Transcripts For CSPAN2 Celeste Headlee We Need To Talk 20180219

That happened later when they realized that bannon was monopolized in me. In the beginning everybody was was talking and confused about why they were talking but they were talking. What i saw, this book is really about flatline, a transformation that took place. Theres people in the beginning who were donald trump, rob rock and youve got the donald trump line and then that began to degrade. They began to give you the trumpline , but while they were giving to you they would go to. And it became very clear that they wanted someone else to know that why they have to give this line, they didnt believe it and after moving even further on, then it fell apart entirely and they would tell you this is really a mess here watch this and other programs online at booktv. Org. D. [inaudible conversation] youre watching tv on cspan2. We are live from Trinity United Methodist church, one of the sites of the savanna book festival and starting now, its author Celeste Headlee talking about the importance of civil communication. Good afternoon. I hope you are enjoying the book festival. My name is al stiles and im delighted to have you join in the 11th annual savanna book festival. The book festival is presented by georgia power. David and nancy cintron, but she had Family Foundation and mark and pat mcewan. Many thanks to jack and mary romano, our sponsors for this glorious venue, Trinity United Methodist church. Wed like to extend special thanks to our literati members and donors who continue to make Saturdays Free festival evidence possible. 90 percent of our revenue comes from donors just like you. We are excited to have savanna book festival app r available for your phone so just look in your program for instructions as to how to download it. Its very useful. Immediately following the presentation, celeste will be signing festival purchased copies of her book out here in the square and if you are planning to stay for the following author presentation, we ask that you move forward though the ushers can get a good count of available seats so that we let everybody in that we can. Take a moment now to set your phone to do not disturb and if you dont know how todo that, you can also turn it off. No flash photography. The same thing if you dont know how to not use the flash and probably dont take the picture. For the question and answer portion, we need you to raise your hand and an will bring a microphone to you. Dont start asking your question until the microphone gets there because we cant hear you. In the interest of time and to be fair to everyone, we ask that you keep your questions short and no long stories. On Celeste Headlee is with us courtesy of Savannah State university and bob and linda sarah. Celeste is the host of the georgia Public Broadcasting Program on second thought, as well as a previous cohost of the take away lland midwest correspondent for National Public radios day today. And a classically trained soprano. And in between all of this, shes even written a book called we need to talk how to haveconversations that matter. Its a book about communications and one that im going to have my wife read very soon. Please give me a warm welcome to Celeste Headlee. [applause] im a buddhist so this feels a little uncomfortable. A weve tried it the other way for a really long time. For generation after generation we have taught our children and ourselves that if something is going to cause an argument, we dont talk about it. It used to be we didnt talk about politics and religion and now weveadded race and weve added Climate Change and weve added guns. And eventually we are just going to add everything though we are just not talking about anything thats difficult anymore and we dont talk to people unless they agree with you and you will talk to people if youre never going to be challenged, then youre not learning anything new about the subject. Youll have to forgive me if i get a little bit emotional because after a shooting in florida last week i keep seeing the headlines from people saying it was an unspeakable tragedy. And its not unspeakable. It has to be spoken of. We have to speak about it. [applause] and i honestly could not care less what your views are. All of us, most of us have , people in our families that disagree with us, right . Thats what makes holidays so awkward. You can get along with people who dont agree with you. You can talk to them and instead of avoiding these subjects that lead to an g argument , you have to learn to talk about them without arguing. And it is much easier than you think. So i just want to start with telling you exactly how to do that. And d theres a number of steps that are all going to help you but theres really only one and that is stop tryingto change peoples minds. Stop trying to convince them that you are right and they are wrong. When was the last time you had a disagreement with someone and at some point in the conversation you went you know what . I am completely wrong. You are right. I have totally changed my mind. It doesnt happen. I mean, science can tell you that but thats another oneof those no dust studies. I can go into research after research that tells you you dont change your minds out over the course of a conversation but we already know that. Especially since ive been talking a lot over the past week. And the attempt to change peoples minds is making us all frustrated and miserable. Part of the reason we are arguing about it is because we are trying to change peoples minds and its not going to happen. And you are basically y beating your head against the wall repeatedly and repeatedly and then thinking im never going to do that again. Its not the exercise, its the beating of the head against the wall thats making you upset. Dont do it anymore. You have zero control for what someone else thinks or the way they view things. That is 100 percent not in your control but guess what is in your control . You. What you think. What you hear. What you listen to. So g instead of going into these conversations saying allright, im going to have it out. Im going to score points. Im going to win this debate. Thats going to make you a bet, instead of doing that, going to every conversation saying im not going to leave this conversation until ive learned something. And you can accomplish that 100 percent of the time. I dont care, and you know, guns at this point is more divisive as avoting issue then race, abortion, same sex marriage and the marijuana. Really . Really. We cant talk about firearms . I dont care if you are a member of the nra, i can talk to you about it. How many of you know everything you need to know about guns and you dont need to listen to anybody else ever because you have nothing to learn about it . I dont care if you are a gun owner, you really think you know everything about guns . I own a smartphone. I dont know everything about that phone. Theres lots of stuff i own that i dont know anything about. There is no issue on which you can tell me you are the ultimate expert and have nothing to learn about it. That is not true. Ut and that means you are going to have to change your habits. Again, im sorry. Im just. Veour entire society doing thesame thing over and over and over again. And throwing up our hands and going he called me an idiot. Of course they did. Because they didnt listen to you. And its possible you didnt ib listen to them. If we plan to progress, you cant stand on principle. Youre just ending s. Youre not going anywhere. How many of you made promises at some point in your life about the things you are going to do or not do . Im never going to, and then ended up. When i was pregnant, i said i was never going to raise my voice to my child in anger. Yeah. We all make principles and its ridiculous to think you are going to stand on tthem and you are never going to change. Theyre going to change. But the way they change is by realizing you dont know everything and what i didnt realize was that my son was going tobe a huge pain in the butt. You have to evil. Right now we are not involving the reason we are not involving is because we put our own ocomfort above everythingelse. Heres the thing about being comfortable. Comfort is the enemy of innovation. We have created bubbles around ourselves. Weve done a great job of it. I could point to you all the research from pew. They have incredible authorship and Academic Research going on in which they are basically telling us the same thing over and over. One of the reports is called the spiral of silence because social media, which we dreamed was going to open up conversations. We bought social media was going to make people who were nervous about raising d their voice and stating their opinion, we thought it was going to embolden them and open up the conversation and make it more free and tolerant and it did the opposite. It turns out that people get shut down on social media are less likely to have a facetoface conversation. Social media is shutting down conversations. Its the opposite of what we thought. Thats why they call it the cone of silence. We thought that the smart phones in our hands at their heart or a phone, we thought they would increase the number of conversations that we had. But at this point, the average american, this research is about three years old so i bet its worse. But at this point, the average american adult and 30 minutes texting and six minutes or less on the phone. Companies like cocacola, cisco, jp morgan, Goldman Sachs and use their phones so little that theyve eliminated the voicemail system in their phone. Itsnot used. But heres the thing. Your smartphone cais a crappy replacement for conversation. I do not know why we keep inventing new replacements for the things human beings do better than any other species. And listen to me, it is probably the only thing we do better than other species. Im not even trying to be funny here. We all know thatin a onetoone fight, we lose out with a mosquito. We are not impressive. But the one thing that we do well, the reason we have dominated on the planet is because we collaborate. Because when you mess with one human, you are usually messing with a bunch of other humans. That is why we succeeded. That is the formula we are messing with. We are breaking it. Because we think each and every one of us, google has tricked us into thinking we are a few clicks away from being an expert in anything. We are beginning to think we are in and of ourselves enough or maybe our family unit, our small little tribe. It is not true. There is no replacement for the human voice, none. It is so complex. In many ways, magical. Science cannot explain works. Theres Research Going on at princeton right now into whats called Neural Coupling and basically what they did was they had one person come in and hook them up to it as mri. Its a functional Magnetic Resonance imaging machine that allows you to watch the brain. So it would hook someone off and they have them tell a story. In one case she told the story of a disastrous problem. And then they had a whole t bunch of other people come in and listen to her telling the story. And they found something really miraculous. They found out that when these people were listening and engaging with this other woman talking, their brains synced up. They moved in perfect sync. In fact, it was so exact at times that the listeners brain could and his fate changes in the speakers brain by a erfraction of a second. Quicks that is mine no. We saw in star trek, we wouldnt think it was realistic. But that is what happens when a pair of human years listens to a human voice. We cant explain it. We dont know how it works. We dont know why. But we know that that is something humans do that at other species dont. We can bond with one another. We can reach one another on a level beyond what science and track. And that is what we are trying to replace with eogs. Seriously. You cant. Theres all kinds of ways that Technology Just cant replace what you can do with your voice and ill give you another example. Apologies. The process that begins with an apology and leads eventually to forgiveness and moving on, its a relatively complicated physiological process. We stick your finger and put it at the top of your right here. Move it up one inch. Ovand move it back one inch. Thats the Compassionate Center of your brain. And atwhen the process of forgiveness begins, you have to get an apology of some form and your Compassion Center goes on and thats what leads you throughthe whole rest of that process that makes you able to forgive that person and n forget about it. One reason apology in any form , nothing happens here. If you send an apology by email, god for bid text, nothing. Crickets. Why do we avoid calling the person or singing them to apologize anyway. Why do we do that . Its easier. Thats right. Thats exactly right. It is tough to say youre sorry to somebody. Its tough. Its painful. And guess what . When youre apologizing to someone and they either hear or see that it is tough for you, but Compassion Center lights up. And then the process begins. The apology is effective because its hard. And if its not hard, theres no point. This is another way in which you cannot replace human communication between one voice and one pair of ears. And listen, there are tons of things humans do terribly. There are lots of ways that are smart phone can fill in for things we are not great at. I mean, our brains are not computers, right . Our oumemories are bad. Theyre storing information and recalling it. So thats what a computers four. Thats great. Thats awesome. And like it or not, even though most people cant find their way home from the Grocery Store without their phones anymore, gps is pretty awesome. We used have to rely on people to give us directions to houses, and some people are terrible at it. And after falling their crackly directions and getting lost, you get to their house and your life high. That doesnt happen anymore. You dont have to get angry at your friends and family members for giving you terrible directions. You have a gps. Fantastic. I use ways, he even tells me if theres a traffic jam which is always because i live in atlanta. There are many things for us to use technology four. Not conversation. Theres no replacement. It cant be improved upon at this point. And the other part of that is, the adoption of Smart Phone Technology has been so rapid. As of i think was 2003, only maybe 10 percent of American Adults in the United States on the cell phone. Raise your hand if you owned a smartphone right now. Over 90 percent. In fact, in the world today according to the United Nations more people have access to a cell phone then work. That is incredibly rapid growth. And it has outpaced our ability to understand the effect, because clinical studies take years and then they have to be peerreviewed and they have to be replicated. So we are only now beginning to see some of the effects smart phones are having on our brains and its not great. For example, they did a study in the uk in which they had hundreds of people come in and have a conversation with strangers. And afterwards i would ask them tell us about the other person. In half of those conversations, they would come and they would place a cellphone down on the table. It belongs to either person, it never made a noise but in those conversations in which there was a cell phone present and visible they were 62 percent more likely to come out and say the other person was an empathetic, unfriendly and unlikable. I want you to think about how many times youve gone to lunch with somebody and set your cell phone down on the table. You felt good because you didnt look at it. The thing is, its having an effect on their brain because they can see it. And the other side of that is its having an effect on your brain caused part of your brain, they say about 10 percent of your brain is taking about that cell phone. Its basically in fight or flight mode. Ready for it to make anoise. Which means if you sit at your desk and you are one of those people that keeps your email open, always has outlook open, your iq drops by 10 points. Because part of your brain is thinking about the email. It is occupied and wondering, its making sure its ready. For that notification to come in. So again, im not telling you to get rid of your cell phone. Im just saying put it away. When assigned to have a conversation, dont put it down, put it away. Its not about getting rid of technology and becoming the univar. Its about being aware of the power of that technology. And being smart about it. Its not about not letting technology do the things we are bad, its about reclaiming the things we do better than anybody else. Reclaiming what is basically our humanity. And theres more, really mind blowing research. My favorite research, but my son would tell you that shows what a dork i am because i have a favorite researcher. Theres a guy named Nicholas Epley and hes been researching these intangibles of human nature for years. Just recently, a few months ago he had this very long study but what he found was when we read an opinion we disagree with in any form, it doesntmatter if its printed in thenewspaper, about , and email,facebook , you read it. We are much more likely to think we disagreed because that person is stupid and ignorant of the real issues. If we hear someone telling us this same opinion, whether its recorded, in a podcast, doesnt matter. If we hear their voice, we are much more likely to think they disagree with us because they have a different experience and perspective. And what that means is that the human voice is literally humanizing. It is the voice itself, some quality of the human voice that helps us to recognize each other as human beings. Deserving of respect. And we do deserve respect. Every person deserves respect. Not every opinion, but every person. And it also means that this process we are going through right now of transferring all of our communication to the Digital World is humanizing us. Of course we hate each other. We dont see each other as human beings deserving of respect. And this is not a partisan issue. If youre thinking absolutely, those liberals, they are always jerks for the other way, doesnt matter what youre thinking. Its not partisan. Every y Single Person is equally prone to do this to the other side. Every person is equally prone to confirmation bias. You guys know what confirmation bias is . Where you believe something and then someone gives you evidence proving that belief is wrong and it makes you believe it tharder. We are the only species that suffers from confirmation bias. And that is because confirmation bias is not helpful. Well, its not really helpful. But if you have acat , and the cat truly believes theres in the next room, i mean, a mouse sought, ndsorry. And the mouse believes there in the next room and you show them evidence of cats in the next room, lots of cats and that makes the mouse belief order there are in the next room. Life would be wiped off the face of the planet. So you have to ask yourself why do we have confirmation bias after mark why do all of us have confirmation bias and how does it help us . Because frankly, why would it survive. Through all of millennia of evolution, if it did not in some way help . And ill tell you what i believe even though we fully dont understand it yet. Ive been i think confirmation bias is a strength. I think what it does is prove to us constantly that we need each other. That we need to talk to each other. Because we are our own checks and balances. I need you guys to tell me when i send something and i need to believe you. We need each other. All of us. There is no virtue in saying ea i dont talk to people like that. Its not a virtue, i dont care how vile you think their opinion is. Thats not something to brag about. You can talk to everybody. And ill just give you two examples. One of them isgeorges own. Does anyone know who simona clinton is. One person. Theres a street named after her in atlanta. Wynonna clayton was a good on friend of the kings, doctor king and his wife, coretta. When theydecided to create the great neighborhoods initiative, the Great Society initiative, strength in neighborhoods, here in atlanta she was appointed as the head of that program and had a whole bunch of different neighborhoods. And the mayor came to her and said listen, i did warn you, she wasnt africanamerican and still is, an africanamerican woman, that hasnt changed. But i have to warn you that one of your naval captains is a brand member of the kkk. Just so you know. And she described that very first meeting where all the captains came in and one of them shook her hand. So he would come in from time to time and sit in her Office Downtown and she would talk to him. About whatever. She says doctor king told her you dont try to changehearts. Leave that to god. You have no control over whether a heart is changed. But you can be a human being. And they would talk to each other, he ended up coming two times a week and sat down and one point she asked him why do you keep coming here . You dont even like me. He says i know, but i like to talk to you. And about a year later after all this, he held a press conference and renounced his membership in the kkk. And he said its because this woman he probably never heard of, window equation says i was wrong. Ill give you one more example. Another black guy, africanamerican. He played piano, name is Darrell Davis. A pbs documentary about him accidental breakthrough. And what Darrell Davis does in his off time to convince people to leave the kkk. And hes so successful at it that he almost dismantled singlehandedly the kkk operation in the state of maryland. And people asked him what do you say . What is ityoure saying to convince them and he says i dont say anything. In fact, he said this is important. He said by actively listening to them, im passively teaching them about myself. Sometimes people just need to be heard. And this is what i would say to you. After telling you you cant change peoples minds. After doctor king and atyou cant change anybodys heart and thats true. Sometimes. Sometimes, the active listening can be such a gift. It can be such an active love that over time, you may not even be aware of when it happens over time, you can change people and more importantly, you can be changed. My listening, by being heard. We have about 25 minutes left. But there are usually a lot of questions so im going to go ahead and take questions if you have some, if there are i will keep going. Celeste, over here. Far back. Here. A couple years ago you came to savannah and you did a can talk. And it was one of the best ever. 13 million views ladies and gentlemen. [applause] tell us if you would something you learned doing it and talk. Next time, get a haircut and put on makeup. That is what i learned. Other people will be watching this. Brush your hair. Yes. Oh wait. Here and here, let me bring you a microphone. Okay, you talked a lot about the challenges to great conversations but you didnt say anything specific about how to have great conversations. Thats because i wrote a book about it. [laughter] and it took me a long time. No, i mean the number one challenge is listening and is not just a matter of none of you are going to leave here. Im going to be a great listener from now on, heres the thing. Human beings are not born knowing how to listen well. We just dont do it well as a species and anyone whos been around a baby knows that. You dont come out of the womb knowing how to listen. You come out of the womb knowing how to scream and some of us never stop. Listening has to be taught. Thats the secret. How many were offered at some point a public speaking course in your life . How many were offered a listening course in your life . Like, 2. Its something you have to learn. Theres incredible research coming out of australia and new zealand that shows the only way to become a better listeners work at it. It takes discipline. Its n. One of those things, its not like information that you master and learn and memorize and move on. Its like going to the gym. Nobody goes to the gym and gets a great tone and youre done working out the rest of your life its exercising muscles that are not naturally strong. So ive been there, every day. How does the brain react to Artificial Intelligence . We dont have a lot of Good Research on there right now, like alexa. We dont really react to it the way we do to a human being and believe me, im one of the consultants for amazon trying to teach them how to make alexa have a real conversation. And an unpaid consultant, i might add because what am i going to say . We dont know. We dont have any way at this point of measuring what it is we are responding to in a human voice so we dont know whats missing in the ai. But it is missing. Zero coupling does not occur between nai and a human being regardless of that movie. Her or is she, youve seen that movie . She has a question here. Im going to go by three of your books and give it to three of my family members and give them some three instructions from you. Listen was one but what would the other to be . The other one obviously would be put away your cell phone and the last one would be if youre not able to have a conversation right then, walk away. If you cant focus , thats fair, thats fine. , dont put the other person through the theme of talking to you when lyou cant listen. Its a waste of time, just walk away. Politely. Other questions . Dont worry. So there are a lot of people and i and a millennial and there are a lot of people in my generation and im sure the one below us now. Right, right. But theres, they would argue that ar having meaningful conversations over text and over social media and what would you say to them. To change peoples minds, but how would you approach that subject . I say youre wrong. [laughter] i mean, you cant just tell me what you feel. Show me the proof. Right . And there is zero that, i mean, the scientific opinion on texting and emailing is as universal as the opinion on Climate Change. Its wrong. Texting is not a conversation and in fact, they have found that even your closest friends and family members are no more accurate at detecting sarcasm been a complete stranger off the street and heres the thing. When i tell people that and they say i totally believe that, except me, my friend totally leaves me and i say thats not how math works. That is not how math works. We are great at figuring out what other people do wrong. We are excellent at the fact of the matter is, youre terrible at being judges of what we are doing well. Theres this book called you are not so smart, this whole podcast t. If youre ever feeling really confident, just read that book. Its okay. Its true of all of us, even really, its true of everybody but the thing is that its just wrong. Text is not a conversation. And you may be thinking youre communicating well but youre not saying what theyre hearing. Theyre hearing and reading Something Different than what you have typed. Co and miscommunication is the number one cause of project failure in business, mostly because of email. Cost 210 trillion a year. If you want to put in dollars and cents. Has a child i remember hearing children should be seen and not heard. Children are told to keep quiet their entire school year. Is that part of why we dont talk anymore . I dont think so. Youre told to keep quiet in class because there too many kids all wanting to say their own thing and it would be mayhem if they were all talking, thats the reason. Its the same thing in college courses. S. Anyone can sit there and talk while the professors trying to lecture. And not only that, thats been, thats been the norm for as far back as we have records. Im not saying children should be seen and not heard completely. But thats okay. When someones lecturing, if you were all ttalking right now, it would be overall because the person next to you would be im trying to hear any other person would be shut up, im talking to my mom and they would be fighting and it would be like that church in the kings men. People who have seen the movie know what im talking about. Theres times when you shouldnt talk. Theres plenty of them but were not talking about that. Im not talking about that, im talking about actual conversations which we are not having any more. We are having is exchanges where one person says what they think and believe in the other person says what they think and believe but they are not listening toeach other. Conversation is an exchange of information. One person speaking, another listening and responding and then going back area and we are not adding that anymore. And thats certainly not what a tweet is. We need fewer hot takes. Question. I heard your tent talk, it was wonderful and you did make a wonderful comparison i think with your sister, a good conversation and a short skirt. I do have a question. I assumed that your book was going to be more anecdotal and it sounds like youve really solidly research this and how long did it take you to do this. To do the research and write it . A long time. I think theres probably like 30 pages of footnotes at the end. It is not fully justified. Its basically split into three kind of chunks. Theres plenty of anecdotal. I admit all the things i do wrong. That could have filled another book. Then theres the Science Behind what we know and theres what i learned in my professionalexperiences and broadcast. Its kind of split evenly between those three things. But it takes a lot but one of the reasons it takes so long is because when i first set out to be, this better interviewer, thats what my initial effort a few years ago. I went to those same Research Books that all of us have been reading for years. The ones that say listen with your eyes and not your head and show your listening and thats crap invites. I dont even know w what those people followtheir own advice. It doesntwork. It doesnt work. If youre sitting there staring at someone and making eye contact. Its uncomfortable. It doesnt work. And so i have this from scratch. Sometimes i had to reach into Research Fields in science that works about communication. In order to get my answers. I had to sort of just forget what i knew or thought i knew about the subject and also, what the hell . What were they writing about. Theres no way they follow that advice and it made the confirmation, theres no way. Its literally teaching you how to like you are listening. It is, thats what all that advice is about. Heres how you can pretend you are paying attention. The most authentic way to do that is to pay attention. Its totally believable. So yes, the quote youre talking about is a version of ll originally a Winston Churchill quote which says conversation, a good conversation is like a mini start, long enough to cover the subject and short enough to keep it interesting. Winston churchill would Say Something like that. Okay, great. Im an Adult Education and one of the things that we continue to learn is that learning is ineffective. So kinesthetic learning where people are actively engaged is more, how can you have a conversation with that active component . Lecturing and trying to educate people to death isnt conversation. It goes along with not trying to change their mind. If your intent is to educate someone, youre not having this conversation. The first thing is you screwed with the power dynamic because you put yourself above them. You made yourself a teacher which is why theres one part in the book i will never tell you what to say or what not to say because it situational and if youre paying attention you will know what to say but theone race i want people to uses but actually. Its like, im not a racist but nothing good will come after it. If you feel yourself wanting to say but actually , just stop yourself. You dont need to explain. And i think the example i use in the book is youre not making the dinner in your bedroom to interrupt what someone is saying to explain that real champagne comes from france. Come on. Just let it go. Let it go. And its the same thing in learning. What were finding is theres all kinds of, we know all kinds of ways to shut a brain down and the human mind is already really prone to distraction. Microsoft redoes some of the best research into Attention Span and what theyve discovered is on the internet at least, our Attention Span is about eight seconds which is one second shorter than that of agoldfish. In conversation, our Attention Span is about 30 to 60 seconds so when you leave here, if something has a secondhand, a timer, if you start telling a story and see how long 30 seconds gets you through and stop because its a good chance if their Attention Span hasexpired , and the other side to that is the human brain can only hold on to three or four things at any one time so if youre one of those people that starts talking to your spouse and his life and another thing , and youre going through all the stuff , you are spitting in the wind, my friend. Choose one thing. Choose one thing and say it in 30 to 60 seconds and then be done and walk away. And everyone will be happier. Yes. I. Yes. Im not trying to break lines. Your good. I was always told and reading Business Books and advice from people who know that one should stick to their knitting. That is, know what business you are in and stick to that. Why on earth would you change your appearance when your last 10 talk gained 13 million listeners or viewers . I watched your tent talk last night and decided i have to go see this woman. And im a little disappointed because frankly, i didnt think it was all about cell phones but i understand everything youre saying. My daughter, yeah, theres the question. They consider the multiplication of technology, im talking about text messages. For forwarding your stuff. I forwarded something, my daughter, she friended me and i called her and i said listen, this is what shes trying to say and shesaid oh , the human voice. I apologize. Was there a question . Why would i change it . I didnt. I didnt. I just put it in a clip. I lied about me learning back. Because we are more reticent to communicate with each other in conversation thats making people more reliance on texting, has there been any study that says we now read differently . In the old days you use to learn empathy by reading novels. You still do but are we not as good as readers . Thats a promulgated question. Thank you. We are not as good readers meaning that we dont have an Attention Span for reading the way we used to and if you look at the amount , how much of an article the c average person reads where a click away to another link, or how long a book is, from an unestablished author, that people will actually read to the end, we do not read as much as we used to. But weve also found the number one way to teach people Critical Thinking in reading and have them speak well is read to them. The benefits that we get from reading have not changed and it is still true that you can learn empathy by reading novels about people howhose experiences are idifferent from your own. The number one most effective way to learn to increase your empathy and this is important because empathy can be increased or decreased and empathy has been on the climb now for 30years. It dropped 40 percent in the past 30 years, most ofthat since the year 2000. But it can be increased. And the number one most efficient way to do that is by having a conversation with someone in which you learn about their experiences and perspective. Its no small thing, even when you disagree with them its helping you and i tell people all the time, stop thinking about the benefits. Your conferring on someone else by listening. Its good for you. Smalltalk makes you live longer. Makes you less likely to have a fatal cardiac event. It makes you less prone to depression, being friendly with your neighbors makes you less prone to diabetes. It makes you less prone to all kinds of diseases and yet i have a friend of mine who drove around the block in my neighborhood out front and he didnt want to pull in and while he was there and conversation. Those little chat with your drivers and your Grocery Store clerk, they are literally making you healthier. So by staring down at your phone n, that they dont make eye contact and they dont Start Talking to you. You are hurting yourself. Other questions. When the comment was made that younger folks might feel they are communicating just as effectively on their cell phone, the first day you said was thats not true. I has shown blah blah blog. Oliver, i feel this way is legitimate in terms of how im approaching that conversation. You seem to stop the conversation that point and say thats not true. This is the facts ask dont seem to be as important anymore as feelings. Not to me f. I have nothing but respect for peoples feelings but it doesnt change facts. I can feel all i want but i have written an email and its really good communication, from my end that may be true. I may have expressed myself in a way that im perfectly happy with and i think it is rewarding to me. The question is in a Good Exchange of information, the other person get an accurate reading of what it was that i was trying to say. In other words, was the information communicated clearly . And did i express myself in a waythat was effective. That they dont need further explanation in order to understand what i was trying to say and the fact is, that doesnt mean every single text is not a Good Exchange. And in fact, its a perfectly great form or a Simple Exchange of information. What do you want for dinner . Chinese food. My. I cant make it your birthday party, so sorry. But then how do you use, how do you effectively use the facts that you are aware of from scientific literature to confront that confirmation bias of the other individual . I dont confront peoples information. You just did. Somebody said i communicated equally well if not better on my cell phone. He was saying other people think that. You were saying other people believe that, not that you believe that. But i believe it. I would sayyou probably do feel that but its not correct. Youve got four minutes. Questions. I enjoyed your talk very much. Is there any mystery to why it seems like these alexa and things like that are in the female voice . Predominate. Its quite interesting. People get irritated when its a male telling them. For whatever reason, amazon believes its because of the maternal nature of much of the instruction that most people get when they are growing up. They tend to be more accepting of someone tetelling me your timer is up or its time to go to bed or whatever it is when its a woman telling them where the guy telling them its mike, i will say heres an interesting thing thats not part of the question amazon has made it if you are rude in misogynist ways to alexa, she shuts off. [applause] she turned herself off if you call her the c word or anything like it. Ask he will not engage. Facts t. Is there any scientific information on what you comprehend feeding off of the computer versus what you comprehend when youre reading a book or a newspaper. Ive been saying its a generational thing. But i donot comprehend as well off the computer. Thats habit. Theres no some of the best research is going on at uc berkeley. One of the places we are doing incredible work on not only this topic but also on the and thats more of a, it depends on what you like. I like actual physical book and i like libraries. I dont like Library Books but hes fine reading off the computer, he gets it the same ti as me. Writing though, we need the actual physical act of writing in order to make it to your memory banks, fyi. If you type notes in a class, b it doesnt get to your memory banks. Thats exactly where i was going with my his letter writer writing different . There are a few things that email does better than regular communication. We only have one minute soim going to make this quick. One of them is sending an attachment, the other is sending a summation of a meeting or a phone call. Heres what i heard. The other thing we found is an email is a perfectly good replacement for what would have been a long letter that you wrote. You dont get the benefits of writing it except in Microsoft One noteswhere i can write in my tablet with my pen and then i do get the benefits. Other than that there is no diminution in the benefits of them receiving that letter or r reading it on email. Thank you all very much. [applause] you all, dont forget the little yellow buckets on the av way out, if you have any spare jewelry, car keys, excess money, what have you. [inaudible conversation] you been listening to author Celeste Headlee talking about the importance of civil communication. This is live coverage of the annual savannah book festival. Weve got a few minutes to wait until our next author, New York Times finance editor david enrich. His book is called the spider network. Its a detailed look at the 2006 financial scam in which bankers, traders and brokers manipulated Interest Rates worldwide. And we will be back live in georgia in just a few minutes. The second plan claimed to be continuing the first. But it was different in a series of major ways. Of all, it was not secret. Second of all, it was a Mass Movement having somewhere between fthree and 5 million members. Third, it had women. Fourth, it was humane, nonviolent and fifth, its basic strategy was electoral and i can talk about that later and finally, perhaps the most important thing is it expanded what you might call the hate list. The first was entirely focused on keeping africanamericans down and used lynching to not only punish individuals but to intimidate the whole population. The second klan understanding its founders understanding you wouldnt get a lot of traction by concentrating only on African Americans because in 1920, very few African Americanslived in the northern states. They expand their list to add catholics and jews and immigrants, but immigrants is really the same category because in the waves of immigration that had grown larger from about 1880, very few of those immigrants were protestant and when they said x also, they included the russian and greek orthodox. They didnt actually register they were podifferent but it was equal opportunity bias. Rights. I would hiadd one more thing, i dont know if youd characterize it like this way organizationally but this y plan was also, you might call it a forprofit business. It was entrepreneurial so this is one of the reasons. You tell the story of this one guy who came up with the idea and he kind of failed and he brought in a Public Relations agent who used the most modern sophisticated marketing techniques which included broadening the market for who you should be hating and basically, i wrote a article for the bachelor and it was about how much of rightwing politics has evolved into a money hustle. People even before the internet were getting terrifying letters, the left wants to teach your children cannibalism and sex and and teach them how to have sex and send me 10 so we can save the world. We all know how it works with the internet. It wasnt necessarily all thatdifferent with the clan who functioned in essentially like a pyramid scheme. If a recruiter could keep 40 percent of the initiation fee, the initiation fee was 10 in 1920 but that is worth over 100 today. It was notcheap. And this underlies one important fact ndand that is that very lowincome people were not in the clan. So if i recruited you, i could keep 40 percent but you could turn around and recruit somebody else and this keeps going until theres just no one left to recruit and thats what is the problem with pyramid schemes. Well, for some peoples right. , ultimately, this was the undoing of the clan because there was so much money going and i can give examples later if you want that the corruption became too much to ignore. And a lot of clan members became very disillusioned and a little embittered about what was going on and also, its not just initiation fee. Let me mention two other forms of income. They may a uniform in such a way as to make it very, very difficult for a woman to take old hesheets and so it herself. They did this knowingly in order to make you have to pay for it. Second, people in the clan target manufacturing all sorts of memorabilia. You could get a clan pocketknife and you could get a clan brooch for your wife and they were Just Marketing these things publicly in all these newspapers and all this money, completely unaccountable was flowing in. You can watch this and other programs online at booktv. Org. Book tv takes hundreds of author programs through the country all year long. Some events we are covering this week. Monday we are at politics and prose bookstore in washington dc to hear lanny davis, former counsel for president clinton share his thoughts on the outcome of the 2016 election. On tuesday we had had the roosevelt house in new york city where former white house official and cabinet secretary joseph will examine our democracy and share his views on how to bring back trustworthy systems of government. Later that night we are at New York University for the presentation of the pen america literary award, given annually 1963 which recognized in a range of categories from biography and science e writing essays and poetry. And on wednesday, the green light bookstore in brooklyn, investigative journalist vegas reynolds post on White Nationalism in america. Eric is University Professor Daniel Thompson at Saint Anthony college in New Hampshire to discuss why moderates might be less likely to run for congress. Later that night we will be at the free library at philadelphia where rutgers professor Brittany Cooper will examine the power of what he calls eloquence rage and how it can be harnessed as a resource to bring about change. And on friday, former Clinton Administration labor secretary robert rice will be at the Parish Church in cambridge massachusetts to talk about the economic and social cycles society is experiencing and their effect on the common good. Thats a look at someof the events book tv will be covering this week. Many of these events are open to the public. Books here in the near future on book tv on cspan2. The point is that im making here and im sure youve forgotten. Miami is a wonderful city. Maybe a new attitude down there, new tourism and promotion, come back to miami. I dont know if you cannot, miami has a lot in common. Miami is warm and sunny. New york is warm and sunny. Miami is ranchos replacement. Miami has a diverse population. Rancho is warm and sunny. The list just goes on and on. No, i actually really do love it here. I love it. If nothing else is a wonderful audience here and i can rely on you year after year to forget the jokes i told the previous year. For example. I told that joke here last year from this same one but also, i can relate to it because im getting old. I turned on the in july. That makes me a septuagenarian from the latin scepter meaning everything and jerry and meaning hurt. But i am 70 or as we say in rancho, jailbait. And its a big milestone. Theres some milestones you reach in your life as you age. The first one, we sort of feel old when we turned 50 you can maybe remember that. You turn 50 and then its like a horrible thing that happens to everybody. You get a letter from aarp. Aarp which is the last sound you make before you die. [laughter] all right doctor, hes gone over here. Theres all sorts of, the American Association for retired persons, the person ahead of you asking for a discount for everything. I have nothing against aarp. Its a fine organization. It owwas hard for me to be asked to join it because im a baby boomer and maybe many of you are baby boomers. No matter how old and pathetic you are, drooling and incompetent youget , we think we are cool. We still think we are cool. Its hard to be asked to join a organization including members that wear their waistband up around their armpit. If they ever need openheart surgery, you just unzip the fly. But the other thing about it, when you are 70, you sort of become accepted of all the stereotypes about being 70 are true. All the jokes people make about old people, youngpeople make about old people are true. The way old people drive. In miami, i dont know if you have this year. I call it the seeing eye white system. You know what im talking about, where the couple drives. They are always together but the man drives. Always, the man drives. Why . Because the man drives. The problem is the man canno longer see