for the work.
Speaker 3: What you do is gives is fascinating? Is that the
Speaker 3: right word that we want? He was fascinating the right word.
Speaker 2: But it's an appropriate word, all right. It is fascinating
Speaker 2: that it was fascinating.
Speaker 3: He is fast, he is fat, and by the way,
Speaker 3: he also was fascinating.
Speaker 2: Yes, and where he's going here Now I'm going to
Speaker 2: do an accusatory you you may have messed that up,
Speaker 2: all right, So I'm not sure I got the buckets.
Speaker 2: I didn't get the word, so I got I guess
Speaker 2: I gotta pay for the word. You gotta pay for
Speaker 2: the word. I gotta pay.
Speaker 3: But I'm thinking back. The guy who influenced you the
Speaker 3: most in college to acting was William Shatner. Yeah, was
Speaker 3: Captain Kirk. Did he speak with certainty all the time?
Speaker 3: He got, yes, That's what It's really interesting. He gave
Speaker 3: him lines that were certainty.
Speaker 2: Yes, even even when what he was speaking of expressed
Speaker 2: uncertainty when he said doctor McCoy is right and pointing
Speaker 2: out the huge risk involved engaging creatures of another world.
Speaker 2: But risk is our business.
Speaker 3: Right, I mean, but I'm thinking they gave that's a
Speaker 3: character spoke with certainty all the time, and Spot spoke
Speaker 3: with certainty. And yes, it's a different kind because it
Speaker 3: was emotionless. Which is funny because then you went on
Speaker 3: to one of the most successful sitcoms where everybody showed uncertainty,
Speaker 3: although you.
Speaker 2: Were I think everybody. I think the thing in Seinfeld
Speaker 2: is you got four people absolutely what you're doing. None
Speaker 2: of it is right. So that's it.
Speaker 3: So George was certain about stuff but completely wrong, right, Absolutely,
Speaker 3: jerkstore is the line jerkstore. I'm going with jerkstore.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, it's a certainty. It's really fascinating
Speaker 2: once you start taking apart. But certainty is that is
Speaker 2: the absolute of comedy. Look at Jackie Gleeson, look at
Speaker 2: all the great comedians, especially in television. They develop an
Speaker 2: answer to a situation that the rest of us know
Speaker 2: is absolutely wrong, but they're certain it's right and they
Speaker 2: won't let go. That's amazing, well, powerful, fascinating, fascinating. You
Speaker 2: know you did you have anything on that one? David?
Speaker 2: You know I always have something on everything. I'm fascinated.
Speaker 6: That's that's why I make the big bucks.
Speaker 2: I understand. Today.
Speaker 6: Of course, we've been talking about the power of words,
Speaker 6: especially how we string them together.
Speaker 2: But do you know what the first words were? First
Speaker 2: words ever created by humans? That is exactly right.
Speaker 6: We're talking fifteen thousand years ago.
Speaker 2: I'm imagining. How hot I know that's what big one?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Fire fire fire fire fire fire Wait wait wait, wait,
Speaker 3: how do we know that?
Speaker 2: Who documented that? It was written on a wall? And
Speaker 2: so much?
Speaker 6: Mark Mark Pagal of the University of Reading School of
Speaker 6: biological sciences. They did research in twenty thirteen that obviously
Speaker 6: nothing was written down, but using human syntax and what
Speaker 6: would have been important at that time, they have put
Speaker 6: together what some of the first words would be, like
Speaker 6: I we fire mother, and of course because of the
Speaker 6: chosen people.
Speaker 3: No, you know what's funny?
Speaker 2: You know what's funny? What I think about here? Thank you?
Speaker 3: What I think about here? Thank you for the negative.
Speaker 3: What I think about here is just like the dinosaurs.
Speaker 3: We thought there were certain color and then all of
Speaker 3: a sudden they earth stared, they are wrong, and other stuff.
Speaker 2: They're all wrong. I'd love to find a cave from
Speaker 2: you know, fifty thousand years ago that has an arrow
Speaker 2: and the word exit. I'd love to just see that
Speaker 2: up on the wall, you know, just the same.
Speaker 3: I'm going to sue your ass is up on the
Speaker 3: wall of summer. Yeah, because they.
Speaker 2: Would, you know, seriously, so if you didn't have language,
Speaker 2: and we absolutely had to name some things in order
Speaker 2: to get along, I you that would be that would
Speaker 2: make sense? Good? Bad? That would make sense? What want
Speaker 2: need mine? Or right? Sex? Well sex, there has to
Speaker 2: be something for we're getting together. That's why they meant
Speaker 2: why that's why the word no was.
Speaker 3: And then headache would be in there, right in there,
Speaker 3: and and depressed depressed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but if you think about it, what what would
Speaker 2: you need?
Speaker 3: Foods, some kind of food thing, hunting things, things, the
Speaker 3: things that would keep you by the way things would
Speaker 3: keep you alive, like run run, yeah, bear, or name
Speaker 3: a thing why bear? And then you got the context
Speaker 3: of say quicker together like run bear, not run why
Speaker 3: and he's gone?
Speaker 2: You know, but it is you know, it's interesting. We
Speaker 2: should have somebody to do this. There are universal sounds
Speaker 2: that we make under certain situations, like ow I was
Speaker 2: you know, I said, what would be the first one out?
Speaker 2: Almost universally some form of our ouch is the sound
Speaker 2: we make when we're in pain.
Speaker 3: But like thousands of years ago, did they make that
Speaker 3: sound or did they go globe them?
Speaker 2: I don't know whether it's the first time. That would
Speaker 2: be very interesting to find out. Has it always been?
Speaker 2: Is it? Is it a breathing sound that became you know,
Speaker 2: vocalized on that? Good on that? Let me do you
Speaker 2: want me to look into it? Yeah, okay, let me
Speaker 2: make up a word for English. I'm going to get
Speaker 2: to it. It is interesting how language and how long
Speaker 2: it took to develop? Ye yeah, fascinating. Right, all right,
Speaker 2: all right, this could be the end. This should be
Speaker 2: the end. This is the end. This was the end,
Speaker 2: and cannight no really.
Speaker 1: As another episode if really no really he comes to
Speaker 1: a close. I know you're wondering, what are some common
Speaker 1: English words that mean something very offensive in other languages? Well,
Speaker 1: all big guile you in a moment. But first let's
Speaker 1: thank our guest to doctor Joonah Berger. You can follow
Speaker 1: doctor Berger on x where he is at j one Burger,
Speaker 1: or you can go to his website jonah Berger dot com.
Speaker 1: Find all pertinent links in our show notes, our little
Speaker 1: shell hangs out on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and threads at
Speaker 1: really no Really podcasts, And of course you can share
Speaker 1: your thoughts and feedback with us online at reallynoreally dot com.
Speaker 1: If you have a really some amazing factor story that
Speaker 1: boggles your mind, share it with us, and if we
Speaker 1: use it, we will send you a little gift. Nothing
Speaker 1: life changing, obviously, but it's the thought that counts. Check
Speaker 1: out our full episodes on YouTube, hit that subscribe button
Speaker 1: and take that bell so you're updated when we release
Speaker 1: new videos and episodes, which we do each Tuesday. So
Speaker 1: listen and follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts. And now, what common
Speaker 1: English words are actually a bit offensive in other languages? Well,
Speaker 1: I said, I would beguile you, but maybe not if
Speaker 1: you speak German or the word guile means horny. You
Speaker 1: might little a baby to sleep in English, but lull
Speaker 1: in Dutch means penis, which as far as I know,
Speaker 1: is not an effective sleep aid. Puff might be a
Speaker 1: magic dragon and the English speaking song, but in Germany
Speaker 1: puff would be a magic brothel. Salsa is a Spanish
Speaker 1: word that we English speakers now commonly use for a
Speaker 1: spicy condiment. However, in Korean that same word means diarrhea,
Speaker 1: a decidedly less popular condiment, and truer words have.
Speaker 2: Never been spoken.
Speaker 1: Really No, Really is production of iHeartRadio and Blase Entertainment