A “Stupid” Way To Get People To Say Amazing Things
It goes against everything you’ve heard about asking questions
My career as a journalist who writes about complicated topics like health, psychology, physiology, anthropology, etc. means that I’m constantly talking to very smart people. The kind of people with all sorts of letters behind their name, whose studies appear on the cover of Nature and Science, and who talk in long and data-filled streams of consciousness. People who make me feel dumb.
So I often get self-conscious when I interview these people. I’m the type of person who once went to the emergency room after inflating his hand into a balloon when he tried to clean a puncture wound with compressed air. True story.
In interviews I’ve always been concerned about asking the right questions the right way. Taking time to laboriously phrase each question in such a way that suggests to the interviewee, “hey, I’m a smart guy who’s done his homework!” This, I think, shows my sources that I respect their work and will not butcher their science. And to a certain extent it does.
But in promoting my new book, The Comfort Crisis, I learned a new technique that was totally at odds with what I learned in journalism school. It seemed almost lazy at first. But it totally worked and drew better…
