Alison Wood Brooks: Cracking the Conversation Code

0:00:02 (upbeat music)
0:00:11 – What model roadcaster do you have?
0:00:13 – You know what’s funny, it’s very above my pay grade.
0:00:15 I’m in a band and somebody asked for advice
0:00:18 from my bandmates about what kind of microphone to get.
0:00:20 I’m wearing my husband’s headphones.
0:00:21 He’s the drummer in our band.
0:00:23 And then I have this roadcaster
0:00:25 and I don’t know how to use it at all.
0:00:28 All I know how to do is make like one funny sound effect.
0:00:30 But it’s a roadcaster, I can look at it.
0:00:31 It’s a roadcaster.
0:00:34 – Oh, I have a roadcaster, too.
0:00:35 – Roadcaster, too?
0:00:36 – Yeah, I’ll play this.
0:00:37 – Yeah, I can’t hear.
0:00:39 – So, yeah.
0:00:41 (upbeat music)
0:00:46 (laughing)
0:00:47 – I love it, I love it.
0:00:48 I was giving it to you
0:00:51 and you thought it was mine, let’s see.
0:00:53 – I can change my voice, I can have my dress.
0:00:56 (laughing)
0:00:58 (laughing)
0:01:02 – Podcasters just wanna have fun, so.
0:01:03 (laughing)
0:01:05 – That’s my only trick, guy.
0:01:08 (laughing)
0:01:10 – So, is today launch day?
0:01:12 – Today is launch day.
0:01:15 You’re catching me on such a crazy day.
0:01:17 It’s so miraculous.
0:01:19 – I figured that out last night.
0:01:21 Yeah, today is launch day and I said,
0:01:23 maybe her PR firm made a mistake
0:01:27 and they didn’t intend to take up her morning on launch day.
0:01:28 I feel so bad.
0:01:30 Are you sure you have time to do this?
0:01:31 – You’re so kind.
0:01:34 It’s such a welcome distraction.
0:01:36 Otherwise, what am I gonna be doing?
0:01:39 Just hitting refresh on the sales page, I don’t know.
0:01:41 (laughing)
0:01:44 – You’re not on the Today Show or Joe Rogan or anything.
0:01:47 – Well, I went on Mel Robbins yesterday.
0:01:50 When my kids were home on a snowy MLK day,
0:01:52 I went and visited Mel Robbins
0:01:54 and today I get to talk to you.
0:01:57 (laughing)
0:02:00 – You need to talk to your PR firm to get better people
0:02:02 for your launch day than me.
0:02:03 Oh my God.
0:02:04 (laughing)
0:02:07 – You’re too humble, too humble.
0:02:10 – Oh shit, I forgot to introduce you.
0:02:13 So, listen everybody, I’m Guy Kawasaki.
0:02:15 This is the Remarkable People podcast
0:02:18 and we’re on the mission to make you remarkable
0:02:21 and today we have the remarkable Alison Wood Brooks.
0:02:24 She’s a professor at Harvard Business School.
0:02:28 I like to call her the Queen of Conversation
0:02:30 because she teaches a course
0:02:33 on how to be a great conversationalist
0:02:37 and we’re honored to have her on her launch day
0:02:39 and as an author, I can tell you,
0:02:42 launch day is not an ideal day to do a long interview.
0:02:44 You got so much other things to do.
0:02:47 So, her PR firm screwed up and scheduled her
0:02:48 on the wrong day.
0:02:49 So, we’re gonna make the best of it.
0:02:50 – We gotta forgive them.
0:02:52 You’ve done a wonderful job.
0:02:54 I get to talk to you, Guy, come on.
0:02:57 (laughing)
0:02:59 – So, I know we’re supposed to start with small talk.
0:03:01 So, how’s the weather in Boston?
0:03:03 – You know what, it is beautiful here.
0:03:06 We had a snow storm and I love snow.
0:03:09 It’s so gorgeous and my kids went sledding yesterday.
0:03:11 It was very picturesque.
0:03:12 Where are you in the world?
0:03:13 Are you in Silicon Valley?
0:03:17 – Yes, I’m in Santa Cruz and we have a gorgeous day today.
0:03:20 Madison and I are gonna go surfing later today too.
0:03:22 – Oh, imagine that.
0:03:24 My kids were surfing on the snow yesterday
0:03:25 and you get to actually go surfing.
0:03:26 That sounds nice.
0:03:28 (laughing)
0:03:32 – I fully understand your hierarchy of small talk,
0:03:34 directed talk and deep talk.
0:03:36 So, we gotta engage in some small talk
0:03:38 to observe your book, right?
0:03:39 – That’s right.
0:03:40 No pressure.
0:03:42 – So, I gotta pitch you some soft balls
0:03:43 in this small talk phase.
0:03:46 What’s something that you’re really lousy at
0:03:47 that you love to do?
0:03:49 – I love that question.
0:03:50 It’s one of my favorites.
0:03:53 One of my really lousy at what I love to do.
0:03:55 Probably cooking.
0:03:58 I don’t cook often, but when I do, it’s so soothing
0:04:02 and it’s so cozy and warm and I’m so bad at it, guy.
0:04:03 I’m not a good cook.
0:04:06 I have no business being in the kitchen,
0:04:09 but I do love creating a meal for my family
0:04:11 every once in a while.
0:04:14 – Well, you know, they have this thing called home fresh
0:04:16 and it comes in a box and everything’s in it.
0:04:20 They have very good meals in that box.
0:04:21 – Here’s the challenge.
0:04:24 I’ve got three kids and they’re such picky eaters.
0:04:27 I feel like I can’t get, there’s no rest.
0:04:30 The Venn diagram of foods that everybody in my family
0:04:34 will eat is a possibly tiny overlapping zone.
0:04:38 And I don’t think a home fresh finds the zone.
0:04:39 But we’ll see.
0:04:41 I’ll look into it.
0:04:44 – Just go to Costco and get the dollar half hot dog.
0:04:44 That’s good enough.
0:04:46 – Exactly, that’s the over, you found it.
0:04:50 That is the overlapping part of the Venn diagram, hot dogs.
0:04:51 – I’ve had four children.
0:04:54 I know how that Venn diagram works.
0:04:56 – How old are your kids now, guys?
0:04:58 – They are no longer kids.
0:05:03 They’re 19, 23, 30 and 32 or something like that.
0:05:08 I’m a grandfather, I’m a new grandfather.
0:05:09 – Congratulations.
0:05:11 How many grandkids do you have?
0:05:12 – One that I know of.
0:05:17 – One that you know of, a baby or a toddler?
0:05:20 – Three months old.
0:05:22 – Congratulations, you’re a new grandfather.
0:05:25 That’s a huge deal.
0:05:28 – So I saw some interviews of you
0:05:30 and you were complimenting this podcast
0:05:32 about how many questions he had
0:05:33 and how he was jumping around
0:05:36 and I’m gonna set the new standard for you today, okay?
0:05:40 – Oh, I love it, I love it.
0:05:43 I’ve had some competitiveness in you guys, I like that.
0:05:47 – You can ask Madison, I’m a very competitive person
0:05:50 and to answer the question that I asked you,
0:05:53 I’m lousy at surfing, but I love to do it.
0:05:56 So that’s kind of where I’m at.
0:05:57 First question for you is,
0:06:00 you know that person in your book
0:06:02 where you had a conversation
0:06:04 and you told her that her boyfriend
0:06:05 wasn’t good enough for you?
0:06:07 – Yes, I do.
0:06:08 – Are they still married?
0:06:10 – They’re still married, they have children,
0:06:13 they’re, as far as I can tell, happily married
0:06:18 and I did get a text from her when she received the book
0:06:21 and I hadn’t warned her about the story.
0:06:26 So we are still friends and everything’s copacetic
0:06:28 and she actually did not remember
0:06:31 that number thing happening.
0:06:34 She didn’t, and I think I was very relieved
0:06:36 that she didn’t remember.
0:06:39 – So you’re telling me that to this day,
0:06:42 you don’t know if she was offended by that question?
0:06:44 – Correct, and at this point,
0:06:46 I don’t think she knows if she was offended.
0:06:48 I mean, this is something that’s true.
0:06:52 I do think this is a very vivid thing about conversation.
0:06:54 It’s easy to get hung up on things
0:06:57 when you feel like they don’t go well,
0:06:59 but you have no idea how other people
0:07:01 are experiencing a conversation
0:07:04 or how they’re experiencing you
0:07:06 and truly we had an amazing friendship.
0:07:07 It was a very close friend of mine.
0:07:10 Honestly, I did that to a lot of my friends.
0:07:11 At that point in my life,
0:07:12 I felt like it was very much my place
0:07:15 to be protective of all of my girlfriends
0:07:17 who I thought were amazing
0:07:20 and no partner was worthy of them.
0:07:24 And so I just went around sprinkling feedback left and right
0:07:26 of like, this guy’s not good enough for you.
0:07:28 And now in retrospect, I’m like,
0:07:29 well, that was an interesting phase of life,
0:07:33 maybe not my place to be tossing that around so casually,
0:07:36 but learning how other people experience
0:07:38 a conversation like that is very enlightening.
0:07:41 I mean, in the moment, you really have no idea
0:07:45 how people hear you or what they’re learning from you.
0:07:48 – Maybe Madison should introduce you to her boyfriend
0:07:51 so you can check him out for her.
0:07:54 – Now she’s gonna be scared that I’ll write
0:07:56 about their relationship in a book
0:07:58 and have it be in print for the all the time.
0:08:00 – Well, the test will be,
0:08:02 if you don’t like Madison’s boyfriend,
0:08:07 then she’ll probably be living happily ever after with him
0:08:09 based on her track record.
0:08:11 – That’s right, if there is one clear take away from this,
0:08:13 it’s that my instincts are not good
0:08:15 about other people’s love lives.
0:08:17 (laughing)
0:08:20 – I can hardly wait till your daughter’s have boyfriends.
0:08:21 Oh, that’s-
0:08:22 – I know, I know.
0:08:25 I have two boys and a little girl.
0:08:27 – Oh, you only have one girl.
0:08:28 – There are only nine, seven and five,
0:08:31 but it does take a lot of self-control for me
0:08:34 as like a psychologist and just,
0:08:35 I’m obsessed with relationships
0:08:37 so to not ask them every day,
0:08:38 like what’s going on?
0:08:39 Who’s gonna crush on who?
0:08:40 What’s got how you feelin’?
0:08:41 What’s new?
0:08:43 (laughing)
0:08:45 Too soon, I just want the break.
0:08:47 – Is she still licking your nose?
0:08:49 – Oh, you know what, guys?
0:08:52 She does, she’s in kindergarten now
0:08:54 and she is very funny.
0:08:57 She’s very silly and she’s so proud
0:09:01 that she is the first story in the book, her name’s Charlotte.
0:09:05 And she knows that story
0:09:06 and she doesn’t remember it
0:09:09 because when it happened, she was a baby, she was one.
0:09:10 But I’ve retold it to her
0:09:12 and now she hears from other people,
0:09:15 “Hey, this is the story so cute at the beginning of the book.”
0:09:20 And so she’s very proud that she is, you know, this book star.
0:09:22 And now it’s this inside joke between the two of us.
0:09:23 Just last night, I was like,
0:09:25 “Charlotte, my book’s coming out tomorrow.”
0:09:27 And she came right over and she goes,
0:09:28 “I lick you.”
0:09:30 And licked me right on the nose.
0:09:31 (laughing)
0:09:32 So cute.
0:09:36 Even the boys, even the boys now say, “I lick you.”
0:09:38 It’s a family, ongoing family joke.
0:09:42 – I guess that’s what social distancing is
0:09:44 in the Brooks family.
0:09:47 – Yeah, there’s no distance in a family like ours.
0:09:48 Oh my God.
0:09:52 – So I happen to notice that
0:09:54 there’s a lot of licking stories in your book
0:09:57 because you talk about Carrie Fisher’s dog
0:10:01 licking her hand during Terry Gross’ interview.
0:10:03 So there’s some licking thing.
0:10:04 – There is a licking theme.
0:10:07 I thought about it as I was writing it
0:10:10 and I was like, “Why is there so much licking in this book?
0:10:13 “What do I kind of invite to my giving to people?
0:10:14 “You’re so right.
0:10:16 “What a great reader you are, guy.
0:10:17 “It’s true.”
0:10:22 – Well, I mean, something like that sticks out.
0:10:27 – Okay, so now shifting gears a little bit.
0:10:32 Your course at Harvard is Hall to Talk Gooder, right?
0:10:34 – That’s right.
0:10:36 – So I want to know if you are inspired
0:10:39 by the Think Different campaign of Apple
0:10:43 where you purposely do something dramatically incorrect.
0:10:45 – I wasn’t directly thinking of Apple,
0:10:47 but I do think the principle is the same.
0:10:50 My intention was just be different.
0:10:51 I mean, to be different.
0:10:53 And at Harvard, to be different,
0:10:55 it doesn’t require much levity.
0:11:01 There’s not a lot of silliness.
0:11:03 I think it’s a weakness of ours.
0:11:06 And I really wanted to make that point in the course title
0:11:08 when it’s sitting in the course catalog
0:11:12 alongside democracy in America
0:11:14 and global capitalism.
0:11:17 And then you get to this course as how to talk gooder.
0:11:18 It jumps out at you.
0:11:20 It’s very different.
0:11:22 There’s a double meaning too
0:11:24 because there’s a theme of kindness in the book.
0:11:26 Gooder is in the sense of like,
0:11:29 what does it mean to be a good person?
0:11:31 But also better in all the ways
0:11:33 we’re hoping to be better communicators.
0:11:39 – Maybe Susan Acker and Naomi Bagadonuts
0:11:42 are gonna rename their course because of that, right?
0:11:45 ‘Cause they have a really plain name.
0:11:46 – That’s right.
0:11:49 Yes, their course is called Humor Serious Business.
0:11:51 Their book is Humor Seriously.
0:11:53 I visited their course.
0:11:54 They have visited my course.
0:11:58 Actually, Naomi visits my course every time I teach it.
0:11:59 She’s such a talented teacher.
0:12:02 She comes during our Levity module and talk.
0:12:04 So we’re very much on the same page.
0:12:05 Maybe I can get them to rename their course,
0:12:07 something even sillier.
0:12:11 – Okay, I notice, you’re gonna figure out
0:12:13 that I notice the damnedest things,
0:12:16 but I notice that when you introduce Naomi,
0:12:19 you introduced her as a comedian,
0:12:20 not as a professor.
0:12:22 Was that an inside joke?
0:12:25 Or did you have a lousy copy editor who didn’t check?
0:12:26 – You know what?
0:12:27 Probably both.
0:12:28 No, I’m kidding.
0:12:32 Actually, the way that I introduce people in the book
0:12:34 is the way that I think of them in my mind,
0:12:36 how I categorize them.
0:12:38 So Naomi’s a professor,
0:12:40 but she’s not a behavioral scientist
0:12:44 in the way that so many of my professor friends are scientists.
0:12:47 In my mind, the value add of my relationship with Naomi
0:12:49 is that she is really a practitioner.
0:12:50 She’s out there in the world.
0:12:52 She’s teaching humor to people
0:12:54 who have been incarcerated in Palo Alto.
0:12:56 She’s teaching humor workshops.
0:12:57 She’s out there.
0:13:00 She’s consulting with so many companies.
0:13:02 And that’s a different role.
0:13:04 That’s a different job than what so many
0:13:07 of my behavioral science research friends are doing.
0:13:11 – I can just see Katie Milkman and Angela Duckworth
0:13:15 in a prison in Philadelphia teaching the grit.
0:13:17 Let me teach you grit, sir.
0:13:18 – Hey, they would do it.
0:13:20 I mean, if you could get a large scale,
0:13:22 large enough scale prison,
0:13:24 they would, I’m sure love to get in there,
0:13:27 especially Angela and Katie.
0:13:28 They’re amazing.
0:13:31 – They’re gonna give a whole new meaning
0:13:33 to the Milkman delivers.
0:13:35 – Exactly.
0:13:37 One of the studies that I talk about in the book
0:13:39 is that about parole hearings.
0:13:41 So we’ve had the lick theme.
0:13:44 Now we’re picking up on a prison theme.
0:13:48 We moved on from licking to prison.
0:13:50 It’s showing we’re going up the pyramid.
0:13:51 – That’s right.
0:13:53 Yeah, exactly.
0:13:54 Reaper and Reaper.
0:14:03 – Shifting gears again.
0:14:08 Do you think people can have a conversation with an LLM?
0:14:11 – It’s a good question.
0:14:12 I think it goes back to this question
0:14:15 of what are your goals in conversation?
0:14:20 I think an LLM, an AI, a chatbot are quite good
0:14:25 at fulfilling some of our conversational needs.
0:14:30 It’s why there’s such great promise in companionship
0:14:32 through AI or through LLMs
0:14:35 because they can help us not feel alone.
0:14:37 They can help us have fun.
0:14:39 They’re an incredible sounding board.
0:14:41 They help feed good ideas to us.
0:14:46 There’s so many needs we have that a non-human entity
0:14:47 can fulfill.
0:14:51 Here’s where I get a little bit worried.
0:14:52 I mean, there’s a lot that’s worrisome,
0:14:55 but one of the things that I’ve been thinking about
0:15:00 is something that humans struggle with in conversation
0:15:03 is getting past our own self-centeredness,
0:15:07 our own egocentrism that we focus so singularly
0:15:10 and naturally on our own point of view.
0:15:13 In the book, we take this position of a kind conversation,
0:15:16 a good conversation that relentlessly pushes themselves
0:15:18 to think about the other person’s perspective,
0:15:20 not just think about it, but ask about it.
0:15:22 Ask questions, learn as much as you can
0:15:25 about what’s really in the other person’s mind
0:15:26 because we’re bad at guessing, right?
0:15:30 We’re bad at knowing what other people are thinking about.
0:15:32 So we have these egocentric tendencies,
0:15:34 we like talking about ourselves,
0:15:36 we like thinking about our own perspective,
0:15:38 and we have to really work hard to get over that.
0:15:43 When you’re interacting with a non-human entity,
0:15:46 you don’t need to do that at all.
0:15:48 The whole point is to get the entity
0:15:51 to fulfill your needs as much as possible.
0:15:54 It’s completely self-centered in a way.
0:15:56 You don’t need to relentlessly push yourself
0:15:58 to understand its perspective.
0:16:00 It doesn’t really have a perspective.
0:16:01 It doesn’t have needs.
0:16:06 A chatbot, an AI, an LLM, it doesn’t have needs
0:16:08 and it doesn’t have desires.
0:16:11 And so what I worry about is,
0:16:16 if we are interacting with non-human entities too much,
0:16:20 is it training us to be even more selfish
0:16:21 than we already are?
0:16:28 – That’s a scary thought, I hope that Sam Altman
0:16:31 and the people at OpenAI read this book
0:16:35 because it might improve their agent aspect
0:16:37 of LLMs, right?
0:16:37 – For sure.
0:16:39 Some companies have come over the years,
0:16:41 many people and companies have come to me
0:16:44 looking for advice and guidance and consulting
0:16:47 about how to make their bots more human-like.
0:16:50 How can we make them better at conversation?
0:16:53 At first, I was flattered and excited to engage with them
0:16:54 and then I sort of stopped
0:16:58 because I’m just not sure that that’s what that means
0:17:00 and if that’s actually helpful to us at this point.
0:17:04 – There’s a lot of upside there
0:17:08 when every voicemail system says press one for tech support,
0:17:11 press two for sales, press three, four, executive directory,
0:17:14 press four if you wanna get this menu over again,
0:17:16 I’m sure you can improve that.
0:17:18 – I definitely can, I definitely can.
0:17:20 I would be interested to hear,
0:17:23 so for people who are working on LLMs and bots,
0:17:25 I would love to hear what they think of the insights
0:17:28 and talk and how much of it is translatable
0:17:30 to bot development and how much is not, right?
0:17:33 Like how much is uniquely, the human mind
0:17:36 is uniquely positioned to do.
0:17:40 – Do you think that you could use an LLM
0:17:44 to train you to be a better conversationalist?
0:17:47 You could prompt it with what are some great topics
0:17:50 because you say it’s okay to create a topic list, right?
0:17:53 – So this is where LLMs can be so helpful.
0:17:56 I think as a training mechanism for a human
0:17:58 to become a better conversationalist for sure.
0:18:01 In fact, before LLMs became a thing,
0:18:05 I developed a case at HBS with a company called Summersion,
0:18:06 which is essentially this,
0:18:09 they created like simulated conversation partners
0:18:13 so that my students could practice interacting
0:18:15 with people that are different from who they would normally
0:18:18 encounter in their normal lives and get like lots of reps.
0:18:20 You just talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk
0:18:22 and get lots of different responses
0:18:24 from this simulated conversation partner.
0:18:26 So an LLM could do a lot of things.
0:18:29 My sister recently asked ChatGPT like,
0:18:32 “Hey, I want to have better conversations with my parents.”
0:18:35 So then she fed information about our parents.
0:18:38 She was like, “What would people who live in upstate New York
0:18:41 “in the Finger Lakes who have nine grandchildren
0:18:44 “or 72 years old, what would they want
0:18:48 “their adult children to ask them about?”
0:18:49 And it gave great ideas.
0:18:52 It was a great way to brainstorm topics
0:18:55 because the LLM has a lot more data about people
0:18:57 that meet those demographic characteristics
0:18:59 than we might guess.
0:19:02 Then like we as young, you know, 40-somethings
0:19:04 could guess that they would want to talk about.
0:19:07 So seeding topics, brainstorming topics is a great idea.
0:19:11 Simulating conversation and practicing, great.
0:19:14 Pushing us to become more kind, I’m not so sure.
0:19:19 – I think you should ask your parents,
0:19:21 vis-a-vis your grandchildren,
0:19:26 have you created a generation skipping trust for my kids?
0:19:28 That’s the most important question
0:19:31 you could ask your parents for your grandchildren.
0:19:34 – I’m adding that to my topic, let’s write now, guy.
0:19:36 – Generation skipping trust
0:19:39 so that they don’t give you something, you pay tax,
0:19:41 you give it to your kids, they pay tax.
0:19:45 It skips your generation, go straight to their generation.
0:19:47 – That’s amazing, that’s amazing.
0:19:50 – I went to law school for two weeks and dropped out.
0:19:52 So, you know, I picked that right up.
0:19:53 – The only thing that you learned
0:19:56 during your two weeks of law school about generation skipping
0:19:58 trust? – It was so valuable.
0:20:00 Imagine if I had stayed two years, my God.
0:20:03 – Imagine, imagine, imagine the hacks.
0:20:06 – I’d be teaching at Harvard Law School,
0:20:07 we would be colleagues.
0:20:11 – But you can’t surf here, guy.
0:20:14 You can’t surf, I mean, I guess you can in the summer,
0:20:15 but not in the winter.
0:20:18 – I love a good acronym.
0:20:23 And your acronym is TOC, T-A-L-K.
0:20:26 So, please explain what TOC stands for.
0:20:28 – Can I tell you through this book,
0:20:30 I’ve already learned that acronyms are very polarizing.
0:20:32 Some people really, really love them
0:20:35 and find them to be so helpful to help them remember stuff.
0:20:36 Other people are very like,
0:20:39 come from a very anti-acronym place.
0:20:41 – I’m pro-acronym.
0:20:42 – I’m also pro-acronym.
0:20:44 I think really good mnemonic device to help remember.
0:20:47 But I hope this acronym, people find very helpful.
0:20:50 T stands for topics.
0:20:53 A stands for asking questions.
0:20:58 L is for levity and K is for kindness.
0:20:59 – And so those four things
0:21:02 are the foundation of great conversation.
0:21:04 – Yeah, the ambition.
0:21:06 And I think, I hope it delivers on this promise,
0:21:11 is that it provides a comprehensive landscape
0:21:15 of conversation where, so lots of prior work,
0:21:18 I mean, if you focus only on persuasion
0:21:22 or you focus only on influence or you only on negotiation,
0:21:24 only on relationship development,
0:21:27 the problem is that you’re missing out on how those things,
0:21:30 those goals trade off with other important goals,
0:21:33 like having fun or maintaining privacy
0:21:36 or like just liking to be with people.
0:21:39 And so it’s overly narrow view.
0:21:41 The promise of this acronym in this book
0:21:42 is a broader perspective.
0:21:45 Like, let’s consider all of the things
0:21:47 that we want as humans at one time
0:21:50 and then come up with these four reminders,
0:21:52 these four guardrails that are gonna help us
0:21:54 do all of the things better.
0:21:57 – May I make a suggestion with your acronym?
0:21:59 – How dare you?
0:22:00 How dare you guys?
0:22:02 Yes, I can’t wait to, I can’t wait.
0:22:03 – What do you mean, I read in your book,
0:22:05 it’s okay to bring up sensitive questions.
0:22:08 – I can’t change it at this point, Guy,
0:22:10 but yes, I’m all ears, I can’t wait to hear.
0:22:14 – Okay, so I think you should change
0:22:18 ASKING, ING, to ASKS,
0:22:23 because then all elements of your acronyms will be nouns.
0:22:26 – You’re right, it is a jarring gerund.
0:22:28 It is a jarring change of grammar.
0:22:33 But here’s the thing, when I hear the word ASKS, the noun,
0:22:36 I think when people use the word ASK as a noun,
0:22:40 they’re usually talking about, I have a big ASK.
0:22:43 And there they mean, I’m asking for something.
0:22:47 I’m gonna ask you to give them something that serves me,
0:22:51 which is totally against the spirit of ASKING in this book,
0:22:54 which is like, no, you’re ASKING for the sake
0:22:58 of information exchange and learning.
0:22:59 – But I would make the case
0:23:02 that as a Harvard Business School professor,
0:23:05 and someone who’s already broken the bounds
0:23:07 of good grammar with gooder,
0:23:12 you can change the meaning of ASK to just be a synonym
0:23:16 for questions, for generating conversation.
0:23:19 – You know what, I was talking to Patrick McGinnis
0:23:21 the other day, he was interviewing me about the book.
0:23:22 He has this great podcast.
0:23:25 He’s the guy who invented the word FOMO,
0:23:26 fear of missing out.
0:23:29 And we had like a jolly good bonding moment
0:23:33 because of our shared experience of inventing acronyms.
0:23:37 I like this guy, I like the idea of the lofty goal
0:23:40 of me changing the whole meaning of the word ASK.
0:23:42 I like this, I like the ambition of it.
0:23:43 I’m gonna keep it in mind.
0:23:45 I will tell people that this is your vote.
0:23:47 When I say A is for ASKING and I’ll say,
0:23:50 and guy, Kawasaki told me it should be ASK.
0:23:56 – It’s my OCD Chicago manual of style upbringing.
0:23:57 What can I say?
0:23:58 – I applaud you.
0:24:02 I applaud your OCD grammatical ways, thank you.
0:24:06 – We should ask Angela Duckworth what she thinks.
0:24:07 – Let’s call her in.
0:24:08 I can call her right now.
0:24:10 You want to dial in, where you’re in?
0:24:12 (laughing)
0:24:14 Angela, what do you think?
0:24:17 – So, you know, I want people to read the book.
0:24:19 So I’m not gonna force you to explain
0:24:20 each of the four things,
0:24:25 but I noticed that you busted some myths in this book.
0:24:29 So I’m gonna mention what I think four myths you bust
0:24:32 and how and why you busted them, all right?
0:24:35 So first of all, myth number one is small talk
0:24:37 is a waste of time.
0:24:39 Tell me why that’s wrong.
0:24:40 – It is wrong.
0:24:42 Everybody feels like it’s a waste of time
0:24:44 because it’s so unpleasant.
0:24:46 Everybody knows that once you’re there,
0:24:48 it’s shallow, meaningless, empty,
0:24:50 start to have these alarm bells go off like,
0:24:52 “Oh, we’re not doing conversation right.
0:24:53 “We gotta get to the real stuff.
0:24:55 “We gotta get to the productive stuff,
0:24:56 “the meaningful stuff.”
0:24:58 We all know that feeling.
0:25:01 The problem isn’t with small talk itself,
0:25:04 it’s that we get stuck in it for too long.
0:25:06 Small talk is a very important social ritual.
0:25:08 It’s where conversation has to start,
0:25:10 especially between strangers
0:25:12 or people who don’t know each other that well
0:25:14 or who haven’t seen each other in a while.
0:25:17 It’s a very well-worn social ritual.
0:25:19 That’s how we start conversations.
0:25:21 The point though is to use it as a place
0:25:24 to search for better stuff.
0:25:27 And ideally to search for better stuff quickly.
0:25:29 I wanna hear people talking about surfing
0:25:31 within the first four turns of a conversation
0:25:33 and how much they love it
0:25:36 and how their kids are surfing down the snow
0:25:38 rather than like, “Oh yeah, it’s cold.
0:25:40 “Oh yeah, I don’t like the cold.
0:25:42 “It’s warmer here in California.”
0:25:44 And a lot of conversations do stay
0:25:48 in that very mundane world for much too long.
0:25:51 So the trick is just making sure you look for the doorknobs
0:25:53 to better or more interesting rooms
0:25:55 and get the courage to go through those doorways,
0:25:57 go to better places.
0:26:00 – Is there a rule of thumb about when to make the switch?
0:26:02 – It would be weird if right away
0:26:06 I had been like, “Tell me about your mother.”
0:26:08 That’s the best jarring.
0:26:10 It’s almost as jarring as the asking Jaron
0:26:13 in the middle of the talk, across the–
0:26:17 – Well, we got from weather in Boston to licking dogs
0:26:19 and licking noses pretty quick, right?
0:26:21 – Yeah, I think both of us are people
0:26:25 who are very hungry to move past small talk.
0:26:28 But I don’t, but we don’t dread it, right?
0:26:29 Like you have to do it.
0:26:31 You just have, it’s the starting place.
0:26:34 It’s the launch pad to go somewhere else.
0:26:36 And some people have developed the skill
0:26:39 of moving away from it more quickly and more smoothly.
0:26:41 And everybody can develop that skill.
0:26:43 – Okay, myth number two.
0:26:46 I think a lot of people would say it’s kind of tacky
0:26:50 to prepare a topic list in advance of meeting people
0:26:52 that you shouldn’t pre-plan the topics
0:26:53 you’re gonna talk about.
0:26:55 So bust this myth.
0:26:57 – I’m so happy to bust this myth.
0:26:59 I love the word tacky.
0:27:02 When we survey people, when we say,
0:27:05 imagine prepping topics before a conversation,
0:27:07 especially with someone you know well,
0:27:10 like your spouse or your lover.
0:27:11 Yeah, look at your topic list.
0:27:13 Let’s go.
0:27:14 I love it.
0:27:17 So a lot of people are very averse to this idea.
0:27:19 They’re like, I shouldn’t have to brainstorm topics.
0:27:21 I’m gonna know what to talk about
0:27:22 once I’m in a conversation,
0:27:25 especially with people that I know well.
0:27:27 In the experience of it, in reality,
0:27:29 once you get to a conversation,
0:27:33 having thought ahead about it is incredibly helpful,
0:27:35 not just for a podcast interview or for a work meeting
0:27:38 where you’ve brainstormed an agenda,
0:27:41 but even for conversations with people that you love
0:27:43 and know well and see every day
0:27:45 because it forces you to just think about them.
0:27:47 It’s a perspective taking nudge where you’re like,
0:27:50 oh yeah, what’s going on in my partner’s life?
0:27:52 What do I really need to remember to ask them?
0:27:55 It’s a way to show them that you care
0:27:58 and that it helps you remember to raise the topics
0:28:00 that you should be raising with them.
0:28:02 Make things more enjoyable, less anxiety-inducing,
0:28:04 smoother, more productive, all the good things.
0:28:06 – You know, there is no one who is more positive
0:28:10 about AI than Guy, and I often do this,
0:28:13 and I think AI is smarter than me.
0:28:14 There’s no doubt in my mind,
0:28:16 chat, GPT is smarter than me.
0:28:17 – Oh yeah, smarter than all of us for sure.
0:28:21 I mean, my definition, it’s like as smart as the masses,
0:28:22 right?
0:28:22 With the crowd.
0:28:27 – But one thing AI absolutely cannot do that I can do
0:28:31 is come up with questions and topics for a podcast.
0:28:33 Because before every podcast, I usually ask,
0:28:38 what should I ask Katie Milken or Angela Duckworth
0:28:39 or Steve Wolfram?
0:28:41 And they always come up with really boring questions
0:28:44 like what was the most exciting part of your career?
0:28:46 What do you look forward to, et cetera, et cetera.
0:28:50 And if there is ever a day where I ask,
0:28:54 what should I ask Allison in a podcast?
0:28:58 And the LLM says, Guy, ask her why she talks so much
0:29:02 about licking, that’s the day that AI has arrived.
0:29:04 – Why do you think that is?
0:29:05 Do you think it’s a unique skill set
0:29:07 that you have as an individual
0:29:09 or do you think it’s a broader human ability?
0:29:13 We’re just better at knowing or anticipating
0:29:16 what will be fun and interesting to talk about
0:29:17 with other people.
0:29:20 – I think it’s because using your vernacular
0:29:24 of system one and system two, I’m about system 10.
0:29:25 That’s why.
0:29:28 – Say more.
0:29:29 – Okay, wait, more mids.
0:29:31 I got two more mids.
0:29:32 – Oh yeah, that’s right, keep going.
0:29:33 Sorry, don’t let me derail you.
0:29:37 – So myth number three,
0:29:40 it’s bad to ask too many questions.
0:29:43 – Oh, I love busting this myth.
0:29:45 Everybody can think of a person.
0:29:47 They can think of a person or think of a conversation
0:29:50 where they were annoyed that somebody asked too many questions.
0:29:52 It felt like an interrogation.
0:29:55 That memory is so salient that it leads us to believe
0:29:57 that you can ask too many questions
0:30:01 when in most contexts, for most people,
0:30:04 it’s either impossible to ask too many questions
0:30:06 or the number of questions that you would need to ask
0:30:09 to get to that annoying point is so extremely high
0:30:12 that you almost can’t possibly get there.
0:30:15 This is true particularly in cooperative conversations
0:30:18 where you’re collaborating or you’re on a date
0:30:20 or you’re just there to have fun, connect with people.
0:30:23 That’s a big chunk of the conversations we have in our life,
0:30:26 our cooperative conversations.
0:30:30 And even in competitive, conflictual conversations
0:30:31 where you need to negotiate something.
0:30:36 – My fourth myth is that it is bad to ask sensitive questions.
0:30:42 – It’s bad to not ask sensitive questions.
0:30:43 It’s terribly bad.
0:30:46 It means you’re going to get stuck in small talk world,
0:30:50 mundane, meaningless, unproductive world forever.
0:30:54 We have all kinds of fears about asking sensitive questions.
0:30:55 We don’t want to hurt people’s feelings.
0:30:56 We don’t want to seem rude.
0:30:58 We don’t want to seem intrusive.
0:31:00 We don’t want to seem incompetent, right?
0:31:04 Sometimes we worry that asking a question will make it look
0:31:06 like we should already know the answer to it.
0:31:09 In truth, asking sensitive questions
0:31:13 is the most direct pathway to connection, to learning,
0:31:17 to teaching, to, ironically, even to privacy, right?
0:31:20 Because only by asking a sensitive question,
0:31:22 can you learn where somebody’s personal boundary is
0:31:23 where they can say, actually,
0:31:25 I’m not comfortable talking about that.
0:31:27 Otherwise, you’ll never find it.
0:31:30 And you can never learn how to, you know,
0:31:31 where are their boundaries?
0:31:32 What are they comfortable talking about
0:31:33 and not talking about?
0:31:36 So, yes, we need to ask more sensitive questions.
0:31:38 – So how much do you make
0:31:40 as a Harvard Business School professor?
0:31:41 – That’s such a good question.
0:31:43 (laughing)
0:31:44 – Love it.
0:31:45 I’ll tell you what, book deals help,
0:31:48 book deals help you earn a lot more.
0:31:49 And I think that’s why a lot of professors
0:31:52 are writing these trade books.
0:31:54 – I need a number here.
0:31:56 (laughing)
0:31:58 – I’m still not tenured.
0:31:59 I’m a junior faculty member.
0:32:01 So I actually don’t know
0:32:03 what my tenured faculty colleagues make.
0:32:06 – I’m asking you, not your tenured faculty colleagues.
0:32:11 You think you can just avoid my sensitive questions.
0:32:12 – But I, can I be real with you?
0:32:17 My husband is a financial advisor.
0:32:20 And I don’t even know how much money I need.
0:32:21 – Okay, okay.
0:32:24 – The money flows, the money flows to my husband.
0:32:26 – I learned from your book
0:32:29 that I learned from your book
0:32:32 that you have to learn when to switch topics.
0:32:33 – I actually want to answer your question.
0:32:35 I think the sincere answer to your question
0:32:37 is more than enough.
0:32:40 Too much, I mean too much.
0:32:41 – Speaking of tactics,
0:32:46 so do you think it’s better to switch too many topics
0:32:51 or what’s worse, too fast or too slow switching?
0:32:52 – We know this.
0:32:53 I know this answer,
0:32:56 not just based on my personal hunches or preferences.
0:32:58 Of course, I love rapid topic switching.
0:33:00 I think because I have an ADHD,
0:33:02 sort of an inattentive brain,
0:33:04 I think you do too.
0:33:06 But we also actually have data on this.
0:33:10 This is a huge data set that was collected from BetterUp,
0:33:12 which it’s just amazing conversations.
0:33:14 After their conversations,
0:33:16 like hundreds of thousands of conversations,
0:33:17 they ask people,
0:33:20 did you cover the right amount of topics?
0:33:21 And most people say, yeah,
0:33:24 I think we covered about the right amount of topics.
0:33:26 But of all the people who said no,
0:33:28 we did not cover the right amount of topics,
0:33:30 people are much more likely to say
0:33:34 that they covered too few than too many.
0:33:38 So the most common mistake is moving too slowly
0:33:39 through topics.
0:33:42 And we see that when we manipulate the speed
0:33:44 with which people move from one thing to the next.
0:33:46 So we’ve run experiments where we tell people,
0:33:48 move faster.
0:33:49 As soon as this thing starts to lag,
0:33:51 we want you to move to something else.
0:33:54 And those conversations are much more enjoyable.
0:33:55 – Okay.
0:33:56 So now let me ask you.
0:34:00 So what about when people who are hesitant to ask
0:34:03 sensitive questions start with the question
0:34:06 like I did, may I ask you a sensitive question?
0:34:08 Do you think that is a cop out?
0:34:10 Do you think that is a waste of time?
0:34:13 Or do you think that is a good social grace?
0:34:15 – I think it’s a nice sign posting.
0:34:16 It’s a little bit of a warning,
0:34:19 like, hey, something’s coming, pay attention.
0:34:23 It at least gives the veneer or the veil of politeness
0:34:24 and caring, right?
0:34:26 You’re also saying,
0:34:27 I’m gonna ask you something sensitive.
0:34:30 If you don’t want to answer it, I understand, right?
0:34:32 That’s a nice disclaimer.
0:34:33 The same is true when you switch topics.
0:34:35 You can note, like, is it okay
0:34:37 if I take a hard left turn here?
0:34:39 Is it okay if we smoke bomb and move to something else?
0:34:42 It’s almost like you’re asking permission of your partner,
0:34:45 even though they’re sort of required to say yes,
0:34:47 because they don’t know what’s coming next.
0:34:49 But yes, I think it’s lovely.
0:34:51 Or you can just do it, just ask.
0:34:53 How much money do you make, guy?
0:34:56 You know, like just go for it and see how people run.
0:34:58 – My wife is my financial planner.
0:34:59 I really don’t know.
0:35:01 And everything is a direct deposit.
0:35:02 I don’t check my balance.
0:35:05 But can I tell you a really funny story?
0:35:06 – Yes.
0:35:07 – You can use this story.
0:35:09 – I think I get to decide if it’s funny,
0:35:11 but okay, go ahead.
0:35:13 – I guarantee you when I tell you something is funny,
0:35:14 it’s funny, all right?
0:35:16 So when I was at Apple,
0:35:18 I used to work with some of the executives
0:35:22 in outside companies who are Macintosh users.
0:35:26 And one very famous person was a woman named Sandra Kurtzig.
0:35:29 She started a computer company called Ask Computing.
0:35:32 It was manufacturing software.
0:35:34 She was the first woman in Silicon Valley
0:35:35 to take a company public.
0:35:37 So she was very, very rich.
0:35:40 And she had this Ferrari Testerosa,
0:35:43 which I love Ferraris, not that I have her own one.
0:35:45 So anyway, she reaches out to us.
0:35:48 She says, I’m having problems with my Macintosh.
0:35:51 So Guy goes over to her house
0:35:53 to help her with her Macintosh, right?
0:35:56 And she shakes the mouse and the screen wakes up.
0:36:00 And the window in the front is Quicken.
0:36:02 And I know how to use Quicken.
0:36:04 I know exactly where the current balance
0:36:05 of your checkbook is.
0:36:07 And as soon as she wakes up Quicken,
0:36:10 I look down and it’s like, holy shit,
0:36:13 she has a quarter million dollars in her checking account.
0:36:14 And ever since that day,
0:36:16 it’s been one of my goals
0:36:19 to have a quarter million dollars in your checking account.
0:36:21 And I have achieved that goal, Allison.
0:36:23 – Yes, Guy, yes.
0:36:28 I love that your eyes darted so quickly to the balance.
0:36:31 It’s like, it’s such a lovely measure
0:36:32 of your inner curiosity.
0:36:34 I love it so much.
0:36:35 And you’ve done it.
0:36:36 Is that it?
0:36:37 You can drop the mic.
0:36:40 You’ve achieved all the things you wanted in life.
0:36:44 Quicken, you’re 250 in your checking account.
0:36:48 – Tell that to your husband.
0:36:51 So if you ever need help with your Macintosh,
0:36:53 be sure you have quick books closed
0:36:57 when you call me to your house or I will know.
0:36:58 – I love it.
0:36:58 I love it.
0:37:02 I hope you’re not tracking my screen right now.
0:37:03 We’re talking to that.
0:37:06 I’m like, oh God, what does he have access to on my computer?
0:37:07 What do you want?
0:37:08 What is this?
0:37:09 What does this even do?
0:37:10 – It’s too late.
0:37:12 I already posted it on threads.
0:37:13 How much money you have?
0:37:18 Clayton Christensen is up there laughing.
0:37:21 And I was like, Guy, you’re really taking it to her.
0:37:22 Go, Guy, go.
0:37:24 – I’m just cheering you on.
0:37:26 I can’t decide if he’s what would be cheering you on
0:37:27 more or cheering me on more.
0:37:29 I think he’s cheering us on together.
0:37:32 – He is saying, I’m gonna write a new book
0:37:34 called “A Conversationalist Dilemma.”
0:37:38 – Exactly, when you love old people so much,
0:37:39 what do you do?
0:37:43 – So, okay.
0:37:47 Another question, what happens or what’s the impact
0:37:51 or the value if somebody gives you
0:37:54 an inappropriate, mean, or destructive answer
0:37:59 and the person then says, I was just being honest.
0:38:02 Does that excuse you from being an asshole?
0:38:04 – There’s a really great Taylor Swift lyric
0:38:08 that says, “Casually cruel for the sake of being honest.”
0:38:11 Ooh, that line will cut you like a knife.
0:38:12 And I think it cuts you like a knife
0:38:13 because it really captures something
0:38:16 that we all feel torn about.
0:38:20 This tension between benevolence or kindness
0:38:23 or politeness and honesty
0:38:27 because often the true contents of our minds are not kind.
0:38:29 Our brains are built for a judgment
0:38:32 and social evaluation and negative evaluation
0:38:34 of other people and their work.
0:38:36 And as you could tell from the book,
0:38:38 I think a lot about what kindness means.
0:38:41 Sometimes being honest in the short term,
0:38:43 maybe giving feedback that someone needs to hear
0:38:46 is kindest in the long term,
0:38:50 but still you can deliver that honesty
0:38:52 in a way that hopefully,
0:38:53 and I think there’s some nice ingredients
0:38:55 in the book to do this,
0:38:59 in a way that isn’t even hurtful in the moment
0:39:01 so that we can navigate this conundrum
0:39:04 between benevolence and honesty
0:39:07 even there with more kindness.
0:39:10 – Up next on Remarkable People.
0:39:14 – They are on a Zoom call but emailing at the same time.
0:39:16 And so you get to see how overlapping
0:39:19 and twisted and braided our conversations are these days.
0:39:21 And what you realize is,
0:39:25 it’s not just about choosing topics and asking questions.
0:39:27 It’s doing that while you’re also engaged
0:39:29 in like six other conversations at the same time
0:39:32 that have their own unique topics and their own questions
0:39:35 and sometimes a human mind on the other end
0:39:37 synchronously and sometimes not.
0:39:39 And this new conversational world
0:39:41 that requires us to toggle like this
0:39:43 can feel quite overwhelming.
0:39:45 (gentle music)
0:39:49 – Thank you to all our regular podcast listeners.
0:39:52 It’s our pleasure and honor to make the show for you.
0:39:54 If you find our show valuable,
0:39:56 please do us a favor and subscribe,
0:39:58 rate and review it.
0:40:00 Even better, forward it to a friend,
0:40:03 a big mahalo to you for doing this.
0:40:07 – Welcome back to Remarkable People with Guy Kawasaki.
0:40:12 What’s your advice when you have to converse
0:40:16 with someone that you just completely disagree with?
0:40:20 If I went to some dinner and I had to sit next to Elon Musk,
0:40:22 like how do I approach a conversation
0:40:25 with someone I completely disagree with?
0:40:28 – You wanna think about what your goals are, right?
0:40:30 So we have goals in the short term,
0:40:35 like to survive the dinner and not have it be miserable,
0:40:40 not get in such a heated argument that you cause a scene
0:40:43 or probably like ruin a potential relationship
0:40:45 with Elon Musk forever.
0:40:47 Those are kind of inhumane.
0:40:49 Maybe that’s your goal, that’s okay if it is.
0:40:51 But then you have longer term goals.
0:40:54 If you are thinking about how could I leverage
0:40:57 a meaningful relationship with Elon Musk,
0:40:59 if you’re playing the long game,
0:41:00 your goal in the short term should be
0:41:03 to have a great conversation with him.
0:41:05 And the way that persuasion actually works
0:41:09 between people is that you have to be in a good relationship.
0:41:11 And if you have very differing views,
0:41:16 they may slowly over time come to bend
0:41:19 to the gentle pressure of your differing viewpoint,
0:41:21 but you’re not gonna persuade him
0:41:24 over a correspondence dinner at the White House
0:41:26 in one conversation to change all of his views
0:41:28 that you agree with.
0:41:28 So I think-
0:41:32 – The odds of me being invited to the White House are zero,
0:41:34 so yeah.
0:41:35 – You know what I mean?
0:41:36 I think a lot of us have this instinct
0:41:38 where we’re receiving, we hate the guy,
0:41:40 we don’t agree with almost anything
0:41:42 that someone else stands for,
0:41:44 and therefore we have this need to be right
0:41:47 and say something that really puts them in their place.
0:41:50 But that’s not how to pursue.
0:41:52 If you really have goals to persuade someone,
0:41:54 you gotta play the long game.
0:41:54 – Okay.
0:41:57 I’ll tell him that I think Starlink is very well done.
0:41:58 How’s that?
0:41:59 – That’s a good start.
0:42:01 compliments are a great start, guys.
0:42:02 That sounds nice.
0:42:04 Yes.
0:42:05 – I hope it’s a short dinner.
0:42:06 – Right?
0:42:10 – Yeah, that’s one I’m gonna have to ask ChatGPT.
0:42:14 What topics should Guy discuss with Elon at dinner
0:42:15 in the White House?
0:42:19 – To avoid getting into, immediately into a shouting match.
0:42:20 Yeah.
0:42:22 (laughing)
0:42:24 – Next question, also tactical.
0:42:28 How do you end or divert a conversation
0:42:33 where someone is hitting on you or sexually approaching you?
0:42:35 – I don’t wanna brag, but this was much of my life.
0:42:38 So I have an experience with Elon.
0:42:41 – Oh, that’s a 1% problem.
0:42:42 – Yeah.
0:42:44 You don’t have to end it, right?
0:42:46 A bit of flattery is nice, no matter what,
0:42:50 as long as it doesn’t feel threatening.
0:42:53 And as long as it’s not disrespectful to someone else,
0:42:56 to your partner, if you’re in a relationship or,
0:42:59 or if it’s inappropriate in the context,
0:43:01 if it’s someone in the workplace who’s coming
0:43:05 and sort of coming onto you sexually in a way,
0:43:08 so much of conversation is about reading your own needs,
0:43:10 reading the other person’s needs,
0:43:12 and then reading the context.
0:43:14 So if you’re at a bar and somebody comes up to you
0:43:16 and is hitting on you, that’s appropriate,
0:43:18 but you should probably say, oh, actually I’m married
0:43:21 or I’m in a relationship, I’m unavailable.
0:43:23 If you’re in the workplace, things get trickier
0:43:27 because then you have power dynamics and other goals
0:43:30 and outcomes at play.
0:43:31 That one gets harder.
0:43:33 Most organizations have an anonymous line
0:43:36 where you can contact a sort of title nine
0:43:40 or mandatory reporter type of line to seek advice,
0:43:41 especially if it’s someone who comes to you
0:43:45 who has actual power over you in terms of your work.
0:43:48 And hopefully you feel comfortable confiding
0:43:53 in some sort of mentor to ask for advice about what to do.
0:43:55 But in general, if somebody is,
0:43:56 it makes an advance towards you
0:43:58 and certainly outside of the workplace,
0:44:00 I think you can take it as a compliment
0:44:01 and just be honest with them.
0:44:04 – Thank you so much, but I’m not available to be in that way.
0:44:07 – I know, I hate when women treat me as an object, but okay.
0:44:10 (laughing)
0:44:13 – It’s all that surfing guy, you’re like a surfing stud.
0:44:19 – You got into a whole discussion about NPR
0:44:21 and how great their questions are,
0:44:23 but I have a question for you.
0:44:26 It seems that when I’m listening to NPR,
0:44:30 they ask a lot of closed end questions.
0:44:32 And just let me parody that.
0:44:35 Like some of these interviews on NPR, they say,
0:44:38 well, you saw your mother kill your father when you were eight
0:44:41 and there was blood all over the kitchen floor.
0:44:44 And then you had to testify against your father.
0:44:47 Can you tell us more about how that affected you?
0:44:49 Well, the answer is yes or no, right?
0:44:53 But what happens when you ask a closed end question like that?
0:44:56 – Yeah, I think especially for an outlet like NPR
0:44:58 or for many people when they’re asking closed ended questions,
0:45:01 it’s a sort of way, it’s a leading question
0:45:04 and it’s a way of almost fact-checking.
0:45:07 It’s literally saying, I know this about you already
0:45:11 and I need you to confirm or deny that it’s true.
0:45:13 Or some people use closed ended questions
0:45:15 to help set context for a new topic
0:45:16 to judge how much you know.
0:45:18 So if I were to change and say,
0:45:20 Guy, have you seen the TV show Silo?
0:45:21 – Nope.
0:45:25 – Right, so I just need that information quickly
0:45:28 in order to guide how much, what I’m gonna say next.
0:45:29 Am I gonna continue down that path?
0:45:31 Or like, this isn’t gonna be interesting to you
0:45:33 ’cause you haven’t seen the show, so I’m gonna pivot.
0:45:36 So closed ended questions do have an important purpose,
0:45:38 but they’re a completely different animal
0:45:40 than the lovely open ended launch pads
0:45:43 that we were talking about before.
0:45:44 Open ended launch pads, by the way,
0:45:48 good questions that inspire real information exchange
0:45:49 and authenticity and connection.
0:45:51 Often start with the word what.
0:45:55 As opposed to I say, what is your favorite TV show right now?
0:45:58 You’ll give me an answer and then we can go from there.
0:46:01 So I will learn more than twice as much information
0:46:03 by asking that question than saying,
0:46:04 have you seen the show Silo?
0:46:06 Where I get a yes or a no.
0:46:08 As opposed to open ended questions
0:46:09 that start with the word why.
0:46:11 Why haven’t you watched Silo yet?
0:46:13 Or why don’t you watch more TV?
0:46:15 Those questions are open ended in theory,
0:46:17 but they feel accusatory.
0:46:21 So the relational part of that kind of question asking
0:46:23 a little bit goes by the wayside.
0:46:26 – Okay, just for the record, my favorite TV show
0:46:29 was Yellowstone, and I’m the only person
0:46:31 in Silicon Valley who liked Yellowstone.
0:46:34 – Yeah, that is surprising.
0:46:36 Oh my gosh, wow.
0:46:39 – And my favorite character was Rip.
0:46:42 – Oh, he’s a great character.
0:46:43 I get it.
0:46:44 You know what?
0:46:45 There’s another topic for you
0:46:47 to talk to Elon Musk about, okay?
0:46:48 At the White House Dinner.
0:46:51 You can talk about your share of Yellowstone
0:46:52 and Rip Hamilton.
0:46:54 Is it a Rip Hamilton?
0:46:55 I don’t know, Rip.
0:46:59 – Now I have a lot less hesitation
0:47:03 to accept the White House Dinner in the next four years.
0:47:05 – Yeah, you’ve already got two topics.
0:47:09 We’ll find some more once you’re free and filming.
0:47:11 – I want to know about the differences
0:47:14 if you notice between men and women in conversations.
0:47:17 And when I read this section about your friend
0:47:20 calling you up and asking you about a vaginal mesh,
0:47:24 I said, “I cannot imagine a man calling up another man.”
0:47:27 So is there a difference between men and women?
0:47:29 – Okay, agree to disagree.
0:47:31 Because the number of conversations
0:47:34 that I have overheard men talking about getting snipped
0:47:37 after they’ve had their children,
0:47:40 like more than 15 conversations have I eavesdropped
0:47:42 on men talking. – Really?
0:47:43 – When are you getting snipped?
0:47:44 Are you snipped?
0:47:45 Are you gonna do it?
0:47:47 Are you gonna do it on master’s weekend
0:47:49 so you can lay around and watch the go?
0:47:50 (laughing)
0:47:53 Truly, it’s like so many, so many has.
0:47:55 So I think that’s the male version
0:47:58 of the vaginal mesh conversation.
0:47:59 As scientists, we have a lot to learn
0:48:03 about gender similarities and gender differences
0:48:05 in terms of communication.
0:48:09 You see a lot of hypotheses and hunches
0:48:11 thrown around in the public
0:48:15 about gender differences in conversation
0:48:18 that are not yet substantiated by scientific evidence.
0:48:20 And in fact, the stuff that we do know
0:48:23 is like actually men and women talk
0:48:25 in a lot of the same ways.
0:48:27 So there’s this great study by Matthias Mel.
0:48:29 They’ve had people wear badges
0:48:32 that just recorded ambient noise on people
0:48:34 every two minutes or so in their lives.
0:48:36 And so you get this full sample
0:48:39 of somebody’s auditory life.
0:48:41 And through that method, they found that men and women
0:48:45 speak exactly the same amount of words on average per day,
0:48:48 about 16,000 words per day on average.
0:48:49 Now, when you start to look at,
0:48:52 well, when are they talking and what are they saying?
0:48:53 That’s where you can get into,
0:48:55 well, are there content differences?
0:48:58 Are women more likely to talk about vaginal mesh than men?
0:48:59 Yeah, probably, but men are more likely
0:49:02 to talk about their vasectomies.
0:49:04 But science really hasn’t gotten to a point
0:49:06 of how a fine grained figuring out,
0:49:07 are there gender differences?
0:49:08 Are there racial differences?
0:49:09 Are there age differences?
0:49:11 And what are they?
0:49:13 What are the topics that different demographic groups
0:49:14 are discussing?
0:49:17 And what does that mean for how they relate to each other,
0:49:20 for how we see each other as similar and different?
0:49:22 That’s, I think, a very exciting area
0:49:23 for scientists to pursue,
0:49:26 is looking at the content of what people are saying.
0:49:29 – I want you to know today that between sets,
0:49:32 as we serve, I’m going to go asking all the men
0:49:33 if they’ve been snipped.
0:49:37 I can come across as a sensitive man, but–
0:49:38 – But again, you’re probably beyond
0:49:41 that phase of life where it’s irrelevant anymore.
0:49:46 – Actually, this is another topic I can have
0:49:48 with Elon. – Yes.
0:49:51 – Don’t you think you should be snipped by now?
0:49:53 – Yes, vasectomy, I’m adding it.
0:49:56 I’m literally compiling your list for Elon.
0:49:59 This is so fun, I didn’t anticipate this,
0:50:00 but I’m really enjoying it.
0:50:02 (laughing)
0:50:04 – All right, so you brought up the topic
0:50:06 of academic research.
0:50:09 So as I was reading your book, I thought to myself,
0:50:12 there’s a lot of dependency in this book
0:50:15 about speed dating experiments.
0:50:17 Are you at all worried that speed dating
0:50:20 may not extrapolate to everybody in the real world?
0:50:22 – Yes, of course.
0:50:25 This science of conversation is very new.
0:50:28 It is very important for people to realize this.
0:50:30 People have been studying language,
0:50:32 human language, the development of language.
0:50:34 They’ve been studying public speaking,
0:50:37 so one way where one person just says something
0:50:41 and nobody responds for a very, very long time.
0:50:43 We know a lot about language.
0:50:46 We know very little about dialogue
0:50:48 because only in the last 10 years
0:50:50 have we come across a technology
0:50:53 that allows us to record real conversations
0:50:54 at very large scale,
0:50:58 the tools to analyze those conversations at large scale.
0:50:59 And so we’re at this phase right now
0:51:03 where we’re learning things very, very quickly,
0:51:05 but we are still quite limited by the data sets
0:51:08 that we have access to that are of the gold standard
0:51:11 of academic rigor that you would rely on.
0:51:14 And so you kind of have to make these sort of logical leaps
0:51:17 of like, well, if things are going well in speed dating,
0:51:19 probably some of those things are generalizable
0:51:20 to real dating.
0:51:23 And then, well, what about dating is specific to dating
0:51:28 or versus it’s actually translatable to all conversations?
0:51:29 And so that’s where we are right now.
0:51:32 It’s starting to figure out, well, what is context specific
0:51:35 and what is generalizable across lots of areas
0:51:37 where people talk to each other.
0:51:40 – I’m not saying that most people who listen to my podcast
0:51:43 are in the dating game, but while I have it,
0:51:45 do you have some tips for dating?
0:51:47 – I do, I do.
0:51:50 Number one, it depends on if the person is a stranger to you.
0:51:52 So if it’s a first date,
0:51:55 it’s really important that you don’t have long pauses.
0:51:57 So long pauses are the death knell
0:52:01 or conversations between strangers is very awkward.
0:52:04 So just keep asking questions, keep asking, follow up questions,
0:52:07 bring, have your list of topics ready to go
0:52:08 so you don’t have to panic
0:52:11 when you know you need to change the topic.
0:52:13 You can use any of the topics that we’ve used here today.
0:52:15 Actually, on your date would be great.
0:52:18 Really, I think on a date, whether it’s with a stranger
0:52:21 or with someone that you’ve been dating for a while
0:52:24 and with all people in all contexts,
0:52:27 asking follow up questions is a superpower
0:52:31 because you don’t need to have prepared at have time.
0:52:33 You don’t need to know anything about them
0:52:35 or about or have any knowledge of anything.
0:52:38 You just need to listen to what your partner is saying
0:52:40 and continue to ask questions about it.
0:52:44 We see people fail to do this a lot in our data,
0:52:47 both in speed dating, but in other contexts as well,
0:52:49 negotiating, sales calls,
0:52:52 just normal conversations between family members.
0:52:55 When someone shares something important with you,
0:52:57 if they are courageous enough
0:52:59 to share something about their life with you,
0:53:02 you should follow up on it and ask more about it
0:53:04 as a signal that you care, that you heard them
0:53:06 and that you wanna know more.
0:53:10 – So now, another kind of dating is the job interview.
0:53:12 So now you’re trying to get a job.
0:53:16 How do you have a good conversation as the applicant,
0:53:17 not as the recruiter?
0:53:20 – Yeah, as an applicant, I think in our minds
0:53:22 when we think of conversational job interviews,
0:53:24 there’s this very clear script of like,
0:53:26 well, this employer is gonna be asking me questions
0:53:30 and I need to prove how great I am.
0:53:32 I need to prove how interesting, smart, competent
0:53:35 and well suited to this role I am.
0:53:39 Anything you can do to flip that script is gonna go great
0:53:42 because a real conversation that’s rewarding
0:53:45 and actually makes you look competent is a give and take.
0:53:48 So you can’t just sit there and wait for an interviewer
0:53:50 to hit you with question after question.
0:53:52 They’re gonna get bored with that.
0:53:53 They’re not actually gonna be impressed
0:53:56 with almost anything you say, probably.
0:53:59 So again, ask questions back, ask follow up questions,
0:54:02 try and learn about their perspective.
0:54:05 Instead of trying to prove how great you are as an applicant,
0:54:08 try and be interested in the work that they’re doing
0:54:09 and learn as much as you can about it
0:54:10 so that you can actually judge
0:54:13 whether you are a good fit for the role.
0:54:17 – You could ask, what do you think of your CEO
0:54:20 going to the inauguration that’ll definitely get you an offer?
0:54:24 – If you were giving him advice about the topics to raise
0:54:27 with the people at his table,
0:54:29 what would you advise him to say?
0:54:31 And then you could raise him about it together.
0:54:33 That would be so fun.
0:54:34 And it would be such undeniable evidence
0:54:37 that you’re interesting and creative.
0:54:39 (laughing)
0:54:43 – I’m glad I’m not applying for a job anytime soon.
0:54:45 (laughing)
0:54:50 So now, bring me up to speed, like your research,
0:54:54 what are the implications of doing all this on Zoom
0:54:56 instead of in real life?
0:54:58 – Yeah, I think about this a lot.
0:54:59 I had written a whole chapter in the book
0:55:02 about digital communication and I took it out
0:55:04 at the very end of the editing process.
0:55:05 – Why?
0:55:07 – I know, because I want the book to be timeless.
0:55:10 By the time I had written it a year earlier,
0:55:11 it was already outdated.
0:55:13 I mean, while I was writing the book,
0:55:17 LLNs, chat, GPT, AI, it all happened.
0:55:20 And there’s going to be more of that in the future.
0:55:24 Whatever you say now is going to change dramatically.
0:55:26 Most of what you could say now is going to change
0:55:29 just rapidly and in exciting ways.
0:55:31 But now I get to actually talk about it.
0:55:32 So let me tell you what was in that chapter
0:55:34 that I find so important.
0:55:36 I think there’s a lot of rhetoric in our culture
0:55:39 about getting kids off their phones
0:55:41 and letting them have a good childhood.
0:55:44 I think what we need to talk about a little bit more
0:55:45 is like, well, we’re all part of this world.
0:55:47 It’s not just children.
0:55:51 We are all toggling constantly between our phone
0:55:53 and the computer and then turning and talking
0:55:55 to someone in real life and then someone calls
0:55:57 and then you’re texting at the same time.
0:56:00 So we’re all doing this conversational toggling.
0:56:04 And I think we don’t have any idea what that’s doing
0:56:07 to our brains, what it’s doing to our relationships
0:56:11 and certainly how it’s affecting our conversational skills.
0:56:14 So I’m interested to see what happens.
0:56:17 In my class, I ask my students to do an audit
0:56:19 of their conversational lives
0:56:21 where I ask them to take 20 minutes in your life.
0:56:24 And I want you to write down every incoming
0:56:27 and outgoing message, whether it’s an email, a text,
0:56:30 a phone call, a real life conversation,
0:56:32 some reels and memes on TikTok.
0:56:34 Well, I should say Instagram now.
0:56:35 And so they write it all out
0:56:38 and you get this really wild sample.
0:56:41 It’s a transcript, but it’s all over the map, right?
0:56:43 They’re sending texts while they’re talking
0:56:45 to their mom on speakerphone.
0:56:49 They are on a Zoom call but emailing at the same time.
0:56:51 And so you get to see how overlapping
0:56:54 and twisted and braided our conversations are these days.
0:56:57 And what you realize is it’s not just
0:57:00 about choosing topics and asking questions.
0:57:02 It’s doing that while you’re also engaged
0:57:04 in like six other conversations at the same time
0:57:07 that have their own unique topics and their own questions.
0:57:10 And sometimes a human mind on the other end
0:57:12 synchronously and sometimes not.
0:57:14 And this new conversational world
0:57:16 that requires us to toggle like this
0:57:18 can feel quite overwhelming.
0:57:20 When they look back on their audit,
0:57:23 the students often say that only the ones
0:57:24 where they were synchronous,
0:57:28 whether it’s in person or on Zoom, felt real.
0:57:30 That felt rewarding.
0:57:33 Felt like they had some sense of human connection.
0:57:35 And I think that’s not trivial.
0:57:37 – My phone is off.
0:57:38 – You’re so kind.
0:57:40 I just got six text messages.
0:57:41 Sorry, guy.
0:57:45 – Okay, so two last questions
0:57:48 because I don’t wanna take up too much of your time
0:57:48 on launch day.
0:57:53 So I wanna know who is in the Alison Woodbrooks
0:57:57 conversation hall of fame.
0:58:00 – Oh, what a great question.
0:58:01 My mom.
0:58:02 My mom is-
0:58:03 – Your mom?
0:58:05 – Yeah, she’s amazing.
0:58:07 I talk to her every day.
0:58:09 I’m gonna cry just thinking about it.
0:58:12 She’s such a good listener.
0:58:16 She’s so funny and she cares so much about me
0:58:18 and about all the people that she knows
0:58:20 that I think she was an incredible role model
0:58:22 for me my whole life.
0:58:25 And I’ve never said that out loud before, guy.
0:58:26 Thank you for asking.
0:58:27 – Wow.
0:58:29 – I could give answers to letters like celebrities
0:58:32 that I think are amazing.
0:58:33 Most of them are very good listeners
0:58:35 and are good at levity.
0:58:39 So people like Stephen Colbert, Conan O’Brien,
0:58:41 Nikki Glaser, in the book you,
0:58:44 Terry Gross is a really amazing question asker.
0:58:47 Really anyone who is in the public sphere
0:58:50 and become successful for having conversations,
0:58:52 this is what their core skill set is, right?
0:58:54 Like that’s why they’ve been successful
0:58:56 is that they are good at preparing topics.
0:58:58 They are good at asking questions.
0:58:59 Joe Rogan, right?
0:59:01 Like whether you agree or disagree with him,
0:59:03 he’s a terrific conversationalist.
0:59:04 He’s great at asking questions.
0:59:06 He’s good at getting people to open up.
0:59:09 Guy Kawasaki, great at bringing levity
0:59:12 and then moving topics quickly and asking follow-up.
0:59:14 – You mentioned Joe Rogan and Guy Kawasaki
0:59:15 in the same sentence.
0:59:17 – I’m sorry, I know.
0:59:18 – I’m arrived.
0:59:19 – I know.
0:59:21 – We can end the recording right here.
0:59:22 (laughing)
0:59:26 – You see, this is what’s so beautiful about the world.
0:59:31 You see examples of conversational greatness all the time.
0:59:35 You also see examples of fumbles and stumbles all the time.
0:59:38 And it’s because we’re all human beings.
0:59:40 We’re all just trying to do our best.
0:59:44 Sometimes we strike gold and we find amazing moments
0:59:47 of connection and information exchange and closeness.
0:59:50 And sometimes we mess it up and that’s okay.
0:59:51 – Speaking of messing this up,
0:59:55 right, as I was reading your book and as we’re having
1:00:00 this discussion, when we adopted our fourth child,
1:00:03 so we have two adopted children.
1:00:07 So we adopted him about 17, 18 years ago.
1:00:13 I was at a dinner with my wife and a friend and his wife.
1:00:16 And he said, you know, we told him
1:00:18 we’re adopting another child, right?
1:00:20 And he said something like,
1:00:22 aren’t you concerned about adoption?
1:00:24 Because adoption, typically these kids,
1:00:28 they didn’t have good prenatal nutrition
1:00:31 or they come from broken homes or drugs in the house.
1:00:35 Adopted kids have a lot of problems.
1:00:37 And I have never forgiven him for that
1:00:42 because he, this is after we told him we have one kid,
1:00:45 we’re adopting another kid.
1:00:47 Not that we’re thinking about adoption.
1:00:51 We have adopted kids and we’re going to adopt this.
1:00:54 And I thought that was such an insensitive thing to do.
1:00:57 I have never forgiven him.
1:01:00 And he probably has no idea why I’ve been pissed off
1:01:02 for about 20 years with him all this.
1:01:04 – Would you ever think about telling him?
1:01:06 – Would you ever think about telling him?
1:01:08 – After reading your book and this discussion,
1:01:12 maybe I will because he probably, from his side,
1:01:13 maybe he was just thinking,
1:01:16 I want my friend to make a really wise decision
1:01:17 about adoption.
1:01:21 I don’t want him to go in with blinders on.
1:01:22 – Or maybe it was out of his own fear.
1:01:24 Maybe he had been thinking about adoption
1:01:28 and that’s what he’s afraid of for himself or for you or,
1:01:31 yeah, we make mistakes like that.
1:01:32 That’s an insensitive thing to say.
1:01:34 It sounds very self-centered, right?
1:01:39 It sort of reeks of being focused on what you know
1:01:40 and what you’re afraid of
1:01:42 rather than asking a question of,
1:01:45 do you have any fears about this, right?
1:01:47 Like that would have been much more adaptive thing
1:01:50 to do in that moment for them.
1:01:52 – I would tell you what country he’s from,
1:01:55 but it would immediately help some people identify
1:01:57 who I’m talking about, some of them.
1:01:58 (laughing)
1:02:00 – I could make guesses, but I don’t want to make,
1:02:03 I don’t want to, I don’t want him stereotyped.
1:02:07 – All right, so my last question for you,
1:02:12 Alison Wood, the queen of conversation is, ironically,
1:02:15 how do you be a better listener?
1:02:18 As opposed to conversationalist.
1:02:20 – Yeah, it’s so funny, the title of the book is talk,
1:02:22 but I think the secret sauce,
1:02:25 the secret message of the whole thing is about listening.
1:02:28 You can’t talk well without listening.
1:02:31 And it turns out that listening is really hard,
1:02:33 especially for people who have attentional issues,
1:02:36 but really for everybody, there’s great research.
1:02:40 The resting state of the human mind is mind wandering.
1:02:44 It is not built to pay attention to another person
1:02:47 continuously while you’re engaging with them.
1:02:50 So it takes effort to get out of our natural mind wandering
1:02:52 state and actually listen to each other.
1:02:54 That is effortful.
1:02:55 It is worth putting in that effort.
1:02:59 You need to do it in order to have good conversation.
1:03:01 And when you do it, when you look at somebody else,
1:03:02 you listen to what they’re saying,
1:03:04 you process what they’re saying,
1:03:07 you think hard about it, you try and really engage with it,
1:03:09 you should get credit for it
1:03:12 by showing them that you’ve heard them.
1:03:15 And so many, many years of research on active listening
1:03:19 have told us to use nonverbals like nodding and smiling
1:03:20 to show someone that we’ve heard them.
1:03:23 That’s good, that’s a great start, that matters.
1:03:26 But really the advanced course on listening
1:03:29 is using your words to show someone that you’ve heard them.
1:03:33 I can only call back to this story about adoption
1:03:35 for your kids because I was listening to you
1:03:37 and I care about it and I’ve been thinking about it.
1:03:40 I can only call back to your surfing earlier
1:03:42 in the conversation because I cared about that
1:03:44 and I latched onto it and I heard it.
1:03:46 I can only ask a follow-up question
1:03:49 if I heard what you said and I care to know more.
1:03:51 So these verbal signals like follow-up questions,
1:03:53 callbacks, paraphrasing,
1:03:55 just repeating what someone has said,
1:03:57 hey, I hear you saying that you were upset by this
1:04:00 and maybe you’re thinking about contacting this guy again
1:04:02 to reach out, do you think you’ll actually do that?
1:04:06 So repeating what someone has said can be really,
1:04:10 really valuable and makes people feel heard and seen
1:04:13 and loved and it’s really where so much
1:04:15 of the conversational magic lies.
1:04:20 – This has been speaking of magic, a magical conversation.
1:04:20 – I agree.
1:04:24 – I can look forward to having dinner with Elon Musk.
1:04:27 I never would have predicted that.
1:04:28 – Now you can get excited about it.
1:04:31 We’ve got four topics brainstormed.
1:04:33 We’re gonna get at least 10 more together
1:04:34 and then we’re gonna make it happen
1:04:36 ’cause I wanna record this conversation at CO4.
1:04:39 – You’ve changed my life, you’ve changed my life.
1:04:42 I want you to get the transcript of this
1:04:45 and do an analysis and I want you to figure out
1:04:47 this is like speed podcasting.
1:04:50 – If I wasn’t doing so many podcasts for the book,
1:04:53 I would honestly, so many of my students have done that.
1:04:55 Actually, this year, two of my students
1:04:56 did this creative thing.
1:05:00 They took a real podcast recording of me and somebody
1:05:04 and then they created an LLM podcast of fake Allison
1:05:07 and fake other person and then they did a conversation,
1:05:10 side-by-side conversation analysis of both
1:05:14 to see what are the pros of human-to-human conversation
1:05:18 compared to LLM conversation
1:05:21 and your hypothesis guy was definitely confirmed,
1:05:25 which is humans are better at asking questions.
1:05:27 They’re better at laughing with each other.
1:05:29 They’re better at finding sparkly moments
1:05:31 of levity and connection.
1:05:34 So thank you, it’s such a gift to do this together.
1:05:38 – You know what, I noticed, speaking of questions
1:05:41 from left field, I noticed you had a podcast
1:05:46 and I watched it and on your side, on your shelf,
1:05:49 you had his logo.
1:05:50 Do you remember that?
1:05:51 – I don’t.
1:05:55 Oh, maybe Matt Abraham says, “Think fast, talk smart.”
1:05:59 – No, it wasn’t Matt Abraham, it was somebody else
1:06:01 and I thought, I wonder if he superimposed that
1:06:03 on the video or that.
1:06:07 – Alison is so clever that when she is interviewed
1:06:12 by a podcaster, she puts the podcasters book on her shelf
1:06:16 and I said, “That is why she’s at Harvard Business School.”
1:06:19 – I’m that ahead of the curve.
1:06:22 I’m sure he superimposed it, but I will aspire
1:06:25 to be the kind of person that would do that for sure.
1:06:29 – And I swear to God, I thought about it,
1:06:30 but I didn’t do it.
1:06:33 I was gonna put talk on my shelf.
1:06:34 – Yeah, where’s your-
1:06:35 – But I forgot.
1:06:37 – Yeah, get it on your shelf, guy.
1:06:40 Tell everybody about it.
1:06:43 Our world needs it so badly right now and always.
1:06:45 We need better communicators.
1:06:50 – Speaking of LLM, so there’s such a thing as Kawasaki GPT
1:06:52 and we put the transcripts of every one
1:06:55 of my interviews in there.
1:06:58 So pretty soon, people can go to Kawasaki GPT
1:07:01 and ask Alison questions based on this interview.
1:07:04 Well, you let me know if you do an analysis
1:07:06 of this conversation, I would love the output.
1:07:09 I would love to see what you uncover about our connection.
1:07:13 – No, but I don’t have the academic wherewithal to do this.
1:07:15 You should make this a project to like-
1:07:16 – I should.
1:07:20 – Are you tired of listening to people talk on speed dates?
1:07:21 You should listen to-
1:07:22 – Never.
1:07:25 – Guy and I do a podcast to see what great conversation
1:07:28 is like, how many questions did they ask?
1:07:30 How many times did they switch topics?
1:07:32 How many times did they come back?
1:07:36 How many sensitive questions about salaries did Guy ask?
1:07:38 – Well, it is, I mean, doing a book tour like this
1:07:41 with lots of podcasts, it is a very interesting,
1:07:44 natural sort of case study of conversation
1:07:45 because I’m always there.
1:07:46 I’m always constant.
1:07:48 It’s just that the host is changing.
1:07:51 And in theory, it’s the related topics.
1:07:52 We’re always talking about the book,
1:07:56 but the variability is stackering.
1:07:58 What you end up talking about,
1:08:01 my favorite is when they’re more conversational like this,
1:08:02 like where you, you know,
1:08:03 you’re talking about the book,
1:08:05 but you’re talking about other stuff too.
1:08:07 I think everybody wants that.
1:08:09 – So in version two of your book,
1:08:11 you can mention this conversation,
1:08:14 but what’s even more important to me in version two
1:08:18 of this book is that you change asking to ask.
1:08:18 – I’ll do it.
1:08:19 I’ll do it.
1:08:21 I’m gonna add, I’m gonna make a footnote
1:08:23 in the next edition.
1:08:26 Addition two, Guy Kawasaki says this should be asks.
1:08:31 I’m gonna change the entire meaning of the word asks
1:08:32 for him.
1:08:35 – Allison, I’m sure you have other important things to do.
1:08:37 So thank you so much.
1:08:40 This has been just a remarkable conversation.
1:08:42 – It’s amazing to connect, Guy.
1:08:43 – I’m Guy Kawasaki.
1:08:45 This has been remarkable people.
1:08:49 And man, what a remarkable conversation we had today.
1:08:52 This is gonna go down in the annals of podcast history.
1:08:54 My thanks to Matt for bringing us together
1:08:58 and also for being in the same group of people
1:09:01 with Katie Milgman and Angela Duckworth and Bob Cialdini.
1:09:04 These are all the people who lead behavioral research.
1:09:08 And thanks to Madison Nizmer, who is our producer.
1:09:09 Tessa Nizmer, our researcher.
1:09:12 Jeff C. and Shannon Hernandez.
1:09:14 We got a lot of people who make remarkable people,
1:09:15 remarkable.
1:09:18 So until next time, thank you very much.
1:09:21 And Mahalo and Aloha.
1:09:26 This is Remarkable People.