Subject which ive been doing for decades now that really seriously, its a couple years while i was writing the book i found empathy coming up more and more and i began to realize the things i have learned that came to the essential were good communication often boiled down to empathy. But i first i wasnt crazy about that idea because i didnt trust the word empathy. When i first began to hear about the it started to show up in our culture and awful lot a couple decades ago. And when i started to think about it i thought this sounds like a very soft, q. Week, new ag emotional kind of emotionbased thing that im not sure i believe whats being transmitted by that notion. And then themore i worked on it, the more i realize that for me , my definition of the, the way i think about it is not the way everybody thinks about it. There are many meetings that empathy has two different people. To some people it means compassion. It means sympathy. It means getting to the other person. And letting them take from you because you have an unbounded bounty of group you can get them and empathy to me, its useful as a really important tool for communication. I even wonder if you could do communication effectively without empathy what i mean by empathy is being aware of what the other person is going through. Being aware of what theyre feeling, what state of mind. It goes a little bit into what scientists call theory of mind which is more about what theyre thinking and empathy is more about what theyre feeling but without both those things, you dont know where they are and why youre trying to communicate with them so you have to revisit that voice, defining language. You have to get a pretty good estimate of whats 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 a blank wall because youre spraying information in them. Theres less of a chance that its going to get internalized by then and remembered by them and in a way be useful to them. To me, empathy is just a tool and its not a tool that necessarily makes you a good person in my opinion. Cause i think theres too much evidence from life, from the experience 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 they know how to make you feel worse about their tracking how you feel as they do their double and you so interrogators know how to use empathy. They know how to take an understanding of how you feel and use it against you so they can make you feel healthier. Tell them what they want to hear. Thats not compassion. So i call that in the book, i call it dark empathy. And i think if you have a tendency toward doing some good, of being compassionate, empathy can be a useful tool to help conjoin it but just in communicating something complex and difficult or even difficult feelings that you have because it applies to everybody, if you want to convey something you feel is important, even that you love them very much, in spite of the crazy things theyre doing. I was a young actor come in my. I think i began studying as a aa boy. My mother was schizophrenic paranoid. I can remember as early as the age of about six 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 are just her reality, because she had this disease, this mental disease. I did know it was a disease. I just knew her behavior was erratic and difficult to track. But i did know i was working on empathy or communication or any of those things. I didnt know when i studied improvisation and yet i was learning some of the basic tools which was to connect to another person. And when it did the Science Program on pbs, Scientific American frontiers, i was using those tools connecting to the science while we had conversations. It was a conversation. It wasnt that he came up with a list of questions. They didnt going to lecture mode when asked him a question because i was personally asking the question. I wanted to understand it wasnt tell us about Quantum Mechanics. Its what do you mean by Quantum Mechanics . I dont get it come tell me again. I wouldnt let go until h i got it. So they were taken out of the desire to do a lecture for the camera. They were trying to make me understand. We had the same connection that we wouldve had if we were in an improvisation. It was an improvisation. It was really happening in that moment. That dynamic relationship between us is when i begin to realize and i left the program, maybe we could teach scientists to communicate at that personal level through the connection 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 scientist but has accomplished communicators. There was all this other stuff happening with the scientist. Wasnt just there were learning to communicate science. One scientist told us this training has stayed my marriage. I realized, and another scientist said youve got to do more people about this. My wife is an art historian. I cant understand a word she says. All she has to do showing pictures but he wasnt getting it. There were tones and jargon that he wasnt getting. Everything can be communicated better, and we can get more contact with the other person that we imagine we can. Every day i found out i can do better and im writing a book about it. I spent two years rereading, or tell myself to see if i could do for myself what people like a that i interviewed, job or empathy. You come in with some empathy usually but you can always get more, and thats an interesting idea. A lot of people think youre stuck with what youve got what i know people who do it. Im working on myself to get more. I have this tool to connect with other people and communicate. Host you have a connection with Stony Brook University. What is that . Guest i went around the country trying to find out if the president s agenda universities, whenever i found myself and university, the president would be interested in starting a program to train scientist to communicate. It wasnt a popular idea when i started. This was nine or ten years ago, maybe more. And one president said to me we have too much sites to teach that to teach communication. And i thought too much science. When i thought about it later i thought what better can you do once you have taught science and to teach communication thats an essential part of science . The next thing to do is write about it, you talk about it, share it with other scientists, to see if your correct. The only university i was interested was Stony Brook University in long island, and weve been there for eight years. Its now called the all the center for communicated sites. At stony brook and it universities all over the country and at universities around the world, weve taught communication now to over 8000 scientists and doctors. Its really extraordinary to see people transformed. Because we dont teach tips. We dont give verbal tips. We put them through experiences like improvising exercises, put them in touch with the people they want to communicate with. Host speak to the improvisation because you write about that quite often in your new book. Guest its a good thing to say what its not. Its not comity improvisation. A lot of people, most people i think are exposed to improvisation through comity shows and many actors, mini comic actors came out of comedy improvisation. This is not that picked this is a much more fundamental in a way pure flow of improvisation that was offended by, in the 1940s come quite a while ago. Its the basis of all improvisations, in many cases the comedy improvisation but we dont get into that. We dont want to turn scientists into comedians. What the improvisation does is to really important things, at least two. Gets you in touch with the people youre trying to communicate with. It 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. It makes you talk in a kind of foreign way we dont talk in your own natural voice, we dont have an intimate connection with the people you talk to. Improvisation habituate you to being you and connecting you with the real you and the other person. It doesnt mean you cant lose it. Youve got to keep practicing. It goes away. Its so strange. Isnt it strange that it goes away . We are social animals and yet we retreat from one another, react as if were condemned one anothers company, to be in one anothers company. It feels so good. Once you get out at the excommunication state and get into the communications state, you are really glad you are there. Host theres a real component of active listening, isnt there . Guest yes. The thing is its not just the description of active listening. It becomes the description of active listening, but maybe im exaggerating but i think its really important compared to a verbal prescription, something you can read in a book. As much as my book is written on paper, and i hope people read it, i hope they will find their way through experimenting in finding ways to make this content. Because experience is the main thing. For instance, the tip we are all the time to do active listening, its a very important thing to do, to let the other people know you have heard them and to demonstrate youve heard them, and to answer what they had said rather than what you want to say next, which is a classic flaw in listening, or nonlistening, where youre just waiting for the person to finish, right . Thats my cue to talk and say whatever i want to say regardless of what you say. So can you do that really effectively if somebody tells me to do it . Maybe. Maybe you get the idea. I think experiences, if you can experience the way that gets you habituated to do that, i think its longerlasting and its more fun to do it. I kind of everyday example i have come its a real experts that happen to be. The difference between tips and experience. In the town knew i live theres a street sign that says dont go over 25 miles pe 25 miles per h. I routinely went 40 miles an hour passed that speed sign, and then a cop stop me and gave me a ticket, and i never went more than 25 miles an hour again past that speed sign. The sign was the tip. The ticket was the experience, and it landed on me. I went through something that lodged in the, change my behavior. Sometimes tips can do that, nothing beats going through something with somebody else come in my opinion. Host why have you brought this into the Science Field . Guest well, i starred 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 of sites from him and the audience was learning the sites, 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 scientists do this. Then it was from that experience that a realized it applies to everybody, people in, parents, children, mothers, salespeople. I even, in order to help raise money for the center for communicate insights that i helped start, at Stony Brook University, i started a Company Called alda training communication company, act. That would offer the services into medication training to corporations, and the profits would go to the center for to medicating sites. For instance, our initial program is workshop for women in business to help women navigate the problems that are still obstacles in the way of women trying to make progress in their business careers. Things that shouldve been solved decades ago like constantly interrupting women at a conference table, stealing their ideas, ignoring them, promoting their trainees above them, all these things that women have to advocate for, we give them the tools and the confidence to be able to do it. We are doing too good things at once. We are helping train women and other people in corporations, leadership, teamwork, and the profits go to the center for to medicating science. Its really a happy trajectory i find myself on and i didnt decide to do it. I just found myself doing it stepbystep. Host in your most recent book you write about the fact that Scientific American called you are asked you to host a series of programs, and you had been reading, waiting for this forever. This was like a dream come true. But the first outing was not such a dream come true. Guest thats true, thats true. Actually the producers of the sharon a letter and asked me if i wanted to host a show at a figured out that they probably wanted me to go on camera and say heres our show this week, then get right of camera and read a narration. That did really interested me so much. I wanted to talk to the site is because i wanted to learn from them about their work. So i said id be interested if youd let me interview. They did know if i could interview scientists and i did know if i could either but i hd studied improvisation. I was used to talking to people. The only experience i had was taken over a couple of times in show business talk shows which is a little different for interviewing scientists. So the first interview i did i walked in a talk to a scientist who had made a solar panel for a solar powered car. So i write a way three huge mistakes. I thought i knew more than a new. And i said this is great, you made this with items right off the shelf. Eddie didnt. Why did i send it . I assumed something that wasnt true. He said no, we made this thing from scratch. He looked really unhappy. I didnt even notice how it looked. That was in another thing, i wasnt paying to them, wasnt listening to him and answering his questions. And then i reached out, i was trying to be casual and looked like i was really friendly and in awe of his work. I put my head all over the solar panel picky so please dont touch that, you will ruin it. So i wasnt paying attention and i learned pretty quickly. I couldnt pretend i knew more than i knew. I had to really be open and vulnerable. I had to be who i was, acknowledged my ignorance. One of the best things you can do is know that you ignorant about something. Its a terrible feeling to find out you thought you knew something and you didnt. And it would screw up the unity because i boxed them in with questions based on what i thought i knew about their work, which was wrong. They did know how on camera to say to me, excuse me, you dont know what youre talking about. So i started to realize theres some funny look on this guys face can whats wrong and i assumed i knew more than i knew about their work. So i begin to learn a couple of things. One, to let my ignorance show. Because with curiosity, ignorance is a wonderful thing to have. As long as youre curious. The other thing i learned was to Pay Attention to that so that we really had a true improvisation between us. Host where does the theory of mine fit into all of this . Which is kind of step two and a sense, is that fair . Guest i think three of mine is one of the things you to do along with being aware of feelings. You have to try to have a pretty good estimate of what they are thinking. If you are describing Quantum Mechanics and they go kind of brownie at the word quantum, here to pick up on that and find out what, where aces frowned coming from . They dont know what quantum means . Quantum issues in so many funny ways in our society. They say its a quantum leap, meaning its a big leaguer in fact, a quantum leap is a smallish you can possibly get. Its from one come if i have the right, and a a big distant stars of the added ms. Concerned at makes a big difference in the way the adam behaves. So we had in our heads quantum, that must mean big. I can get in the way, you got to find out what they are thinking. If i said things wrong about Quantum Mechanics, i apologize to quantum physicists but luckily thats an example of what im talking about. But the term three of mind, one of the things wrong with it is that its jargon. Its a term given to us by scientists. And all it means is that when i talk to you, i have an awareness, a theory that theres something going on in your head that may be different from whats going on in my head. Now, that sounds obvious because as adults we all know that to be true. People dont think the same thing, otherwise we would need to talk. We would all have telepathy going. The funny thing is that the term i think derives from there. Insights when they begin to realize that children come until the age of four or five actually believed that what they know, you know. They dont have the theory of your mind, the three of whats happening in your mind. So for instance, you show a child that age a cartoon of a woman coming into a room putting a cookie on the desk and then she leaves. Then somebody else comes in and moves the cookie to a cabinet. Now if the first woman comes back into the room. The child watching the cartoon has seen the cookie go from the tabletop 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 and then left. The cartoon lady never saw the cookie go to the cabinet. But the kid saw the cookie go to the cabinet, and the kid says she thinks its in the cabinet. She knows its in the cabinet. Because the kid knows its in the cabinet. Until a certain age she doesnt have this awareness that you might have Something Else in your mind other than 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 line . 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 idea from what i think and thinking, we would use technical terms as though the other person understands it. And still at four or five years old thinking i know what they know. We forget people have different ideas in their heads, different understandings, different experiences. Its very easy to forget that. Every single field has its own jargon, and we get so used to it we think like the kids, they must understand it also. Host the kid jargon or vernacular also be used as kind of a bullying technique or, im smarter than you . Guest it can be. Ive done that in my own life, at dinner conversations before i knew how complicated something was that i was trained to talk about. We would talk about as though i knew more than anybody else. A lot of people have done that. Its not a good idea but it doesnt really communicate. If im using terms that im glad to see you dont understand by using terms like that. Im not really transmitting anything useful to you, just showing off. For one thing its a good idea to remember about jargon is jar