00:00 Today we've got a very, very special guest. Now, when I started my career fresh out of university about 10 years ago, there was no formal training. So I found myself seeking experts in communication and I found myself before every meeting that I had with a potential client watching the same TED Talk, it was how to speak so that people want to listen. And today we're with Julian Treasure, who is the man behind that speech and behind

00:29 getting me through those early few meetings. So Julian, massive honor. How are you today? Well, I'm very delighted to hear I was helpful to you. That's lovely. It's always nice to get feedback. know, people always think I'm deluged with it, but I'm not really. And it's lovely when I hear I made a difference to somebody. It really does mean a lot to me. Huge difference. Quieted a lot of nerves for me. So nice to be able to thank you 10 years later.

00:58 So we always start our podcast off the exact same way. So for people who, who don't know you, who are you and what problem do you solve? I'm Julian Treasure. I'm an author, trainer, coach, and speaker on three things. Sound, particularly the use of sound in business and speaking, powerful speaking, and most of all, conscious listening. So it's all around sound really.

01:26 These days, most of my time is spent training people and coaching people on the important skills of speaking and listening, which when you think about it, we don't teach in school, which is nuts. So many people don't even know these are skills and they so are skills. So I travel the world giving keynotes and doing workshops and I have online courses and I have books on these subjects. That's what I do.

01:55 Wonderful. So I'm prepared to have my mind blown. So I'm going to ask you a really broad question to kick us off and feel free to take this wherever you would like. What are things that people don't know about sound in terms of how it's impacting them on a day-to-day basis without them being aware? Well, a long time ago, when I started a company called The Sound Agency, which I've recently closed actually after 20 years of audio branding.

02:22 I'm now focusing very much on communication skills, personal communication skills. But when I started the sound agency back in 2003, I did a lot of research and I came up with four ways in which sound effects all of us, you, me, everyone listening to this every day. And yet most of the time we're unconscious about these effects. They're powerful. So the first one is psychological, sorry, physiological. Sound will...

02:52 have an immediate physiological effect. If I play this.

02:58 and that's not a very nice noise. And if your alarm clock sounds like that, please change it. It's not good for you. That's an alarm sound and it will give you a shot of cortisol, your fight, flight hormones. So puts you in a state ready to flee. And that's natural because hearing is our primary warning sense. You know, 10, 20,000 years ago, if you were going to take shelter in a cave, you'd better be listening pretty well because there might be something else in there that would have you for lunch. So hearing is, it's survival.

03:27 It always has been survival world until recently. Not so much now when I see people cycling around cities with headphones on. I think maybe we've lost contact with that essential reason for listening to the world around us. So physiological, that's the first thing. And I could calm you down again by playing this. That's gentle surf. It's a lovely sound, very similar to the breathing we're seeking humans. So it'll calm you and also.

03:54 you know, associated with being on the beach, not a care in the world, being on holiday, lovely places and so forth. So if you have a problem sleeping, anyone listening to this gentle surf, it's very good. Second way sound affects us is psychologically changes our feelings. I this piece of music isn't going to make you feel happy. It wasn't designed to make you feel happy. So music is a very powerful way of changing emotions, but lots of sound does that too. It's not just music.

04:22 Over the years at the sound agency, we used birdsong a great deal actually, because people have, over hundreds of thousands of years, humans have found that when the birds are happily singing, things are normally okay. So we have an association with birdsong that leaves us feeling secure, calm, and also alert because it's nature's alarm clock. So if you want to work, birdsong is a great sound to work to. The third way sound affects us is cognitively.

04:51 how well we can think so you can understand two people talking at the same time. It's just not possible to do that. So we have bandwidth for around 1.6 human conversations, which is why open plan offices are a disaster for concentrating. And noise is the number one problem by miles in modern offices because we're open planning the whole world. And if there's somebody behind you talking about their great night out last night, you have no earlids, you're programmed.

05:20 to decode language, and that means they're taking out one of your 1.6, leaving you very restricted in listening to the voice in your head, which is what you need to listen to if you're writing or calculating or whatever. So the drop in productivity, it's significant. mean, I always quote the paper I found with the biggest drop, which is Banbury and Berry, who found that noisy offices reduce our productivity by two thirds.

05:49 for quiet working, two thirds. And that is terrifying really, when you think about it. And the fourth and final way sound affects us is behaviorally. So there was a great study that illustrates this. They had two gondola ends displaying wine, one with French wine, one with German wine. And all they did, these academics who did this study, was to alternate a music condition. So on day one, a little bit of this.

06:19 And on day two, a little bit of that. So what happened on the French music days? French wine outsold German wine by five bottles to one, which may not be too surprising. That's so more on the world stage, but big, but on the German music days, German wine outsold French wine by two bottles to one. And that's a huge shift in purchasing behavior. And most of the people interviewed

06:48 had not even noticed the music. So this is not, ah, German music, therefore I should buy German wine. No, no, this is unconscious, subconscious. So I think if that is how powerfully sound is affecting what you and I buy, decide to buy, how long we stay in a place, what we do, how sociable or unsociable we are, all these things, the research shows sound has a powerful effect on how well we can think, how well we feel.

07:17 You know, happiness, effectiveness and well-being fundamentally. I think we need to listen a bit more carefully, don't you?

07:27 I love that study. now I know that we can't control people, Julian, like we cannot kind of control what people are thinking and what people do. what am I in control of and what is Zach in control of? And people listen to the podcast when it comes to communicating effectively to help others in their subconscious. How do we get people to listen to what we say?

07:56 How do we communicate effectively to listen? Well, the basis of all my work is a simple diagram where I start when I'm talking with a chart that just goes speaking arrow across listening. And that's how most people think communication happens. But actually that's profoundly wrong. Speaking and listening are related in a circle. So you have to have them with arrows going round and round and

08:24 between them because the way I speak affects the way you listen and the way you listen affects the way I speak and on and on. And that process all happens inside of a context which is where sound is so important because we're talking here about verbal communication. I mean I'm not talking about writing at all. Verbal communication we've been using for hundreds of thousands or even millions of years if you go back pre-language you know when people or proto-humans used

08:54 all sorts of noises to communicate with each other. But language-wise, we've been using complex language for probably something between 100 and 200,000 years. So 100 to 200,000 years. Writing was only invented 5,000 years ago. So for the vast bulk of human history, speaking and listening have been our only way of communicating, and they've now been sidelined. So what do we teach in school?

09:23 reading and writing. We do not teach speaking or listening. They're not even acknowledged as skills, which is very sad and very crazy. So just coming back to the model, you have the circular relationship where if you want to be a powerful speaker, you need to learn to be a good listener as well because the two things affect one another. It's not going to work simply to shout at the world. Although that is the predilection of many people. My TED talk on speaking,

09:53 has been seen by five times as many people as my TED talk on listening, which is interesting. So that process, think listening is the foundational skill and we can learn how to master both of these two skills if we acknowledge first of all that they are skills and that's the door into this whole world really is to realize these are skills. I can practice, I can master them, I can become good at them. Most people aren't.

10:22 Most people think that you've just given a voice and you've got ears and they work and that's it and you don't have to do anything. That's not true. The voice is an amazing instrument that we all play and just as you wouldn't want to go on stage and give a piano recital in the Royal Albert Hall with no practice at all, you know, why is it people are happy to go and stand in front of people and speak to them?

10:51 without having learned how to master this instrument. You know, I do this all the time in talks to, you know, rooms full of senior managers, chief execs. How many of you use your voice in your work to present, to talk to the media, to inspire people? Everybody puts their hand up. Of course. Good. How many of you have had formal vocal training? About three. I don't understand that.

11:21 So training the voice and training your ability to listen, that is how you create powerful communication. And at the same time, you also need to be conscious of the context. I mean, it's not always a good context. Here we've got very nice context, know, microphones, no background noise. I don't know about the people listening to this. Maybe they'll be in a noisy office or in a cafe and there's a lot of noise going on. You wouldn't want to...

11:50 propose marriage in a noisy Starbucks, would you? I mean, it's just not the right environment, probably. I mean, maybe some people would. You know, people often ask me questions like, what's the best sound for working to? It's very, very personal, all of this, but it is important to ask yourself questions about the context, to take responsibility for the sound you're consuming, because then you can really dramatically improve your wellbeing and your effectiveness.

12:21 by thinking is this the best sound right now for what I'm trying to do? And we so don't think about that. So there's a lot to think about here. There's a lot to master, taking responsibility for the sound we create, the sound we consume, and our listening as a skill.

12:43 So there'll be people listening to this, that are screaming at their iPhones and their Samsung saying, Julian, drop the routine. What should they be doing to practice becoming a better listener? What can they tangibly be doing? Well, there's a lot of things. You know, I do workshops on this and there are many, exercises. I'll give you a couple of starters, which are very easy to do. The first, I think, for listening particularly is to make friends with silence.

13:14 If you live in a city and more than 50 % of humanity now lives in big cities, it's quite hard to get silence. It's not easy to achieve it. So if you can't get absolute silence, just a quiet place, a couple of times a day, sit quietly for three, five minutes and let your ears relax and recalibrate. And then you'll be listening far better. It gives you a baseline. know, silence is the baseline for all sound. It's also what makes sound.

13:44 Meaningful, it's the gaps between the words, the gaps between the notes. Otherwise it's just cacophony. So silence is very important and we don't get very much of it in our modern lives. And particularly, you know, with the always on multitasking existence that we tend to lead something in our hand the whole time. You know, when you're looking at your hand going, you know, I am listening to you. No, you're not actually, you're sending a text or checking, you know, Facebook or whatever it is.

14:13 Well, that's not listening. Scott Peck, the American author, said you cannot truly listen to anyone and do anything else at the same time. Now that's quite challenging these days, isn't it? So, dear listeners, I wonder when it is that you last gave somebody 100 % of your attention, put everything down, looked at them and focused on them and gave them the enormous gift

14:42 of your full attention. Try it after this podcast. You might get the response, what are you doing? Because people aren't used to it. You know, they're so used to being partially listened to. There's nothing wrong with partial listening. I'm not saying that's a sin or anything like that. As long as you're conscious, that's what you're doing. And you have a range. So you may need sometimes to say to yourself, hang on, I'm partially listening and this person's bearing their soul and sharing deep stuff.

15:12 put everything down, turn to them, you know, and give them what they need. Other times, of course, partially listening is absolutely fine. So it's all about consciousness to me. So there's a couple of examples of things that you can start to pay attention to, giving yourself silence and becoming conscious of where you're listening from, if you like, how you're listening. Those are really powerful things to do.

15:45 There's a, as we're sat here listening to you, I'm hearing the texture, the cadence, the timbre of your voice. You don't say ums and ahs, all that is absent. And I know that I'm guilty of that myself. Where was Julian when he first started on this journey or is sound and communication something that you were always fascinated in from the moment you came out the womb?

16:11 Well, we do start listening before we're born actually, and I can give you a little sample of that sound. This sound is the first one we hear, it's the mother's heartbeat. And we're listening to that even before our ears develop. You know, we listen with every cell in our being. We still do that. I was lucky enough to interview Dame Evelyn Grenny a few years ago, and I mean, she's an amazing woman. She's...

16:37 a world famous percussionist who plays with symphony orchestras all over the world and she's profoundly deaf. And she learned from a very enlightened teacher, very young, to listen by sensing vibrations with the rest of her body, even though her ears don't work well at all. that kind of, that listening with every cell of your body is an amazing concept.

17:06 to me. Hang on, I've forgotten your question. I've gotten off on a tangent there. What was the question again? Zach? I was just wondering about the... So we're hearing you today as, let's say... speaking where did I start from? Yeah, I'm sorry. Yeah, so how did it start? Do we take it that you came out of the womb like this or... Okay. How do we look back at your journey? So just like everybody, I came out of the womb...

17:36 with an auditory shock actually. It's worth reflecting on that as well. When you're in the womb, everything's very dull and there's no top end at all. You're in a fluid and you're listening to your mother's heartbeat through fluid, your breathing fluid at that time. When you're born, suddenly the fluid's gone and you're in air. And sound through air is very different to our ears. Suddenly the entire top end of the frequency spectrum becomes

18:05 Definitely loud, would think, terrifyingly loud, especially if you're born in hospital and there's hisses and so forth going on around you. That must be a big, big, big part of the shock of being born, not just the light, because we don't see very well when we're a tiny baby, but we hear perfectly. And that shock of the whole top end of the frequency spectrum becoming available, I think that must be enormous. Anyway.

18:31 I don't think I was that different to anybody else at that stage, but I do remember from a very, very young age, I was blessed to have a mother who was quite religious about inculcating me into musical appreciation. And, you know, so from, I would say five, six, seven, I was being played the young person's guide to the orchestra, Carnival of the Animals, that kind of, you know, classical music for children, Peter and the Wolf.

19:00 Those kind of things which had a huge impact on me. I loved them. And then as time went on, I remember my dad coming home with Sergeant Pepper under his arm saying, this is supposed to be good. I then by the late 60s, I was buying records and I was off. You know, I then spent years as a teenager in darkened rooms with headphones on listening to albums, which were my best friends.

19:29 for a long time. I mean, not that I didn't have friends, but music was so important to me and it has remained so actually in my life. So listening, I then started to play, became a drummer. And I think musicians listen to the world in slightly different ways to non-musicians. mean, if you're playing in a band or an orchestra, you've got to have an attentive multi-track listening, which is different to perhaps the way that people

19:59 would go around in any normal day. You have to listen to all the other instruments at the same time. And you have to be very aware of what they're doing. Otherwise you're not gonna play well. You're not really a member of that gestalt thing that's happening. anybody who plays in a band knows that moment when it just locks in and everybody gets that goofy grin and starts nodding at each other and you're going, yeah, this is it. This is what we're here to do. So that kind of listening is a very powerful thing.

20:29 And then I had a long career in marketing. I started a company in the UK doing contract magazines, you beautiful magazines for big brands like Lexus and Apple and Orange and so forth grew that. But all the way through that, I was playing music and listening to life. And I just kept thinking the world doesn't sound very good. And I realized that actually brands, the brands I was talking to among others,

20:59 We're partly behind that because most of the noise around us is the exhaust gas of the economy. It's a byproduct, it's undesigned, it's accidental, unintentional, and it's there because of commercial activity, most of it. And not your neighbor noise, but certainly, you know, delivery trucks and aircraft and trains and, you know, all the rest of it. So...

21:24 When I sold that company and started the sound agency, the concept was to help organizations sound better, listen better and sound better. And that proved to be a little bit early doors for that. Took a few years of breaking rocks and pre-selling. mean, this, you know, lot of your listeners are salespeople, I know, and it's easy if you're selling something everybody acknowledges they need to a degree.

21:54 But when you're selling something nobody knows they need, have to do a pre-sell in the first place and sort of sell the idea of the thing before you can get into the product itself or service. that was very much, excuse me, that was very much the case with the sound agency. What do you mean sound? We don't have a sound department. Who would be in charge of that? Is that marketing or operations or?

22:21 And the answer is it's everywhere, unfortunately. It's at every sale of an organization from the sound in your corporate reception, which is very often a TV screen with some commercial station on it showing terrible news, why people think bad news is going to make for good meetings. don't know. Might even show ads from competitors. You never know. So, you know, that kind of sound, undesigned, unintentional, or there's a receptionist playing their favorite music because they're bored.

22:51 What's that got to do with your brand? These little things make a huge difference. I we did things like put Birdsong into the toilets in BP service stations, which transformed people's experience of the entire service station. I mean, they did clean them as well and they put nice murals up with pictures of sunflowers and things, but many, many people mentioned the Birdsong as a really delighting and surprising thing. It's not what you expect when you go into a service station bathroom.

23:22 So yeah, sound in that way, you know, it was a fascinating journey to start listening to the world and teaching or persuading organizations to start listening in that way as well, to ask the question, what's the sound of our brand? What sound is our business making? Is it appropriate? Is it effective? Is it positive? Because if you've never designed it, it would be a miracle if it was actually

23:51 working for you, it?

23:56 You mentioned then a big BP, I think you just said that, and so big global brand. Are there cultural nuances or things that differ from geography to geography that you found in terms of the way brand and sound should be communicating with their audience or is sound a global thing regardless? I think the four effects of sound that I've outlined earlier are universal.

24:23 But there are definitely cultural differences as there are with music. You know, you or I might listen to Far Eastern music and find it quite discordant because the sensibilities of harmony vary across the world. And so it's certainly true that, I mean, for example, we did a great deal in Europe and in the Middle East.

24:50 of making shopping malls quieter places or more peaceful places by helping them with the acoustics, making them less jangly and noisy that way. And also by installing soundscapes, which are largely biophilic, nature-based or very gentle, not music. Because most of the sound systems in those places weren't designed to play music in the first place. So you walk around and all you can hear is t-t-t-t-

25:20 You think, don't even know what song that is, but it's fast paced. So it's causing people to walk faster and leave faster. And retailers all understand that dwell time is sell time. They want you in the place longer. So, you know, we thought we were doing a pretty good job there of making these places more pleasant and relaxing. It's a win for everybody. Nice shopping experience and you stay longer and spend more so the, you know, the malls are happier. But if you go to...

25:49 China, or many places in the Far East, noise is associated with success. So if you make a place quieter and more peaceful, people think it's not so successful. So it's just like colour sensibility, you know, in the, here in the UK or in the West, red is the colour of danger and stop. In the Far East, it's the colour of luck and happiness, you know, those kinds of associations. White is...

26:19 for weddings here, white is for funerals there. So just in the same way that colors have different associations, sounds also have different associations in different places. But there are some universals. Birdsong is universally liked. I've only ever met one person in my life who didn't like Birdsong. And water, for example, is another sound you can deploy pretty much anywhere with relatively predictable.

26:47 outcomes depending on the kind of water it is. But water is the sound of purity, cleanliness, health, life, especially if you're in a hot place. know, rich people in hot places have for thousands of years installed fountains, which is a sign of wealth, really. And the fountain is not there to look at, it's there to make that sound. It's the sound of wealth, the sound of I'm a successful person and I can have this.

27:16 water flowing freely in my palazzo or whatever it is. So yeah, are some universals and there are many differences too.

27:30 I've never thought about the sound of water like that before, it's so true. It's like I've got all of this water. Look how wealthy I I love that. I want to ask a bit of a stupid question, Julian, because I want to get your take on it. As you mentioned, lot of people will be listening to this. They're salespeople. So they'll spend a lot of their time cold calling. And they'll spend a lot of their time on calls similar to this, where one person is

27:59 asking questions and then the other person will be like answering the questions and trying to sell. How do you prove, especially in a sales environment, but I think you can take this into the real world as well, how do you prove to somebody that you're listening? Well, there are a lot of proven techniques for this, which can be applied more or less rigorously. Reflection is a big one.

28:27 and that's used in the therapeutic professions a great deal. So it sounds like, oh, what I heard you say is this, is that right? Where you repeat exactly what the person said without colouring it, flavouring it or edging it towards what you think they really meant to say, but they didn't quite get round to or whatever. So it's not interpretive, it's what it actually says, reflective. It's simply leaving the other person feeling heard.

28:54 And that can be very important in particularly in a conflict situation, but also in sales. You ask somebody a question about the area that your product or service is in. And if they come up with some sort of a pain point and then you can reflect that back to them. Oh, okay. So I hear that you're not happy with dot, dot. So reflection definitely leaves the other person feeling heard.

29:24 But I have a mnemonic that I train people on, which is RVSEC, and the R is reflect. The V is possibly the most important part of any human conversation, and it kind of runs in contradiction to an enormously addictive and prevalent human tendency. That tendency is being right. Being right.

29:54 which is made far, far worse by the internet at the moment. So you now see the polarization of politics, people shouting at each other from the rooftops, making everybody wrong. The easiest way to be right is to make somebody else wrong, of course. So, you know, if I say, Jack, you're an idiot, that's completely nonsense. Well, then I know better than you, don't I? And I'm better, I'm more right. Whereas if I say to you the validated way of saying that would be, Jack,

30:24 I don't agree with you, but I absolutely understand why you would think that. Then you're not being invalidated. you you come to what, what was it? Who was it who talked about this? it Kaeya? I can't remember. The place beyond where you've transcended argument and you're into a place where you can both coexist because two people can disagree with each other and both be right.

30:54 in their own worlds. And making somebody wrong is not a successful way to build a trust-based relationship because it lacks the element of understanding and compassion completely. So I think Harville Hendricks, the American author who I'm a great fan of and counselor, he said, you can either be right or

31:23 be in a relationship and I think there's a lot of truth in that. So and he said you can't cuddle up with being right at the end of the day. So you know I think we have to watch this tendency to be right which is you know as I say being exacerbated by social media and silos of people with ever more extreme opinions you know I knew I was right thousands of people agree with me yeah but millions don't but you're not asking them.

31:51 You're just hanging out with the people who do. And there's this tendency we all have to hang out with people who are giving us affirmation of our opinions. Opinions are not facts. And I wish we would remember that more often. If science proceeded the way that we do in politics, for example, we wouldn't get very far at all. Scientists can't hold on to theories like we hold on to opinions and defend them. A theory is only the

32:20 currently not disproven best explanation for something and they're seeking a better one all the time. So how cool would it be if we were seeking, if we held our opinions that loosely and we're seeking a better opinion all the time. But unfortunately they get entrenched and they become part of us. So in sales making people wrong is death, absolute death. So RV, validate, the S is summarize.

32:51 which is important through a conversation. You know, it's like closing doors in the corridor as you move down the corridor of the conversation. So what we've agreed is this, or, so let me understand what you've said is this. So it's, it's reflecting, but big chunks as opposed to individual words. Then the E is empathize, which is a very powerful way to be, if you're selling to somebody particularly, oh, that must've been really tough for you. Or I can only imagine how that felt, you know.

33:21 And then you get to the C, which is where you can create. So you've placed a problem on the table in front of both of you, whether you're selling or problem solving, or you're trying to solve a conflict. The problem is on the table in front of you both, and you can use your two different perspectives, fuse them together, know, thesis, antithesis, and hopefully synthesis, and come up with a creative solution that works for you both. So,

33:50 RVSec, it's a powerful system and the biggest missing piece in the modern world, I think, is validation.

34:01 And then one of the things that I see thrown about, I've been saving this question for you, Julian, to maybe put it to bed, whether it's true or not. But I see this quote that goes around that says communication is like 70 % body language, 25 % tone and 5 % words. So I guess the first part of the question is how much truth is there to that? And secondly,

34:30 with the world changing during the pandemic and working from home, with the loss of being in person and the lack of body language sometimes, how do we keep people engaged when all we have is our tone and our words? Well, first of all, that quote is not true. It's an urban myth which has been propagated. It's a bit like the other one, which said that people's attention span is now as short as that of a goldfish, which was a complete error.

35:00 when somebody copied seconds instead of minutes. And in any case, Goldfish have got quite good attention spans. So that was nonsense too. This one is not true. And if you research it back, I mean, I did some work on this years and years ago and I can't remember where it originated from, but it is not, it was a very loose.

35:22 not very well carried out piece of research that just got quoted and quoted and quoted until everybody thinks it's true because you've seen it around so many times. But you've got to watch out on the internet. There are so many bits of apocryphal nonsense which have been reposted so many times you think they're true. Lots of them you'll find if you search for Einstein said, you'll find all sorts of absolute crap that Einstein never said.

35:51 So no, that is not a correct piece of research and I absolutely don't believe it. And nor does, you if you think about it, it's nonsense, isn't it? You know, that 70 % of communication is nonverbal. We've been using words for hundreds of thousands, even, you know, as I say, voice for millions of years, probably before homo sapiens evolved. So, you know, the voice is the most powerful form.

36:21 of communication. Would you rather read a play or see a play or hear a play being spoken? Would you rather read poetry or hear it? It's, you know, you had so much, would you, have you ever misunderstood an email, the tone of voice in an email? Or had one of yours misunderstood because people couldn't hear the inflection or the the wry, you know, little tone you put into that little bit of sarcasm or irony or whatever it was. So I...

36:50 No, I don't believe that. And I do believe the voice is ultimately powerful. It's the most powerful sound on the planet. It's the only sound that can start a war or say, love you. And we don't treat it with enough seriousness.

37:10 Do you, I imagine like us, you're seeing AI coming up through the ranks and becoming more and more complex and clever and innovative. Do you see that being able to replicate all the nuances of a conversation like this and be believable? It's pretty credible within narrow limits.

37:39 I've seen quite a lot of AI avatars which are really quite impressive. And in a conversation like this, it could probably do pretty well. And indeed, I'm working with AI specialists on the West Coast. We're looking at creating an AI me, because I think that's the future of education. We will all have the ability, if you want to learn physics, you can have a chat with Einstein. We've got enough of his voice recorded.

38:08 to create an AI Einstein and enough of his work to pour it into an AI brain. And then you'd be able to ask him questions and he'd be able to answer you. Well, that's a nice way to learn, isn't it? And I think that's what will happen that we'll be able to have gurus in our pocket who can respond to our immediate and personal needs in ways that

38:39 courses, seminars, books, you know, one to many mechanisms never can. So I think that's a huge potential benefit of AI, but it is at the same time deeply worrying. I mean, I'm a great fan of AI as an enhancer, as something that can take the best of us and make it even better. Not, you know, a lot of companies are treating it as a good way to lay off loads of people. Well, you know, that's not really what it should be about.

39:09 It should be about enhancing humanity. And then the interesting question is, what is it that's irreplaceably human and that AI could never do? And the moment to me, that's in the domain of, you know, the ineffable, the things we can't really understand, emotion, creativity, imagination, those kinds of things.

39:37 So I'm not tremendously interested in listening to AI music, although that's moving on very, very fast now. And, you know, to the point where it is able to create some pretty passable music. And certainly, you know, that AI tool, can't remember the name of it, where you can ask it to write a song with the name of your beloved in it and impress their socks off. I mean, that's kind of...

40:05 That's a gimmick now, but give it a year or two and these things could easily be in the charts because, you know, to be honest, a lot of the music that charts is pretty formulaic anyway and is designed by producers who know exactly what they're doing. So, you know, it doesn't really matter that much who's singing it or what it's about. However, I don't think you'd ever get an AI composing Beethoven's Ninth.

40:34 or a song like my favorite song of all time, which is River Man by Nick Drake. No, you're not gonna get an AI doing that. So, I think it's a very interesting area of what is truly and irreplaceably human and where the AI can enhance us and make us better. But as I say, there is a scary side to this as well, of course, deep fakes being replaced in...

41:03 certain ways, you I mean, you guys and probably everybody listening to this has suffered from the upswell in cold email where people have discovered ways of getting AI to churn out infinite numbers of emails. Hey, just bumping this up your inbox, blah, blah, blah. Please go away, stop it. Well, the idea of that happening through the phone or other more personal

41:33 communication mechanisms through our social media and so forth. That's pretty frightening too. The noise in the system is liable to increase and that's going to require smarter tools to distinguish the signal from the noise. But I don't know if you saw the TED talk recently on audio computing. It came out just a month ago. It was at the recent TED in Vancouver.

42:03 company, what's it called now? I can't remember that either. The guy has, he was a Google kind of researcher and he has a company which has invented an audio computer, which is AI based. So you have proper conversations with it. And that to me is the future. That's where we're heading. No more apps, no more six bloody digit codes that you have to enter six times in order to access anything. No more of that.

42:32 We'll just be saying, you know, think of Jarvis in Iron Man. It's more that kind of style. So, you know, if mine's called, hey, Fred, I'm going to Brazil next week. Could you book flights for Friday, coming back on Thursday? Just the ones I like. And could you contact Pablo and see if he can make dinner on Wednesday night at that restaurant I went to last time? Buff. And that will all happen without me having to go near a credit card or...

43:02 you know, a booking form or anything like that. So this kind of intelligent interface is going to regenerate our relationship with sound, I think. We will be using speaking and listening as our primary interface with technology, which is so sensible because it's the most natural way we communicate. And it frees up our fingers and our eyes at last.

43:28 So we're not any longer sitting around the table staring at our hands and not talking to anybody. I think that's quite an exciting future.

43:40 Yeah, I agree. It reminds me of I heard Jimmy Carr say recently that AI is a really good covers band. So when you're thinking of watching a great covers band, you know it's a covers band, you still enjoy it, but there's nothing like watching the actual ACDC. So Julian, this has been an amazing conversation. I'm really honored that you've done this for us.

44:06 Um, a lot of people that listen to this tend to listen to it at the point of I've got a tricky meeting today. I need some inspiration for that. Or it's a Monday morning. I want to kind of re-engage. want to, I want to think of something to communicate with my team. So if someone's listening to this and they're just looking for that, that one tip, that one takeaway, that one consideration to have before that presentation, before that team meeting that kicks off the Monday morning, what would you like them to take away?

44:36 There's a very important distinction I make about listening, which is again, something most people don't realize. One of the most common mistakes is assuming everybody listens like I do. They do not. Every human being's listening is unique because we listen through a whole set of filters, the culture we're born into, the language we learn to speak, values, attitudes, beliefs, intentions, expectations, assumptions, emotions, all these things color our listening.

45:06 My listening is different from yours, Zach, and yours, Jack, and our listening's change through the day as well, depending on what's happened to us or what state we're in. So whenever you're talking to even just one person, but certainly if you're standing up in front of a room full of people or on a stage in front of hundreds or even thousands of people, ask the question, what's the listening I'm speaking into?

45:35 because you always speak into a listing and it's never the same. So giving the same old spiel every time is not gonna work. And this question above all else is how you can hit the bullseye instead of missing the target altogether. Whether you're selling, presenting, giving a team meeting, inspiring people or having a chat with your friends, really. What's the listening I'm speaking into?

46:02 Just keep asking that and you will become more and more and more sensitive to the listening. And that's the biggest single tip I can give anybody in human communication.

46:19 Superb.

46:25 And if anyone has watched this, they want more, they want to learn more from you, they want to find more out, where should we be sending them to? Well, first of all, my website is a good place to start, JulianTresher.com. And there's a free video on there, I think still, which is an analysis of my number six of all time TED Talk. Why was that so successful? What do they do right?

46:55 and what made it work. So it's quite useful for anybody who does public speaking. Sign up there. And also I have a sub stack where I post regularly stuff about sound speaking and listening. And you'd be welcome there. That's free subscription. Well, there is a paid version as well, but you can subscribe for free. Those are great places. And you know, if anybody wants to investigate working with me in any way, coaching workshops, keynotes, I'm always happy to do that.

47:25 And the book is out there, of course, in all the usual places.

47:31 Wonderful. will put all those links in the description for this. Thank you so much, Julian. It's been amazing. Thanks for having me, guys. It's been a lot of fun. Cheers.