Think Fast Talk Smart: Communication Techniques

Why modern communication still relies on ancient words and narratives.

All communication and connection depend on one thing: language. That’s why Laura Spinney says understanding language — where it comes from and how it evolves over time — can help us use it more effectively.
“Language is incredibly powerful,” says Spinney, an author and journalist published in the Atlantic, National Geographic, Nature, and New Scientist. As “humanity’s oldest tool,” language has evolved as we have, which Spinney explores in her latest book, Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global. In addition to the words themselves, there are also the stories that humans have carried with them for millennia. “Some stories that we still tell today,” Spinney notes, have remained stable for tens of thousands of years — providing more than just entertainment — shaping how we understand the world, share knowledge, and build community.
In this episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart, Spinney and host Matt Abrahams discuss why language and storytelling are fundamental to being human, what makes a story compelling, and how our ever-evolving language continues to be our best tool for communication and connection.

To listen to the extended Deep Thinks version of this episode, please visit FasterSmarter.io/premium.

Episode Reference Links:
Connect:

Chapters:

  • (00:00) - Introduction
  • (02:45) - Power & Limits of Language
  • (03:16) - Detecting Lies
  • (05:07) - Origins of Storytelling
  • (08:03) - What Makes a Great Story
  • (10:52) - Proto-Indo-European Language
  • (13:13) - Language Families & Connections
  • (15:27) - Language Clues in History
  • (17:38) - The Final Three Questions
  • (22:42) - Conclusion





Creators and Guests

Host
Matt Abrahams
Lecturer Stanford University Graduate School of Business | Think Fast Talk Smart podcast host
Guest
Laura Spinney
Journalist | Author

What is Think Fast Talk Smart: Communication Techniques?

One of the most essential ingredients to success in business and life is effective communication.
Join Matt Abrahams, best-selling author and Strategic Communication lecturer at Stanford Graduate School of Business, as he interviews experts to provide actionable insights that help you communicate with clarity, confidence, and impact. From handling impromptu questions to crafting compelling messages, Matt explores practical strategies for real-world communication challenges.

Whether you’re navigating a high-stakes presentation, perfecting your email tone, or speaking off the cuff, Think Fast, Talk Smart equips you with the tools, techniques, and best practices to express yourself effectively in any situation. Enhance your communication skills to elevate your career and build stronger professional relationships.

Tune in every Tuesday for new episodes. Subscribe now to unlock your potential as a thoughtful, impactful communicator. Learn more and sign up for our eNewsletter at fastersmarter.io.

Matt Abrahams: Language sits at the
very heart of our ability to connect,

to innovate, and to collaborate.

If we are to get better at our
communication, we first have to start by

understanding language and its origins.

My name is Matt Abrahams, and I
teach strategic communication at

Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Welcome to Think Fast
Talk Smart, the podcast.

Today I look forward to
speaking with Laura Spinney.

Laura's an author and journalist.

Her writing appears in many locations
including The Atlantic, National

Geographic, Nature, and New Scientist.

Laura is the author of Pale Rider:
The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It

Changed the World, and her latest
book is entitled, Proto: How One

Ancient Language Went Global.

Welcome, Laura.

I'm really excited for our conversation.

Laura Spinney: I'm delighted to be here.

Thank you for the invitation.

Matt Abrahams: Excellent.

Shall we get started?

Laura Spinney: Yes.

Matt Abrahams: Alright.

You have written on a wide
range of topics, many which

center around communication.

I'm curious what motivates
your interest in communication?

Laura Spinney: I suppose that
language is both something incredibly

powerful, you can change the way
that other people behave, almost

telepathically with language.

You don't have to operate to
implant an idea in their head,

you can just speak to them.

And at the same time,
it's a blunt instrument.

So I suppose I'm fascinated by that
kind of tension between the power of

language and the sort of bluntness of it.

Matt Abrahams: It's fascinating to me
how there is so much we can accomplish

with communication, and yet there are
so many things that we struggle with

in our communication, and I really
appreciate that you take the time

to reflect on it and write about it.

I first came to know your
work in an article you wrote

about deception detection.

Humans aren't really good at
detecting when other people are lying.

Referring back to that article in your
research for it, what are some things that

we can do to become better lie detectors?

Laura Spinney: Yeah, indeed,
people think that they're good

at detecting other people's lies,
but, but actually they're not.

The point about lying is that
it imposes a greater cognitive

burden than telling the truth.

Because you have to make sure
that your story is straight and

all the bits of it fit together.

And if you've invented it,
that's quite hard to do.

So if you wanna catch someone out in a
lie, some of the tips or recommendations

are to try and sort of get 'em to tell
the story backwards, or say that you've

maybe got a witness who saw this part
of the story, and could you just maybe

check that the facts are aligned, and
make them a little nervous, disrupt them

a bit and try and catch them out that way.

Or perhaps something like draw the
scene they're describing because they've

gotta make all the ingredients cohere.

And if it's invented, that's tougher.

Or something like if they're expressing
a powerful point of view, maybe get them

to play devil's advocate and pretend
to support the other one, because that

becomes harder if they're lying about it.

So yeah, some of the tricks to
leverage that extra cognitive

burden that a lie poses.

Matt Abrahams: So when we're being
deceptive, it takes a lot of cognitive

effort to do so, and anything that
puts a little added burden, like

telling the story backwards or having
somebody draw things out, really

forces them to overload themselves.

And often the detection
can become more visible.

And the big takeaway from that work,
and your reporting of it, is we're

just not very good at detecting lies.

Laura Spinney: And that we think we are.

Matt Abrahams: That's right.

And we think we are.

And that can get us into lots of trouble.

So I think the big point there is
remember that you might not be as good

at detecting the lies as you think.

I found your article on the history
of storytelling just fascinating.

Where stories come from,
why we tell those stories.

Would you mind summarizing your
central thesis of that article and

then explain why storytelling is so
important and essential to being human?

Laura Spinney: Central thesis is a little
difficult to address except for there's

this new mindset about how to approach it.

There's still quite a lot of
theories about why we tell stories.

If I was to summarize a few of them,
there would be like, what one main

school of thought is that it's about
passing on really important ecological

information that's essential to survival.

Another would be that storytelling
has a very social function.

When people are sitting around being
told a story, they're listening closely

to this story, their neurons are firing
in a sort of synchronized way with

each other, and that inspires kind of
feelings of groupiness and there's a

sort of social cohesion effect of that.

So there are lots of theories, and
I don't think we were yet at the

point of choosing between them.

And any way they might all be valid.

But the thing also that I think is
fascinating about this new approach

is that it's showing how very stable
some stories can be over time.

And so there's the evidence that some
stories are as old as the first migrations

out of Africa, sixty thousand years.

Some stories that we still tell today were
brought in by the first speakers of the

Indo-European language, the subject of
my most recent book, when they came into

Europe, about five thousand years ago.

Pretty old anyway.

And by the way, pre-writing, importantly.

Some stories in Australia, date
to the end of the last ice age,

because they talk about the rising
of the seas and they describe

land that is now covered by water.

So some of these things that are coming
out of this comparative approach,

this possibility of storing stories
and comparing them across space and

time are truly mind boggling, I think.

And so the point of the article
again was just to talk about some

of the ideas that are coming out.

Not to say that we've got a fully
front loaded theory of storytelling

yet, we're working on it.

Matt Abrahams: I think as we both
agreed, this is really fascinating,

that there are stories that have been
told with relatively high fidelity.

That is, they have maintained their
essential ideas for a long, long time,

millennia, and at the same time that
there are some differences around

how stories are told across cultures.

But fundamentally, everybody tells stories
and there's some theories about it.

As you said, one is
biological and evolutionary.

Where is the food, where do we go?

And then there's the cohesive
nature where we actually connect

better, share empathy through story.

And as you mentioned, this all happened
way before we had written word.

And it's fundamental.

Laura Spinney: You're absolutely right.

And so some of the findings about how
very stable certain types of stories

are, are feeding into this other
idea about what stories do for us.

So like why are those particular
stories stable over so long?

Whereas these ones change faster.

Matt Abrahams: Given that you've spent
some time studying stories and you do

very well writing your own stories,
what do you find makes for a good story?

Are there certain key elements or
aspects that make for good story?

Laura Spinney: Definitely.

This kind of comparative approach
that I referred to is allowing

people to draw out the kind of more
universal structures from stories

that do repeat across space and time.

They have this capacity to revive
what eyewitnesses might have

seen, put us in the places as
if we are there at the action.

And, and some of the ways that,
some of the tricks they have

to do that are, for example, to
violate some of our expectations.

So if you want to make people's hearts
beat a bit faster and them to remember

things, you need to give them a little
bit of a shock, a tiny little surprise,

not too much because then they'll shut
down, but a little bit of a violation.

That's one theory, for example,
about why we love things like ghost

stories, because ghosts are things
that most people don't encounter.

They violate our expectations of
what you might meet in your daily

round, but also a story intrigues and
obviously a good story entertains.

So one of the important theses for why
we tell stories is that they have this

appeal that draws us into the situation
in the first place where we're gonna

sit down with other people and listen.

They have to be entertaining.

And the hero's journey is one
very common example of that.

That would be Luke Skywalker, Spider-Man,
Harry Potter, you know, the genial

protagonist who comes up against a
major obstacle, clears the obstacle.

And this triumph over adversity
inspires feelings of joy

and empathy in the listener.

So it's a fairly basic plot line that
has endured through the ages and is

apparently highly entertaining to us.

Matt Abrahams: So it sounds like a
few things that really make for a good

story, and that is that there is some
kind of violation of expectations.

Our brains are certainly wired for
things that are novel, and so a story

can violate expectations and draw us in.

I heard you, although not name it,
but really describe it, this notion

of building curiosity pulls us in.

The entertainment value and the empathy.

So if you're trying to craft a story that
can really draw people in, I think using

any or all of those novelty, curiosity,
entertaining empathy, can really help.

And you shared with us one
of the most predominant

structures, the hero's journey.

Story falls into structures and one
way is to use the hero's journey.

There are others.

And I think that's really important
because if we're going to try to leverage

storytelling for whatever goal we're
trying to have, thinking about what we

can do to make it relevant, engaging,
interesting, is really important and

I appreciate you delineating those.

Laura Spinney: So you could
think about sort of entertaining

vehicle into which you load your
ecologically important information,

the message you wanna get across.

Matt Abrahams: Absolutely.

And that was very helpful for our species
for a long time, and still probably today.

I'd like to turn our attention to your
latest book, Proto, which dives deep

into language and looks at the origins
of the Proto-Indo-European language.

That's a mouthful to say.

Why is studying the origins and
evolution of language important and what

impact can the learnings we have from
that affect how we communicate today?

Laura Spinney: Great question.

I think first of all, in the case of
the language family that I'm talking

about, Indo-European, the world's
largest language family today,

spoken by nearly half of humanity,
that family was born before writing.

And studying it does a
number of things for us.

First of all, it reveals the very deep
connections, cultural, psychological,

between groups of people who we would
not necessarily connect on those levels.

So the Ind0-European language
family is so-called because even

in the ancient world, it was spoken
from Ireland in the West to the

Indian subcontinent in the East.

In fact, actually further afield
because there was one branch of it

that was spoken in what is now China.

Uh, from 1492, the age of exploration on
it went, moved onto the other continents.

So it's huge.

And yet when you look down into the
deepest layers of these languages

and the stories that people have been
telling in those languages for five

thousand years or more, the same tropes
repeating, words and units of stories,

things we've just been talking about.

And for example, an obvious
example is a Dragon Slayer stories.

Across the Indo-European world
we tell that story, which is

very old, in similar ways with
similar themes and similar words.

There are levels in which we are
really connected, but there's another

really important function that
this kind of research does for us.

I said that the family predates
writing, but language in a way is an

archive of its own journey because
languages are ceaselessly changing.

They are, language is, and this is
how we started the conversation, it's

considered humanity's oldest tool.

And so in order for it to be a
useful tool, it has to adapt.

It's the way that we function in
our environment's, one of the ways

that we adapt to our environment.

And so it's constantly changing.

And if you can extrapolate back and
understand ancestry of our modern

languages and how they've evolved over
time, and much of that information is

locked into them, then you can tell a
lot about what was happening in the past,

even before historical records began.

Matt Abrahams: Language as a tool, not
just to communicate what we need to

communicate, as we do through stories, but
language as a tool to better understand

humans and our evolution is really cool.

I want to take a step back because
maybe some of our listeners

aren't familiar with this, but you
talked about language families.

Can you just give an overview of
what that means and perhaps some

examples of other language families?

Laura Spinney: Yes.

Okay.

Just to give the kind of basic concept,
a language is spoken in a place.

The people who speak it, their
population, imagine grows.

They spread out over space.

The language divides into dialects.

We see that happening all the time.

And then if the circumstances allow
or promote, those dialects can

become languages in their own right.

Become even more separated.

And so you can imagine one ancestral
language essentially diverging through

branches to become many generations
and a large number of offspring.

That's what we think happened from, for
example, the Indo-European family, that

it was originally just a small cluster
of dialects spoken by a group of people.

Probably on the Eurasian Steppe about
five thousand years ago as they moved

out, as their descendants moved out,
their languages diverged with them.

There has to be a caveat there 'cause
it's not exactly like human families or

biological families because languages
can change both vertically by dissent,

but they can also change through
horizontal transmission, through loans,

lending to each other and contact.

So both those mechanisms are very
important in shaping language evolution.

And when you see, for example, in
my book, a family tree of languages,

that's really only part of the story.

It's kind of a simplification of
the truth because in the white space

between the nice crisp branches
are all the effects of contact.

So today it's estimated there are
about a hundred and forty language

families in the world, but most
of us speak the top five of those.

So it's very unevenly distributed.

And the two behemoths, if you like,
are Indo-European and Sino-Tibetan.

The major representative of
Indo-European is English.

The language we are now speaking
in, and the major representative

of Sino-Tibetan is Mandarin.

Mandarin has more native speakers
than English, but Indo-European

as a whole family has more native
speakers than Sino-Tibetan.

So Indo-European is, whether you
measure it by the number of speakers

or geographical spread, today the
largest language family on earth.

Matt Abrahams: Thank you for that
explication, it's very helpful and

I am fascinated by that transmission
horizontally that you talked about.

We see that all the time.

So in English, we use words that,
for example, came from French,

even though that's the same family.

The notion is that that we
co-opt and leverage words.

And what I find fascinating, and I don't
mean to take us on a tangent, is that

in some languages that are words that
we just don't have easily explained

or correlates to in other languages.

So we borrow these concepts.

And I find that really fascinating that
if you have a term for it, you can have

a shared meaning for an experience or an
idea, but if you don't have a term for

it, in some ways we're limited in how we
envision and see what the world is like.

And that to me is a really fascinating
conundrum and really interesting

because it means we have to rely a
lot on our communication skills to

try to build a shared mental model
for whatever it is we're discussing.

Laura Spinney: And by the way, both the
vertical and the horizontal processes

can be really informative about history.

So if I compare what the same word across
a number of Indo-European languages,

I find that it has varied according
to a sort of predictable set of rules.

And so I can say that those languages
are related, they form part of

the same family, but I can also
trace loans through languages and

piece together history that way.

And I'll give you one very concrete
example of where that happened,

fascinatingly, if you ask me.

So the Romani people, who used
to be called, and we don't use

this term anymore because it's
considered pejorative, gypsies.

The word gypsy came from Egypt
because there was a time when

we thought they came from Egypt.

They do not come from Egypt.

They originally came
from the south of India.

And part of the piecing together of
the Romani people's backstory was

done with the help of lone words.

So you could trace their, basically, it
took them a thousand years to get from

India to the eastern fringes of Europe.

They passed through Persia,
what is now mainly Iran.

And there they picked
up some Persian words.

I think donkey was one of them,
uh, honey, pear, as in the fruit.

But they didn't pick up any Arab words
so that we know they went through

Persia before the Muslim conquests.

So in this way you can use loan words
as a sort of way of piecing together,

reconstructing the history of peoples.

Matt Abrahams: So language in essence,
becomes the clues that we use to solve

some of these mysteries about humanity.

How neat that this is one of
the fundamental investigation

stories for being human.

Before we end, I like to ask
three questions of all my guests.

One I create just for you, and the other
two are similar across all of the guests.

So, are you up for answering?

Laura Spinney: Absolutely.

Matt Abrahams: Question number one,
given all the work that you do on a

wide variety of topics, what advice
would you give someone who wishes

to improve their communication?

Laura Spinney: So the biggest
challenge is to make them care.

And I suppose it's pretty
simple a recipe really.

Maybe imagine trying to tell a
story to somebody you know, your

friend in the pub where there are
competing demands on their attention.

There's a TV screen with a football
match on it, or how are you gonna

draw them in and how are you gonna
get the information across to them

and how are you gonna make them care,
again, the most important thing.

'Cause you have to engage their attention
before you can do anything else.

Matt Abrahams: Very well said.

Yeah, it's all about attention and as
you suggested, making it really relevant

and salient is the place to start.

But you do that, not by thinking about
what it means for me, the writer, the

communicator, but what does it mean for
the people that I'm communicating to?

And thank you for that.

Question number two, I'll be
curious to get your answer to this.

Who is a communicator
that you admire and why?

Laura Spinney: People I admire
are people who raise us up.

Give us a sense of grandeur, give us
a sense of why this matters, how this

story connects you to the bigger why.

Why it's important to push against the
big, enormous, black enveloping pillow

of uncertainty in which we all live.

I'm going to name a French journalist
who I admire very greatly, although she's

not a science writer at all, Florence
Aubenas, who is a very important reporter

at the newspaper, and she's written
some amazing books where very often

she goes underground for a long period
of time and describes her experiences.

Matt Abrahams: It sounds to me what's
important to you, and communicators

that you admire, is that they can
engage, they can intrigue, they can

entertain, and they can connect to
something bigger, and that's important.

So final question for you.

What are the first three ingredients that
go into a successful communication recipe?

Laura Spinney: I think I said it
in other answers to others of your

questions, but grab the attention,
draw people in intrigue, lift.

Give them the sense of that grandeur
that, as I think of it, pushing against

that great big pillow of uncertainty
that surrounds us, and resolve whatever

question you're asking, even if you're
not giving the answer to the question

so much as explaining why it's important
and why the question needs to be asked.

So it goes back to the beginning of what
we were talking about, the vehicle of

entertainment with the message inside it.

But you have to also make sure your
vehicle gets to the destination.

Matt Abrahams: I like the analogy
there to help us understand, but

this notion of attention, lift, and
resolution I think are really powerful.

And we've heard some of that before,
but this notion of lift, bringing

people to something bigger, helping them
understand the uncertainties of their

worlds, I think is really powerful.

Laura, you've done a fantastic job
of introducing us to some really

insightful and interesting ideas.

The notion and power of language in our
lives and understanding its evolution

is really helpful, and I appreciate
you taking the time to make us all

better communicators, and please keep
writing the interesting, intriguing,

and uplifting articles that you do.

Thank you.

Laura Spinney: Thank you very
much for some great questions

and a great conversation.

Matt Abrahams: Thank you for
joining us for another episode of

Think Fast Talk Smart, the podcast.

To learn more about storytelling, please
listen to episode 168 with Matthew Dicks,

and dive deeper into language by listening
to episode 91 with Valerie Fridland.

This episode was produced by Katherine
Reed, Ryan Campos, and me, Matt Abrahams.

Our music is from Floyd Wonder.

With thanks to Podium Podcast Company.

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