That run through your book. Number one, is empathy. Why is that a theme of your book . Guest i found as astudied the subject, which ive been doing for decades now, but really seriously for the last couple of years while i was writing the book i found that empathy kempt kept coming up more and more and i realized the thing its learn that seemed to be essential to good communication often boiled down to empathy. I didnt at first i wasnt crazy about that idea because i didnt trust the word empathy. Started to show up in our culture an awful lot a few years ago, couple of decades ago. And when i started to think about it, i thought, this sounds like a very soft, gooey, newagey emotion based thing that im not sure i believed what is being transmitted by that notion. And then the more i worked on it, the more i realized that for me my definition of empathy, the way i think about empathy, is not the way everybody thinks about it. There are many meanings that emthe has for different people. For some people it means compassion, sympathy, giving to the other person and letting them take from you because you have an unbounded bounty of good you can give. I dont empathy to me is useful as a really important tool for communication. I even wonder if you can do communication effectively without empathy, but the what i moon by mean by empathy by is a big ware of what the other person is going through, theyre feelings, their state of mind, that gets into what scientists call theory of mind, which is more about what theyre thinking and empathy is more about what theyre feeling. Without both things you dont know where they are while youre trying to communicate, and i luck to have to read therapies, read their tone of voice, body language, get a pretty good estimate of what is happening inside them or youre not really talking to them. Youre talking to a generalized version of them. And in a way, for all you know youre talking to blank wall and just spraying information at them. Less of a chance it will be internalized and be useful. To me empathy is just a tool and its not a tool that necessarily makes you a good person in my opinion. I think theres too much evidence from life, the experiences we have in life, that empathy can be used for good and for not so good purposes. Empathy is used by they know how you feel and how to make you feel worse because theyre tracking how how feel as they do your stuff on you. Interrogatears know to use empathy and take an understanding how youre feeling and use it against you so they can make you feel helpless and tell them whack they want to here. Thats not compassion. Called it dark empathy. If your have a tendency to do good or being camp passion newscast. , emthey can be a useful tool to help you but just from communicating something, something complex or difficulty, you want to convey something you feel is important to them, even that you love them very much in spite of the crazy things theyre doing, say. You got to be aware of how theyre getting it. Suppose theyre getting it in opposite way from what you intend in you would have been better to employ a little empathy. How you get empathy, how you build it up, how you keep is going and dont lose it, thats almost as important as the idea itself, i think. Host you said you have been studying this for years. How did you begin and why . Guest i began without knowing i was study it when i did improve improvisation when i was a young actor. I did it as a boy. My mother was schizophrenic and paranoid and i can remember as early as the age of six, studding studying her face to try to figure out what she was going through. I had to try to understand if what she was saying was reality or just her reality, because she had this disease, this mental disease. I didnt know it was disease. Just knew her behavior was erattic and rick to track. Didnt know i was working on empathy or communication or any of those things. Didnt know when i studied improvisation, and i learned how to connect with other people and when i did the Science Program on pbs, the scientific mesh frontiers, i was using the tools of connecting to the scientists while he had conversations and it was a conversation. I wasnt that i came in with a list of questions. They didnt go into lecture mode when i asked them a question because i was personally asking the question. Wanted to understand. It wasnt tell us about Quantum Mechanics. Its, what do you spoon by quan tim maybe Quantum Mechanics. I wanted to know. They were trying to make me understand it, not a lecture for the camera. We had the same connection we would have had if we were in an improvisation. It was happening in that moment. That dynamic relationship between us is what i began to realize when i left the program, maybe we could teach scientists to communicate at that personal level through the connection that is possible to achieve with an audience, and teach them how to do that while were teaching them to be scientists so they would leave their education not as accomplished scientists but accomplished communicators. I realized there was all this other stuff happening with the scientists. Wasnt just they were learning to communicate science. One scientist told us this training has saved my marriage. So i realized another scientist said, you have to tell more people about this. My wife is an art historian, i cant understand a word she says. And anard historian. Just show him pictures but he wasnt getting it. There will terms terms and ling, jargon he wasnt getting. Concepts. Everything can be communicated better and we can get more contact with the other person than we imagined we can, every day i find out i can do better, and im writing a book about it. I spent two years really working on myself to see if could i do for missiles what people ive interviewed have done for other people. Ive talked to people who train other people to have more empathy, because you come in with some empathy usually but you can always get more, and that is an interesting idea. A lot of people think youre stuck with what you got. I know people who can do it and im working on myself to get more, so i had this tool to connect with other people and communicate. Host you have a connection also with stony brooke university. Guest yes. Host what is that connection . Guest well issue went around the country trying to find out if the residents of different universities whenever i found myself at a university, the president would be interested in starting a program to train scientists to communicate. It wasnt a popular idea when i started. That was nine or ten years ago, maybe more. And one president said to me, we have too much science to teach, than to teach communication. I thought i didnt have an answer for that at the time, and i thought about it later and thought, what better can you do once you have taught science than to teach communication . That is an essential part of science. Have you do an experiment, the next thing is you write about it, talk about it. Share with other scientists to see if youre correct. The only university that was interested was Stonybrook University on long island, and we had been there for eight years. Its now called communicating science. At stonybrook and universities all over the country and universities around the world, we have taught communication now to over 8,000 scientists and doctors, and its really extraordinary to see people transform, because we dont teach tips. We dont give people tips. We put them through experience like improvising exercises, and put them in touch with the people that want to communicate. Host speak to the improvisation. You write about that quite often in your new book. Guest its a good thing to say what its not. Its not comedy improve situation. A lot of people most piping thing are exposed to improvisation through comedy shows and many actors, many comic actors, came out of comedy improvisation. This is not that. This is a much more fundamental and in a way purer form of improvisation that was invented by viola spolin in 1940s. Its the basis of all improvisation, even in many cases the basis of comedy improvisation but we dont want to turn scientists into comedians. What the improvisation does, gets you in touch with the people youre trying to communicate with. Also brings out the real person who is in you, the real you, the vulnerable you, the person that you might mask when youre afraid of really being there in front of an audience. That makes you talk in a kind of foreign way, where you dont talk in your own natural voice. You dont have an intimate connection with the people you talk to. Improvisation habit waits yates habit yates you to being you. You have to keep practicing. It goes away. Its so strange. Its strange it goes away. Were social animals. And yet we retreat from one another, act as if were condemned to one anothers company but were made to be in one anothers company. We thrive in it. It feels so good. Once you get out of the excommunication state and get into the communication state, you really glad youre there. Host theres awe real come opinion component of active listening. Guest yet yes. It becomes the description of active listening. Maybe im exaggerating the importance of experience bit its important to a verbal description, something you can read in a book. As much as my book is written on paper and i hope people will read it, hope theyll find their way to experimenting and finding ways to make this contact because the experience is the main thing. So, for instance, the tip that we hear to do active listening. A very important thing to do, to let the other person know you have herd them and to demonstrate you have heard them and to answer what theyve said rather than what you want to say next. Which is the classic flaw of listening or nonlistenning where youre just waiting nor person to finish. Thats my cue to talk and say whatever i want to say regardless of what you say. Can you do that effectively if somebody tells you to do it . Maybe. Maybe you get the idea. I think experiences, if you can experience the way hat gets getu habituated to do that, its longer lasting and more fun to do. Kind of everyday example about that, is a real experience that happened to me. The difference between tips and experience. In the town near where i live, theres a speed sign that says dont go over 25 milesperhour. I routinely went 40 and. The could cop stopped me and gave me a ticket and i never went more than 25milesanhour again past the sign. The sign was the tip. The ticket was the experience. And it landed on me. I went through something that lodged in me and changed my behavior. Sometimes tips can do. That but nothing, nothing beats going through something with somebody else in my opinion. Host why have you brought this into the science area . Guest i started in the Science Field with this because i was interviewing hundreds of scientists on television, and i realized that we were having a great time together and i was learning the science from them and the audience was learning the science because it wasnt a lecture. It was just this dynamic relationship we had that really involved listening on both sides. And i wanted to help other scientist do this. Then it was from that experience i realized that it applies to aberdeen, people in business, parents, children, lovers, sales people. I even in order to help raise money for the center for communicating science i helped start, at stony brook universe. I started a call called the training company. And that was offered to corporations and the profits would good to the center for communicating science. For instance, our initial program is workshops for women in business, to help women navigate the problems that are stale on stack well obstacles in the way of women trying to make progress in the business careers. Things that should have been solved decade ago, like constantly interrupting women at a conference table. Stealing their ideas. Ignoring them. Promoting their train yesterdays trainees before them. All these things women need to advocate for and not the tools and confidence to do it. So, were doing two good things at once. Were helping train women and other people in corporations, leadership, teamwork, and the profit goes to the center for communicating science. So, its a really happy trajectory to find myself on. I didnt decide to do it. Just found myself doing it stepbystep. Host in your most recent book you write about the fact that Scientific American called you or asked you to host a series of programs and you had been reading about this forever to and his was like a dream come true but the first oating wases not a dream come true. Guest thats true. The producers wrote me a letter and asked me if i wanted to host the show. Figure out they probably want met to good on camera and say heres our shore this week and then go off camera and read a narration. That didnt really interest me. Wanted to talk to the scientist because i wanted to learn from them about their work. So i said, id be interested if you would let me interview. They didnt know if could i interview scientists, and i didnt know if i could either, but i studied improvisation and was used to talking to people. The only experience i had was taking over a couple of times on show business talk shows, which its different from interviewing scientists. So the first interview i did, walked in and talked to a scientist who had made a solar panel for a solarpowered car. And i right away made three huge mistakes. Thought i knew more than i knew and i said, its great. You made this with items right off the shelf, and the didnt. Why decide i tsunami that . I assumed something that wasnt true. He said, no, we made this thing from scratch. He looked really up happy. Didnt know that look. Wasnt paying talks to him. Wasnt listening to him and answering questions. Then i reached out dish was trying to be casual and look like i was really friendly and in awe of his work and i put my hand all over the solar panel. He said, please dont touch that. Youll ruin it. Wasnt paying attention and i learned pretty quickly, i couldnt pretend i knew more than i knewment i had to really be open and aboveboard. Lad to be who i was. Acknowledge my ignorance. One of the best things to do is know youre ignorant about something. Its a terrible, terrible feeling to filed out you thought you knew something and you didnt. It would screw up the interviews because i would box them in with questions based on what i thought i knew and it was wrong. They dont know how on camera to say to me, you dont know what youre talking about here. So i start to realize, theres some funny look on this guys face. Whats wrong . I realized its because i assumed i knew more than i did about their work. So, i began to learn a couple of things. One, to let my ignorance show. If youre curious, ignorance is a well thing to have. And i learned to Pay Attention to that so we really hat a true improvisation between us. Host where does theory of mind fit in . Kind of step two . Guest yes. Think theory of mind is one of the things you have to do along with being aware of their feelings. Have to have a pretty good estimate of what theyre thinking. If youre describing Quantum Mechanics and they go kind of frowny at the word quantum, you have to pick up on that and find out what is this frown coming from . Try to work with them and get it out. They dont now what quantum means . Id used in so many funny weighed. Eight a quantum leap, meaning its a big leap. Quantum leap is as small as you can get. Its from one shell of electrons to another around an an at tom. Thats a short distance but as a big distance for the atom. We had in our head, quantum. That must mean big. That can get the way. If i said things wrong about Quantum Mechanics, i apologize to quantum physicists but thats an example of what im talking about. But the entire theory 0 one thing wrong is its jargon. A term given to us by scientists. And all it means is that when i talk to you, i have an awareness of theory that theres something going on in your head that may by defendant from what is may be different whats going on in my head. That might sound obvious because as adults we know that to be true. People think the same thing, we want have to talk. The term derives from am period in science when they began to realize that children, until the age of four or five, actually believe that what they know you know. They dont have the theory of your mind, theory of what is happening in your mind. So, for instance, you show a child that age a cartoon of a woman coming could be room and putting a cookie on the desk and then leaves, then somebody else comes in and moves the cookie to a cabinet, now the first woman comes back into the room. The child watching the cartoon has seen the cookie go from the table top to the cabinet. She knows where the cookie is. You ask her, where does the lady think the cookie is . The lady put the cookie on the table. Then left. The cartoon lady never saw the cookie go to the cabinet but the kid saw the cookie go to the cab cabinet and the kid says, she think its nit cabinet, she knows its in the cabinet because the kid knows its in the cabinet and until a certain age she doesnt have this awareness you might have something necessary your mind other what she knows. Which is why they say until the age of four or five, kids dont lie. They dont realize its useful to lie because they think whats the point of right . You know what i know. So in trying to communicate with people, often instead of making use of the idea that this person may have a different used different idea from what i am thinking, we use technical terms as though the other person understands it, as though were four or five years old thinking what i know they know, because we forget that people have different ideas in their heads. They have different understandings, different experiences, very easy to forget that. Every single field has its own jargon and we get so use it to, we think like the kid, they most understand it, too. Host but kid jargon and vernacular be used as a bullying thing. Guest it can. I would talk about it as though i knew more than anybody else at the table. I think lot of people have done that. Not a good idea. But it doesnt really communicate anything. Im using terms you that i am glad to see you dont understand if im using terms like that. Im not really transmitting anything useful to you, just showing up a. One thing its a good idea to remember about jargon is jargon can be use inflame the psalm way that empathy can be hurtful. Whereas we think of it as bad, jargon can be very good. If were in the exact same field, sharing the same work bench, why would you Say Something to me that takes five pages to say if you can convey it to me in one word . That makes sense. We can work more efficiently together. But if i dont understand that word, or if its a common english word we use the different ways, then you should go to some trouble to make sure i understand what you mean by it. That might take five pages if its a very complicated term. Math is extremely hard to communicate about because its all special talk. When you get into higher math. So, i dont im still trying to figure out a way to help mathemati