You’re So Good At Conversation!

Summary

Stuff You Should Know – “You’re So Good At Conversation!”

Podcast by iHeartPodcasts
Hosts: Josh & Chuck
Airdate: September 11, 2025

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Episode Overview

In this engaging episode, Josh and Chuck dig into the fascinating world of conversation analysis—the study of how ordinary talk works, from turn-taking in dialogue to why we so rarely say what we actually mean. They trace the roots of this social science, break down its key terms (like "turn construction units" and "repair mechanisms"), and share surprising findings about what governs our conversations. The episode is peppered with the hosts’ trademark humor and personal takes, making a deeply academic topic accessible, relatable, and even laugh-out-loud funny.

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Key Topics & Insights

1. Opening Banter and Approach to Conversation Analysis

[01:19–05:18]

• The hosts start with a playful meta-demonstration, intentionally “messing up” the flow of conversation to highlight what conversation analysis studies.
• Josh admits: “I step on you a lot.”
• Both hosts discuss their personal relationship to self-awareness in conversations—Josh overthinks every exchange, Chuck prefers to “not think about it at all.”
  • Josh: “That's almost a hundred percent of what goes on in my mind when I'm talking or when someone else is talking. I can't help but do that.” [04:49]

2. The Birth of Conversation Analysis

[05:18–09:58]

• Roots: Emerged at UCLA in the 1970s, heavily influenced by sociology, ethnomethodology (how people make sense of the world together), and sociolinguistics.
• Key Figures:
  • Harvey Sacks—“the grandpappy” of conversation analysis, whose lectures still influence the field.
  • Gail Jefferson—noted for her system for transcribing conversations and studies on laughter.
  • Emanuel Schegloff—took over after Sacks, contributing major work on phone call analysis and turn-taking.
• Josh: “People like to try to push it into a typical social science ... and conversation analysis says, no, we’re not going to do that. Instead, we are purely about observation, noticing patterns...” [02:21]

3. Turn-Taking and Transcription (Including Jefferson System)

[09:58–12:54]

• Early work involved phone calls: how do people know when to talk when they can't see visual cues?
• The Jefferson Transcription System records not just words, but pauses, interruptions, laughter, etc., to fully capture the rhythm of conversation.

4. Patterns and Scripts: How Conversation “Works”

[12:54–16:42]

• Patterns: Sacks identified “composites” (e.g., “May I help you?” always prompts certain responses).
• Adjacent Pairs: Greetings (“How are you?” — “Fine”) and the universal “lie” of saying you’re okay.
  • Josh: “Everybody has to lie... Everybody essentially does not want to know how you’re actually doing.” [14:57]
• True intimacy is when you can honestly answer how you’re doing.

5. The Evolution of Conversation Analysis: From Phone Calls to Video

[16:17–18:05]

• Technological advancements (VCRs) allowed analysts to finally see gestures, posture, and non-verbal cues—not just hear voices.

6. Core Components of Conversation

[22:34–35:19]

• Turn Constructional Unit (TCU): The building blocks of talk—might be a word, phrase, gesture, or full sentence.
• Transition Relevance Place (TRP): Points where it is possible for another to take a turn, i.e., natural pauses.
• Repair Mechanisms: How we correct ourselves or each other in real-time.
• Gaps: Those “awkward silences” (conversation gaps).
• Adjacency Pairs: Set structures, e.g., offers and acceptances: “Would you like cake?” / “Thank you.”
• Discourse Markers: “Oh” or “because,” which organize talk.
• Laminated Actions: Actions and speech together (like rolling eyes to change the meaning).
• Overlap and Interruption:
  • Overlap = two people talking at once unintentionally.
  • Interruption = taking over deliberately (which could be “cooperative” or “competitive”).
• Josh: “We’re really good at conversation. We don’t even realize it.” [09:58]

7. Cultural and Group Differences

[37:17–39:23]

• Deborah Tannen's research: Shows how conversational “rules” differ by region and culture. New Yorkers overlap enthusiastically with each other but can overwhelm speakers from elsewhere.
• Japanese, Samoan, and Italian-American cultures show similar patterns.
  • Josh: “Whereas American English speakers, you are done speaking, then the person starts speaking, or else you have transgressed on that person's turn, for sure.” [39:20]

8. Conversation "Families": Types of Dialogue

[42:29–43:49]

• Reconstruction: Remembering past events.
• Projection: Talking about the future.
• Moralizing: Communicating approval/disapproval—“We tend way more toward negativity, tearing people down rather than building people up.” [43:15]

9. Real-World Implications & Applications

[43:49–46:53]

• Conversation analysis is used in corporate consulting, medical settings, customer service, and even training chatbots.
• Subtle language changes (e.g., “anything else?” vs. “something else?”) can dramatically impact the responses you receive.
  • Josh: “One of the sterling examples of how conversation analysts help things change for the better.” [45:22]
• Should bots act more human? Current consensus: no, they should be clearly bots.

10. Gender, Generational, and Social Trends

[47:26–52:25]

• Gender: Men may interrupt (especially competitively) more often, particularly in groups. Women’s interruptions are typically cooperative.
  • Chuck: “When men are interrupting, it is definitely more intrusive, maybe mansplainy... and women interrupt maybe just as often, but it's much more of the cooperative type.” [48:23]
• Generation Z: Changing scripts—unbothered by silences, the “Gen Z stare” at the end of a story, and new phone etiquette (answering without “hello”).
  • Chuck: “Apparently there's a Gen Z thing where they just answer the phone like this...” (stares silently) [51:11]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Josh: “Our entire human civilization is based on the fact that we're able to converse pretty much effortlessly, even though in a lot of times it just does not make sense.” [03:14]
• Chuck: “The last thing I want to think about is, did I say that right, did I interrupt somebody, did I act interested enough?” [04:17]
• Josh: “Harvey Sacks... the grandpappy of conversation analysis... He figured it out. He laid this down.” [06:28]
• Chuck: “If someone says, ‘may I help you?,’ what they're then obviously is asking you for a response to let you know what's going on... it needed to be taken at face value like that.” [13:35]
• Josh: “One of the unsung parts of human interaction and conversation is that we have to have ways of correcting and adjusting misunderstandings.” [27:19]
• Chuck: “That’s just you taking another turn, basically, and having two turn constructional units in a row.” [24:44]
• Josh: “If you find somebody who actually does want to know how you're doing, you hang on to that person.” [16:02]
• Josh: “We're also so good at this whole thing that we can interrupt while someone's telling a story without taking away from the story.” [35:53]
• Chuck: “Should we take a break?” (Repeated “meta” joke about conversation’s structural habits.) [16:42], [39:23], [33:44]

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Useful Timestamps

• [01:22] — Introduction to topic, hosts demonstrate conversational stumbles
• [05:30] — Roots in ethnomethodology & sociolinguistics
• [06:28] — Harvey Sacks, Gail Jefferson, Emanuel Schegloff overview
• [09:58] — The “genius” of studying phone calls & transcription methods
• [13:35] — "Composites", adjacency pairs, and how expected responses work
• [16:42] — VCRs transform the field by allowing non-verbal analysis
• [22:34–33:08] — Core definitions: TCUs, TRPs, Repair, Gaps, Adjacency Pairs, Discourse Markers, Laminated Actions
• [37:17] — Deborah Tannen’s crossover cultural analysis
• [42:29] — Three big “families” of conversation
• [43:49] — Real-world applications (call centers, doctors, bots)
• [47:26] — Gender differences and interruption research
• [50:02] — Generational differences—Gen Z changes the rules

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Tone & Style

Engaging, humorous, and conversational (naturally!). Full of friendly jabs, relatable anecdotes, and pop culture references—Chuck and Josh keep things light, but thoughtfully unpack the fascinating mechanics that make everyday communication possible.

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For New Listeners

This episode offers a deep but accessible dive into how conversations actually function, why we’re better at it than we think, and what happens when we break the “unwritten rules.” You’ll leave with a new appreciation for the invisible choreography of our daily talk—and probably catch yourself analyzing your own conversations, even if, as Chuck says, “the last thing I want to think about is how I’m conversing with somebody.”

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Transcript

[Chuck]

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[Josh]

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[Josh]

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh. And there's Chuck.

[Chuck]

I'm Chuck.

[Josh]

Oh, man. Already?

[Chuck]

Yeah, you know, thought it was apropos.

[Josh]

Oh, it's my turn to talk. Yeah.

[Chuck]

Oh, well played.

[Josh]

I'm not very good at this, as you know. If you have ever listened to the podcast, and I know you have because you're one of the co hosts, you know that I step on you a lot.

[Chuck]

No.

[Josh]

Yep. I'll keep going with my turn. Constructional unit then. How confused are people, do you think? Right now?

[Chuck]

I don't know. Probably very. I mean, we should say this is all just a bit to sort of demonstrate a conversational analysis.

[Josh]

Yeah.

[Chuck]

Well, now we're demonstrating the analysis. If someone was sitting in another room making notes about how we were talking like a creep. Yeah. That would be conversational analysis. We were just demonstrating poor communication, pretty much.

[Josh]

But it would be a bonanza for a conversation analyst, a cat, as they like to call themselves. This is a super, super niche field of science. I guess it would be a social science because it branched off from sociology. But one of the things that I noticed about it is that people like to try to push it into a typical social science, right? Like come up with some theories, like, why do people do these things that you guys are studying? And conversation analysis says, no, we're not going to do that. Instead, we are purely about observation, noticing patterns and then figuring out how those patterns predict other patterns and how all these different patterns fit together in this grand way to make up conversation. And you might say, well, that's Pretty boring, wouldn't you, Chuck?

[Chuck]

I mean, I'll let you finish and then I'll give you my take.

[Josh]

Okay. You might say it's pretty boring if you were Chuck. The reason why it's interesting is because it reveals something about us. That conversation is one of those things that we're really, really good at without realizing what we're doing. That conversation is an amazing interaction between two or more people that gets stuff done, that shares information that you can make a case. Basically, our entire human civilization is based on the fact that we're able to converse pretty much effortlessly, even. Even though in a lot of times it just does not make sense.

[Chuck]

Yeah, my deal with this is I'll get through this episode, and then I want to wipe it from my memory bank. Because I'm one of those people that the last thing I want to think about is how I'm conversing with somebody. And it reminds me of that scene in Better Off Dead, when early on, John Cusack is having, like, his early. A flashback, I think, to his first. First meeting with his girlfriend and where they're in his head, and he's like, oh, she just touched her nose. Does that mean I have something on my face? And then she's like, oh, he just touched his face. Do I have mustard on my face? Or something like that? And then before you know it, they're just going crazy. And that's kind of what this does to me, is I don't want to think about, like, I'm very much organic when it comes to stuff like this. And the last thing I want to think about is, did I say that right or did I interrupt somebody? Or did. Was I. Did I act interested enough? Like, that kind of thing Just. I have no place for that in my life.

[Josh]

That's funny, because that is almost a hundred percent of what goes on in my mind when I'm talking or when someone else is talking. Like, I can't help but do that.

[Chuck]

I know, and I know that, and I feel for you for that, because that can't be fun.

[Josh]

It's really tiring. My bad. So, okay, this is like potentially a career ending topic pick that I made, huh?

[Chuck]

No, no, no, no, no. I just, you know, it's interesting and then I just don't want to ever think about it again.

[Josh]

Okay, well, do a good job doing that, and I'm sorry for even picking it. Well, let's dive into all of this because it is interesting in and of itself, even though it is a really strange discipline in the way that it's set up.

[Chuck]

Yeah, it draws from a couple of fields. Primarily lybia helped us with this one. And I can tell because it's awesome ethno methodology. And that is, it's studying how people, not just how they make sense of the world, but how they do it in relation to others and how they collaborate with others. And then sociolinguistics, which is language, but not just language, language specifically with how it relates in specific cultures and the context of different cultures. And there were three key players and researchers doing this in the 1970s, mainly at UCLA. Go Bruins. The first one is a sociologist named Harvey Sachs. And he seems to have kind of been the ringleader here. He's the grandpappy of conversation analysis. He started ucla in the 60s, but really got into this in the mid 70s.

[Josh]

Yeah, and he stopped in the 70s because the poor guy died in a car crash at 40 years old in 1975. And he really only worked on this for just over a decade. But he figured it out. He laid this down. And part of it was that he benefited from working closely with some other sociologists, including Erving Goffman, who was the star of our impression management episode. And I think that might have been where I first heard of conversation analysis. And then. So he was working with Erving Goffman. They weren't doing the same thing, but they were both coming from that same strain of sociology, which is, it was really transitional at the time from studying huge institutions like religion or government and zooming into a much more granular, almost micro interaction level. So that's what Goffman was into with impression management. Harvey Sachs was into that with conversation.

[Chuck]

Yeah, he didn't publish a lot of stuff. This wasn't like white paper, peer reviewed kind of stuff. It was mainly like, you know, sort of pre TED talk kind of thing. Like, hey, isn't this interesting? Here's my lectures. I'm going to make them available. You can take a gander if you want.

[Josh]

Right.

[Chuck]

Then there was a student of Sacks named Gail Jefferson there at UCLA who was a dance major but had this interesting job. She worked as a typist for the Department of Public Health. And part of that included transcribing sensitivity training sessions with prison guards. And so she got really interested in a very kind of key part of conversation with something called turn taking. When you take turns talking. And a lot of this will be about the cues that people give to let the other person know, hey, now it's your turn to speak, or how to interject constructively or Interrupt constructively, things like that. But that seemed to kind of fascinate her when she was transcribing these training sessions with the prison guards. And so she got interested in that. She ended up developing a whole system called the Jefferson Transcription System, which we're going to talk about a little bit. Basically, how to kind of make sense of all this stuff when you're, you know, writing down how people are speaking to one another. And then later on, it's kind of interesting. I think she worked with laughter. She was fascinated by laughter and how that works its way into a conversation and how someone may cue someone to laugh at something they've even said themselves by giving a small laugh after they've said that thing.

[Josh]

Yeah. The third guy is Emmanuel Shegloff, and he seems to have kind of taken the reins after Harvey Sachs passed away. That's my take. He became the chair of the Conversation Analysis Department at ucla, which seems to be the center of conversation analysis from what I can tell. He also received a lifetime achievement award from the American sociological Association in 2010. So he was a big man on campus, essentially.

[Chuck]

Yeah, he was a big Bruin on campus. But they kind of started out and got with kind of the simpler side of things, which is like, hey, let's look at telephone calls and just sort of everyday interactions with people. Like, what do people say at the beginning of a phone call? What do people say at the end of a phone call? And this is sort of the bird's eye view of, like, just very basic interactions before they got more specific with their observations, I guess.

[Josh]

Yeah, but also, one of the genius things about studying phone calls is how do two people who aren't looking at each other know when it's their turn to talk? And they don't just. Exactly. And they don't just sit there and talk over one another constantly. And it's just one big jumbled mess. That's what I was talking about earlier. We're really good at conversation. We don't even realize it. Yeah, but one of the first things you have to do then is not just record the phone call. You have to transcribe it. And that's what Gail Jefferson came up with, was that method of transcribing that. It's pretty clever if you know what you're looking at. You can get a lot of. Of information from this transcription if it's used the Jefferson method.

[Chuck]

Yeah. And this was like, you know, this came around the early 70s. This is when linguist Noam Chomsky was kind of out there in the public sphere with his idea that there's a universal grammar. And this doesn't, you know, this didn't set out to disprove that or anything like that. It was really more of, let's look at different cultures and dynamics within a conversation. Because Chomsky and some of his cohorts was like, conversations are just. You can't analyze this kind of stuff systematically. The conversations are too irregular and too different between people. And they were like, no, I think we can actually come up with some principles that are consistent enough to do it. And I think they did totally.

[Josh]

And one of the first projects that they started, one of Harvey Sachs first projects, was he worked with a psychiatric hospital, an emergency psychiatric hospital. So their work's pretty urgent, you can imagine. And one of the things that they wanted to figure out was how to get patients to give them their name when they called in. Because there was a certain amount of reluctance, as you can imagine, especially back in the mid to late 60s.

[Chuck]

Yeah. They found out when a call was answered at one of these places, they would say. If they said just hello, the person might just say hello. But if they said, well, Hi, this is Dr. Charles Bryant. What can I do for you today? May I help you? The people were much more inclined to then respond by saying, oh, well, this is also Charles Bryant, and I'm calling because I'm having some intrusive thoughts or something like that.

[Josh]

Right. And then the receptionist would go, ha, I got you. I got your name. We know your name now.

[Chuck]

Yeah. Sometimes they found that people would not respond in kind with their name. And in those cases, it's pretty interesting. And this, you know, kind of provided another little nugget of information for how these things go.

[Josh]

Yeah.

[Chuck]

When they did not say, oh, yeah, my name's Chuck, and I'm having, you know, intrusive thoughts, they would sort of introduce like an. Like a disruptor. They would say something like huh or what? And just a small little bump in the road to change the conversational flow subtly, kind of saying, like, I don't want to give you my name, without saying, I don't want to give you my name.

[Josh]

Right. Because what they found, conversation analysts found, was that we follow set patterns, these kind of prescribed rhythms of conversations. So if you interrupt the flow of one type of conversation would say, aha. A new set of rules comes up that takes the conversation from there that both people are aware of but don't realize they're aware of. Which to me, I hadn't thought about it, but if you've ever said, huh? To somebody when you knew full well what they had just said, you were just reflexively trying to derail or disrupt that type of script in favor of a different one. Never realized that before, but it makes sense.

[Chuck]

Or maybe by time, even. But it's just some sort of a disruptor to divert something. For some reason, Sacks identified another thing called composites, and they're phrases that are kind of combined as a unit. And it usually is a prompt for some kind of response. Like, if someone says, may I help you? Like that on the telephone, what they're then obviously is asking you for a response to let you know what's going on. In the case of, like, an emergency call center, they might literally respond to, may I help you? By saying, I don't know. And what they found was, is it wasn't like that was a reasonable response. Somebody might literally say, like, I don't know if you can help me. And it needed to be sort of taken at face value like that.

[Josh]

Right. What that suggested that Sacks discovered was that there were these composites where, if you're saying, may I help you? You don't mean it at face value. It's a part of a. I think, what would be called later, an adjacent pair where you prompt. You say something that's a prompt, and there's an expected, like, range of responses to it. And anything outside of that is like, okay, that makes sense on paper, but it doesn't make sense conversationally. And he kind of supported this with the idea he wrote in a 1975 paper that everybody has to lie.

[Chuck]

Yeah.

[Josh]

And he used the example of, like, a greeting among people meeting on the street where you say, like, how are you doing? And if the person says anything other than fine or great or good, they have just violated this. This type of composite prompt. You're not supposed to say anything else. And even more interesting than this, Chuck, is that they seem to have found that this is actually universal. It's not just, like, among Americans or English speakers or Germans or anything like that. Everybody essentially does not want to know how you're actually doing.

[Chuck]

Yeah. And I found that that's a very good indicator of closeness and how you know that you've developed a true, like, closeness with someone else, like a friendship or whatever, because that's much more of a formal thing. If even if you know somebody but don't know them that well, you'll say, oh, like, oh, yeah, I'm doing fine. They're like, oh, pretty good.

[Josh]

Right?

[Chuck]

But if it's somebody you really know. And you're close to. You don't have to lie. You can very easily say, I'm super tired, or I'm not doing great. Because xyz. Yeah.

[Josh]

If you find somebody who actually does want to know how you're doing, you hang on to that person.

[Chuck]

Right. Or if you meet someone out of the blue and say, how you doing? And they start in with the truth, then just walk away.

[Josh]

Right. Maybe even jog away.

[Chuck]

Yeah. Red flag.

[Josh]

So one of the other big breakthroughs came along when you could rent VCRs and they had giant recording equipment like the kind they used in Poltergeist, that changed conversation analysis, where now all of a sudden, you could see all the stuff that goes along with it. It wasn't just telephone calls from disembodied voices. You could see how people interacted. And it opened up this whole new world for sure.

[Chuck]

Should we take a break?

[Josh]

I knew you were going to say that.

[Chuck]

All right, we'll be right back.

[Josh]

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[Chuck]

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[Josh]

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[Chuck]

I don't know what that is.

[Josh]

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[Chuck]

Is that in this? Stuxnet.

[Josh]

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[Chuck]

All right.

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[Chuck]

You know, before we broke, you talked about the huge cameras and I'm reading Matthew Modine's diary of making a Full Metal Jacket. You know the actor Matthew Modine?

[Josh]

Of course. I know exactly what you're talking about. But number one, I can't believe there is such a thing in Number two, I can't believe you're reading it.

[Chuck]

Oh, it's great. It's his diary when he was making the movie. Casey actually got it for me when we were doing Movie Crush. It was a very sweet gift, but at one point he was talking about having to put yourself on tape for an audition, which is something routinely done all the time now, especially since the writer strikes and Covid and stuff. But he was like, it's just such a pain. You gotta know somebody who has one of those huge video cameras and you have to go to their studio and blah, blah, blah. It was very cute and quaint.

[Josh]

Yeah, my niece Mila has to do that a lot.

[Chuck]

Yeah, yeah, it's super. It's kind of the way it's done now, for sure, for sure.

[Josh]

But yeah, I imagine it's a. It's. I don't know which would be worse, doing it live in front of people or doing it in front of a recording that you're getting zero feedback from.

[Chuck]

The every actor I know hates putting themselves on tape. They would much rather be in the room.

[Josh]

Gotcha. Because they're all energy vampires, Right?

[Chuck]

Exactly.

[Josh]

So one of the things I kind of alluded to earlier is that conversation analysis is not a standard social science in that it doesn't develop theories of why people are doing these things or why you said this when somebody else said that. Again, they're just looking for patterns. They're looking at its structure. And the cool thing about it is that that doesn't mean that they're not deriving any meaning. They're not postulating what it means. Like, for example, they're not going up to two listeners or two speakers, and they go to speaker number two and say, what do you think speaker number one meant when they said, how are you doing? Yeah, yeah. They just analyze the conversation. And based on speaker two's response, that tells the conversation analysts what speaker number two thought speaker number one was saying. So just by examining it, they can come up with meaning or derive meaning from it. And again, that's just not like other social sciences. And it seems to really stick in the craw of everybody else. I love it.

[Chuck]

Yeah. They also didn't want to. They wanted to be as organic as possible and just have people have naturally natural conversations with. With each other rather than orchestrating some big, like, scenarios. You do have to. Just because of scientific ethics and stuff, you have to tell people they're being recorded. So you can't truly be just a fly on the wall. But they did find that just the introduction of a recording device, they. They didn't feel like. And I think they've shown through evidence that it didn't really significantly change things enough to where the. The result was like thrown out or whatever.

[Josh]

Right, right. And like, we said that, that when you are beginning a conversation analysis, you start with a recording of a conversation. Nowadays it's with videotapes. And then you transcribe it. And one of the big things in conversation analysis is when you transcribe it, you need to do it as objectively as possible. You need to keep out your own subjective thoughts about who did what and just faithfully say, this was an interruption. This was a tcu. This person took a breath in the middle of their word. Josh just said. He corrected himself in the middle of the sentence. So he just used a Repair and notate all this stuff without any subjective input from you. And then you go back and you analyze it after it's been fully transcribed.

[Chuck]

Yeah. And so you've been very cleverly, I might say, subtly dropping in little words here and there that people are like, what's he talking about with this stuff? That's the stuff that they're looking for, and that's the stuff that they named, like, things that, like, in common parlance, we know some of these things, like rejoinders and interruptions and things like that. But, you know, they're analysts, so they took it a step further. And here are some of those right now. One of them is called a turn constructional unit. Tcu, obviously not Texas Christian University.

[Josh]

Frogs, horn toads, horned frogs, I think something like that.

[Chuck]

Yeah.

[Josh]

Even tree frogs.

[Chuck]

I think that's it. But turn construction units are the building blocks of any conversation, of every conversation. And it can be just a gesture, like a nod at somebody. It can be multiple sentences, but they end up with what's called a transition relevance place, a trp. And that is a moment where, like, what you've said has ended, and someone else may have a turn to speak now, or you may say something else after that. And that's just you taking another turn, basically, and having two turn constructional units in a row.

[Josh]

And so what, just right after you said in a row, that's where the transition relevance place was. That was it, because it gave me a chance to start talking. And everything you said leading up to it was the turn constructional unit. That was your turn. You took your turn in the conversation. There was a pause that allowed me to start taking my turn. And that's. That's the basic building blocks of a conversation.

[Chuck]

That's right.

[Josh]

Okay, see, you're good at this. There's also, when I analyze it. Sure. There's also, like, a lot of different, I guess, rules or exceptions or whatever. Like, you could say you could use two turns in a row without really allowing for a transition relevance place, that pause that allows the other speaker to start. For example, you could say, are you hungry? I could go for a burger. You actually just took two turns like a big fat hog without any pause in the middle. And yet that's not considered, like, any sort of violation of conversation. It's just, again, it's like an exception. It's a way that we've kind of. We're so good at conversation. We can show off by taking two turns in a row and not mess up the flow of conversation.

[Chuck]

Yeah, exactly. If it's. And we have to point out too, that a lot of times they were looking at conversations between just two people. But you can also analyze conversations in groups. It's just sort of a different beast. But in conversations with more than two people at that transition relevance place where it's probably someone else's turn to talk. Like if you're in a group of people at a dinner party and you're telling a story, it's very common to finish up the story and not just stare blankly into space, but you finish up the story and maybe look at one particular person. And there may be a reason for that. Maybe it's your person, or maybe it's the person you originally sort of started the story in reference to what this other person was saying. So you'll kind of turn it back to them. But, you know, that's one way you can sort of indicate like, hey, now I'm looking at you. And they may not speak at that point. You know, someone else may jump in. It just sort of depends.

[Josh]

Right. You could also make a finger gun and go at that person and they'll take over. One of the things I laughed a minute ago when you talked about staring blankly at the ceiling. It's so silly when you just take out like a proper response and put in something else. It just makes me laugh every time. Because it's so prescribed. Like these scripts are so prescribed that doing anything other than that is just absurd and hilarious.

[Chuck]

Yeah. I mean, it's like hidden camera material, you know?

[Josh]

So I mentioned that. I think I corrected myself. Actually. It's considered an interruption. When I misspoke and said breath weirdly and then said it again correctly right after I actually interrupted myself and I referred to that as a repair mechanism. Yeah, that's exactly what it is. Because one of the unsung parts of human interaction and conversation is that we have to have ways of correcting and adjusting misunderstandings. If we didn't, we would be able to converse, but two people would walk away from the conversation potentially with totally different understandings of the information that was just exchanged. Right. So we have to be able to correct ourselves when we know we made a mistake. And then also conversely, we need to be able to ask for clarification if we didn't understand what the person was saying.

[Chuck]

Yeah. Or someone else may ask for that clarification or something like that. So the repair doesn't have to come. It's not necessarily a self repair always.

[Josh]

Right. But it doesn't mean like going to the person and Being like, I'm really sorry and I'm not going to do this anymore. And here's how we're going to do it better from this point forward. Not that kind of repair.

[Chuck]

There are also gaps, something to identify when they're analyzing conversations. And we all know what that is. That I believe I always called them. And friends have called them awkward pauses when it's not clear who the next speaker is going to be. And that can happen even with groups of close friends in a very social situation. In fact, I feel like that's when it's most noticeable, is when like you're at a dinner party and something and everyone's laughing and saying things and then everyone just draws a blank for a couple of beats.

[Josh]

Sure.

[Chuck]

And then someone will usually say like awkward pause or something like that and not say like that's a. Technically it's a conversation gap.

[Josh]

That's I think, a good replacement now because awkward pause is so used up. Just be like conversation gap. So it can be uncomfortable when it happens naturally like that. Like everybody's just kind of run out of things to say about whatever that conversation was. It's even more uncomfortable when somebody misses.

[Chuck]

Their turn to speak clearly.

[Josh]

Yes. Or they don't give any sort of response. Right. That can cause a gap. And a lot of times you can signal that by like repeating the question you just asked. Saying the punchline one more time, saying something like, what do you think about that? A prompting thing. And then there's also non verbal ways of signaling gaps, like putting both hands in the air and going into a forward lunge. Right.

[Chuck]

I've always found that if the joke doesn't go, we're just merely repeating the punchline again. Always works.

[Josh]

Exactly. Over and over and over again.

[Chuck]

You may not have heard me adjacency pairs. I think you might have mentioned that. But that's when a specific kind of response is expected. So like, how's it going? Hey, I'm doing pretty good. They're also a lot of times referred to as pre sequences. So just sort of like. It's sort of like a pad answer almost.

[Josh]

Yeah. Like come in, won't you? Thank you. That'd be invitation, acceptance, greeting, greeting, question, answer. There's actually a lot of those that. Those are the ones that are maybe even silliest when you replace it. Like if somebody says, would you like a slice of cake? And you go, hello.

[Chuck]

Right.

[Josh]

It doesn't work.

[Chuck]

Well, what if you went, hello?

[Josh]

Exactly. I was gonna say the same thing. Like we've figured out ways around that you can massage the rules and get even more creative with the whole thing, that you could use something that's totally inappropriate and make it appropriate. The best thing about something that funny is explaining it to death.

[Chuck]

All right, here. Ask me for cake one more time. I got one more.

[Josh]

Okay. Would you like a slice of cake?

[Chuck]

Go yourself.

[Josh]

That works. It kind of works to an extent, for sure.

[Chuck]

Stories is another one. When you mentioned the staring into space at the end of a question to you. That can also happen at the end of a story if you don't know what you're doing as a communicator. When you start a story, you, a lot of time give an indicator that it's going to be you for a minute or two by saying something like, did I ever tell you about. Or something like that. Yeah, get a load of this. Or I tell you what happened to me. And then you start your sort of story. And usually you will end it by kind of looking in someone's direction. And that's when you should sort of acknowledge by either saying like, oh, man, that's so funny, or just something like that and not just stare blankly back at somebody.

[Josh]

So I'm guilty of doing that. Especially before I started treating my adhd, my mind would wander very easily when somebody was telling us to, and I would know that I really miffed it when the person would look at me and then have to feel like they had to explain why I should be reacting more than I am. And then I'd be like, oh, yeah, that really sucks that that happened to you. It was not. It doesn't really make for good interactions. Really. People want to stay away from you.

[Chuck]

Oh, Josh really dug that one, huh?

[Josh]

Right? I'm like, huh what? Because. Yeah, you don't say, huh, what? I wasn't paying attention. You try to play it off. And that actually makes it worse.

[Chuck]

Yeah. There are discourse markers, and they're just sort of words or phrases like organizationally help out, like O or because. And you're usually, like, connecting something to something that came before it.

[Josh]

Right. And then the last one is a laminated action, which is when you combine it with a gesture that it doesn't just change the meaning, it actually completes the meaning. Livia gave an example of when you say, oh, yeah, I've met him, and you roll your eyes. Right. If you just say, oh, yeah, I've met him, Even that same intonation, it doesn't tell the person what you actually think about them. When you roll your eyes, then they get the whole Picture. You've met them, you've judged them, you've. You can't stand them. You wish they were dead. Dead, dead.

[Chuck]

Yeah. Good eye roll. Can say all those things.

[Josh]

Exactly. Should we take another break now or keep going?

[Chuck]

Let's talk about overlap maybe, and then we can take a break. That feels about right.

[Josh]

Good idea.

[Chuck]

So overlap is a really, really, like. I feel like conversation analysts just sort of light up whenever there's an overlap that they can witness. They get pretty turned on by that kind of thing. One common form is just like, just a simple misunderstanding. Like, I didn't know that your turn was over. I'm sorry. It's not the same thing as interruption. Those are two different things. But interruption is like when you stop in the middle of, like, stop somebody in the middle of their sentence and talk over them. And overlap is just when someone stops talking and had something else to say, maybe. And you. You start on your own train.

[Josh]

Yeah. That's the thing. I think I do the most to you. I think you're done, and then I keep talking or I start talking. That is. Yeah, that's just straight up interruption. Unintentional. There is such a thing as intentional interruption where somebody's trying to, like, gain control or dominate a conversation, AKA total jerks.

[Chuck]

Right.

[Josh]

There's also a different kind of interruption, which is a cooperative interruption. Like when I say write to you while you're telling a story, I'm actually interjecting it while you're still using your turn. You're making a turn. Construction unit. But I'm helping you along. At the very least demonstrating. I'm listening and participating in the conversation, which makes it cooperative.

[Chuck]

Yeah. And those are just fine. You can interrupt people all the time in the middle of their story and even add to it. If you're. If you can, like, maybe you'll interrupt and say, like, if somebody was telling a story about driving their car, you know, it's like, you know, it was a guy. What kind of car was he driving? And they'll say, oh, a BMW. And then everyone's like, yeah. And they may have left out that detail. So that's all just sort of active participation in the conversation.

[Josh]

Precisely.

[Chuck]

We're also saying, no shade toward BMW drivers, by the way. I'm not sure why I said that car.

[Josh]

We're also so good at this whole thing that we can interrupt while someone's telling a story without taking away from the story. For example, if you're sitting there having dinner with somebody and they're telling a story and you say, hey, pass the potatoes.

[Chuck]

Right.

[Josh]

It doesn't actually, like, derail the conversation. The person's not offended. You're just fitting that in there so you can eat the potatoes and enjoy them while you're hearing the story, too.

[Chuck]

Yeah, and that can happen even. I mean, dinner party's such a good sort of experiment because it's. Everyone's seated around and looking at each other and all these conversations are happening. That you can even do that to someone else at the table during someone's story if the potatoes are closer. But you might do it in a hushed tone, like during the middle of their story.

[Josh]

Hey, can you pass the potatoes?

[Chuck]

And that person may even go, they're so good. Like, something like that.

[Josh]

What kind of potatoes did you imagine when I said pass the potatoes?

[Chuck]

Mashed?

[Josh]

Did you? I, for some reason, thought of steamed or baked red potatoes. And then I was like, those are no good. So I changed it to scalloped potatoes, which are great.

[Chuck]

Oh, man, you overthink everything, don't you?

[Josh]

I totally do. And then I thought about Yuma makes really good scalloped potatoes. It just kind of kept going from there.

[Chuck]

I wonder what Chuck's talking about right now.

[Josh]

Right, exactly. No, I was listening, too. That is a bit of a talent. I can listen and do that at the same time.

[Chuck]

Okay, what? Exactly. I think this is kind of really interesting. There's a Georgetown University linguist named Deborah Tannen who did a fun little experiment where she transcribed conversations between two Californians, three New Yorkers, and a Londoner. And this should come as no surprise. New Yorkers talked over everybody. And when they did it with the fellow New Yorker, the other New Yorker just kept talking, and they were just sort of talking over each other, and they were still enthusiastic and having a good time. But when a New Yorker talked over a Californian or a Londoner, they would stop talking. Other people, you know, when they went back and looked at it, others viewed it as like, these New Yorkers are dominating the conversation. They just want to take over. Anytime I said anything, the New Yorkers were just like, hey, it's all good. This is what we do. And they found that as far as New Yorkers. And the New Yorkers also thought that, like, no one joined in. Like, when they stopped talking, they were like, well, I guess they didn't want to talk or whatever, because they're not interrupting me.

[Josh]

Right, exactly.

[Chuck]

But they did find that other scholars have found that there are these New York like, patterns in other cultures. Samoan, Japanese, and Italian American. And so that's why every Italian American New York family, all they do is just sit around and scream over each other all the time.

[Josh]

Right. And Japanese stood out to me. And I'm like, that doesn't sound right. And then I thought of. Have you ever seen a Japanese, like, morning talk show?

[Chuck]

Oh, sure. Yeah.

[Josh]

So the. The somebody, like a guest or some other anchor or something will be talking, and then one of the hosts will interject, usually a question before the person has finished talking, and the person stops talking, saying what they were saying, and answers that question and adjusts without being offended at all. So it actually happens quite a bit, and usually toward the end of a sentence or a story or something like that. But it does happen a lot. Whereas American English speakers, you are done speaking, then the person starts speaking, or else you have transgressed on that person's turn, for sure.

[Chuck]

Should we take a break?

[Josh]

Yeah. All right.

[Chuck]

We'll take a break and finish up right after this.

[Josh]

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[Chuck]

Say it one more time.

[Josh]

Stuxnet.

[Chuck]

I don't know what that means.

[Josh]

You know, it's Stuxnet.

[Chuck]

Is that in this? Stuxnet.

[Josh]

Stuxnet. It's a great name.

[Chuck]

Stuxnet.

[Josh]

That's the name of it.

[Chuck]

I know.

[Josh]

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[Chuck]

Yeah, for sure. You can target your buyers by job title, industry, company role, seniority, skills, even company revenue. So you can stop wasting budget on the wrong audience.

[Josh]

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[Chuck]

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[Josh]

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[Chuck]

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[Josh]

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[Josh]

So we, we talked about how like all of these are scripts or templates. Like there's you say something and there's a predictable response and there's actually you can boil it down to what are called families. So like different types of conversations fall into different kinds of families. The big ones that we've seen are reconstruction, moralizing and projection. Right?

[Chuck]

Yeah, reconstruction. You know, obviously reconstructing or remembering and sharing something about an event with somebody the projective is looking to. The future could be very specific like where we going to dinner or just more like sitting around and chatting out loud about like the real future. And then what was moral communication about good and bad?

[Josh]

Yeah, it's more about tearing people down or, or complimenting people. And we are, we tend way more toward negativity tearing people down rather than building people up and are tearing people down. Types of genres are way more intricate and sophisticated than our building people up or complimenting because we have a negative bias as a species that's depressing. So we'll outgrow it one day. Just give us several tens of thousands of years.

[Chuck]

Yeah, so at the beginning we Kind of talked. I think we gave an example of how this might be used, like on the job or something. And sort of practical applications do involve that, for sure. Like you might be hired by a company to come in and consult when that company does, like, has kind of the same kind of conversation over and over with people. Like, if it's a surgical team or a call center, for sure. Whenever you hear this call may be recorded for training and evaluation purposes. That's probably what they're doing right there. Or maybe just judging their own employees and how they're doing on the job.

[Josh]

Right, for sure. They've also found you can help people get certain types of responses that you're looking for. Like, we talked about the emergency psychiatric hospital where they wanted to get the person's name and then trick them into it. There was a guy named John Heritage, unsurprisingly, from ucla, who worked with doctors to figure out how they could get patients to volunteer more problems that they needed help with. And they found that doctors who say, is there anything else that you need help with today? Apparently anything triggers a response, a predictable response, which is, no. But if you change anything to something that for some reason, that particular script or template opens up the possibility of sharing more information, and you would just never figure that out. And this is one of the sterling examples of how conversation analysts, like, actually help things change for the better.

[Chuck]

Yeah, that was well said.

[Josh]

Thank you. Way to go, John Heritage, et al.

[Chuck]

A woman named Elizabeth Stoko of the London School of Economics and Political Science found this when she studied conversations in a mediation service that people. It seems like in this case, people just kind of wanted to get down to brass tacks on what actually they did. They didn't want to hear things like, well, we don't take sides here and we don't judge. They really wanted to hear just sort of the step by step process of mediation and how it worked.

[Josh]

Yes. She also works with companies that are trying to install customer service bots. And I was reading about that. It's not going very well. I bet people hate customer service bots. And there's a. Yeah, I'm one of them, too. There's a question of, okay, is the solution making these bots way more human? Like, should we insert things like have a bot, say, or, you know, like waffle like a human does? And from what I saw, the consensus is, no, don't do that. Bots should be recognizable and volunteer themselves as bots. Humans are humans. Keep the two separate. And I don't know which direction it's going. It does kind of seem like the whole thing's in a quagmire currently. But I also did see that bots are poised to start taking over the reins from human conversation analysts and doing it themselves and then training bots how to be better at their job. So one bot training another bot.

[Chuck]

Right?

[Josh]

That's, from what I can tell, the future of conversation analysis. Yeah.

[Chuck]

I mean, with the movie her that now is like kind of freakily ahead of its time with Scarlett Johansson. I think in that situation, they definitely wanted to make her way more human and do things like stumble words and make mistakes. But if it's something like a customer service bot, you don't want that. I don't want it at all. But I definitely don't want one that's like, I just goofed. Aren't I cute?

[Josh]

Exactly. Lol. So let's get down to it though, Chuck. Here's the real reason we started talking about this. Do men interrupt women as much as people think?

[Chuck]

Well, I mean, this has been something that they've studied a lot since the 70s about the roles that that plays, and it's been mixed results. There have been studies that found that men interrupt women much more. There's some that found there's not much of a difference. There was a meta analysis from 1998 that found that gender divide becomes more clear cut when looking at intrusive, specifically intrusive interruptions. As to cooperative interruptions, and that's kind of what I took away, is that it seems like when men are interrupting, it is definitely more intrusive, maybe mansplainy, I don't know. And women interrupt maybe just as often, but it's much more of the cooperative type.

[Josh]

Right. And they chalk this up to different kinds of upbringings where girls who become women are raised to essentially socialize through communication, through conversation. So they become masters at it. But they also develop expectations that men don't necessarily fulfill, like cooperative interruptions, like, oh, that's right, you don't say. If a man doesn't do that, the woman might feel like she's not being listened to. And conversely, boys are raised in a hierarchical manner where they might eventually come to see listening as a form of submission, where instead they're trying to dominate. They want to be the alpha male. They want their puffy vest to be the coolest at their kid's football game. And so not only are they not going to cooperatively interrupt, they're not even going to listen. And they may interrupt competitively too. So there's a lot of at least anecdotal data to back that up. For sure.

[Chuck]

Yeah. And I think they also found that men tend to interrupt more in groups than a one on one. And that definitely seems to fall in line with like, you know, trying to establish the power position and like, if you're working together in a group. They did also find another interesting correlation where in studies where the first author of the study was a woman, they found bigger differences. And that just could be that the male and female researchers are coding the interruptions in a different way. Pretty interesting.

[Josh]

I thought so too.

[Chuck]

What about generationally?

[Josh]

Well, so apparently Gen Z is just throwing a huge wrench in the works. Remember we talked about how at the hospital, the emergency hospital, when somebody called and they said, my name is may I help you? Right. The other person felt obligated to give their name. That's not true. Like when we were growing up, you would not feel like you had to say, oh well, I'm Josh Clark and here's what I need from you. You just say, hey, I need this, or whatever. That's an example of a generational change that took place. Now it's even more pronounced. Apparently with Gen Z, there's something called the Gen Z stare, where they're essentially pulling a Josh, where you can tell them a story and they just stare back at you blankly at the end when it's their turn. And apparently it's fairly widespread.

[Chuck]

It's disconcerting. Yeah, I've heard about it. And then I was like, what is that? Then I read up about it and it is very disconcerting, as is the phone call thing, which I haven't experienced because people don't call each other much anymore. But apparently Gen Z, when they answer a phone, they don't go, hello. They expect the other person to talk first. So apparently there's a Gen Z thing where they just answer the phone like this.

[Josh]

Yeah. And then the other person goes, hello, do you need help? That's what I would say.

[Chuck]

Yeah. And I mean, I guess I've definitely witnessed the Gen Z stare with our friends, kids here and there to where you're just like, boy, I just like, I must be the least interesting human on earth because they're just blankly looking at me.

[Josh]

Yeah, yeah. Or you can look at it the other way and be like, good talking to you. I'll see you later.

[Chuck]

Yeah. But I've also found, especially when you're around teenagers, like your friends that have teenage kids, like just don't even, you know, maybe say Something nice and hello, but don't try to strike up a conversation. They don't want to talk to you. Just don't.

[Josh]

I think just move along. That's been true since Tuk Tuk was a teenager. You know what I mean?

[Chuck]

You know what I usually do? I'll go like, oh, hey, how's it going? How's school going this year? Oh, good, good. Glad to hear it. And I'll just walk away, like, a nice thing to say and then just end it.

[Josh]

You don't follow up with like, are you really anxious when you wake up in the morning before school?

[Chuck]

No, no, no. No one wants to hear from an adult if you're of a certain age.

[Josh]

Okay, I'm going to have to rethink my approach then.

[Chuck]

Do you remember when you were a kid, like, I don't remember even having conversations with adults.

[Josh]

Oh, yeah. No, absolutely not. You know I'm totally kidding this in everything I'm saying, right? Oh, yeah, of course. Yeah. No, I remember that it was very intimidating to talk to an adult, let alone having very little in common.

[Chuck]

Yeah. And they didn't want to talk to us.

[Josh]

No, no. For sure.

[Chuck]

Gen X was famously ignored by most adults.

[Josh]

Yeah, very famous. Just ask Douglas Copeland. Who's that? He's the guy who wrote Gen X. Oh, okay.

[Chuck]

Was that a book? Famous book, Yes.

[Josh]

I believe he's the one who coined the term.

[Chuck]

Oh, all right. Good for him.

[Josh]

You should read it. It's good. It's a quick read. It's not like an essay or anything like that. It's a story about three Gen Xers and just going through life over, I think, just the course of a few days.

[Chuck]

I've been a reading fool lately. I'll put it on the list.

[Josh]

Nice. I just started Infinite Jest, and I'll bet I regret ever announcing it publicly.

[Chuck]

Is that David Foster Wallace?

[Josh]

Yes, and I love that guy, but this is a slog already.

[Chuck]

Yeah, I'm finishing. I just finished the Bono book that I had put down, like, a year ago, and I am almost done with the Don Felder of the Eagles.

[Josh]

Good Lord.

[Chuck]

You might be asking, why would you read that? It's specifically because I used to love the Eagles, and apparently the book was just really bitchy.

[Josh]

Oh, okay. Yeah, I could see.

[Chuck]

So I was like, ooh, I want to read this. Because he's like, he hates those guys. So let me read this.

[Josh]

Did Matthew Modine recommend you read it in his diary about Full Metal Jacket?

[Chuck]

No, that's my bathroom book. So I've just been slow rolling. That one.

[Josh]

Gotcha. I don't think you should use words like slow rolling when you talk about being in the bathroom.

[Chuck]

Good point.

[Josh]

Well, I think we just brought about listener mail whether we like it or not, don't you?

[Chuck]

That's right. This is not a really correction, just sort of a maybe a gentle reminder about our history of orthodonture. I feel like we might have focused a little too much on appearance. This is from Aaron. Hey guys, appreciate the depth of curiosity you bring to each topic and I wanted to offer an update regarding orthodontia. It's not just about appearance anymore. The field has evolved significantly and current research shows that strong connection between jaw and bite alignment and conditions like sleep apnea, ADHD, and TMJ dysfunction. Which is of course totally true. While some of these links were suspected years ago, orthodontic treatment today is increasingly focused on preventing or mitigating these issues in the UTE before they become chronic. On a personal note, my journey with TMJ dysfunction led me down the path of exploring treatment options and after years of discomfort, I found relief through Invisalign. It not only helped with my smile, it realigned my bite and significantly reduced my TMJ symptoms and open my eyes to the broader health benefits of orthodontic care. And that is warm regards from Aaron. Very nice email, Aaron.

[Josh]

Invisa, right?

[Chuck]

Yeah, exactly.

[Josh]

Thanks a lot Aaron. I'm really glad Aaron with an E or AA or 1A, that's E R I N. Thanks a lot Aaron. I'm glad that you were able to take care of tmj. I can't imagine that that's a fun chronic condition. You know, if, if you got rid of a condition that you're happy about, we want to hear about that or for whatever reason you want to write in. You can send us an email. Send it off to stuffpodcastheartradio.com.

[Chuck]

Stuff youf Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite show.

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[Josh]

Why are TSA rules so confusing?

[Chuck]

You got a hoodie on?

[Josh]

Take it all. I'm Manny.

[Chuck]

I'm Noah, this is Devin and we're.

[Josh]

Best friends and journalists with a new podcast called no Such Thing where we get to the bottom of questions like that. Why are you screaming? I can't expect what to do now if the rule was the same, go off on me. I deserve it, you know. Lock him up. Listen to no Such thing on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. No such thing. I'm Dr. Joy Hardin Bradford, host of the Therapy for Black Girls podcast. I know how overwhelming it can feel if flying makes you anxious. In session 418 of the Therapy for Black Girls podcast, Dr. Angela Neal Barnett and I discuss flight anxiety. What is not normal is to allow it to prevent you from doing the things that you want to do, the things that you were meant to do. Listen to Therapy for Black Girls on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

[Chuck]

This is an I Heart podcast.