Kelly connects with Harvard professor Alison Wood Brooks who studies the science of conversation. Her new book is called “TALK: The Science of Conversation and the Art of Being Ourselves.”  

So, you and I are about to sit down and have a conversation about having conversations. Does that just ever get in your head? 

“Oh, my God, Kelly! Yes, of course! My life has become so Meta, and in so many ways, right? I feel like often I’m floating over the room watching a conversation happen. Sometimes I’m wearing a behavioral scientist hat; sometimes I’m wearing a professor or teacher hat; sometimes I’m wearing my mom hat or friend hat. But there’s this awesome quote, I’m sure you know it, by Charlie Parker, of how you practice as a jazz saxophonist. You practice, practice, practice, and then you just go up on the stage, you just let everything go, and just wail.” 

I think about the Red Ball exercise we do at Second City, where the group is in a circle passing an imaginary Red Ball around – the trick being you have to say thank you when you catch it. But then we introduce a blue ball or a baby – it becomes really hard. 

“And it feels like, at least with conversation, or really anything between more than one person, it feels like we should be experts at it because you learn to do it when you’re 15 months old. And you spend every day of your life practicing with so many different people around the red ball circle, right? With so many different conversation partners, so many people in your life, and it feels like by the time you get to adulthood you should be an expert, and you should be great at it. You should not be dropping the red ball. You should not be saying, thank you for the blue ball. Thank you for the baby. And the truth is, it’s just really flipping hard and much trickier than it appears, and we are all going to be dropping the balls some of the time.” 

In improvisation, there is this idea that everything you’re doing is right. And you talk about a similar idea in conversation – that even if someone is conning you, there is an agreement within the conversation. 

“Exactly! Even when someone is trying to con you, or they’re lying to you, or you vehemently disagree with each other, you are still doing this very cooperative task together. You’re letting them speak by listening and being quiet. They’re letting you speak, even if you’re gonna yell back at them. It’s sort of like these implicit habits we have – like if someone’s walking behind you towards the door, you hold the door open for them, even if you hate them, right? And that’s what our conversational habits are like. We are essentially opening doors for each other. We’re holding doors for each other all the time, even when we don’t agree with them, don’t really even want to be there. We still do this. We still do this cooperative thing together.” 

Photo Credit: Janelle Carmela