You’re Not Listening
June 10, 2025
Since returning from Tokyo, I have been on a deep dive into listening: reading about it, practicing it, and creating ways for others to experience and practice it. After decades of putting much of my creative energy into looking, listening is this fascinating new place that I want to spend more time exploring.
One of the recent books that fell across my path of curiosity is You’re Not Listening: What You're Missing and why it Matters by Kate Murphy. Kate is a journalist and author who writes for The New York Times, WSJ, The Economist, Agence France-Presse, and Texas Monthly.
So, I’m guessing that some of you reading this might have already formed an opinion about Kate Murphy based on the above media outlets she works with. But even that small judgement you've made is already distorting and hampering your ability to listen and learn. This book is about how to calibrate your listening skills to be fully receptive and capable of true conversation, and ultimately, understanding and growth. The author's succint description of her book is what hooked me:
At work, we’re taught to lead the conversation.
On social media, we shape our personal narratives.
At parties, we talk over one another. So do our politicians.
We’re not listening.
And no one is listening to us.
This is exactly how I felt after returning from Japan, as I looked around at our intensely polarized country in the lead up to the Presidential election. Everyone in the US was yelling at each other, no one was listening. It was just a bunch of pointless noise that was making everyone crazy.
I really appreciated Murphy's ability to clearly explain concepts, then back them up with real world experience and scientific studies. There were so many interesting ideas in this book, but here are some of my favorites:
"To listen well is to figure out what's on someone's mind and demonstrate that you care enough to want to know. It's what we all crave; to be understood as a person with thoughts, emotions, and intentions that are unique and valuable and deserving of attention. Listening is about the experience of being experienced. It's when someone takes and interest in who you are and what you are doing. The lack of being known and accepted in this way leads to feelings of inadequacy and emptiness."
"When you leave a conversation, ask yourself, What did I just learn about that person? What was most concerning to that person today? How did that person feel about what we were talking about? If you can’t answer those questions, you probably need to work on your listening.”
“The English romantic poet John Keats wrote to his brothers in 1817 that to be a person of achievement, one must have “negative capability” which he described as “capable of being in uncertanties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.” Good listeners have negative capability. They are able to cope with contradictory ideas and gray areas. Good listeners know there is usually more to the story than first appears and are not so eager for tidy reasoning and immediate answers, which is perhaps the opposite to being narrow-minded. Negative capability is also at the root of creativity because it leads to new ways of thinking about things”
“To listen does not mean, or even imply, that you agree with someone. It simply means that you accept the legitimacy of the other person’s point of view and that you might have something to learn from it. It also means that you embrace the possibility that there might be multiple truths and understanding them all might lead to a larger truth. Good listeners know that understanding is not binary. It’s not that you have it or you don’t. Your understanding can always be improved.”
“Neuroscientists at the Brain and Creativity Institute at USC recruited subjects with staunch political posiitions and, using an fMRI scanner, looked at their brain activity when their beliefs were challenged. Parts of their brains lit up as if they were being chased by a bear. And when we are in this fight, flight, or freeze mode, it’s incredibly hard to listen.”
“Student protestors in recent years have said listening to opposing views and opinions made them feel “unsafe.” According to a nationwide survey of college and university students conducted by the Brookings Institution, more than half, 51 percent, thought it was “acceptable” to shout down a speaker with whom they disagreed, and almost a fifth, 19 percent, supported using violence to prevent a speaker from delivering an address.”
“Studies have shown that Japanese businesspeople tolerate silences that last nearly twice as long as those Americans withstand, 8.2 seconds versus 4.6 seconds. Doctor-patient interactions in Japan contain more silences than in America, 30 percent versus 8 percent. In America, we say, “The squeaky wheel gets the grease,” while in Japan, “The silent man is the best to listen to.”
There’s so much more in this book, but for me, the takeaway is that in America, we don’t have political problems, we have listening problems. The continued polarization of our system is not a function of political ideology, but rather the inability for people to develop their “negative capability.” The ability for people to allow for the validity of views and ideas that are different from theirs, without getting triggered and flying into a fight, flight, or freeze state. And after enough time yelling in this elevated state, it’s only a matter of time before the guns come out, because guns are louder than yelling. Which, sadly, we are seeing more and more in the US.
Last weekend, a middle-aged guy named Mohamed Soliman drove from Colorado Springs to Boulder and attempted to kill a group of peaceful pro-Israel protesters on the Pearl Street Mall by setting them on fire with a makeshift flamethrower. He was quickly arrested, but not before severely burning a bunch of people. He is married, with a wife and five kids. He has no prior criminal record.
Of course, setting other people on fire is never OK. But I can understand that he believed in something very strongly, and why he was so angry. Angry enough to spend a year planning his attack, angry enough to drive several hours to Boulder, angry enough to park his car and actually follow through on his horrible plan. He felt unheard and misunderstood, like his survival was threatened. He had probably been in an elevated state of flight, flight, or freeze for at least the past year, probably longer. For someone to throw their life away and leave their family behind in the name of hate, things need to be pretty bad.
But I wonder, if there had been someone to really listen to Mohamed, could this have been avoided? If his parents or friends had listened to him when he was younger, or if his wife and kids had listened to him over the last year, or if there had been a concerned friend with him in the car as he drove toward Boulder on June 1st, could that friend have truly heard him, understood him, and kept him from taking his anger out on a group of peaceful protesters with a flamethrower?
My hunch is that this sort of thing is entirely avoidable. If we can all learn to listen just a little bit better — to be genuinely interested in and curious about others, to develop our “negative capability”, to let people finish their thoughts before responding, and taking an extra second or two to do so, maybe we can quiet the noise and make room for real conversation.