Dr. Brian Keating

Our eyes are unique in that we have, you know, amongst most species don't have the white part that we have, but mammals do.

So the white part is really strong cue that where your attention is devoted.

So humans don't trust people as much when they're not looking at each other.

Another kind of instantiation of that is

the joke that how do you know a scientist is outgoing he looks at your shoes when he talks to you right okay so so like attention but the way that i do it is when i am talking to a guest let's say i'm talking to a big shot like sam harris so setting up a sam harris involved like two producers his assistant whatever and they said well he's got one hour okay so he's got one hour on this day and so we did the podcast and then two hours go by three hours go by at that point i know he's deeply engaged

And it's going to be – it's a good interview for him because nobody would say like if I have an out, I said, Ryan, I got to go in 32 minutes.

And then 32 minutes comes up and I'm like, well, I actually didn't have to go.

I'm actually saying I'm a liar, right?

I'm admitting that I'm not – I wasn't honest about – which is ironic for Sam because he has a book about lying.

and how you should never do it, but he has many flaws, as we can get into some other time.

So we had this great conversation, and then we're talking, and it goes, the other way is when you hear somebody say, oh, I've never thought of that before, or that's a really good question, and they're actually kind of stumped a little bit.

I've never been asked about like the business side of my podcast.

Like that's just not something that comes up mostly because I'm an astrophysicist, cosmologist, author, and so forth.

So I'm not asked about my YouTube empire.

I'm not like that level of greatness.

But those are cues that I use to kind of –

lean into like the fact that I'm doing a good job in real time.

And, uh, and it's obvious sometimes when people aren't really good, but sometimes it's hard to tell.

Like if I'm looking down, I might just be just like you, Ryan, or I might be, I might be really introverted or body dysmorphic or something like that.

Like I might just not be.