How to Talk to a Human
Conversations are Jad Abumrad’s forte. In addition to being a composer, educator, and more, Abumrad is creator of New York Public Radio’s Radiolab and is known for insightful interviews. But he noticed a change around 2021. “All my interviews started to suck,” he confessed. He went on a quest to figure out why, consulting everyone from hostage negotiators, to psychiatrists, to a choreographer about the nature of human communication.
What he learned became an interactive presentation called “How to Talk to a Human,” which he shared at Yale on March 26. He described his talk as “a grab bag of tips and techniques and tricks that I have found very useful.”
Abumrad was presenting via the Poynter Fellowship in Journalism in partnership with Cultivating Conversation—an initiative that is working to help the Yale community develop the skills and readiness to engage constructively across differences.
To start, Abumrad stressed the difference between performative and active listening. He invited audience members to pair up and ask each other open-ended questions. Each would repeat their partner’s answer without trying to impose meaning on what was said, asking further questions, or spinning off into their own story. Then they would switch roles.
When the exercise began, audience members Colleen and her conversational partner, Keith, were strangers. “We learned that we are both deeply concerned about equity in Connecticut school funding and that neither of us have patience with Nutmeggers who complain incessantly about our state. That’s a lot of common ground to establish in a three-minute exercise,” Colleen said.
Abumrad moved on to something even more fundamental, the “choreography” of a conversation. A criminal defense lawyer told him that it’s best to sit beside clients in interviews rather than across from them. “Eye contact can be very intimidating, and you do not want someone to clam up,” Abumrad explained.
He found that out in his first interview with Dolly Parton in 2018. Sitting directly across from each other, “she steamrolled me,” Abumrad recalled. Though she told delightful stories, he never got to ask a question. In subsequent interviews, he sat beside her on a sofa. He also tried to bring in some object to discuss with her, perhaps an old picture or record. He termed this item “the third” and believes it drastically improved the conversation. His resulting podcast series, Dolly Parton’s America, won the Peabody Award.
Abumrad ended the formal talk where he began, on the subject of listening. He introduced the listening triangle. One corner of the triangle is asking an open-ended question, the second is listening without jumping in, and the third is reflecting back the most important points your partner made. The triangle can be made a rectangle with a fourth step—verifying with the speaker that you understood them.
The presentation concluded with a brief Q&A with Secretary and Vice President for University Life Kimberly Goff-Crews and questions from the audience. One of the most challenging came from an undergraduate who said she dislikes conversations with “people who seem determined not to listen to me.” She asked, “Are there conversations not worth having?”
“If someone is determined not to respect you, maybe it’s not worth it,” he answered. Then Abumrad, who had kept up a rapid pace through the afternoon, took a pause. He added that such a conversation could be valuable if you abandon the hope of persuading the other and concentrate on finding the roots of their position. “We need to understand how we got to where we are,” he said.
How to Talk to a Human — on Zoom
- Use the listening triangle: ask open-ended questions, don’t jump in with your own thoughts, mirror back what the other person is saying.
- Signal that you’re actively listening. Nod and make other gestures, either with your own body or emojis. Give feedback like That’s important to say or Good point.
Photography by Barsa Enkhbold '27