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- [00:00]
Commercial Narrator
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- [01:05]
Charles Duhigg
Hi there.
- [01:06]
Commercial Narrator
We're looking to get to the campground.
- [01:07]
T-Mobile Representative
Well, you're going to take a left at the old oak tree end of this here road. No, I'm just kidding. Let me get my phone out.
- [01:13]
Commercial Narrator
How are you getting a signal out here?
- [01:14]
T-Mobile Representative
T Mobile and US Cellular decided to merge. So the network out here is huge. We're getting the same great signal as the city and saving a boatload with all the benefits. Oh, and a five year price guarantee. Okay, here's those directions.
- [01:26]
Commercial Narrator
Actually, can you point us in the direction of a T Mobile store?
- [01:29]
Charles Duhigg
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- [02:13]
Tim Miller
Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Okay, here's the deal. Today is the state of the union. As you guys know, I hate the state of the union. Hate it. I hated it even when I liked the president just fine. It's antiquated it's stupid. It's all the puffery. It's all the reasons why I left D.C. but you know, I got a job to do. I'm going to suffer for y'. All. It is my Lenten obligation. So here's our content plan for the State of the Union. I'm going to give myself and you a brief respite from the speech. Fun to trade this morning. So we have a very fun off the news guest I've been wanting to bring in for a while. We're going to get to him in a second over on TNL with Sarah and jvl. We're going to cover everything, news, politics, campaigns, besides the speech. So you can go get your campaign fix on the Next Level feed. And then tonight, it's the only way I can tolerate it. I'm going to be Mystery Science Theatering through the speech on YouTube so you can come hang out with me on YouTube. And then after, we have a very special guest coming, he's a very good talker and so hopefully that will ease the pain of having to have watched Donald Trump for three hours or however long he's gonna go. And then if you're hearing this on Wednesday morning, you can get the State of the Union reaction stuff over on the Bulwark takes feed. So that's the schedule. It's a content marathon. I'm your humble servant. Soak it all. In today's show, we've got a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter at the New Yorker. His latest book like a year and a half ago now, that book is called Super Communicators. It's Charles Duhigg. How are you doing, man?
- [03:45]
Charles Duhigg
Good, how are you? Thanks for having me on. And I'm looking forward to the Mystery Science Theater 3000 State of the Union tonight.
- [03:51]
Tim Miller
If I had to watch it anyway, why would I sit on the couch and subject my husband to it? You know?
- [03:57]
Charles Duhigg
Exactly. You might as well have two robots
- [03:59]
Tim Miller
with you and you guys can just
- [04:00]
Charles Duhigg
let him watch this whole time.
- [04:03]
Tim Miller
He can watch whatever housewives and I can sit here with y' all and snipe at him. And that seems at least borderline tolerable. I want to get to the book and I think there are a lot of lessons in Super Communicators for all of us for what our the mission is here, ostensibly, which is persuading people to the benefits of liberal democracy. But you also have some lessons, some political lessons in your latest New Yorker article which was headlined what MAGA can teach Dems about organizing. And I Have to tell you this, I'm just coming clean.
- [04:32]
Charles Duhigg
Yeah.
- [04:33]
Tim Miller
I didn't even know you wrote it because I did not like the graphic. No shade to the artist. Okay. But I hated it because this graphic, many people you might have seen on social media, because this article went viral. It's all of the blue fingers pointing at each other and all of the red fingers pointing at blue. And I feel like this is a little bit of a misnomer because there's a lot of red fingers pointed at each other as well.
- [04:56]
Charles Duhigg
Absolutely.
- [04:56]
Tim Miller
Yeah. So as. As you always can do in these sort of situations, it's an oversimplification. And so I was embittered by that. And so I didn't click on the article. I finally clicked on it, I don't know, yesterday or Sunday. And the text is amazing. So, you know, don't judge a book by its cover, as you say, there are a lot of important insights in there. So talk to us about why you decide to write this. It's a little bit off of, you know, your normal beat. What was the genesis of it?
- [05:21]
Charles Duhigg
It's true. I. I mean, the basic question I was asking is, you know, if on the left, we're so dismissive of MAGA and we say, like, they have. Their ideas are illegitimate, they are. They are beholden to this guy who's completely mercurial. If that's true, why have they been so successful? Right? Like, what is the science behind the growth of maga? And I think it's important to create a distinction between Donald Trump and maga, because I think that distinction exists at this point. He was the progenitor, the biggest cheerleader of mag. But MAGA now has its own life outside of Donald Trump. And what's happened is that it's been picked up by political groups like Ralph Reed's new organization, the former head of the Christian Coalition, which is called the Faith and Freedom Coalition, by Turning Point usa, by groups like that have really picked up maga, the mantle of it. And what's interesting is, unlike Donald Trump, they bring a very different approach to how to make MAGA viral, how to make it sticky, how to get people interested in it, which is to say we're a huge open tent. As long as you're willing to put on the red hat, as long as you're willing to say that the President's the greatest guy on earth, Trump should be president, you know, right now, then you're welcome in, whether you're gay or straight, whether you're. You care about immigration or you don't care about immigration, whether you're pro life or pro choice. And that strategy has been incredibly effective at making some of these groups almost without anyone noticing. Some of the most powerful groups in the United States when it comes to electoral politics. Yeah.
- [06:48]
Tim Miller
One thing I like to say about Trump in that red hat is if I this afternoon, I'm doing an Ms. Now hit with Katie Tur. If I was on the show and I brought a MAGA hat as a prop and I said, you know what? I've been so impressed by what the president has done over the last couple weeks. On what? I don't know. I don't even know what you'd compliment him on. His strong response to the Supreme Court overturning his tariffs. I love the 15% tariff. I want a bomb Iran desperately.
- [07:19]
Charles Duhigg
Lately.
- [07:19]
Tim Miller
I'm on board. Probably that night on Truth Social, Trump would be posting, Tim Miller was such an idiot. I've seen him for many years. He was such a loser. But even Tim Miller gets it, right? Like, he would be immediately. It would just be like that. Like, that's all you have to do.
- [07:34]
Charles Duhigg
Oh, he would embrace you. Right. Like, I'm so glad Tim Miller finally saw the error of his ways. It wouldn't be quite that eloquent, but you're exactly right.
- [07:43]
Tim Miller
The article begins with a really, I think, insightful metaphor about how the MAGA Republicans, I think we should say, versus the Democrats, organize. And you talk about two groups that those of us elder millennials were very familiar with growing up, DARE versus mad, and why one succeeded where the other failed. Talk about that metaphor a little bit.
- [08:07]
Charles Duhigg
Sure, Absolutely. And for anyone who doesn't remember, DARE is this drug education program that they used to do in the schools, and MAD is Mothers Against Drunk Driving. They both emerged at about the same time in the early 1980s. And when DARE emerged, it was like the immediate darling, right? Like companies would line up to support it. It spread all over the nation in, like, a year. President Ronald Reagan declared DARE Day at one point. It was a huge, huge success from the start. And what DARE was really good at is what's known as mobilization. Right? They were really good at getting tens of thousands, millions of people, millions of school kids out of their classes into an auditorium to hear a lecture about how bad drugs are. They could mobilize all over the country. And when it comes to building a social movement, mobilization is part of it. Mad, on the other hand, MAD Mothers Against Drunk Driving had a different approach, in part because it was so chaotic and the central office really didn't know what it was doing. They kept on fighting.
- [09:08]
Tim Miller
It's kind of a shit show, actually.
- [09:09]
Charles Duhigg
Yeah, it was a total shit show. It's a total shit show. And so what they did is they turned to all these local MADs, MAD coordinators, these people who just volunteered to start MAD chapters, and they said, okay, do whatever you want, right? Like. Like, learn to become a leader in your own community and take over running MAD and expanding it. That's another aspect of how to organize a social movement. That's known as organizing. Right? And in organizing, what you're doing is you're trying to push down leadership as far as possible to the local level. You're trying to train people to become leaders, to become advocates, so that there is no need for central coordination as there was with dare. You don't have to coordinate things because all of independent cells, these independent agents, are out there figuring out what works best on their own. So we have these two components of social movements that are both really important. Mobilizing, getting people into the streets, organizing, building a infrastructure that teaches people how to be leaders. What's important, though, is that this one, organizing, is much more important than mobilizing. Dare, as anyone who's been paying attention knows, basically was a fad. It sort of exploded in popularity. And then it turned out that if you went to a DARE education program, you were more likely to do drugs. The program just kind of disappeared.
- [10:22]
Tim Miller
Exactly. I learned about huffing. I learned about huffing from DARE in fifth grade. I was like, wait a minute, I can. I can party with the stuff underneath my parents sink.
- [10:29]
Charles Duhigg
Yeah, exactly. All I need is a paper bag. Yeah, that's exactly.
- [10:33]
Tim Miller
That's exactly what happened. Now where would I have learned about huffing if it wasn't for DARE telling me about the dangers of huffing?
- [10:40]
Charles Duhigg
Matt, on the other hand, has become one of the most successful social movements in America. And if we look at politics today, what we see is that the Dems are really good at mobilizing, right? Look at the no Kings marches. Look at the Women's Day protest. They can get millions of people into the streets overnight, and that's really, really impressive. But MAGA is really good at organizing, and that's much less visible, it's much less high profile. But what they've done is they've created tens of thousands of local leaders, these little cel that exist to get out the vote on election day. And organizing beats mobilizing every day of the week. Because the truth of the matter is, when you go to that no Kings Day rally. And you feel so good to be in a huge crowd afterwards. You go home and you didn't get the names of anyone who is there. You didn't make any new friends. You don't set up a meeting, a plan to meet the next week in order to figure out how to continue the effort. It feels good, but it doesn't create change. And that's where. That's what we need to learn from Mac.
- [11:40]
Tim Miller
I. I don't want any of the folks that are doing the no Kings organizing to get mad at me. It's like we do, we have our little group. But I think that there's some differences that I want to explore. Just really like, what made you think about the MAD versus DARE comparison? It's an interesting parallel.
- [11:53]
Charles Duhigg
So I'm Gen X and I was like, as I was reporting this, I was trying to figure out how to explain the difference here. And I just went back to. I've always had this question. Everyone looked down their nose at MAD and DARE was so popular. And today MAD is successful and DARE isn't. And I was just curious, like why? And so I started doing reporting and it turned out to be a great way to explain this.
- [12:13]
Tim Miller
The thing that resonated with the MAD example to me was, as you mentioned, it's such a shit show, just like America is. It doesn't seem organized. Right?
- [12:22]
Charles Duhigg
Right.
- [12:22]
Tim Miller
And then on the other hand, there's a lot of lip service on the left to organizing and there is some work to be done. I don't mean to demean anyone. Right. But it's like organizing is an important principle. Obama was a community organizer. This was something that there's a huge value in. And yet like, there's some limits to the type of organizing that is done. And the best example, I always hate to hand it to them, but you have to hand it a turning point on this. Right. And the way that turning point does organizing is very different from how the Democrats do organizing. Like they have all these local chapters. A lot of them are very different than other ones. One example you gave that I thought was really important was that like some of these local chapters are like actually disgusting. Right. And like are doing actively like racist and offensive things in order to get attention. Some of them are kind of earnest and Christian. Some of them are like debate clubs kind of on campus. So you're exposing to a lot of different people. Most all of them are organized around kind of a social element of like, let's have fun. And the result ends up being a Pretty motley crew when you go to the big Turning Point USA conferences. No doubt. I always noticed when I went to the America Fest thing, it was interesting, on Friday night they would have a revival tent where some people would go to do Christian service. And then there was the fingering bars where other people would go and get hammered and hooked up. And like both of those things were happening together, but they were all doing what they found to be nutritious. So anyway, talk about that.
- [13:51]
Charles Duhigg
Yeah, no, you're exactly right. This is a. This inclusion is a really important. And it's funny that you mentioned Obama as a, as an organizer because if you look back to the Obama campaign, the first campaign and the second campaign, what was. Which was revolutionary in how they used volunteers, they got more volunteers to do more outreach than any campaign in history. And the reason why was because they were very big tent. I don't know if you remember, but they said if you encounter a voter who's racist, they use the N word or they say something racist, don't disagree with them, Simply say, I totally understand that. I understand that you feel that. But let me tell you about on economics, how Obama feels, right? It was a big tent in terms of are on the war on other things. Right. And so what's happened since then, I think, is that within the left there has become a lot of litmus tests that serve either for virtue signaling or serve for trying to mobilize and show unity around the issues that the left cares about. But those litmus tests have the effect of excluding many ambivalent members. Right. Many swing voters. It basically says, look, if you're pro life, there's really no place for you in the Democratic Party. And it says, if you don't believe in immigration reform, if you don't believe in trans rights, then this is not a party that's welcoming to you. Contrast that with Turning Point USA and Faith and Freedom Coalition where they basically say, like, you know what, actually, and in fact, Charlie Kirk has said this from the stage when people come up and they say, you know what, I'm gay. Charlie Kirk says, I just want you to know I don't approve of your lifestyle, but if you and I agree on immigration, then you're welcome here. This is the movement for you. Now. There's problems there, right, that you can very easily dilute the values.
- [15:34]
Tim Miller
Yeah. It's not a 100% tense. Right. Like if you want your lifestyle to be validated, you feel unwelcome there. So it's not as if everybody feels welcome, but I've been to Turning Point usa. I was, I talked to the Gays Against Groomers or whatever group. There are certain types that don't mind that he says that that's actually true, but.
- [15:51]
Charles Duhigg
And more importantly, it's kind of a signaling, right? Because Charlie Kirk isn't actually trying to convert the gay kid who's coming up and talking to Mike. What he's trying to do is he's trying to signal to the rest of the crowd, it doesn't matter if you don't agree with me 100%. There's a place for you here. A leftist who gets up at a Turning Point meeting is not going to be convertible. But what you can do is you can welcome that person as a signal to everyone else who's more ambivalent, who's more in the center, that this is a place for you.
- [16:18]
Tim Miller
Talk about the crank example, because I think this is important too, right? About the. I forget what it was. It was the Turning Point group Against Affirmative Action or whatever example you use, right? That like a lot of times we're painting with broad brush. And there are different examples to all this stuff. Charlie ends up advancing a lot of crankish and racist type stuff on his podcast too. But the stuff that would even feel a little more, too extreme for the leaders to say. Rather than ostracizing those people, they had groups that they just sort of allowed to run wild and bring in people that wouldn't have gone to maybe a traditional college Republican event because it would have felt too buttoned up.
- [17:00]
Charles Duhigg
Absolutely. Too boring. They made it really fun, right? And it's, it's important to note at Turning Point usa, if you ask to become a student leader, like to start a chapter, the first thing that the organization asks you to do is to read a book about the Obama campaign called Groundbreakers, about how Obama organized so many volunteers and use the same playbook. Just on the other, other end of
- [17:19]
Tim Miller
the spectrum, there's a copy of the Dean Campaign, we should say Democrats used to know how to do this. The campaign was very heterodox.
- [17:25]
Charles Duhigg
Very, very much. And you're exactly right. So. So in a couple of places, what Turning Point would do is they, its local group would sponsor what's known as an affirmative action bake sale, where they would base the price of the baked good on the color of your skin. So whites who came up had to pay more than black students who came up to buy something. Now, what's amazing is that instead of Turning Point saying that's you shouldn't do that that's too disrespectful. Turning Point actually advertised that in its manual that it gives to students. It uses that as an example of what students might want to do to get attention. And the reason why it works is it's kind of fun, right? I mean, it's terrible. The values behind it are terrible. But if you're a college student walking across a campus and you see this thing that says affirmative action bake sale, and you go over and you ask them what's going on and they're like, well, we don't think affirmative action makes any sense in education, so why would we do it in a bake sale? Suddenly you're having this dialog and it's kind of interesting and it's fun and it seems very anti authoritarian, which is a college student really appeals to me. Ye, you've been to Turning Point USA Rallies. You know what they're like? They are fun. They are just a good time. And part of that is because people are disagreeing with each other, they're arguing with each other, they're having debates. And it's fun to watch people debate with each other. It's fun to cheer for your side.
- [18:39]
Tim Miller
Yeah.
- [18:40]
Charles Duhigg
Now compare that to like no Kings Day. Somebody starts trying to debate at no Kings Day, they're going to get shouted down immediately.
- [18:46]
Tim Miller
It's not very touched.
- [18:47]
Charles Duhigg
Yeah, it's not about debate. It's about unity.
- [18:52]
Tim Miller
You guys in the Northeast are deep into winter. Been hearing about a nor'. Easter. Maybe another nor'. Easter. A lot of anger at the groundhog on my social media feed. And what are you gonna turn to on these cold nights when you can't get out? Probably a nice glass of red wine, Right? One way to find a good one is with our podcast sponsor, Naked Wines. Naked Wines is a wine club that directly connects you to the world's best independent winemakers. You can get world class wine delivered straight to your door. Use our code, the Bulwark for the code and password@nakedwines.com and get 100 bucks off your first order. That's six bottles of wine for just 39.99. The nice part is, you know, you can try different stuff. That's what I like to do. Different varietals. See what you like, mix it up. 39.99. It's cheap. People come over to the house, they want to open up a bottle. You have some sitting around, you know, they can have a glass, you can have a glass or a weed Bev. Whatever works for you. It's Nice. It's just nice to have on hand. And our friends at Naked Wines make it very easy. Get the best wine at the best price. With Naked Wines. Now is the time to join the Naked Wines community. Head to nakedwines.com thebullwerk Click Enter Voucher and put in my code thebullwerk for both the code and password, and you get 100 bucks off your first order. That's six bottles for only $39.99 with shipping included. That's 100 bucks off your first six bottles at nakedwines.com thebull the code and password of the bulwark for six bottles of wine for $39.99. There's another element to this that I think that can be attributed to politics. And there's what I've started to call the Kamala conundrum or the Kamala paradox. And it was not. I don't know that it's really her fault, but it's kind of related to this type of communication style. I think I want to throw it at you, which is that at the end of the campaign, like, progressives, like left progressives and populists broadly call, like, Joe Rogan type audience, like, they thought Kamala was, like, a corporate establishment moderate. Okay.
- [20:56]
Charles Duhigg
Yeah.
- [20:56]
Tim Miller
And a lot of my people, corporate establishment moderates, like, were concerned she was a California progressive. Right. That she was a leftist. And I think that that is an outgrowth of, like, this phenomenon that you're talking about that, like, Democrats were not allowing, you know, absolute different nodes to talk about different things. Because for Obama, it was the opposite. When Obama ran in 2008, there were a lot of left groups for whom they thought, this guy's one of us because he's against the Iraq war. He was a community organizer. And then there were a lot of centrist type people who said, this guy might be one of us. He's doing the. There's no red states, there's no blue states. We're all the United States. Right. Trump is like that too. In politics to succeed, you want your audience to grab hold to the areas where you agree with them. And I think that this, like, what you're hitting on in this mad versus Dare comparison, I kind of explains why some national Democrats now are. Are stuck in this sour spot.
- [22:00]
Charles Duhigg
Absolutely. And I think a lot of it is authenticity. Right. I don't think anyone came away from the Kamala Harris campaign feeling like this is the most authentic candidate we've ever had who speaks her mind without thinking about the Ramifications of the words coming out of her mouth. On Donald Trump, for whatever his faults, he seems authentic. Right. He does not couch his positions to pander to the crowd. He speaks whatever seems to be at the top of his mind, which sometimes is nonsense.
- [22:26]
Tim Miller
He's an authentic liar.
- [22:28]
Charles Duhigg
Yeah.
- [22:28]
Tim Miller
And the people that listen to him think like, yeah, sure, he's lying, but like, he seems, but he seems like he's telling me what he really thinks. Now, that's performance.
- [22:35]
Charles Duhigg
Exactly.
- [22:36]
Tim Miller
Performance.
- [22:36]
Charles Duhigg
It's performance. It's performance. And this authenticity, though, is really important. Mentioned before, the graphic on that, on that article, that, that sometimes the red hands are pointing at each other. And, and it made me think of that, of the recent Turning Point meeting where the national meeting where J.D. vance and Rubio were on stage and Tucker Carlson was criticizing them and Vance
- [22:54]
Tim Miller
criticized Tucker Carlson, Ben Shapiro criticized.
- [22:57]
Charles Duhigg
Exactly, exactly. And everyone on the left was like, oh, finally, finally they're attacking each other. Finally, the, the coalition is coming, coming apart. But I saw it completely differently. Those attacks were evidence to the crowd and to Republicans that they have a big enough party that they can criticize each other, that they, they are comfortable airing their differences and being authentic about where they disagree with one another without actually saying, now we're going to break apart. Now we're going to go do our own thing. Now we're going to factionalize. This ability to disagree in public is really, really important to creating that sense of authenticity. And what's interesting is if you look at Obama in most important, importantly, if you look at Bill Clinton, that's what they did really well. Right. Everyone remembers the Bill Clinton Sister Soulja moment when he comes out and he criticizes Sister Soulja for, for giving bad advice to, to black youths. And that was an important moment because it showed that Bill Clinton was being independent, he was being authentic, and he alienated some of his base in doing so. But it was an important moment for the campaign. We need more of that. We need that authenticity. And I think we're going to see that on the stage for 20, 28.
- [24:05]
Tim Miller
People blanch at this example. People bristle because they're like, oh, centrists always want a sister soldier moment. But here's the thing about the sister soldier moment that's so Clinton was so cunning and good. It was like, there's no policy substance to it, really. No, he wasn't making a concession to the right or to the evangelical right. He does eventually, when he ends up triangulating, he ends up making some legitimate concessions. But in that, in the campaign moment, all it was was signaling. He was just signaling to some people in the sense, hey, I'm not scary, right? We have some common ground on something that's in the culture, then that's like a low stakes sacrifice, right? Particularly if you're on the left. Even if you're on the left of him, you'd rather him be making that sacrifice on that rhetorical point than on.
- [24:52]
Charles Duhigg
Than on some social policy issue that actually affects black Americans, right? I think you're exactly right. So one of the things that we know about communication and this comes from super communicators that as humans, if you think about it as humans, communication is our superpower, right? It's the thing that, like, sets us apart from every other species. And so as a result, our brain has evolved to be very, very good at communication. And part of that evolution is that we have this almost hair trigger sensitivity to inauthenticity. Now, that doesn't mean it works all the time, right? Con men can take advantage of people. But if you're at a party and someone asks you, where do you go on vacation? You know within like 10 seconds that they don't care where you went on vacation, they just want to tell you where they went on vacation. They want to tell you all about the yacht that they. Right. We are really good at detecting inauthenticity. And there's a reason for this. It's because back in a state of nature, back when we lived in villages, if someone came to town and they presented themselves as trustworthy and they weren't actually trustworthy, they represented the biggest threat to our survival possible because we might let our guards down. So as a result, our brain is constantly trying to determine, can I trust this person? Do they believe what they're saying? And there are ways, and Bill Clinton's a perfect example of this, of appearing authentic when you're not really that authentic. But for most of us and for most politicians who aren't as talented as Bill Clinton, we have to genuinely be authentic about some things. And that means that even if we disagree with our supporters, if we make our disagreement plain and we stand for what we believe in and we explain it, they actually like us more because they believe that we're authentic.
- [26:31]
Tim Miller
So explain what Trump's tricks are on this, because obviously everyone listening to this podcast knows he's not actually authentic. He is the con man that comes to the village that you talk about. He is successful at that. What do you attribute it to? All the time on tv. Is there a specific talent or trick that he uses.
- [26:46]
Charles Duhigg
So here's the thing. He is a con man, but he's pretty consistent in his conmanship, right? Like, he basically says, if you're for me, I like you, and if you're against me, I hate you. Like, the thing is that we don't believe any of his political stances. We don't believe that he's really pro life. We don't believe that he's, like, really for the sanctity of marriage or that he actually has read the Bible. But when he's saying that stuff, and anyone who's gotten to a Trump rally knows this, that, that when he says that stuff, what he's actually saying is he's signaling the same way Bill Clinton signaled. He's saying, look, I believe you need to hear this and I want your support. So I'm going to say what you want me to say. And you don't believe it, and I don't believe it. But, you know what's consistent is that I'm out for me. And if you look at Donald Trump, there has been a consistency to his ideology, which is, I want what's best for Trump and screw the consequences. And there is some authenticity there.
- [27:42]
Tim Miller
Authentically fake, right?
- [27:43]
Charles Duhigg
He's, like, when he's angry at someone, I believe he is genuinely angry at that person. I don't think he's performing that anger. In fact, I've seen him be angry at things that don't make any sense to be angry at.
- [27:54]
Tim Miller
And you've also seen him, what he feels like he knows he has to perform. Like, look at the Zoran thing. He, like, just the other day, he kind of, like, he threw some line about how he's not doing a good job with the. I forget what it was. But then he's like, but he's a good guy. He's a handsome guy. You know what I mean? Like, he can't. He's not that good at that.
- [28:10]
Charles Duhigg
Actually, if you watch him speak, and I'll bet you we're gonna see that tonight on the State of the Union at a rally. It's really apparent. He says these things that whenever he's reading from the teleprompter and he. He doesn't believe it. You kind of know he doesn't believe it. Like, he doesn't even try and sell it that hard. He says, like, oh, no.
- [28:26]
Tim Miller
Every once in a while, he'll talk as if he. It's not him. Right? He'll talk as if somebody. Like, he'll break the fourth wall. Sometimes, absolutely. Speech will be going on and he'll read a line and it'll, and he'll do like. Like, is that right? Is that the worst thing or do I hate this? The worst. He does that. Yeah.
- [28:41]
Charles Duhigg
I think that's incredibly powerful because what he's actually saying is, he's saying like, look, I know that I have to play the game, you know, we have to play the game. But don't believe me when I, when, when I play the game. I'm going to tell you what I really care about and then I'm going to say the other stuff that gets lip service. Right. It's incredibly powerful.
- [28:58]
Tim Miller
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- [30:35]
Charles Duhigg
Yeah.
- [30:35]
Tim Miller
And the advice I like to give to folks who listen to this show because they're listening and hearing about all these national problems all the time. And so they want to help do their part, to help solve them. But it's hard. We had an election. The American people fucked up. It's going to be one indivisible group on the North Shore of New Orleans is not going to be able to save the democracy. You can do stuff in your community. You can create these small nodes that build. And I try to encourage people to focus on that. You have any advice from kind of your research on this?
- [31:08]
Charles Duhigg
And you're exactly right. Like, look, the indivisible group in New Orleans probably won't change what's going to happen, you know, later this year in midterms. But if they start working, they could change what happens in 2028. They could certainly change what happens in elections after 2028. This is a long term strategy and it's about building this local support. And there are groups that are doing this. There's a group called Down Home North Carolina, another one called Hoosier, Hoosier Action. So when you look at what's happening in Minnesota, Right. One of the reasons it's been so successful is because there's a group named Isaiah that's been organizing for over a decade there. And they're a big tent group. They bring in people from East Africa, childcare centers, farmers, college students. It's a big tent. And one of the things that they say, the organizer actually told me this, the person who used to run it, is that they don't take a position on things like abortion or trans rights. What they care about is they care about the issues that matter to their members. Things like, can I get Narcan for my relative who's on opioids when it's too cold or too hot? How do I get to a safety center that will, that will take care of me? It was that building, that long term local organizing that made what happened recently against ICE so successful.
- [32:22]
Tim Miller
I'd also say differentiate. I mean, like another lesson for, and I know you agree with this, just another lesson for me about tposa, like, why is CPUSA successful? Because I lived through this. Right?
- [32:30]
Charles Duhigg
Right.
- [32:31]
Tim Miller
The college Republicans were not popular, right?
- [32:34]
Charles Duhigg
No.
- [32:34]
Tim Miller
When I was in college and right after I was in college, like, the group seemed lame. It did not seem fun. They were very top down. You know, it was a group for people who were either like Christian ideologues or who wanted to work in politics. And there was a lot of stupid internal politics that cared more about looking in than communicating out. Right. Like this was it.
- [32:54]
Charles Duhigg
Yeah.
- [32:55]
Tim Miller
And TPUSA comes around and they have basically the same positions, Right. But they're differentiated from this unpopular thing.
- [33:01]
Charles Duhigg
That's exactly.
- [33:02]
Tim Miller
And I do think there's a lesson there for Democrats right now. Like, the Democratic brand kind of sucks, and that's a job for some Democrats in D.C. to fix. But, like, in the local level, you can create groups in your community that, like, are basically Democratic. Like, have essentially Democratic positions, but are differentiated in the brand or the focus or the. Absolutely right. And I think that that's. Would be smart.
- [33:22]
Charles Duhigg
No one in history has ever said, I'm going to that college Republican meeting tonight because I want to find someone to hook up with. Right? That's. That those words have never.
- [33:30]
Tim Miller
On the other hand, it happen.
- [33:32]
Charles Duhigg
TP usa. When I talked to TP usa, like, half the people I talked to were like, yeah, actually, I joined because there were all these hot girls there, and I didn't really know how to talk to girls, and I wanted to talk to them. Right? Like, TPA USA made conservatism sexy. That's the hardest thing on the face of the planet. And if you're a college student, nothing gets you more motivated than. Than going to something where you might get. You might get lucky.
- [33:52]
Tim Miller
I'm gonna have to have Will Summer on next week. We're gonna spend an entire episode shitting on tposa. Cause there's a lot not to like. There's a lot not to like. There's a lot not to like.
- [34:00]
Charles Duhigg
We're not talking about any of the ideology.
- [34:02]
Tim Miller
We're talking about learning from the tech.
- [34:04]
Charles Duhigg
We're just talking about strategy.
- [34:06]
Tim Miller
All right, I want to talk about the book Super Communicators. Well, just for folks who aren't familiar with the book, just. Just give the. Give the little Reader's Digest version.
- [34:14]
Charles Duhigg
So we are living through this golden age of understanding communication. Because of advances in neural imaging and data collection, for the first time, we really understand what's happening inside people's brains when they communicate. And what we've discovered is that one of the big mistakes we make when we're having a conversation is that we think we know what that conversation is about. Right? Like I'm talking to you about politics, or I'm talking to you about where to go on vacation next week, or you're talking to your husband about where to go to dinner. But when researchers look inside people's brains as they talk, what they find is that people are having all kinds of different conversations all at once. And in general, these conversations, they tend to fall into One of these three buckets. There's these practical conversations where we're making plans to get together or we're solving problems together. And then there's emotional conversations where I tell you what I'm feeling, but I don't want you to solve my feelings. I want you to empathize. And then there's social conversations, which are a lot of politics. Conversations are this where we're talking about identities, we're talking about what we think of other people, what matters to us as values. And what researchers have found is that if we're not having the same kind of conversation at the same moment, we cannot fully hear each other other. And so one of the. One of the big arguments of super communicators is there is a science to how we communicate. There are skills that we can learn to become better communicators. And when we learn those skills, it teaches us how to match each other better, have the same kind of conversation. And ultimately, even if we disagree with each other, we will feel more connected to each other as a result. It's hardwired into our brains.
- [35:43]
Tim Miller
The emotional versus practical is a standard spousal disconnect. You know, when my husband would complain about something happening on his job, you know, at work, and, like, I immediately go into crisis communications mode. You know, it's like, okay, okay, I can solve this, all right? And I find that not just with him, but, like. Like, this is a constant mistake that I make because I immediately go to practical solutions. And a lot of folks just aren't really looking for that. They're just looking for, you know, somebody to connect with them on the thing that is annoying them. That's exactly.
- [36:14]
Charles Duhigg
In fact, they want empathy. They don't want your solution. They want your empathy. And when I come home and I start complaining about my day, my wife will often say to me, do you want me to help you figure out how to solve this, or do you just need to vent and get it off your chest? In other words, do you want to have a practical conversation or an emotional conversation? And actually, I love when she asks that. Like, it shows that she actually is, like, thinking about me. And I usually say, like, no, I just need to vent. This is just so annoying.
- [36:36]
Tim Miller
Or probably sometimes you haven't even thought about it. You are just venting. And that makes you think about it for a second. You're like, do I want a solution to this, this, or do I want to.
- [36:43]
Charles Duhigg
Yeah, you're exactly right. And that's really, really important. So we are all super communicators. At one moment or another. But there are some people who are consistent super communicators who can connect with anyone. And one of the things that they do is they think about communication just a little bit more than the average person. There's other things they do, like they ask more questions, they try and match each other other people better. But simply thinking about communication seems to be the first and most important step to becoming a super communicator. And when my wife asks that question, when you reflect that like, oh, I probably shouldn't try and solve my husband's problems. He probably just needs a vent. What you're doing is you're thinking about conversation. You're investing in meta conversation. And what we know is that that makes every single discussion better.
- [37:30]
Commercial Narrator
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- [38:35]
Tim Miller
Hi there.
- [38:36]
Commercial Narrator
We're looking to get to the campground.
- [38:38]
T-Mobile Representative
Well, you're gonna take a left at the old oak tree end of this here road. No, I'm just kidding. Let me get my phone out.
- [38:43]
Commercial Narrator
How are you getting a signal out here?
- [38:45]
T-Mobile Representative
T Mobile and US Cellular decided to merge, so the network out here is huge. We're getting the same great signal as the city and saving a boatload with all the benefits. Oh, and a five year price guarantee. Okay, here's those directions.
- [38:56]
Commercial Narrator
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- [39:00]
Charles Duhigg
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T-Mobile Representative
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Charles Duhigg
enhance the T Mobile network's coverage price guarantee on talk text and data exclusions like taxes and fees apply c t mobile.com for details.
- [39:31]
Tim Miller
I want to do a little bit more of the life advice side of this, but I think this particular example is applicable to the Democrats. This will be my last rap thing of the Democrats on the knuckles of the podcast. But this gap between the emotional and the practical is something that you see a lot. It's the classic white paper politics complaint about the Democrats where it's like, hey, you know, people are concerned about affordability. This affordability is the timely one right now. Where it's like, you see, you're already seeing this where some Democrats think, okay, I'm going to say the word affordability and then I'm going to rattle off four things that we can do that'll make you. And by the way, that's a good instinct. People should want solutions to the problems. But a lot of times folks listening aren't really looking to hear about the four point plan. And back to Bill Clinton. Like, this is something that Bill Clinton was good at. You know, the, the classic I feel your pain. So anyway, talk about that gap and being intentional about it.
- [40:28]
Charles Duhigg
Absolutely. I think it's really astute, the distinction you're drawing here, because people do want to hear that plan. But before they hear that plan, they want you to match them. They want you to have an emotional conversation. I was talking to someone who runs Hoosier Action, which is a group that coordinates and organizes rural voters. And one of the things she said is, she said, you know, we have candidates come and talk to our groups and when Democrats come out, someone will tell this heartbreaking story about their kid overdosing on fentanyl and the room is just in tears. And the Democrat, the first thing they always say is, let me tell you how I'm going to try and solve that. Here's the bill that I want to introduce into Congress because if I can introduce this, it'll help your son. And that just doesn't resonate. Now when the Republicans come out, what the Republicans say is, they say, oh my gosh, I'm so sorry for you. You know, I know exactly what you're going through because my brother in law, he overdose on fentanyl. I feel what you are feeling.
- [41:21]
Tim Miller
I bet more often they say I'm pissed about this too. And you know who's to blame is the Mexicans.
- [41:26]
Charles Duhigg
That's right. Right. I'm really pissed off. And here's the person we can be pissed at. Right. Whether it's true or not.
- [41:33]
Tim Miller
Yeah.
- [41:33]
Charles Duhigg
What they're doing is they're matching the person that is speaking emotionally and then they're saying, look, I'm so sorry this happened to you. I'm super pissed off. Can I tell you, can I tell you what I'm going to do about this? Right. Can we move from an emotional to a practical conversation together? Republicans know how to do this so much better than Dems do right now. And part of it is because it comes from a religious tradition. We see more religious Republicans than others. You go into an evangelical church. Most of the sermon is not about what Jesus says we should do about our life. Most of the sermon is about understanding the feelings of lust, understanding the feelings of temptation, understanding the feelings of anger or greed or envy. It's an emotional experience in an evangelical church. That's why people are drawn to it.
- [42:18]
Tim Miller
This is Jesse Jackson who died recently. I was talking about this with Abby Phillip. He was really good at that. Also came from a church background. That makes sense. Yeah. That's why when Democratic candidates call me, they're like, what advice do you have? And I'm like, I lost a lot of campaigns so I have limited advice. But the one thing I would say, at least for this moment, because I do know the audience is there's so much to be mad about right now. People are mad. People are mad. So like whatever you're mad about, just be mad. Like just be mad with people on that topic. And that, that is I think what you're talking about as far as like
- [42:49]
Charles Duhigg
matching that gets back to this authenticity. Right. To like, like if you're pissed off. And I let you know that I'm pissed off too. And like having a solution doesn't change that. I'm pissed off because I'm super frustrated.
- [43:00]
Tim Miller
Right.
- [43:01]
Charles Duhigg
Like that feels authentic.
- [43:02]
Tim Miller
Particularly in Congress, particularly. You hear this a lot from people in focus groups. They're like, I want my congressperson to be mad with me. I want my mayor to fix my street, street hole. Right. You know, I want my congressman to be mad.
- [43:12]
Charles Duhigg
Right. I want to see my emotions reflected because, because many of our emotions now are national emotions. Right. We're, we're getting angry or we're getting hopeful about national issues. And so I think we want our national politicians to. To be reflecting that. So one of the things that I mentioned super communicators do really well is that they tend to ask more questions than the average person. In fact, they tend to ask about 10 to 20 times as many questions as the average person. And some of those questions are basically just invitations, like, oh, would you what'd you think of last night's movie? Or like, what did you think about that? Like, they're invitations to the conversation. But some of the questions are what are known within psychology as deep questions. They're questions that ask us about our values or our beliefs or experiences without necessarily seeming to ask about that. A great example of this is if you meet someone who's a doctor, instead of asking, oh, what hospital do you work at? You can ask them, oh, what made you decide to become a physician? Right. That second question, it's. It seems as innocuous as the first question, but what it's really doing is it's inviting that person to talk about who they are, about what they value. If you look at what Republicans are doing right now, they ask deep questions all the time. And again, for anyone who hasn't been to a Donald Trump rally, it's worth going to, because even from the stage, he asks deep questions and he doesn't provide answers. He'll say things like, I wonder why they're. I wonder why they're so mean to me. Why do you think that they're so upset? Like, what do you think's going on there? Right. That's actually kind of a deep question, like, what do you think of the other side? What do you think are the emotions that they're feeling? What explains them? As Democrats, we feel like as leaders, people come to us for solutions and come to us for answers. But sometimes the most powerful thing we can do is to give voice to the right question, even if we don't know what the answer is. And I think there's a lot of value there.
- [44:57]
Tim Miller
You say it's learnable. It's a big part about the book. People who are listening to this feel like they don't communicate as well in their life, whether it be work or family, et cetera. I'm not as sure about that after reading it, so pitch me on that. Oh, absolutely. Skills of super communicators are learnable.
- [45:13]
Charles Duhigg
So if you talk to the best communicators, let's take Bill Clinton as an example, and you ask them, have you always been good at Communication, they inevitably say no. They say things like, in high school, I had real trouble making friends, so I really had to study how kids talk to each other. Or in the case of Bill Clinton, my parents got divorced and it was awful. And I had to be the peacemaker between. Between my parents who are warring with each other. No one is born a great communicator. We learn to become great communicators by just practicing these skills. And what happens is there's a handful of skills matching each other on the kind of conversation you're having asking deep questions. Another one we haven't talked about is proving that you're listening. So this thing known as looping for understanding, where you show the person that you're listening, you prove to them that you're paying attention. Those are all things that we can practice. And the book explains how to practice them, them and what we know. You know, my previous book was the Power of Habit, about how we build the habits within our. Within our psyche. One of the things that we know about communication habits is that communication skills become habits very, very quickly. If you practice something like asking deep questions, the third or fourth day you do it, it's going to feel automatic. You're going to quit noticing that you're even doing it. And when we look at a great communicator, what we're really looking at is someone who's just thought about that skill a little bit more, has practiced it a little bit more, until it feels automatic. And as a result, it seems very authentic because it doesn't seem like they're trying to do something artificial. They're doing what comes to them habitually.
- [46:40]
Tim Miller
Can't you tell when people are just trying really hard at it, though? It's not real. A politician I like a lot, and I wrote this in an article, and I say this with love, and he knows that, so I can just say it as Jared Polis, who's the governor of Colorado. He'll tell you that he was not a good communicator. He was awkward. He's a wunderkind. So he was in college when he was 15 or something. I don't have from memory. Right. So like the social media, social communication. And he's practiced. And so. So he has improved. I think it's better. But I kind of can tell he's using your tricks when he's talking to me. And does. And eventually does that, like, rub people the wrong way?
- [47:14]
Charles Duhigg
I guess not if he's doing authentically. So, like, the question is, is he trying to pull one over on you. Like, is he trying to pretend like he's the smoothest guy on earth and that, like. No, what he's doing is he's saying, like, you know what? I'm kind of awkward. I'm kind of like a weird. A weird guy. But you are important enough to me that I'm going to do this thing that feels a little uncomfortable. Having met Polis and also a fan of his, Like, I actually see that. You know, let's use another example. Gavin Newsom. So Gavin Newsom. When you meet Gavin Newsom, one on one, he does not pretend to be someone besides who he is. You know that Gavin Newsom is there to talk to you because he wants your vote that if you say something, he's going to half listen to it. He really is there to tell you a story about himself. Right. He comes off as slick. He never tries to be anything besides this person that he is, and the authenticity of that actually gives him credence. Right? Think about, you know, he still slicks his hair back like he's someone from the 1990s or 1980s. At any point, he could have stopped using gel in his hair, but he didn't because that's who he is. He doesn't pretend to be anyone else. So when he does turn to you and he says, look, I care about the same thing you care about. Tell me about your problem or tell me, or I'm dyslexic and I know how hard it is for you to have kids who have special needs. You believe him because he hasn't been pandering to you the whole time. His inauthenticity is authentic, and that matters. I didn't even realize I was wasting 415amonth until I downloaded Rocket Money. I thought I had my finances under control until the app laid out all my spending and categorized it for me. Me, takeout shopping and unused subscriptions were quietly draining my account, and as a result, my savings took a back seat. But Rocket Money doesn't just tell you what you're wasting money on. It takes action to save you money. First, the app looks at your income and monthly expenses and calculates how much you can safely spend each day to stay under budget. Rocket Money also finds and cancels unwanted subscriptions for you and even negotiates better rates on your bills so you have more money in your pocket. On average, Rocket Money members can save up to $740 a year when using all the app's premium features. Users love the app with over 186,000 five star ratings. It's time to simplify your finances and take control of your Money. Go to RocketMoney.com Cancel to get started. That's RocketMoney.com Cancel RocketMoney.com Cancel.
- [49:40]
Commercial Narrator
We're lost. I'm gonna pull over and ask that man for directions.
- [49:45]
Charles Duhigg
Hi there.
- [49:46]
Commercial Narrator
We're looking to get to the camera campground.
- [49:47]
T-Mobile Representative
Well, you're gonna take a left at the old oak tree end of this here road. No, I'm just kidding. Let me get my phone out.
- [49:53]
Commercial Narrator
How are you getting a signal out here?
- [49:54]
T-Mobile Representative
T Mobile and US Cellular decided to merge. So the network out here is huge. We're getting the same great signal as the city and saving a boatload with all the benefits. Oh, and a five year price guarantee. Okay, here's those directions.
- [50:06]
Commercial Narrator
Actually, can you point us in the direction of a T mobile store?
- [50:09]
Charles Duhigg
America's best network just got bigger. So switch to T Mobile today and get built in benefits the other guys leave out. Plus our five year price guarantee. And now T Mobile is available in US Cellular stores. Best mobile network based on analysis by Ookle of speed test intelligence data at 2H2025 bigger network. The combination of T Mobile's and US Cellular's network footprints will enhance the T mobile network's coverage price guarantee on talk text and data exclusions like taxes and fees apply. CM T mobile.com for details.
- [50:41]
Tim Miller
As you mentioned, one of the elements of this is this matching, trying to match other parts of the type of conversation that they're having. And it's something that I think about like hosting the show is that occasionally I overmatch, right? Like rather than having the type of conversation I want to have, if it's a very practical person, I have to be conscious of, okay, like can we nudge this person towards a more emotional conversation? Because overmatching then feels inauthentic and feels apple polishing, etc. And I just want to give you one extreme example of this. Anybody who started to use these LLMs like Claude or ChatGPT, they try to match you really hard but they're computers and it fails, becomes cringe. So talk about that line between trying to get on the level of the person you're talking to versus coming off as whatever.
- [51:33]
Charles Duhigg
So there's an important component of batching which is, is not only am I trying to match you, I have to be inviting you to match me as well. It has to be a quid pro quo. It has to be a back and forth, right? And so I think it's fine if you're talking to someone really practical and you're asking them some practical questions to say, look, you know, this all makes sense to me on a practical level, but there's some real emotions that I'm feeling right now and I'm wondering what you're feeling because I know that these emotions are legitimate, at least for me. Right. When we announce our intention to move from one kind of conversation, what I'm doing in that case is I'm inviting you to join me. I don't put you in control of the conversation the whole time. This is a back and forth, this is a quid pro quo.
- [52:11]
Tim Miller
Right?
- [52:12]
Charles Duhigg
And that's actually one of the reasons why these LLMs. You know, there's all these articles about people falling in love with chatbots and having relationships. If you look at the data, the relationship only lasts a couple of months. And it's because the chatbot never tries to invite you to match them them. It only tries to match you. It's not a back and forth. It's them pandering to you. And we know what pandering feels like. So I think in those conversations, when we're having, and here's a great example, sometimes you go to a party and you get into that state where you're asking other person question after question after question and they're not asking you any questions in return. Here's what I do. I stop the conversation. I say, look, I've been asking you so many questions, I, I'm sure you have a ton of questions for me. Let me give you a chance to ask me some questions.
- [52:58]
Tim Miller
Questions, does that work?
- [52:59]
Charles Duhigg
Yeah, it works every single time. And what you'll find is that those people actually do have questions. They're just not good at asking questions. They need permission, they need an invitation to question you about something. It works every single time. Because what I'm really doing there is, I'm saying this has to be a quid pro quo. I'm doing all the work and you aren't. And if they don't respond to it, then you can walk away from the conversation. Right? You know that this conversation's going nowhere. There's all these stories of Joe Biden telling like the same story over and over and over again to a group of reporters. And the stories are good, they're real stories. I'm sure that Biden means them, but the fact that he's not paying any attention to who's in front of him, he's not asking for their feedback in the slightest about whether they already heard the story, whether they want to hear it again. That's what makes them seem inauthentic. That's what really turns reporters against him, though.
- [53:53]
Tim Miller
That makes me sympathetic to him. Because my least favorite thing to do is when I start telling a story to somebody and realize halfway through that I've already told the story to them, I feel so embarrassed.
- [54:03]
Charles Duhigg
I know, I know. But that's okay because that's authentic. If you stop and you say like, wait, have I already told you this story? It actually shows that other person, like, I care about you in this conversation.
- [54:14]
Tim Miller
Yeah. This isn't just about me spouting off. All right, I have another advice question for you. So I go into the Piers Morgan show on the Internet. Have you seen this? His news show?
- [54:24]
Charles Duhigg
No, I haven't watched his show.
- [54:25]
Tim Miller
No. Okay. It's like he'll have on four clowns. Usually it'll be like two right wing people and then somebody that's like so far left that they are, you know, or kind of like a patsy, like a left wing person that's like, not really that smart. And then it'll be me. And so it'll be like, talk about what Trump did. And. And sometimes I do it just because I like to vent and I need to get the yelling out of my system. But other times I agree to do it because I feel like the topic is one where maybe people could be persuaded I was doing it a lot after the pretty and good shootings because I'm like, I think even a lot of Trump voters are against this. And so if I go into this space, maybe I can communicate in a way that resonates with a couple of people that are listening to it.
- [55:12]
Charles Duhigg
Absolutely.
- [55:12]
Tim Miller
I think I have mixed success on that as my self report card. What would your advice be to somebody like me going into those settings?
- [55:19]
Charles Duhigg
So this has actually been studied a lot in a polarized setting. How do we represent our side? And what researchers have found is that the number one thing that gets other people ready to listen to you is to acknowledge the weaknesses on your side. So think for a moment. If you're talking to someone who's, who's pro life and they start the conversation by saying, look, I believe abortion is murder. Now, that being said, I want you to know, like, some of the people in this movement are nuts. Right. And I totally understand that in cases of rape, like, this is a complicated question. We have to like, get into the details at that point. This, what this person has said is some of the criticisms in your head about my side. Some of them are legitimate. And I'm not saying I necessarily agree with them, but I'm, I'm agreeing that a conversation is warranted. At that point, you trust that person so much more, you're willing to listen to them so much more. And, and I mentioned this thing, proving you are listening. The other two tactic that works really, really well and this happens in conversations is simply repeating what the person told you and asking you if you got it right. Right? Saying like, okay, here, here's what I hear you saying, Tim. You believe X and Y and Z. Am I hearing you correctly when I do that? You can either say, no, you didn't understand me, or you say, yeah, I think. I think you got what I'm trying to argue. And then I say, I don't agree with everything you said, but I think what you said has integrity to it. Let me tell you how I think about this now. If I prove to you that I am listening to you, you become something like 14 times more likely to listen to me in return. So that's, I think going on Piers Morgan show is a. Is fantastic. And I think particularly if you go on the show and you say, pierce, those guys on the other side, they're a little bit nuts. But they said two things that actually I think are right. But let me explain to you why the rest of it's wrong.
- [57:08]
Tim Miller
Wrong.
- [57:09]
Charles Duhigg
That is so much more effective.
- [57:11]
Tim Miller
So me shouting shut up, Brian when the guy's name is Brandon, that's probably not right. That's not the right thing to do. Screaming at him and calling the wrong name, is that not the best move?
- [57:23]
Charles Duhigg
It has less effectiveness.
- [57:24]
Tim Miller
All right. Some of the commenters liked it.
- [57:28]
Charles Duhigg
It's true.
- [57:28]
Tim Miller
It's true. I don't know if I won anyone over, though. Okay, well, we're going to keep working on that. You've written this book now, you've been on the tour. It's been a year. Anything that people come up to you and say, hey, this was tool that I didn't. That I act, that I employed. And it was really helpful.
- [57:44]
Charles Duhigg
So the overarching thing that I think I carried away from my reporting was there was this study called the people are probably familiar with it, the Harvard Study of Adult Development, where they tried to figure out what makes you like, healthy and happy and successful when you reach 65 years old. And they looked at all kinds of things like what diet you eat, how often you exercise, where you live, if you get married, if you stay married. They found that the only Thing that really correlated with long term success and happiness and longevity at age 65 is having at least a handful of close relationships at age 45. Because if you have a handful of close relationships at age 45, you're probably going to continue them. The most. The best thing you can do for yourself, the best thing you can do for this nation is to maintain close relationships. Even if you've fallen out of contact with someone, there's someone you haven't talked to in two or three years and you've been putting off calling them and saying, hey, let's catch up, because you think the first five minutes is going to be awkward. And they are going to be awkward because you forgot their wife's name and you can't remember how many kids they have. Right. But that's okay because if you call them up and you say like, hey, like, I just love to catch up with you and there's, there's all this stuff that I like is going to feel dumb for me to ask, but I just want to ask about it. The next 45 minutes is going to be one of the best conversations you've had in the last week. And you are going to feel so good, you're going to feel so much happier. The more that we invest in our relationships with other people, the more that we invest in relationships with our neighbors, even if they put different lawn signs on their lawn on. The more that we build connections, the more successful this country is going to be. Because throughout history, our proudest moments are not when everyone agreed with each other, they are when people disagreed with each other. But we were able to figure out how to live alongside each other peacefully. That brought us the American Revolution and the end of the Civil War and the Civil rights movement. These are really important moments.
- [59:36]
Tim Miller
I think this is especially true in person. I'm such a advocate for in person, you know, rather even do the phone call.
- [59:42]
Charles Duhigg
Absolutely.
- [59:42]
Tim Miller
Like one thing, an example of life is, especially if you're the type person that is on business trips or whatever. I think about this and I'm like, I'm in a city and I haven't seen somebody in seven years and you're like, it's just going to annoy them to want to go have a coffee or a drink with me opposite. That's great. Those are the best conversations. Somebody I haven't talked to in like 10 years. I happen to be in their town and we go have a drink. It's always great and enriching.
- [60:04]
Charles Duhigg
And by the way, if they're not having A drink with you. They're just sitting at home watching another boring TV show, right? No. And if they are busy, if they don't have a drink, they'll just say, oh, man, I'd love to, but I have to watch this TV show tonight.
- [60:15]
Tim Miller
Next time I've got to wash my hair.
- [60:17]
Charles Duhigg
Right, Exactly. Yeah, no, it's well worth doing.
- [60:20]
Tim Miller
All right. Do you have any criticisms for me? Any notes in my communications? Yeah, you're fantastic. This is not a compliment, Fish. You've got to give me a, you got to give me a note.
- [60:30]
Charles Duhigg
Okay, okay, let me think. I mean, I love the show. I, I, I like, love what you do with the show. You know, I, I do. I will say, and, and this isn't true of just your show. This is, I think, true of the, of the shows that I listen to on the political spectrum that aren't far left. I do wish that there were more people who were genuinely enthusiastic about Trump, who are given the space in a non judgmental area to talk about why they're enthusiastic about Trump. I think it's a really interesting psychology.
- [60:58]
Tim Miller
This is my self critique as well. I don't think it's the audience's critique. Oh, big portion of the audience doesn't want to hear that. But that's fine. But I want to do that. It's fucking hard.
- [61:07]
Charles Duhigg
It's hard.
- [61:08]
Tim Miller
It's hard. It's just, it's hard. It's not hard to have the conversation. It's hard to get them to come on. And it's hard to get people to come on that are comfortable enough, that they aren't, that they will do what you just said about how, oh, I'm going to acknowledge these two things. Or, you know, everybody gets their armor up and they feel like if they come on the show, they have to defend their side 100%.
- [61:26]
Charles Duhigg
Yeah.
- [61:26]
Tim Miller
And I don't want to have anybody on the show that's going to lie. Like, I try. And that's true on the left. I've cut, left people off the show because I'm like, he's, you're just, you're spinning and like, there are plenty of shows to go on where you can spin for your side. That's fine. That's, I don't, I'm not against that in principle. It's just that that's not what I'm doing. And so it's hard to find people. I'm working on it. I might have one coming on soon, but it is harder than you think. I loved the Ezra Klein and Ben Shapiro. Pot. I'll just say up here, I've been trying to get Ben to come on line. I thought it was very interesting. It was maddening at some points, but, like, you know, you can glean some insights from it. Absolutely, yeah. I mean, part of it is because Donald Trump forces his people to lie to defend him. And this is one of the. We talked about the things that can be learned from maga, and this is, I. I think a fatal flaw about any cult. Right. It's like he. He makes them lie to be in there in good standing. But, you know, about whatever it is, the election or anything. Absolutely. So that makes it hard for people to stay in. In good standing and come here and be authentic, and that's tough.
- [62:26]
Charles Duhigg
I completely agree. And you're right, like in this, particularly in this time, it is really, really hard to have those conversations. That being said, when we set aside our concerns about platforming someone that we don't agree with completely, and we give them the space to make their argument, and then we say, listen, I disagree. I. I think two things you said made sense to me. The rest of it, I think, is absolute nonsense and bs. Let me explain why. Yeah, those conversations are really important. Those conversations are the ones that help the people in the middle, that help the people who have made up their mind say, you know what? Like, now I understand. This isn't about which team you're on. It's about what you believe and where you. Where you are on the spectrum. That's really powerful. That's when we win. That's when everyone wins.
- [63:09]
Tim Miller
Thank you for the time, brother. Thank you for giving me a break from State of the Union punditry.
- [63:13]
Charles Duhigg
No, absolutely, absolutely. This is so much fun. So one thing is, as we're watching tonight, it'll be really interesting to see how much when Trump seems like he's speaking authentically and when Trump seems like he's giving lip service because his followers, the people who love him, they are very attuned to that. And I think that folks on the left should be as well.
- [63:34]
Tim Miller
Well, keep an eye out for that. It's Charles Duhigg. His book is called Super Communicators. The New Yorker article, what MAGA can Teach Dems about Organizing. Appreciate you very much. Much.
- [63:44]
Charles Duhigg
Thank you.
- [63:45]
Tim Miller
Everybody else will be live tonight. If you want to suffer through it with me, come check it out on YouTube or otherwise. We back tomorrow with one of our faves. We'll see you all then. The board podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.
- [64:17]
Commercial Narrator
We're lost. I'm gonna pull over and ask that man for directions.
- [64:22]
Charles Duhigg
Hi there.
- [64:22]
Commercial Narrator
We're looking to get to the campground.
- [64:24]
T-Mobile Representative
Well, you're gonna take a left at the old oak tree end of this here road. No, I'm just kidding. Let me get my phone out.
- [64:30]
Commercial Narrator
How are you getting a signal out here?
- [64:31]
T-Mobile Representative
T Mobile and US Cellular decided to merge. So the network out here is huge.
- [64:35]
Tim Miller
Huge.
- [64:35]
T-Mobile Representative
We're getting the same great signal as the city and saving a boatload with all the benefits. Oh, and a five year price guarantee. Okay, here's those directions.
- [64:43]
Commercial Narrator
Actually, can you point us in the direction of a T Mobile store?
- [64:46]
Charles Duhigg
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