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RESPONSIVE LISTENING There’s a body of scientific literature on responsive listening, but I came to understand it in a personal way through my work. In acting, this kind of relating is fundamental. You don’t say your next line simply because it’s in the script. You say it because the other person has behaved in a way that makes you say it. Relating to them allows them to have an effect on you—to change you, in way. And that’s why you respond the way you do. For an actor, it’s the difference between planning how you’re going to behave, which looks like acting, and finding your performance in the other person’s eyes, which makes you respond to one another—and which looks like life. But, with all that behind me, here I was supposedly in conversation with the solar panel scientist, and I wasn’t relating to him. Slowly, it was beginning to dawn on me: It’s not just in acting that genuine relating has to take place—real conversation can’t happen if listening is just my waiting for you to finish talking. LISTENING AND WILLING TO BE CHANGED I so loved this idea—that on the stage the other actor has to be able to affect you if a scene is to take place—that I came to the conclusion that, even in life, unless I’m responding with my whole self—unless, in fact, I’m willing to be changed by you—I’m probably not really listening. But if I do listen—openly, naïvely, and innocently—there’s a chance, possibly the only chance, that a true dialogue and real communication will take place between us. This was the first step in understanding what had to take place before doctors (and dentists) could talk with their patients; before people in business could relate to their customers, parents could advise their children, and couples could work together—with far fewer misunderstandings and hard feelings. At first, though, I was concentrating on helping scientists get their story out in the most human-sounding way. Once I began to relearn listening as a human interaction, and not just an acting technique, I could go into each interview for Scientific American Frontiers without a set of questions. It wasn’t really an interview anymore. It was a conversation. After a while, I saw that I was having trouble talking with them whenever I thought I knew more than I really did about their work. I was boxing in the scientists with questions that were based on false assumptions. I took a bold step and stopped reading the scientists’ research papers before I met with them. I would come in armed only with curiosity and my own natural ignorance. I was learning the value of bringing my ignorance to the surface. The
If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look on My Face?
Alan Alda
If a chain reaction would work in graphite and uranium, Szilard assumed, then a bomb was probable. And if he had managed these conclusions, he further assumed, then so had his counterparts in Nazi Germany. He sought out Pegram in those early July days and tried to convince him of the urgent need for a large-scale experiment to settle the question. The dean resisted the assault: “He took the position that even though the matter appeared to be rather urgent, this being summer and Fermi being away there was really nothing that usefully could be done until the fall.”
Making of the Atomic Bomb
Richard Rhodes
Vasilios was listening so intently, Chris had to prompt him to translate. “The Germans didn’t know us, and they believed they could not lose,” Yiorgos continued. “They believed they’d never have to look anyone in the face and explain. They’d never have to pay for what they did. And I believe that is why we defeated them.” Because we have to answer to one another, and they did not
Natural Born Heroes
Christopher McDougall
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