32. PRO CONVERSATION

In one of his Clear and Vivid podcast sessions on communication, Alan Alda spoke with Sherry Turkle. She has a doctorate from Harvard University and is a professor at MIT. Her New York Times best seller, Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age, focuses on the importance of conversation in digital cultures. What follows are excerpts from her conversation with Alda.

Alan: “One of the things that I learned talking with scientists on the television show, Scientific American Frontiers, was this idea of the default state of the brain. Apparently, boredom is very useful because we tend to go into the default state…. Creative impulses thrive in this default state where we think we’re doing nothing, we think we’re thinking of nothing, but the brain is roaming and roving and it seems to be a very important part of being alive and coming up with solutions or coming up with new ways of thinking and behaving.”

Sherry: “Actually, the default mode network does more than that. It’s the time, it’s the process during which the brain lays down a kind of stable sense of the autobiographical self.”

Alan: “And if we reach for the phone when we sense, ‘Oh, here comes boredom,’ we’re denying ourselves apparently this very valuable, age-old human function that the brain wants to exercise in those moments that seem like nothing’s happening.”

Sherry: “And to be able to put down the phone so that you can have a genuine moment of solitude where you learn to look into yourself and get to know yourself.”

Alan: “We often hear you have to love yourself. But first you have to find yourself interesting. … And you don’t find yourself interesting unless you spend time with self.”

Sherry: “There was this study over a 10-year period that included the years of the introduction of phones. And in that time, over 30 years, there was a 40% decline in standard measures of empathy in that period. And most of the decline in empathy took place in the final 10 years, which were the years of the introduction of the technology.”

Alan: “It seems to me empathy happens when I have a feeling for what’s going on inside you that I’m not just listening to the words you say. I’m getting under that. And partly I get under that by looking you in the eye. I see these subtle changes in your face as you listen to me. And I have a view of you that’s much more from your point of view than it was before I started looking so carefully.”

Sherry: “I think it’s best done in the presence of the body. I think that empathy is something that, again, when we have our bodies in the game.”

Sherry: “I think conversation is the talking cure, as Freud would have said. … In this conversation, you realize even in just a simple conversation between two people who are trying to understand each other, get to a shared space together, you realize, ‘God, this is great.’”

Alan: “How would you, in really simple terms, how would you describe good conversation? What makes for good conversation?”

Sherry: “Just listening. That’s why I think the association for improvisation is so excellent because when you watch people improvise, the entire exercise is listening.”

Alan: “One of the basic ideas in improvisation is the notion of ‘yes’ and which is now entering the culture and I’m glad to hear it. Because when you say ‘no’ to whatever the other person has said, that’s canceling them out. Whereas ‘Yes, and’ is to say, ‘Yes, I get what you’re saying and this maybe goes on top of it or maybe it doesn’t, but it adds to what you’re saying rather than dismissing what you’re saying.’ That seems to me to be essential. Because how am I going to learn where you are in your thinking and your feelings unless I acknowledge what I’m hearing from you?”

Alan: “One of the most touching stories I’ve ever heard is when you tell about the father who bathed his infant and then he had another child to bathe years later. How did that go?”

Sherry: “I was talking to people about how the change in technology had affected their lives and one guy said, ‘You know, I think you’re right. I have these two daughters and one was in the pre-iPhone years and I used to love giving her baths. She used to have these little toys, her little guys in the bath and we used to sit and we used to tell stories. Bath time was a time for conversation. And now I have a two-year-old and I give her a bath too. … I put her in the bath and I make sure she’s safe and I put down the seat on the toilet and I take out my iPhone and I just do my email while she takes her bath.’”

Alan: “It takes the breath out of me to hear that. To have a little kid that you can get a world of pleasure from and you take out your iPhone. But does he at least recognize that that’s something to move away from?”

Sherry: “He said the damage is to me and my relationship with her. … It’s what I’m missing because I remember that those hours we spent together with the girl before the iPhone, with the daughter before the iPhone, really are the basis of our relationship.”

Q: Does your iPhone help or hinder your empathetic conversations?