YouSaid · the spoken record

Celeste Headlee

lines on the record: 88
first: 2019-02-05
most recent: 2019-02-05
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“So, my mother and I don't get along at all. We've been estranged since about 2003. So the best lesson my mom ever taught me is how not to have conversations. How not to do it frankly, I spent so much of my younger life trying to figure out how to have a conversation with my mom without getting into an argument that I guess I do owe a certain amount of my now insight to her just because that was an impossible task, but I kept working at it. Maybe that's one of the reasons I ended up writing a book on it. Yeah, I don't know how helpful that is as an answer, but yeah, I did learn how to not dominate and shut down other people, other ideas.”
2019-02-05 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #51 Celeste Headlee: The Dying Art of Conversation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I connect back to other research which in 2014 Harvard released the study in which they discovered that talking about yourself activates the same pleasure center in the brain as sex and heroin. It's very pleasurable to talk about yourself. You get good feelings from it. If you spent 10 minutes talking about yourself, you'd feel really good at the end of the 10 minutes. But the problem, of course, is that that's not shared. The other person doesn't feel that. You're the one getting the dopamine shot. They are not. And so when someone says, I'm getting a divorce and you say, oh, I know just how you feel. And then you begin talking about your own experience with divorce, you will feel better. They will not.”
2019-02-05 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #51 Celeste Headlee: The Dying Art of Conversation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Really matter, or maybe we don't realize that that is not what we're expressing, that maybe what we think that we're expressing, but it's not actually. And I think the other reason is that when someone's telling us about their own pain, it can feel awkward. And we feel uncomfortable sometimes. We don't know what to say. And so we default to the subject that we're most comfortable with. And that's ourselves. You may not know what to tell someone whose husband just died, but you're totally comfortable talking about a time when you had it tough, when someone you knew died, that's way more comfortable. And so that's what we default to. And I bring up this particular point, this guideline, just because this one's the hardest one for people. It's really hard because it feels like you're being kind.”
2019-02-05 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #51 Celeste Headlee: The Dying Art of Conversation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And that's a really good reason because if we actually remembered pain to its full extent exactly the way it was when we first felt it, we would be dysfunctional. We would not be able to function in life if we remembered the actual pain of a leg break, for example. So your brain actually softens that memory. It puts Vaseline on the lens, if you will. So you literally don't remember what it was like to lose your dog or lose your job or whatever it is that you're talking about. You need them to tell you because you don't know how they feel. The other thing is that I believe one of the reasons we do this so much is because A, it feels like we're expressing empathy. We tell ourselves that what we're doing is saying you're not alone. I've been through this too. You're going to survive. And I guess it doesn't.”
2019-02-05 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #51 Celeste Headlee: The Dying Art of Conversation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So that's okay. We tend to someone, that's a little different. What I'm usually talking about in this is when someone comes to you with something which is a struggle or a source of pain for them. And we then tell them about a time when we went through what we say was the same thing. I know just how you feel we say, which is the worst possible thing you can say. So let me start there with I know just how you feel. Never say that. And there's a few reasons for it, but for me, the most powerful is that you don't. It doesn't matter if they're talking about their dog dying and your dog died of the exact same thing. You still don't know how they feel. The fact of the matter is that when we experience in any kind of pain or travail, your brain immediately gets to work on softening that memory, literally right after it happened.”
2019-02-05 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #51 Celeste Headlee: The Dying Art of Conversation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I'll tell you the one, and it's related to conversational narcissism, the one that people are the most likely to argue with me over. And that is the one about not offering up your similar experiences, not equating your experiences with someone else's.”
2019-02-05 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #51 Celeste Headlee: The Dying Art of Conversation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Way to do that. So improv is a really great way to not only make you aware of your tendency to do that, to shift it, but it also is a way to train yourself out of it. When I'm doing workshops, I do the improv exercise of yes and basically it's a very simple exercise. Basically, one person says a sentence and after that first sentence every other sentence begins with the words yes and it's going to sound awkward because not everything can start with those, but it doesn't matter. Everything needs to begin yes and. And the purpose for that is because we have this tendency to say yes but. So the yes and is supposed to be saying, okay, I'm going to accept what you just said to me with no questions, with no arguments. The first thing I do will be accept what you just said and then I'll move on. And it can be very difficult for people.”
2019-02-05 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #51 Celeste Headlee: The Dying Art of Conversation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So the good improv is that when someone says, hey, I'm at the beach, you don't then change it. You don't then say, not only do you not contradict it and say, this is the beach, this is the Air Force Base. You also don't turn it to yourself by saying, yes, and as of today, I am the queen of the world, right? That would be a really bad.”
2019-02-05 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #51 Celeste Headlee: The Dying Art of Conversation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So there's this one episode where Michael is at improv class and he is the ultimate narcissist. So every single time someone presents a situation, he ends up with a gun, right? So they'd be like, stop saying that there's a gun, right? So then the other person say, oh, when a lovely day at the beach, and he'd be like, put your hands up. I have a gun, right? No matter what.”
2019-02-05 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #51 Celeste Headlee: The Dying Art of Conversation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So literally, in order to succeed at improv, you have to learn how to support. If someone starts an improv skift and they're going to give you a situation and you have to go with that. Did you ever watch the TV show The Office?”
2019-02-05 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #51 Celeste Headlee: The Dying Art of Conversation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Other kind of it is when it's more subtle, so I'll withhold attention from you. So you'll say, so I need to buy a new front door. And I would say, oh, I need to be like, yeah, mine has a huge scratch in it from a dog or whatever. And it's, you know, it just needs to be replaced. I'd say, oh, wow. So I just withhold attention. And a lot of times if you try this out, which I have, people eventually ask me about myself. If I withhold attention long enough, they'll say, so how are you doing? Hey, how's that, you know, book coming or whatever it may be? So that's another way to turn attention to yourself. This is different as opposed to support response. So you say, I need new shoes and I'd say, oh, what kind of shoes are you looking for? Or what's wrong with these? I start asking you questions. I'm supporting whatever it is that”
2019-02-05 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #51 Celeste Headlee: The Dying Art of Conversation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, conversational narcissism is something that was written about by the sociologist Charles Derber. He wrote this great book called The Pursuit of Attention. And conversational narcissism is sometimes quite blatant, sometimes quite subtle, but it's a tendency to turn the conversation back to ourselves. we do it all the time. Charles Derber used to talk about the shift response versus the support response. So you would say to me, oh, I need to get new shoes. And I'd say, oh my God, me too. I have these kids, but I've had them for like four years and the rubber is coming off, expector, etc, etc. I've just pretty blatantly turned the conversation to myself. I think Derber used to call that active conversational narcissism.”
2019-02-05 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #51 Celeste Headlee: The Dying Art of Conversation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It makes perfect sense to me that if the voice is what allows us to humanize one another and we're not hearing each other's voices anymore, of course we hate each other.”
2019-02-05 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #51 Celeste Headlee: The Dying Art of Conversation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Stupid and they don't understand the core concepts. If you hear someone saying that same opinion in their own voice, you're more likely to think they disagree with you because they have different perspectives and experiences, which tells me that one of the best ways to create that understanding and that empathic bond is to hear someone's voice. In other words, human beings are such sophisticated communicators. There is so much information being transmitted just through the sound of somebody's voice that it is the voice itself, the sound of the voice that allows me to recognize you as a human being and part of my tribe. And so therefore, if you think about this, how little we actually hear people now, how often we reject phone calls and text instead, how often we've replaced phone calls with emails, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.”
2019-02-05 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #51 Celeste Headlee: The Dying Art of Conversation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was talking about how if he'd been on that plane, he would have taken him down. It would have been a totally different outcome. And I was like, see, we all think that. We look at what other people are going through and we make decisions about what we would have done. It would have been different for us. No, you can't. But you're talking about an empathic bond and that's the best way to increase your empathy is by listening to someone else's perspectives and viewpoints. You know, it's quite interesting because just late last year, Nicholas Epley in Chicago and his colleagues released this study in which they were looking at people and how they absorb opinions they don't agree with. And they found out that when you read an opinion you don't agree with in any format, newspaper, book, online, wherever, you're more likely to think that person doesn't agree with you because they're”
2019-02-05 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #51 Celeste Headlee: The Dying Art of Conversation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, absolutely. And you can't truly see something through someone else's eyes. You need them to explain their own experience, right? We make a lot of mistakes by making assumptions about what we would be like if we were in that situation. I remember after September 11th here in the US and Mark Wahlberg, that actor.”
2019-02-05 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #51 Celeste Headlee: The Dying Art of Conversation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh no, that's part of journalistic training, right? Like you can't, you're trying to encourage people to talk, but you cannot give your own opinion. It would be very easy for me to get people to give their opinion by pretending I was on their side. But you can't do that. You can't give your opinion. I'm going to registered as an independent. I'm not allowed to tell you what I think. I'm not allowed to march in protest marches. I'm extremely limited as to how often I can express my own thoughts and opinions. And so therefore, I had to learn how to interview people sometimes for very long periods of time without either agreeing or disagreeing with anything that they said, just encouraging them to continue talking with my simple, clear, direct, unopinated questions. So yeah, that was a very conscious training.”
2019-02-05 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #51 Celeste Headlee: The Dying Art of Conversation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This is a bad neighborhood. It's filled with blacks and Latinos, right? So that was transformative for me hearing him explain that. Look, I'm a mixed race woman. Don't get me wrong. I'm not in any way, shape, or form excusing his ideas or racism or dog whistles or any of that stuff. I'm just saying it was helpful to me to understand that basically awful mindset.”
2019-02-05 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #51 Celeste Headlee: The Dying Art of Conversation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I asked him to explain his racism. I asked him to explain all the ways that he thought what he thought. And it was actually really enlightening to me. I mean, I feel like I got a better idea of not just where he came from, how incredibly white Russia is, but also what America looked like to him and how that can be scary. From his point of view, the way that he explained it, our racial distinctions in the United States are cautionary tales in a way. Like he had to avoid, you know, we separate our neighborhoods into good neighbors, roads or bad neighborhoods. And that's to us, we don't think we're saying something racial, but we are. And to an immigrant, that message is really clear.”
2019-02-05 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #51 Celeste Headlee: The Dying Art of Conversation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Actually, it happens to me fairly frequently. Let me think about the most recent time that happened. So I had a taxi ride to the airport in California and my taxi driver was a Russian immigrant who was very extremely racist.”
2019-02-05 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #51 Celeste Headlee: The Dying Art of Conversation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Interpretive listening is when there's an active interpretation. It's a feedback. They're not evaluating what's said, but they're offering interpretation. Sometimes they're asking for clarification. They're interpreting and understanding what they hear. And actually, the third kind of listening was the most open, and that was transformative listening. And that included this willingness to actually change your mind, to consider other points of view, to think another opinion might be as valid as your own, even if you don't accept it. So you have these sort of three layers of listening. There's the evaluative listening where you're just deciding whether that person's right or wrong. What they're saying is true or false. And then there's interpretive where you're trying to understand and there's trends.”
2019-02-05 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #51 Celeste Headlee: The Dying Art of Conversation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It is that we're going to say, and we don't hear a word they're saying. Yes, you absolutely are capable of responding in the moment. Cole's used to write, and this is the I remember 2007, 2008, he made this distinction between what he called”
2019-02-05 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #51 Celeste Headlee: The Dying Art of Conversation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, I think we're afraid of silence or pauses in conversation, and there's really no need to be, I think I wrote this in the book that they did this global survey of how much time we leave in between one person ending a sentence and the other person responding, and it comes out to less than half a second, which means we're just not actually listening to the end of what somebody says. And Covey wrote in Seven Habits of a Highly Effective People that we're always listening not to understand, but to reply. You can absolutely do that in the moment. You just sometimes you're going to have to ask questions, right? First of all, you got to listen all the way to the end of what someone's saying. And we so rarely do that. We get distracted by what we're thinking. We're thinking about what we're going to say next. That's all we're occupying our mind with. And so we're wasting all that time trying to remember, keep in our minds.”
2019-02-05 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #51 Celeste Headlee: The Dying Art of Conversation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You have to have learned something from them. Look, you can look at it this way. You already know everything you're going to say, right? I mean, nothing, you're not going to surprise yourself by something that comes out of your mouth. You already know it all. So if you get surprising information, that means you've heard it from someone else. And so therefore, if you're not, if you've learned nothing from someone, that's the bare minimum of listening is to at least learn something from them. To listen well is not just though to hear what they're saying, but to consider it. And that's something that we rarely do. You know, we get just a few seconds into a conversation before we begin trying to decide whether we agree with that person or not. We're listening not to actually”
2019-02-05 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #51 Celeste Headlee: The Dying Art of Conversation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And we struggle to really listen. You know, the father of listening, Ralph G. Nichols, who made listening his field of research for at least half a century, at the end of all of that, decade after decade of study and experimentation and writing, his takeaway basically was human beings are terrible listeners. And that has not the fault of your technology. It's just hard.”
2019-02-05 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #51 Celeste Headlee: The Dying Art of Conversation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In terms of a conversation, for the most part, you need to keep it fairly intimate. Look, here's the thing. Listening is really hard. I'm not saying that to make you feel better, although I hope it does make you feel better. It's not hard because of our smartphones. It's not hard because we're distracted. It's hard because human beings, the species Homo sapien, does not listen well. Evolutionarily, we don't really need to. So there's some species that come out of the womb or egg or wherever they come from. And listening is a survival skill for human beings. Your survival depends on how successful you are at being loud to get the attention of an adult who will help you. We are born to scream, to make noise, not to listen.”
2019-02-05 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #51 Celeste Headlee: The Dying Art of Conversation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Actually, more than 16 million. Ted has both its own website and then they have their own channel on YouTube. So if you add them together as my PR reps are wont to do, then it's more than 16 million. But yeah, we can listen to someone else talk if they're engaging.”
2019-02-05 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #51 Celeste Headlee: The Dying Art of Conversation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right, exactly. The conversation is I'm going to tell you what's right. I'm about to tell you what we need to do. And it's going to be a national conversation. No. You know, I generally am when I'm talking about conversation, I'm almost always referring to one person talking to another. And the reason for that is it's really hard to sustain that level of attention and focus once you get more people involved. I think you could do it with three or four. But it's really difficult after that, right? We can hear someone else talk and pay attention to them for that amount of time. That's why TED talks are so popular. Yeah, I think you're TED talk.”
2019-02-05 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #51 Celeste Headlee: The Dying Art of Conversation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, generally, it just means somebody's going to, someone's about to repeat some platitudes, but very often, especially when politicians are talking about it, it means they're about to say stuff which discourages conversation instead of encourages it, right? They're about to go over a bunch of talking points and have zero productive conversation. So yeah, national conversation, national conversation about race, national conversation about guns, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. That doesn't mean they want a national conversation. It means they want to tell you something. They want you to listen to them. That's what that usually means. It's a conversation.”
2019-02-05 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #51 Celeste Headlee: The Dying Art of Conversation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Or training we don't like it. We don't like to be told what to do. We do not like to get unsolicited advice, which is pretty much always a bad idea. That's the time in which we're going to come away, even if we have learned something valuable, we'll come away not feeling great about it.”
2019-02-05 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #51 Celeste Headlee: The Dying Art of Conversation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The only other instance in which it'll have a negative emotional impact is if someone's offering you help. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, like unsolicited advice.”
2019-02-05 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #51 Celeste Headlee: The Dying Art of Conversation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You don't know what you're doing, or whatever it may be. So we do interpret those as a tax. You know, it's interesting. They've studied the benefits, especially the neurological benefits and emotional benefits of conversation. And in every single circumstance, conversation is good for you. It doesn't matter if it's a simple chat with your Uber driver. It doesn't matter if it's somebody you know really well or someone you don't know at all it's it's it's beneficial for you neurologically, emotionally, physiologically in every situation except two only in two instances does conversation have negative impacts emotional impacts and they are one as you can imagine something that has a negative”
2019-02-05 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #51 Celeste Headlee: The Dying Art of Conversation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, yeah, we're very attached to our own opinions. It's mostly because we tend to see a lot of disagreement as an attack, as a personal attack. If someone says you're not using the best laundry soap, people often will interpret that even if it's subconsciously as a criticism of what you've chosen to do.”
2019-02-05 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #51 Celeste Headlee: The Dying Art of Conversation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, yeah, well, an argument isn't a conversation anymore. It's that simple. Like a conversation, like I said, is a mutual exchange of ideas. An argument does not allow for an exchange of ideas. They've done fMRI scans in which they discovered that when you start to feel defensive, that word is quite literally descriptive. In other words, you start to feel challenged. You start to feel defensive, and your brain begins actually instigating the same process it would if you were being attacked like it puts up its defensives, it starts getting ready to fight back. As soon as you begin to feel indefensive, the conversation is over. I recommend at that point you just walk away, come back.”
2019-02-05 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #51 Celeste Headlee: The Dying Art of Conversation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, a consensus is the enemy of innovation. You just have to do the Steve Jobs thing of having everyone scream at each other. But I recommend you don't do that. But you need to just accept that everybody's not going to agree and be okay with that and make it the goal not to reach concessus, but to find the best of the different ideas. And we don't enjoy it. We don't enjoy conflict at all. And like I said, it takes us a very short amount of time to coalesce into a group that does all the same things and follows together and makes the same decisions.”
2019-02-05 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #51 Celeste Headlee: The Dying Art of Conversation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Great goal if what you're trying to do is be innovative and creative in your problem solving. Cognitive diversity is extremely helpful. That's when you'll get your best ideas. That's when you will come up with the best plans, et cetera, et cetera. But we don't enjoy it. It's not comfortable.”
2019-02-05 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #51 Celeste Headlee: The Dying Art of Conversation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Is it all to say that your digital persona is not as nice as you are? It's just not. You're a bigger jerk on the digital space than anywhere else. So if we already have a tendency to want to surround ourselves with people who agree with us, with people who belong, right? And then we have this tech that's with us constantly that allows us to do that to an unprecedented extent. It's kind of a recipe for disaster. And look, this is everything that I'm saying right here is backed up by decades of research. But just to simplify it, the truth of the matter is that diversity, and in this case I mean cognitive diversity, is extremely good for us. It's when human beings do their best thinking. Agreement is not a”
2019-02-05 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #51 Celeste Headlee: The Dying Art of Conversation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of two perfect strangers sitting in a room together for them to become a common tribe are need to belong exceeds our need to be moral, right? They have been able to convince people to break the law and steal after say a 10 or 15 minute period of time spent with a stranger. That's how quickly we form these tribes. The difference is that now our social media and our tech especially is allowing us to isolate ourselves to just a dizzying extent. And into that you add the tendency of people on social media to become polarized and how it makes us the worst version of ourselves. I mean, for example, email in email, you're less likely. Negotiate your less likely to cooperate, you're more likely to escalate conflict.”
2019-02-05 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #51 Celeste Headlee: The Dying Art of Conversation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We do, you've just asked a lot there, so we try to split apart what you've said. So, I mean, human beings are by nature tribal. We already have a tendency to split into tribes. They have found over decades of research that it doesn't take very long.”
2019-02-05 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #51 Celeste Headlee: The Dying Art of Conversation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. I mean, if you have an agenda, you might as well be a politician with talking points. I mean, that's what makes pundits so boring, right? Because we know what they're going to say. And at some point, it just sounds like. That's someone who has an agenda. You bring on a Republican pundit. You know what they're going to say. You bring on a liberal pundit. You know what they're going to say. That's not interesting”
2019-02-05 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #51 Celeste Headlee: The Dying Art of Conversation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And these kids' programs keep the kids engaged by making interactive, right? They'll ask them questions, what number comes after nine? What color is the truck? Or they'll say, okay, let's That's how you keep humans engaged is through interactivity. That's why we're all addicted to our smartphones, because they're so good at playing on our need to be engaged and involved. I don't know why we think that suddenly we become adults and we don't need to be interactive anymore. But that is how you keep people engaged. So when you're in a conversation, a good conversation is interactive for both people. It doesn't even allow the other person to tune out.”
2019-02-05 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #51 Celeste Headlee: The Dying Art of Conversation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You're trying to throw the ball in a way where they can catch it and throw it back to you. You're not pegging it down the field because it's not fun anymore if you do that. So in a game of catch, you're literally not only thinking about how well you throw, but you're setting the other person up for success as well. And that's what a conversation should do also. You should be thinking not just about what you're saying, but the other person, what they're saying are you asking them questions. Are you keeping them engaged? Is it interactive? You should be thinking about the other person. And very often we're not. You know, I find it interesting that we have children and they watch Sesame Street or whatever is on Yogaba Gabba, whatever. My son's 20. It's been a while since I've watched kids programming.”
2019-02-05 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #51 Celeste Headlee: The Dying Art of Conversation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A mutual exchange of information. If people walk away from a conversation and have learned Nothing from the other person, then it wasn't successful conversation. If a good conversation, and I say this in the book also, the best model for a good conversation is a friendly game of catch. And there's a number of reasons for that. The most obvious is that in a game of catch, you can't throw more than you catch. It's a perfectly even balance between throwing and catching just as a conversation should be an even balance between talking and listening. But another really important part, pardon me, I have a cold. Another really important reason for the game of catch is that when you're playing catch with someone, if it's a friendly game, you're thinking about the other person's success.”
2019-02-05 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #51 Celeste Headlee: The Dying Art of Conversation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And if the interviewer is good, they're asking questions in a way that allows the other person to shine. So it's not a mutual exchange of information in an interview. It's really way more one-sided than that because the interviewer, again, is supposed to shine the light on their guest and get the expertise from the guest. If I'm interviewing Neil deGuest Tyson, he doesn't give a good goddamn how much I know about astrophysics. Right. Right. The audience doesn't care either. They're there just so I can ask the questions that allow Neil de Grasthyson to say interesting things. So that's different from a conversation which should be more balanced and more mutual. Every other way an interview is the same as a conversation.”
2019-02-05 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #51 Celeste Headlee: The Dying Art of Conversation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, there's all kinds of ways in which I hear people being interviewed, and I'm sure you've heard it too, being run over by the person they're interviewing. That's relatively common. So it's not always the case. But the interviewer is supposed to be in control. They're time limited.”
2019-02-05 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #51 Celeste Headlee: The Dying Art of Conversation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, an interview is a formalized structured conversation. An interview is different from a, it's similar from a conversation in all ways except one person is in control, and that would be the interviewer or should be in control. Not in this”
2019-02-05 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #51 Celeste Headlee: The Dying Art of Conversation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Getting to the heart of the story. You can't be still doing the intro when you've started the interview. And then you can get stuff done pretty quickly in just a few minutes. I mean, most people don't realize that even the intros on like morning edition that Stevensk does, those are maybe four minutes long.”
2019-02-05 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #51 Celeste Headlee: The Dying Art of Conversation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I would say don't waste any time. So a lot of times I hear people wasting time with a windup. They feel like they need to start, this is going to sound contradictory to what I just said about fairy tales, but I'll explain. So a lot of people feel like they have to start all the way back at once upon a time. So what is this whole issue about anyway? They start way back at the beginning. But that's not what you want from your interview. That's fine for the intro as quickly as possible in three or four sentences. Say, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. This is what had led us up to this moment. But when you start that interview, that first question needs to be a good one. It needs to get to the meat of it. It can be a provocative question. It can be a question that reveals how well you know the material. But for the most part, that needs to be”
2019-02-05 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #51 Celeste Headlee: The Dying Art of Conversation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. Exactly. So those kind of stick out for me. Or, you know, of course, we interviewed Bartie Frank many times and he's hung up on me at least two or three times. He's not a congressman anymore. Those stickouts also because he was always hanging up and then calling back he'd get mad, hang up, and then call back.”
2019-02-05 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #51 Celeste Headlee: The Dying Art of Conversation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right? I mean, that is ridiculous. So there's those, you know, I did an interview with Tony Morrison, and she is another woman who's, I didn't know this at the time. I was doing the interview, but later on I found out that she's also notorious for walking out on interviews and cutting them really short and hating the whole process. And I got a nearly an hour with her, which was fantastic. Yeah. And then I did, I went and did this Getty Fellowship. And the organizer of the program comes up to me and says, hey, we're going to have you talk to the whole group tomorrow. I was like, okay, great. But.”
2019-02-05 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #51 Celeste Headlee: The Dying Art of Conversation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT