Have you ever been frustrated by trying to get a word in edgewise in a conversation, with everyone else talking over you?
Have you ever been frustrated by people who expect you to read their minds, instead of just telling you what they want?
I’m listening to episode 6 of the podcast while gardening; this is the episode when we first bring Jed on as a guest, and we talk (often over each other) about conversational styles (surely of interest to anyone who hosts or listens to podcasts) and segue from there into gender dynamics, Ask vs. Guess culture, etc.
I admit, I find this topic sort of endlessly fascinating. How we communicate, how we make space for each other’s voices (or fail to), how we navigate complex and touchy social dynamics, how we learn to actually listen to each other…all of this seems essential to building a better world.
In these early episodes of the podcast, I think Benjamin Rosenbaum and I were still mostly feeling our way towards our main topics, and in not too much longer, we’ll mostly be talking about writing, editing, story. But that isn’t to say we’ll leave the cultural conversations behind — they’re interwoven with everything we do professionally and personally…
…and in fact, the second half of the podcast has quite a lot about constructing alien cultures in this context. 