WEBVTT 00:00:02.490 --> 00:00:06.570 Matt Abrahams: Language sits at the very heart of our ability to connect, 00:00:06.870 --> 00:00:09.000 to innovate, and to collaborate. 00:00:09.330 --> 00:00:13.320 If we are to get better at our communication, we first have to start by 00:00:13.320 --> 00:00:16.440 understanding language and its origins. 00:00:16.800 --> 00:00:20.400 My name is Matt Abrahams, and I teach strategic communication at 00:00:20.400 --> 00:00:22.410 Stanford Graduate School of Business. 00:00:22.740 --> 00:00:26.490 Welcome to Think Fast Talk Smart, the podcast. 00:00:28.154 --> 00:00:30.255 Today I look forward to speaking with Laura Spinney. 00:00:30.555 --> 00:00:32.295 Laura's an author and journalist. 00:00:32.384 --> 00:00:36.285 Her writing appears in many locations including The Atlantic, National 00:00:36.285 --> 00:00:39.225 Geographic, Nature, and New Scientist. 00:00:39.464 --> 00:00:43.754 Laura is the author of Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It 00:00:43.754 --> 00:00:47.545 Changed the World, and her latest book is entitled, Proto: How One 00:00:47.545 --> 00:00:49.435 Ancient Language Went Global. 00:00:49.735 --> 00:00:50.545 Welcome, Laura. 00:00:50.575 --> 00:00:52.585 I'm really excited for our conversation. 00:00:53.004 --> 00:00:53.995 Laura Spinney: I'm delighted to be here. 00:00:53.995 --> 00:00:55.165 Thank you for the invitation. 00:00:55.465 --> 00:00:56.035 Matt Abrahams: Excellent. 00:00:56.035 --> 00:00:56.875 Shall we get started? 00:00:57.175 --> 00:00:57.715 Laura Spinney: Yes. 00:00:57.985 --> 00:00:58.555 Matt Abrahams: Alright. 00:00:58.555 --> 00:01:01.675 You have written on a wide range of topics, many which 00:01:01.675 --> 00:01:03.235 center around communication. 00:01:03.474 --> 00:01:06.535 I'm curious what motivates your interest in communication? 00:01:06.929 --> 00:01:11.369 Laura Spinney: I suppose that language is both something incredibly 00:01:11.369 --> 00:01:15.030 powerful, you can change the way that other people behave, almost 00:01:15.030 --> 00:01:16.559 telepathically with language. 00:01:16.649 --> 00:01:19.169 You don't have to operate to implant an idea in their head, 00:01:19.169 --> 00:01:20.130 you can just speak to them. 00:01:20.309 --> 00:01:22.440 And at the same time, it's a blunt instrument. 00:01:22.500 --> 00:01:25.740 So I suppose I'm fascinated by that kind of tension between the power of 00:01:25.740 --> 00:01:27.690 language and the sort of bluntness of it. 00:01:28.035 --> 00:01:31.545 Matt Abrahams: It's fascinating to me how there is so much we can accomplish 00:01:31.545 --> 00:01:34.995 with communication, and yet there are so many things that we struggle with 00:01:35.085 --> 00:01:38.385 in our communication, and I really appreciate that you take the time 00:01:38.385 --> 00:01:39.915 to reflect on it and write about it. 00:01:40.275 --> 00:01:42.705 I first came to know your work in an article you wrote 00:01:42.705 --> 00:01:44.745 about deception detection. 00:01:45.100 --> 00:01:48.429 Humans aren't really good at detecting when other people are lying. 00:01:48.670 --> 00:01:51.759 Referring back to that article in your research for it, what are some things that 00:01:51.759 --> 00:01:54.490 we can do to become better lie detectors? 00:01:54.640 --> 00:01:57.340 Laura Spinney: Yeah, indeed, people think that they're good 00:01:57.340 --> 00:02:00.160 at detecting other people's lies, but, but actually they're not. 00:02:00.220 --> 00:02:03.100 The point about lying is that it imposes a greater cognitive 00:02:03.100 --> 00:02:04.595 burden than telling the truth. 00:02:04.714 --> 00:02:06.815 Because you have to make sure that your story is straight and 00:02:06.815 --> 00:02:08.074 all the bits of it fit together. 00:02:08.164 --> 00:02:10.294 And if you've invented it, that's quite hard to do. 00:02:10.294 --> 00:02:14.855 So if you wanna catch someone out in a lie, some of the tips or recommendations 00:02:14.855 --> 00:02:19.415 are to try and sort of get 'em to tell the story backwards, or say that you've 00:02:19.415 --> 00:02:22.730 maybe got a witness who saw this part of the story, and could you just maybe 00:02:22.730 --> 00:02:26.300 check that the facts are aligned, and make them a little nervous, disrupt them 00:02:26.300 --> 00:02:28.730 a bit and try and catch them out that way. 00:02:28.970 --> 00:02:32.750 Or perhaps something like draw the scene they're describing because they've 00:02:32.750 --> 00:02:34.610 gotta make all the ingredients cohere. 00:02:34.700 --> 00:02:36.140 And if it's invented, that's tougher. 00:02:36.290 --> 00:02:40.850 Or something like if they're expressing a powerful point of view, maybe get them 00:02:40.850 --> 00:02:44.480 to play devil's advocate and pretend to support the other one, because that 00:02:44.480 --> 00:02:46.760 becomes harder if they're lying about it. 00:02:46.880 --> 00:02:50.475 So yeah, some of the tricks to leverage that extra cognitive 00:02:50.475 --> 00:02:51.945 burden that a lie poses. 00:02:52.125 --> 00:02:55.364 Matt Abrahams: So when we're being deceptive, it takes a lot of cognitive 00:02:55.364 --> 00:02:59.325 effort to do so, and anything that puts a little added burden, like 00:02:59.325 --> 00:03:04.334 telling the story backwards or having somebody draw things out, really 00:03:04.394 --> 00:03:07.394 forces them to overload themselves. 00:03:07.394 --> 00:03:10.635 And often the detection can become more visible. 00:03:10.725 --> 00:03:15.135 And the big takeaway from that work, and your reporting of it, is we're 00:03:15.135 --> 00:03:17.685 just not very good at detecting lies. 00:03:18.005 --> 00:03:19.265 Laura Spinney: And that we think we are. 00:03:19.415 --> 00:03:19.925 Matt Abrahams: That's right. 00:03:19.925 --> 00:03:21.095 And we think we are. 00:03:21.095 --> 00:03:22.865 And that can get us into lots of trouble. 00:03:22.865 --> 00:03:26.135 So I think the big point there is remember that you might not be as good 00:03:26.135 --> 00:03:27.995 at detecting the lies as you think. 00:03:28.265 --> 00:03:32.375 I found your article on the history of storytelling just fascinating. 00:03:32.375 --> 00:03:34.685 Where stories come from, why we tell those stories. 00:03:34.835 --> 00:03:38.675 Would you mind summarizing your central thesis of that article and 00:03:38.675 --> 00:03:43.055 then explain why storytelling is so important and essential to being human? 00:03:43.695 --> 00:03:47.115 Laura Spinney: Central thesis is a little difficult to address except for there's 00:03:47.115 --> 00:03:49.005 this new mindset about how to approach it. 00:03:49.005 --> 00:03:51.645 There's still quite a lot of theories about why we tell stories. 00:03:51.645 --> 00:03:55.005 If I was to summarize a few of them, there would be like, what one main 00:03:55.005 --> 00:03:58.150 school of thought is that it's about passing on really important ecological 00:03:58.150 --> 00:04:00.704 information that's essential to survival. 00:04:00.765 --> 00:04:04.394 Another would be that storytelling has a very social function. 00:04:04.545 --> 00:04:08.234 When people are sitting around being told a story, they're listening closely 00:04:08.234 --> 00:04:11.595 to this story, their neurons are firing in a sort of synchronized way with 00:04:11.595 --> 00:04:14.795 each other, and that inspires kind of feelings of groupiness and there's a 00:04:14.795 --> 00:04:17.385 sort of social cohesion effect of that. 00:04:17.534 --> 00:04:19.815 So there are lots of theories, and I don't think we were yet at the 00:04:19.815 --> 00:04:21.075 point of choosing between them. 00:04:21.075 --> 00:04:23.145 And any way they might all be valid. 00:04:23.205 --> 00:04:25.935 But the thing also that I think is fascinating about this new approach 00:04:25.935 --> 00:04:30.539 is that it's showing how very stable some stories can be over time. 00:04:30.630 --> 00:04:35.340 And so there's the evidence that some stories are as old as the first migrations 00:04:35.340 --> 00:04:37.229 out of Africa, sixty thousand years. 00:04:37.469 --> 00:04:42.030 Some stories that we still tell today were brought in by the first speakers of the 00:04:42.030 --> 00:04:45.659 Indo-European language, the subject of my most recent book, when they came into 00:04:45.659 --> 00:04:47.439 Europe, about five thousand years ago. 00:04:47.640 --> 00:04:48.510 Pretty old anyway. 00:04:48.555 --> 00:04:50.775 And by the way, pre-writing, importantly. 00:04:51.135 --> 00:04:54.135 Some stories in Australia, date to the end of the last ice age, 00:04:54.135 --> 00:04:56.745 because they talk about the rising of the seas and they describe 00:04:56.745 --> 00:04:58.275 land that is now covered by water. 00:04:58.395 --> 00:05:02.265 So some of these things that are coming out of this comparative approach, 00:05:02.265 --> 00:05:05.655 this possibility of storing stories and comparing them across space and 00:05:05.655 --> 00:05:08.575 time are truly mind boggling, I think. 00:05:08.575 --> 00:05:12.565 And so the point of the article again was just to talk about some 00:05:12.565 --> 00:05:13.855 of the ideas that are coming out. 00:05:14.005 --> 00:05:17.815 Not to say that we've got a fully front loaded theory of storytelling 00:05:17.815 --> 00:05:18.895 yet, we're working on it. 00:05:19.255 --> 00:05:22.344 Matt Abrahams: I think as we both agreed, this is really fascinating, 00:05:22.344 --> 00:05:26.844 that there are stories that have been told with relatively high fidelity. 00:05:26.844 --> 00:05:31.195 That is, they have maintained their essential ideas for a long, long time, 00:05:31.195 --> 00:05:36.415 millennia, and at the same time that there are some differences around 00:05:36.415 --> 00:05:38.665 how stories are told across cultures. 00:05:38.665 --> 00:05:43.405 But fundamentally, everybody tells stories and there's some theories about it. 00:05:43.405 --> 00:05:46.585 As you said, one is biological and evolutionary. 00:05:46.585 --> 00:05:49.395 Where is the food, where do we go? 00:05:49.784 --> 00:05:53.385 And then there's the cohesive nature where we actually connect 00:05:53.445 --> 00:05:55.635 better, share empathy through story. 00:05:55.635 --> 00:05:59.414 And as you mentioned, this all happened way before we had written word. 00:05:59.534 --> 00:06:00.854 And it's fundamental. 00:06:01.065 --> 00:06:01.965 Laura Spinney: You're absolutely right. 00:06:01.965 --> 00:06:06.224 And so some of the findings about how very stable certain types of stories 00:06:06.224 --> 00:06:09.375 are, are feeding into this other idea about what stories do for us. 00:06:09.375 --> 00:06:12.914 So like why are those particular stories stable over so long? 00:06:12.914 --> 00:06:14.655 Whereas these ones change faster. 00:06:15.270 --> 00:06:17.909 Matt Abrahams: Given that you've spent some time studying stories and you do 00:06:17.909 --> 00:06:22.620 very well writing your own stories, what do you find makes for a good story? 00:06:22.620 --> 00:06:26.250 Are there certain key elements or aspects that make for good story? 00:06:26.550 --> 00:06:27.330 Laura Spinney: Definitely. 00:06:27.330 --> 00:06:30.300 This kind of comparative approach that I referred to is allowing 00:06:30.300 --> 00:06:34.305 people to draw out the kind of more universal structures from stories 00:06:34.680 --> 00:06:36.360 that do repeat across space and time. 00:06:36.539 --> 00:06:40.825 They have this capacity to revive what eyewitnesses might have 00:06:40.825 --> 00:06:43.855 seen, put us in the places as if we are there at the action. 00:06:43.855 --> 00:06:46.345 And, and some of the ways that, some of the tricks they have 00:06:46.345 --> 00:06:50.605 to do that are, for example, to violate some of our expectations. 00:06:50.605 --> 00:06:54.745 So if you want to make people's hearts beat a bit faster and them to remember 00:06:54.745 --> 00:06:58.585 things, you need to give them a little bit of a shock, a tiny little surprise, 00:06:58.585 --> 00:07:02.125 not too much because then they'll shut down, but a little bit of a violation. 00:07:02.225 --> 00:07:05.615 That's one theory, for example, about why we love things like ghost 00:07:05.615 --> 00:07:09.155 stories, because ghosts are things that most people don't encounter. 00:07:09.335 --> 00:07:12.335 They violate our expectations of what you might meet in your daily 00:07:12.335 --> 00:07:17.915 round, but also a story intrigues and obviously a good story entertains. 00:07:17.925 --> 00:07:23.145 So one of the important theses for why we tell stories is that they have this 00:07:23.235 --> 00:07:26.715 appeal that draws us into the situation in the first place where we're gonna 00:07:26.715 --> 00:07:28.245 sit down with other people and listen. 00:07:28.485 --> 00:07:29.685 They have to be entertaining. 00:07:29.685 --> 00:07:33.615 And the hero's journey is one very common example of that. 00:07:33.645 --> 00:07:38.865 That would be Luke Skywalker, Spider-Man, Harry Potter, you know, the genial 00:07:38.955 --> 00:07:43.755 protagonist who comes up against a major obstacle, clears the obstacle. 00:07:43.965 --> 00:07:48.300 And this triumph over adversity inspires feelings of joy 00:07:48.359 --> 00:07:49.950 and empathy in the listener. 00:07:50.190 --> 00:07:55.620 So it's a fairly basic plot line that has endured through the ages and is 00:07:55.919 --> 00:07:57.599 apparently highly entertaining to us. 00:07:57.960 --> 00:08:01.920 Matt Abrahams: So it sounds like a few things that really make for a good 00:08:01.920 --> 00:08:06.630 story, and that is that there is some kind of violation of expectations. 00:08:06.630 --> 00:08:11.340 Our brains are certainly wired for things that are novel, and so a story 00:08:11.340 --> 00:08:13.530 can violate expectations and draw us in. 00:08:13.800 --> 00:08:17.370 I heard you, although not name it, but really describe it, this notion 00:08:17.370 --> 00:08:19.920 of building curiosity pulls us in. 00:08:20.040 --> 00:08:22.860 The entertainment value and the empathy. 00:08:23.044 --> 00:08:27.335 So if you're trying to craft a story that can really draw people in, I think using 00:08:27.335 --> 00:08:32.314 any or all of those novelty, curiosity, entertaining empathy, can really help. 00:08:32.314 --> 00:08:34.745 And you shared with us one of the most predominant 00:08:35.015 --> 00:08:37.085 structures, the hero's journey. 00:08:37.265 --> 00:08:41.789 Story falls into structures and one way is to use the hero's journey. 00:08:41.789 --> 00:08:42.510 There are others. 00:08:42.780 --> 00:08:45.780 And I think that's really important because if we're going to try to leverage 00:08:45.780 --> 00:08:49.740 storytelling for whatever goal we're trying to have, thinking about what we 00:08:49.740 --> 00:08:54.390 can do to make it relevant, engaging, interesting, is really important and 00:08:54.390 --> 00:08:56.160 I appreciate you delineating those. 00:08:56.375 --> 00:08:58.475 Laura Spinney: So you could think about sort of entertaining 00:08:58.535 --> 00:09:02.885 vehicle into which you load your ecologically important information, 00:09:02.885 --> 00:09:04.265 the message you wanna get across. 00:09:04.355 --> 00:09:05.105 Matt Abrahams: Absolutely. 00:09:05.105 --> 00:09:09.845 And that was very helpful for our species for a long time, and still probably today. 00:09:10.115 --> 00:09:14.135 I'd like to turn our attention to your latest book, Proto, which dives deep 00:09:14.135 --> 00:09:18.815 into language and looks at the origins of the Proto-Indo-European language. 00:09:18.815 --> 00:09:19.925 That's a mouthful to say. 00:09:20.555 --> 00:09:25.115 Why is studying the origins and evolution of language important and what 00:09:25.115 --> 00:09:28.745 impact can the learnings we have from that affect how we communicate today? 00:09:29.850 --> 00:09:30.600 Laura Spinney: Great question. 00:09:30.630 --> 00:09:34.170 I think first of all, in the case of the language family that I'm talking 00:09:34.170 --> 00:09:36.990 about, Indo-European, the world's largest language family today, 00:09:36.990 --> 00:09:41.310 spoken by nearly half of humanity, that family was born before writing. 00:09:41.580 --> 00:09:44.970 And studying it does a number of things for us. 00:09:44.970 --> 00:09:51.090 First of all, it reveals the very deep connections, cultural, psychological, 00:09:51.090 --> 00:09:56.564 between groups of people who we would not necessarily connect on those levels. 00:09:56.564 --> 00:09:59.745 So the Ind0-European language family is so-called because even 00:09:59.745 --> 00:10:03.375 in the ancient world, it was spoken from Ireland in the West to the 00:10:03.375 --> 00:10:04.755 Indian subcontinent in the East. 00:10:04.755 --> 00:10:07.754 In fact, actually further afield because there was one branch of it 00:10:07.754 --> 00:10:09.254 that was spoken in what is now China. 00:10:09.555 --> 00:10:14.295 Uh, from 1492, the age of exploration on it went, moved onto the other continents. 00:10:14.295 --> 00:10:15.344 So it's huge. 00:10:15.675 --> 00:10:19.185 And yet when you look down into the deepest layers of these languages 00:10:19.185 --> 00:10:22.120 and the stories that people have been telling in those languages for five 00:10:22.120 --> 00:10:27.660 thousand years or more, the same tropes repeating, words and units of stories, 00:10:27.660 --> 00:10:29.040 things we've just been talking about. 00:10:29.280 --> 00:10:32.859 And for example, an obvious example is a Dragon Slayer stories. 00:10:33.209 --> 00:10:36.209 Across the Indo-European world we tell that story, which is 00:10:36.209 --> 00:10:40.619 very old, in similar ways with similar themes and similar words. 00:10:40.800 --> 00:10:43.469 There are levels in which we are really connected, but there's another 00:10:43.469 --> 00:10:46.560 really important function that this kind of research does for us. 00:10:46.845 --> 00:10:51.045 I said that the family predates writing, but language in a way is an 00:10:51.045 --> 00:10:54.675 archive of its own journey because languages are ceaselessly changing. 00:10:54.885 --> 00:10:58.545 They are, language is, and this is how we started the conversation, it's 00:10:58.545 --> 00:11:00.405 considered humanity's oldest tool. 00:11:00.615 --> 00:11:03.675 And so in order for it to be a useful tool, it has to adapt. 00:11:03.765 --> 00:11:06.825 It's the way that we function in our environment's, one of the ways 00:11:06.825 --> 00:11:08.145 that we adapt to our environment. 00:11:08.355 --> 00:11:09.795 And so it's constantly changing. 00:11:10.095 --> 00:11:14.439 And if you can extrapolate back and understand ancestry of our modern 00:11:14.439 --> 00:11:18.100 languages and how they've evolved over time, and much of that information is 00:11:18.100 --> 00:11:22.600 locked into them, then you can tell a lot about what was happening in the past, 00:11:22.605 --> 00:11:24.665 even before historical records began. 00:11:25.305 --> 00:11:29.925 Matt Abrahams: Language as a tool, not just to communicate what we need to 00:11:29.925 --> 00:11:34.905 communicate, as we do through stories, but language as a tool to better understand 00:11:34.905 --> 00:11:37.545 humans and our evolution is really cool. 00:11:37.965 --> 00:11:41.055 I want to take a step back because maybe some of our listeners 00:11:41.055 --> 00:11:43.725 aren't familiar with this, but you talked about language families. 00:11:43.725 --> 00:11:47.865 Can you just give an overview of what that means and perhaps some 00:11:47.865 --> 00:11:50.205 examples of other language families? 00:11:50.235 --> 00:11:50.535 Laura Spinney: Yes. 00:11:50.635 --> 00:11:51.235 Okay. 00:11:51.265 --> 00:11:55.375 Just to give the kind of basic concept, a language is spoken in a place. 00:11:55.375 --> 00:11:59.455 The people who speak it, their population, imagine grows. 00:11:59.605 --> 00:12:01.225 They spread out over space. 00:12:01.405 --> 00:12:03.205 The language divides into dialects. 00:12:03.205 --> 00:12:04.735 We see that happening all the time. 00:12:04.795 --> 00:12:09.335 And then if the circumstances allow or promote, those dialects can 00:12:09.335 --> 00:12:11.165 become languages in their own right. 00:12:11.225 --> 00:12:12.725 Become even more separated. 00:12:12.965 --> 00:12:17.435 And so you can imagine one ancestral language essentially diverging through 00:12:17.435 --> 00:12:21.275 branches to become many generations and a large number of offspring. 00:12:21.335 --> 00:12:24.845 That's what we think happened from, for example, the Indo-European family, that 00:12:24.845 --> 00:12:29.255 it was originally just a small cluster of dialects spoken by a group of people. 00:12:29.405 --> 00:12:32.765 Probably on the Eurasian Steppe about five thousand years ago as they moved 00:12:32.765 --> 00:12:36.064 out, as their descendants moved out, their languages diverged with them. 00:12:36.305 --> 00:12:39.725 There has to be a caveat there 'cause it's not exactly like human families or 00:12:39.725 --> 00:12:43.745 biological families because languages can change both vertically by dissent, 00:12:43.745 --> 00:12:47.045 but they can also change through horizontal transmission, through loans, 00:12:47.074 --> 00:12:48.814 lending to each other and contact. 00:12:49.025 --> 00:12:52.875 So both those mechanisms are very important in shaping language evolution. 00:12:53.285 --> 00:12:57.770 And when you see, for example, in my book, a family tree of languages, 00:12:57.950 --> 00:12:59.360 that's really only part of the story. 00:12:59.360 --> 00:13:02.420 It's kind of a simplification of the truth because in the white space 00:13:02.540 --> 00:13:05.390 between the nice crisp branches are all the effects of contact. 00:13:05.870 --> 00:13:09.230 So today it's estimated there are about a hundred and forty language 00:13:09.230 --> 00:13:12.410 families in the world, but most of us speak the top five of those. 00:13:12.410 --> 00:13:14.570 So it's very unevenly distributed. 00:13:14.930 --> 00:13:19.110 And the two behemoths, if you like, are Indo-European and Sino-Tibetan. 00:13:19.130 --> 00:13:21.350 The major representative of Indo-European is English. 00:13:21.350 --> 00:13:23.990 The language we are now speaking in, and the major representative 00:13:23.990 --> 00:13:26.030 of Sino-Tibetan is Mandarin. 00:13:26.360 --> 00:13:30.140 Mandarin has more native speakers than English, but Indo-European 00:13:30.140 --> 00:13:32.820 as a whole family has more native speakers than Sino-Tibetan. 00:13:32.840 --> 00:13:35.450 So Indo-European is, whether you measure it by the number of speakers 00:13:35.450 --> 00:13:38.750 or geographical spread, today the largest language family on earth. 00:13:39.080 --> 00:13:42.390 Matt Abrahams: Thank you for that explication, it's very helpful and 00:13:42.410 --> 00:13:47.115 I am fascinated by that transmission horizontally that you talked about. 00:13:47.115 --> 00:13:48.345 We see that all the time. 00:13:48.345 --> 00:13:51.915 So in English, we use words that, for example, came from French, 00:13:51.915 --> 00:13:53.655 even though that's the same family. 00:13:53.745 --> 00:13:57.105 The notion is that that we co-opt and leverage words. 00:13:57.195 --> 00:14:00.675 And what I find fascinating, and I don't mean to take us on a tangent, is that 00:14:00.675 --> 00:14:05.385 in some languages that are words that we just don't have easily explained 00:14:05.385 --> 00:14:07.725 or correlates to in other languages. 00:14:07.845 --> 00:14:09.645 So we borrow these concepts. 00:14:09.645 --> 00:14:13.575 And I find that really fascinating that if you have a term for it, you can have 00:14:13.575 --> 00:14:18.135 a shared meaning for an experience or an idea, but if you don't have a term for 00:14:18.135 --> 00:14:22.155 it, in some ways we're limited in how we envision and see what the world is like. 00:14:22.155 --> 00:14:25.845 And that to me is a really fascinating conundrum and really interesting 00:14:25.845 --> 00:14:29.025 because it means we have to rely a lot on our communication skills to 00:14:29.025 --> 00:14:32.955 try to build a shared mental model for whatever it is we're discussing. 00:14:33.415 --> 00:14:37.225 Laura Spinney: And by the way, both the vertical and the horizontal processes 00:14:37.225 --> 00:14:39.145 can be really informative about history. 00:14:39.145 --> 00:14:43.465 So if I compare what the same word across a number of Indo-European languages, 00:14:43.465 --> 00:14:47.785 I find that it has varied according to a sort of predictable set of rules. 00:14:47.965 --> 00:14:50.485 And so I can say that those languages are related, they form part of 00:14:50.485 --> 00:14:55.555 the same family, but I can also trace loans through languages and 00:14:55.555 --> 00:14:56.875 piece together history that way. 00:14:57.085 --> 00:14:59.455 And I'll give you one very concrete example of where that happened, 00:14:59.455 --> 00:15:01.015 fascinatingly, if you ask me. 00:15:01.135 --> 00:15:05.015 So the Romani people, who used to be called, and we don't use 00:15:05.015 --> 00:15:07.745 this term anymore because it's considered pejorative, gypsies. 00:15:07.955 --> 00:15:10.415 The word gypsy came from Egypt because there was a time when 00:15:10.415 --> 00:15:11.675 we thought they came from Egypt. 00:15:11.735 --> 00:15:12.845 They do not come from Egypt. 00:15:12.845 --> 00:15:14.885 They originally came from the south of India. 00:15:15.095 --> 00:15:19.565 And part of the piecing together of the Romani people's backstory was 00:15:19.565 --> 00:15:21.575 done with the help of lone words. 00:15:21.725 --> 00:15:25.115 So you could trace their, basically, it took them a thousand years to get from 00:15:25.115 --> 00:15:26.975 India to the eastern fringes of Europe. 00:15:27.065 --> 00:15:30.360 They passed through Persia, what is now mainly Iran. 00:15:30.450 --> 00:15:32.880 And there they picked up some Persian words. 00:15:32.880 --> 00:15:37.440 I think donkey was one of them, uh, honey, pear, as in the fruit. 00:15:37.650 --> 00:15:40.830 But they didn't pick up any Arab words so that we know they went through 00:15:40.830 --> 00:15:43.410 Persia before the Muslim conquests. 00:15:43.620 --> 00:15:48.390 So in this way you can use loan words as a sort of way of piecing together, 00:15:48.390 --> 00:15:50.310 reconstructing the history of peoples. 00:15:50.630 --> 00:15:54.200 Matt Abrahams: So language in essence, becomes the clues that we use to solve 00:15:54.200 --> 00:15:56.420 some of these mysteries about humanity. 00:15:56.870 --> 00:16:00.290 How neat that this is one of the fundamental investigation 00:16:00.290 --> 00:16:01.760 stories for being human. 00:16:03.165 --> 00:16:06.735 Before we end, I like to ask three questions of all my guests. 00:16:06.735 --> 00:16:10.275 One I create just for you, and the other two are similar across all of the guests. 00:16:10.275 --> 00:16:11.445 So, are you up for answering? 00:16:11.625 --> 00:16:12.345 Laura Spinney: Absolutely. 00:16:12.525 --> 00:16:14.835 Matt Abrahams: Question number one, given all the work that you do on a 00:16:14.835 --> 00:16:19.395 wide variety of topics, what advice would you give someone who wishes 00:16:19.395 --> 00:16:21.435 to improve their communication? 00:16:21.735 --> 00:16:24.615 Laura Spinney: So the biggest challenge is to make them care. 00:16:24.795 --> 00:16:27.314 And I suppose it's pretty simple a recipe really. 00:16:27.344 --> 00:16:30.675 Maybe imagine trying to tell a story to somebody you know, your 00:16:30.675 --> 00:16:35.265 friend in the pub where there are competing demands on their attention. 00:16:35.265 --> 00:16:38.505 There's a TV screen with a football match on it, or how are you gonna 00:16:38.505 --> 00:16:41.535 draw them in and how are you gonna get the information across to them 00:16:41.535 --> 00:16:43.905 and how are you gonna make them care, again, the most important thing. 00:16:43.905 --> 00:16:47.025 'Cause you have to engage their attention before you can do anything else. 00:16:47.355 --> 00:16:48.285 Matt Abrahams: Very well said. 00:16:48.315 --> 00:16:52.065 Yeah, it's all about attention and as you suggested, making it really relevant 00:16:52.185 --> 00:16:54.045 and salient is the place to start. 00:16:54.045 --> 00:16:58.035 But you do that, not by thinking about what it means for me, the writer, the 00:16:58.035 --> 00:17:00.915 communicator, but what does it mean for the people that I'm communicating to? 00:17:00.915 --> 00:17:01.725 And thank you for that. 00:17:02.025 --> 00:17:04.515 Question number two, I'll be curious to get your answer to this. 00:17:04.545 --> 00:17:07.435 Who is a communicator that you admire and why? 00:17:07.865 --> 00:17:09.925 Laura Spinney: People I admire are people who raise us up. 00:17:10.014 --> 00:17:14.214 Give us a sense of grandeur, give us a sense of why this matters, how this 00:17:14.214 --> 00:17:15.954 story connects you to the bigger why. 00:17:16.014 --> 00:17:20.244 Why it's important to push against the big, enormous, black enveloping pillow 00:17:20.244 --> 00:17:21.984 of uncertainty in which we all live. 00:17:22.104 --> 00:17:25.824 I'm going to name a French journalist who I admire very greatly, although she's 00:17:25.824 --> 00:17:30.205 not a science writer at all, Florence Aubenas, who is a very important reporter 00:17:30.205 --> 00:17:35.125 at the newspaper, and she's written some amazing books where very often 00:17:35.125 --> 00:17:38.635 she goes underground for a long period of time and describes her experiences. 00:17:38.845 --> 00:17:41.185 Matt Abrahams: It sounds to me what's important to you, and communicators 00:17:41.185 --> 00:17:44.305 that you admire, is that they can engage, they can intrigue, they can 00:17:44.305 --> 00:17:47.605 entertain, and they can connect to something bigger, and that's important. 00:17:47.785 --> 00:17:49.135 So final question for you. 00:17:49.255 --> 00:17:54.265 What are the first three ingredients that go into a successful communication recipe? 00:17:54.905 --> 00:17:57.845 Laura Spinney: I think I said it in other answers to others of your 00:17:57.845 --> 00:18:02.645 questions, but grab the attention, draw people in intrigue, lift. 00:18:03.014 --> 00:18:06.705 Give them the sense of that grandeur that, as I think of it, pushing against 00:18:06.705 --> 00:18:11.084 that great big pillow of uncertainty that surrounds us, and resolve whatever 00:18:11.084 --> 00:18:14.445 question you're asking, even if you're not giving the answer to the question 00:18:14.445 --> 00:18:19.845 so much as explaining why it's important and why the question needs to be asked. 00:18:19.875 --> 00:18:22.814 So it goes back to the beginning of what we were talking about, the vehicle of 00:18:22.814 --> 00:18:24.885 entertainment with the message inside it. 00:18:25.095 --> 00:18:28.034 But you have to also make sure your vehicle gets to the destination. 00:18:28.545 --> 00:18:31.065 Matt Abrahams: I like the analogy there to help us understand, but 00:18:31.065 --> 00:18:36.105 this notion of attention, lift, and resolution I think are really powerful. 00:18:36.105 --> 00:18:39.225 And we've heard some of that before, but this notion of lift, bringing 00:18:39.225 --> 00:18:42.825 people to something bigger, helping them understand the uncertainties of their 00:18:42.825 --> 00:18:44.505 worlds, I think is really powerful. 00:18:45.135 --> 00:18:49.665 Laura, you've done a fantastic job of introducing us to some really 00:18:49.755 --> 00:18:51.885 insightful and interesting ideas. 00:18:52.035 --> 00:18:56.715 The notion and power of language in our lives and understanding its evolution 00:18:56.805 --> 00:19:00.405 is really helpful, and I appreciate you taking the time to make us all 00:19:00.405 --> 00:19:04.155 better communicators, and please keep writing the interesting, intriguing, 00:19:04.155 --> 00:19:05.715 and uplifting articles that you do. 00:19:05.955 --> 00:19:06.435 Thank you. 00:19:06.735 --> 00:19:08.355 Laura Spinney: Thank you very much for some great questions 00:19:08.355 --> 00:19:09.080 and a great conversation. 00:19:11.985 --> 00:19:14.115 Matt Abrahams: Thank you for joining us for another episode of 00:19:14.115 --> 00:19:16.635 Think Fast Talk Smart, the podcast. 00:19:16.845 --> 00:19:21.584 To learn more about storytelling, please listen to episode 168 with Matthew Dicks, 00:19:21.705 --> 00:19:26.075 and dive deeper into language by listening to episode 91 with Valerie Fridland. 00:19:26.415 --> 00:19:31.784 This episode was produced by Katherine Reed, Ryan Campos, and me, Matt Abrahams. 00:19:32.054 --> 00:19:33.705 Our music is from Floyd Wonder. 00:19:34.034 --> 00:19:36.105 With thanks to Podium Podcast Company. 00:19:36.495 --> 00:19:39.825 Please find us on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. 00:19:39.975 --> 00:19:42.225 Be sure to subscribe and rate us. 00:19:42.495 --> 00:19:45.075 Also follow us on LinkedIn and Instagram. 00:19:45.165 --> 00:19:49.425 And check out fastersmarter.io for deep dive videos, English language 00:19:49.425 --> 00:19:51.645 learning content, and our newsletters. 00:19:51.855 --> 00:19:55.455 Please consider our premium offering for extended Deep Thinks episodes, 00:19:55.784 --> 00:20:01.715 Ask Matt Anythings, and much more at fastersmarter.io/premium.