Charles Duhigg

speaker

203 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 28 Jul

Charles Duhigg’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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Life Kit · How to have better conversations · 28 Jul 2026 podcast

But it just takes like 10 seconds to come up with the real question as opposed to the rote question, which is how is school?

Do you have homework?

So I try and do that more.

So there's a guy named Nicholas Epley who's a professor at the University of Chicago who studied this exact question his whole career.

And what he's found is that almost any question that asks why helps people open up.

So as I mentioned, what do you do for a living?

I'm a lawyer.

Oh, yeah?

Why did you decide to become a lawyer?

What did you have for lunch today?

I had grilled cheese.

Oh, yeah?

Why did you decide to have grilled cheese?

When we ask why, what we're doing is we're inviting the other person to explain who they are.

And when I'm describing it this way, it can seem like, oh, maybe that's harder than it is.

Maybe that's more awkward than it is.

But what Nick has found is that within three questions between strangers, between close friends, between people who have nothing in common, within three questions, you can get to something real if you ask why.

And it's always easy to ask why.

People love to be asked why because they love to talk about how they see the world.

Of course.

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