11. Vanessa Van Edwards: Author of Captivate

Hello, Book Thinkers family, and welcome to episode number 11 of our brand new podcast, Book Thinkers: Life-Changing Books. During each episode, I interview some of the world's top authors, and as a listener, you can expect to discover new books, new mentors, and new resources that you can now use to achieve more and to live better. In this episode, I have the pleasure to interview one of my favorite authors, Vanessa Van Edwards. Vanessa is a recovering awkward person. She's the lead investigator at Science of People, and she's also the bestselling author of Captivate. And the subtitle of Captivate is The Science of Succeeding with People. She's developed a science-based framework for understanding different personalities, also how to improve your emotional intelligence and help you communicate with colleagues, clients, and customers. So this is very valuable for everybody listening. And our conversation does touch on her book, but we also talk about some practical science-based tips for improving your communication. That's not in the book. And then towards the end of our conversation, she also shares some of her favorite books. So without further ado, please enjoy my wonderful conversation with the amazing Vanessa Van Edwards. Vanessa, thank you so much for joining us on the Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books Podcast. I've read Captivate 2 times now and I absolutely love the book. I've been so happy to share it for the last couple of years. Can you introduce yourself to everybody and tell them a little bit about who you are and how you got into writing this book?

Oh my goodness, I am so honored to be here. I've been following your Instagram for years and I am just so excited to meet everyone who's listening as well. My name is Vanessa Van Edwards. I'm a recovering awkward person and just happen to be the accidental bestselling author of Captivate: The Science of Succeeding with People.

Right in the beginning of the book, you say that despite how different we all are on the outside, our inner workings are quite similar and they're also quite predictable. So could you talk a little bit about what that means to you?

Yeah, so I used to think that human behavior was mysterious. And I think that's because as an uncool kid, I always watched the cool kids and was like, what do they know that I don't know? For most of my life, I just have felt like I missed a memo. Like someone, somehow everyone got this memo about how to have conversation and how to have a first impression and what to do with your hands. And I just never got that memo. And so people were very mysterious to me and complicated. I was worried that people were quite complicated. And then as I began to dive into the research, I realized that we're actually much more similar than I would have thought. And I'll give you an example. So I did a little experiment. This is maybe about 6 or 7 years ago now. And, um, basically this experiment was based on the idea that there are universal human truths that everyone thinks they're unique to hold. So everyone has these universal truths about themselves. They think they're the only one who has them. Um, and so what I did was I, um, wrote up a little fortune based on these 7 statements. Um, it was like, you know, uh, you're the kind of person who loves change, but only when you have, um, a nice steady home base to go back to. That's a statement that most people would agree with. So I made this little fortune and I brought all of my girlfriends over for a little party. And at the party I had an envelope with each of their names on it sealed. So everyone had an envelope and they walked in and I said, okay, I'd like everyone to grab your envelope. And at the same time we're going to open them. And I've created a fortune personally written for you. Now what they didn't know was the fortunes were all exactly the same, right? So I had everyone open up these envelopes. And read the statements quietly to themselves. And I said, okay, I want you to hold up on your hand how close I got. 1 being I'm totally off base, you don't even know me, to 5 being I got you, like I know you deep in your soul. And every single woman there held up a 5 except one of my friends held up a 10. And by the way, my friend who held up a 10 like started to tear. She— I felt so guilty. She said, Wow, Vanessa, like, we're really new friends. And I just, I had no idea that you knew me so well and so deeply. I was like, oh God, like, I felt so guilty. And so I was like, well, guess what, everyone? All of your fortunes are exactly the same. People were so mad. They were so mad at me because they were angry, one, that I had tricked them. But two, they were like, but this is me. But this fortune is me. And so I think that once I began to realize that there are these universal truths about human behavior that we can learn and study, it gave me a lot of the confidence I had been missing my whole life.

That's an amazing story. In the book, you, you kind of phrase a question. You say whether you're going to a housewarming party or a first date or you give some other examples, we all worry about the same things. And so we probably all think that we have the same problem socializing. If you're an introvert, you know, I know that there are thrive situations and there are survive situations, but for the most part, if you're an introvert, you're worried about the same things as other introverts. And so we all, we all kind of house these emotions and these feelings that we think are very, I don't know, very centered to who we are as a person. And other people feel the same way. And that's pretty relieving for people.

Yeah. And also I think the hard part is we feel so alone with our fears. especially our social fears. I think that the work of amazing authors like Brené Brown, Bringing Up Vulnerability, have brought to light, thank goodness, a lot of the feelings we have about shame and success and imposter syndrome. I think the next wave, and I've been trying to usher this in as gently as I can, is being more honest about our social fears. And our social fears are a little bit more, I wouldn't say more vulnerable, but a little bit more scary because I think many, many people, myself included, have a, deep fear of being unlikable, that my true authentic self is unlikable, annoying, that people aren't going to like me for me. And so one of two things happens. Either I dive into social anxiety where I close everything out, I don't be social, I try to be by myself, I try not to have any interactions at all because I'm so afraid of people thinking I'm unlikable. Or two, I try to fake it till I make it. I try to pretend to be something I'm not, hoping that people are going to like that person. Both of those are setups for tremendous loneliness. And if anyone's listening and you've experienced this kind of anxiety or fear, when you're lonely because you're physically alone because you've isolated yourself from your fear, it feels insurmountable. But you can also be out at a party or a networking event with hundreds of people and feel incredibly lonely because you're not being yourself. And so that's something that I feel like it's been my life's mission to try to talk about gently.

This next wave, what would you call it? Transparency, radical transparency and honesty. Do you think that it's becoming more acceptable on social media to post bad things as well as good things, or is that still very much frowned upon?

I don't think we're even close to there. And the reason for that is I'm actually doing research right now on a concept called toxic positivity. Have you ever heard of it?

No, but I can imagine exactly what it looks like being somebody who consumes social media.

Okay. So I think we're unfortunately, we're going the opposite way of what you just said, which is there's 2 kinds of toxic positivity. The first is the kind that you see on social media, which is being pretending to be positive, cheerful, happy, outgoing. I'll even say extroverted because you think that that's what people want to see and hear and that will make you more likable. Right? So that's putting out positivity that actually creates toxic, and toxic environment, and toxic feelings, 'cause it's not real and it's not true. That's the first thing. So on the one hand, and by the way, I struggle with this a lot on my social media. So I go through waves. If you look at my Instagram from the last 3 years, it goes up and down, because I can't decide, am I being too positive? Am I not being honest enough? Am I not putting myself in my quote unquote social media enough? So that's the first kind. And I don't have a great answer for it.

Right.

why I'm researching it right now. The second kind, I think, is where I do feel we can make a lot of progress, and that's the social kind of toxic positivity. So the social kind of toxic positivity sounds like this. Oh man, I'm, I'm just having a really hard time. I'm feeling lonely and I'm feeling scared. Oh, it'll all work out. You always figure it out. Just stay positive. The glass is always half full. You make up your mind about how you feel. That is toxic positivity. It's when someone in your life with good intentions— they usually have great intentions— actually dismiss your fear, your negativity, your worries. And so by telling someone to be positive or don't worry about it, you'll, you'll figure it out, or it'll all work out, or everything happens for a reason.

Oof.

That is my least favorite toxic positive phrase because basically you're saying Stop complaining about it. There's a reason for it. You don't know what it is, but I don't want to hear about it. And so that is something that I think that we can, in interpersonal relationships, work on not doing to each other.

Hmm. Well, I'm learning a lot here, so thank you for sharing that. I need to learn a lot more about this though and make sure that I'm not doing it on social media or to other people in my network.

We don't have to go on social media and be like, man, I'm having a terrible day. Like we don't, we don't have to go on and do that. But I do think that we have to think about, um, what are we using social media for? And so if you're using it to actually share who you are, then actually share who you are. If you're using it to be inspiring, then that's okay. Like for example, I made a decision with my team that I want my Instagram to be positive, even if I'm not feeling it. And then those days I don't post. But if you come to my Instagram, I want you to be inspired. I want you to learn something. I, my entire goal for that is it for it to be a positive force in the world. That's something very specific. Do I say that it's a portal into my real life? No, nowhere on there does it say that it's that. Is Captivate more a portal into who I am? Yes. And do I share a ton of very embarrassing stories? Yes. And so I think that you're right, is you've decided that the podcast is where you feel more comfortable sharing those things. And so I think we just have to be more purposeful. Same thing with our throwaway phrases of It'll all work out. Everything happens for a reason. I think we just throw those away and we don't realize the kind of damage they have.

That's a really interesting point. I'm going to have to learn a little bit more about this. So when you finish collecting data and publish it, I'll definitely be a consumer. Okay.

Hopefully in August we're going to have all of our research reported. So tune in then.

All right, perfect.

Yeah.

And everybody in the Book Thinkers family that's listening should as well. Well, for For people who are looking to make progress as far as how they interact with other people from a social perspective, I really like the analogy that you give in the book about playing to your social role. And you say that in sports, a quarterback could go out there and play linebacker and kicker. They could be on the field all 3 times. But if you want to win, that's probably not the best use of your quarterback's time. And the quarterback might not feel great after they go out there and play linebacker. Could you talk a little bit about what playing to your social role actually means?

Yeah. So I think that we tend to think about social situations in one category. Like, we're like, okay, there's professional events like networking events and meetings and conferences, and there's social events— barbecues, parties, nightclubs, brunches. Those are actually all very different. Very different. Not all professional situations are created equal, and certainly not all social situations are created equal. A networking event is very different than a conference, which is very different than a meeting, which is very different than a one-on-one with your boss. The idea that you could use the same skills, people skills, for all of those is kind of silly. It's like saying, well, I'm a good basketball player, so I'm definitely a good volleyball player. Those are totally different sports, and you're going to be better at some than others. The example I give in the book is a jockey, so someone who's a little bit shorter versus someone who's 6'7. You're going to have natural strengths. You could decide at 6'7 that you want to be a jockey, but you're going to be working against your natural strengths. It's the exact same thing that I want to encourage you to think about is think about every people interaction, every interpersonal interaction. That's better. Think about every interpersonal action interaction and How they differ from each other. So when you look at that networking event on your calendar or that friend's barbecue, do you dread it? Right? When you see it pop up, tomorrow is my friend's birthday party, are you like, oh, that means that's probably not one of your high natural social strengths? Versus you see something pop up that says, you know, brunch, and you're like, yes, I so need a mimosa right now. What is the difference between those things? Is it the context? Is it the people? Is it the time? So one thing that I noticed when I began to take stock of each of these different situations— and in the book I actually list them all out, you can do this right now— if you just list all the social situations on your calendar for the next 2 months and then give them a little grade, you can do it yourself. I noticed something very simple. It had very little to do with the people that were there. It had very little to do whether it was social or professional. It had everything to do with the fact Could I have a deep personal conversation with anyone there? So at very big happy hour events or nightclubs or bars, the answer was no. And so all of those were very low on my list. And that's because my way of connecting with people, my only way that I know how to be charismatic, is to ask really deep questions and share stories. If I'm not in a situation where I can do that, then I get super socially anxious. So yours might be something else. Like, for example, I have students that say to me, you know, I noticed that I tend to go to events with my partner, but when I go with my partner, I have more dread, and that's because I feel bad for leaving them. And so we're always joined at the hip, and we share the same stories over and over, and it's really hard for us to meet new people. Okay, that's very helpful to learn and work through. So you might find some interesting patterns that would surprise you.

Once you have gone through that process of deciding where you thrive and where you're forced to survive, You'll end up having to say no to a lot of different engagements, and you'll notice probably that there are some toxic people like you talk about in the book that put pressure on you to attend to places that you now know you will not thrive. And so what you talk about in the book around saying no and saying no gracefully, I think is very important. Could you share that with everybody?

Yes. So if you are a people pleaser, first I want you to know that actually might be your genetics. So one of the things I talk about is our personality traits. A lot of them are more genetic. They're less nurture and more nature. And so high agreeable people, people who are high in agreeableness, they tend to default to yes. So it's really hard for them to say no. So this is you. This, that's okay. You're actually having to develop a framework around your wiring. So I don't want you to feel guilty about it. I don't want you to be hard on yourself about it. This is a skill that we have to learn. So the very first thing is when you're dealing with difficult people or boundary pushers, Anytime you give them a reason, they're gonna try to argue with that reason. And this is really hard. As someone who struggles as a people pleaser, what always happens is I'll say no and then add a reason because I'm trying to justify why I said no. And whenever you have a boundary pusher, they argue with you. So you say they invite you to a happy hour, which everyone— it's my survive location. I don't do great at happy hours. They're super loud and no table and I just don't do well. So it was a happy hour on Friday night. Hey, Vanessa, we'd love to have you come to the happy hour on Friday night. It'll be across the street. You gotta join us. And I say, oh no, you know, I'm so tired on Fridays after work. I have to go home and just crash. Now someone who's respectful of your boundaries will be like, oh, totally get it. Have a Netflix night, jump in your bathtub. I got you. But a boundary pusher will go, oh no, no, this is totally casual, totally easy. We'll have sangria. I promise we'll keep you up. Don't you worry. And then you're stuck, right? So the key here is to practice one of two things. One is saying no gracefully. Oh, thank you so much for the invitation. So a little bit of gratitude. I can't make it. Keep me posted for next time. You never know when you might want to go again. No reason given. Or two, if you're really struggling with this, is to have your standard answer to every request be, oh, thank you so much for the invite. Let me think about it and get back to you. So my real, real people pleasers, I try to train them to never say yes immediately. Never. Even if you are 100% sure you want to do it, always give it a minute. And a lot of the times it's easier to say no over text or over email than right to someone's face. And so the other thing you can do is just practice getting in the habit of never saying yes right away and always giving yourself a minute to think about it.

I need to reflect on that, I think, and implement a little bit more. I was just talking with Greg McKeown the other day who wrote Essentialism.

Oh my God, I love that book.

Such a great book. And right now I'm at a place in my life where there's a maximum level of productivity that can actually lead to positive forward momentum. And once you hit that level, there are diminishing returns. And so I'm working so much and it's forcing me to say no to a lot of people. And I've been implementing some of the tactics from your book and his book and how to effectively say no. But it feels like because I'm giving reasons back to people like, no, I'm too busy, then they always try to work that reason. And so anyway, I'm going to—

You got it. You got it.

You can do it.

Yes, you got this. Anytime. Like, and the funny thing is, if you ever are like, I don't know if I should say yes or no, just reread that section of the book or just hear me being like, you got this. You can say no. And this is the most important thing about saying no. And take this from someone who struggles with people pleasing, who I feel like has finally conquered it a little bit, which is when you say no, you make space for the right things. So saying no to the wrong things makes more space for the right things. And so every time you say no, you don't— it's not like you're saying no to do nothing. You're saying no to the wrong thing so that you have more space, energy, and time for the right thing.

In the book, you say cleaning out the weeds makes more room for new growth, and that's so true.

Exactly.

I love that. Well, let's transition over to hand gestures. So as I shared with you before we jumped on, there are a lot of content creators in the audience, and you give an example in the book about the difference between 2 different TED speakers and the number of hand gestures. So I'd love for you to touch on that for just a minute and give everybody some good practical advice.

Sure. So this actually came from a very simple question that I had when I was really struggling with my awkwardness, which was, what do I do with my hands? Right? This is one of the memos I just felt like I missed. Like, they were just like these, like, dangling things at the end of my arm, and I didn't know what to do with them in a social situation or speaking or in a video or networking events. And so I was like, okay, I'm gonna figure out what do the most successful speakers do with their hands. If I actually watch them on silent, what are they doing with them? So what we did in our lab is we compared thousands of hours of TED Talks. And we looked at the least popular TED Talks by view count and the most popular TED Talks by view count. And we weren't looking only for hand gestures, by the way. We were looking for a lot of different variables. But the one that stood out to us the most was hand gestures. If you compare the least viewed TED Talks and the most viewed TED Talks side by side, you will see the difference, especially if you watch them on silent. When we counted up every single hand gesture used in these TED Talks, the average for the least popular ones was 272 hand gestures in 18 minutes. For the most popular TED Talkers, the average was 465 gestures in 18 minutes. Huge difference. And what we found was that the most popular TED speakers weren't using their hand gestures just for the sake of having hand gestures. Like, it wasn't just jazz hands. They were actually using their gestures along with their words. So if they said the number 3, they held up 3. And there's some great research by Susan Goldwyn-Meadow who found that when we use hand gestures, it actually helps people our memorability. It helps people actually visualize those 3 things. So tomorrow they're more likely to recall, she said 3 things, 3 things, what were they? And so our hand gestures do 2 things. One, they lighten your cognitive load. Try telling a story while sitting on your hands. It's so hard. So actually using hand gestures helps you be more fluent and charismatic. And then second, it also helps your listeners pay attention and remember what you have to say.

I'm just remembering now in the book too, you say that you do everything standing up. And here I am looking at like my little image in this and I'm sitting down and I'm thinking that I need to redo how I record these. And even when you recorded the audiobook, you stood up, right?

Oh my gosh, that was 4 hours of— 4 days— 4 hours— that was 4 days of standing. So you'll actually see, so I'm in my YouTube studio right now. I don't have a place to sit down. So I specifically built my studio so that I can't. So even when I do like really long interviews, I literally have to like sit on the floor. So yeah, I stand because I use way more hand gestures. Even like some of like the rocking back and forth, I'm able to like plant myself. Like when I share a study, I don't know, you can't see this, but when I share a study, I actually widen my stance like to deliver it to you because I want you to feel how excited I am about that content. Yeah. Like, I want to, like, want you to feel it. So highly recommend standing, having your hands loose. I love chairs with armrests for that reason. I find that chairs without armrests, you tend to put your arms tightly to the sides of your torso, whereas if you have an armrest, you immediately roll your shoulders back and you're more likely to gesture.

I really, I wasn't, when I, when I've gone through the book a couple of times, I wasn't thinking about that from this point of view, but now I definitely am. And here's a personal question. Can you overdo hand gestures? So I know there are specific reasons to use them, but was there any point of diminishing return as far as hand gestures?

Yes, 100%. So there's a fine line between purposeful explanatory gestures and jazz hands. So jazz hands are when the gestures aren't tied to a point. So you'll notice like when I use hand gestures, they're either demonstrative, so I'm showing you that a concept is a big concept or a small concept, and I hold my hands up small, or I'm keeping pace and cadence. So I will mark my words with a gesture. That actually helps us stay in rhythm. We like that. It makes you nod. So like, if I do this with my hand, you nod yes. So we're both in cadence, we're both in rhythm. But too many hand gestures are when my gestures don't match my cadence and don't match my points. So if you're just using your hand gestures and they're off, they become incredibly distracting.

I'm excited to share that video clip with everybody. And if you consume this pod— like, if you're listening and you just consumed that via audio, you should check out the Instagram so everybody could see the video because it was—

I was waving my hands like a crazy person in that second statement and it looked nuts.

I love it. I love it.

Oh, I have one more thing. I have one more addition here. I love a hand gesture. I love a hand gesture. But occasionally I've had students who take it to the nth degree, and they do what I would call interpretive dance. So explanatory gestures come up naturally. You use them to emphasize or highlight, but they're not like, I want the sun to come out, and then we are all happy, and then the rain comes down, and then we all feel better. You can't see me right now, but I just did an interpretive dance of that motif for you, and it's absolutely ridiculous. It looks like I'm a kindergarten teacher or a dance performer. So I love an explanatory gesture, but it's about highlighting and emphasizing, not interpreting.

That's really interesting. Well, I will continue to find the fine balance between high levels of hand gestures, intentional hand gestures, and make sure that I don't ever overdo it.

Yes, please.

I love that. And then I know that the Book Thinkers family has a lot of introverts in the audience. And so maybe they're content creators, but they're sitting behind the scenes and they're trying to branch out and have conversations with people. And you have a ton of advice in the book for ways to make efficient conversation and useful conversation, ways to engage other people instead of just trying to impress people. And so can you talk about that for a minute?

Yeah, so I actually, because we have this amazing audience, I'm going to give a tip that I don't share a ton in the book, but I love to give this to fellow readers. So I'm actually an ambivert. I'm somewhere in between an extrovert and introvert. And by the way, very few people, I think, are true extroverts and introverts. Most of us are ambiverts. Ambiverts, we have this ability where we can flex our social skills. We can dial up into extroversion when we need to, but we need to have a lot of recharge time. So that's really important to think about because that means you can think about your social strengths and use them purposefully. If you are listening to this podcast, I already know one of your social strengths, and it's you are very well read. Being well read can be, can be an amazing social strength. It's a social weakness when you say, I'm more read than you, and I've read every book there is under the sun, and I know it all. That's— did you— that was a sarcastic tone. If you could hear it, I don't know if you got it. That's a social weakness. It's not that. But if you're extremely well-read, you have this amazing repertoire of knowledge that you can share with people. And so every single book that I read, I'm not only reading it to learn something, I'm also reading it thinking, where's the conversation starter here? It could be as basic as, yeah, so what are you reading these days? That's a great question. Or if someone asks, what'd you do last weekend? You can always say, oh man, I got so into the best book. I was reading it all day Saturday. A lot of introverts, for some reason, feel like they can't say, I read all weekend, or I'm reading a great book as an answer to their question about fun or exciting things. Books are absolutely an answer to that question. So the first thing is being comfortable and okay sharing that books are a passion and they're absolutely a jumping off point. You can ask about their books or not. And then second is, as you're reading a book, I literally think to myself, what's the that's so interesting here? So I have a newsletter once a month I send out, a That's So Interesting newsletter. So in this newsletter, I only share facts from books that I was like, oh, that's so interesting. Because that means if you have that in a conversation, you can bring it up and the other person goes, oh, that's so interesting. And then you have great conversation. So when you're reading books, to think about what those facts are. And then this is the hardest, this is the advanced part of this tip. So hopefully you'll stick with me on this, the trigger for it. So it's very hard when you're in a conversation and you just read, let's say Freakonomics, one of my favorite, favorite books. In Freakonomics, they have a Great set of studies about names. And one of the things they found about names is one of my— that's interesting facts— is that if you're named George, you're more likely to move to Georgia. They also found that if you have a dental name like Dennis, you're more likely to become a dentist. That's a crazy fact. That's so interesting. By the way, my allergy doctor growing up was named Dr. Itches, so I could tell you 1,000 examples of this. But the question is, when do you bring that up, right? Like, how do you just pop into a conversation? You're like, did you know that if your name's George, you could move to Georgia? That's a little hard to bring into conversation randomly. But you can think of triggers. So for example, whenever I meet someone and they have an interesting name, that is my trigger for that story. So someone will say, hey, nice to meet you. My name is Aria. Oh, Aria, what a beautiful and interesting name. Where does it come from? And they tell me a story about where it came from, long or short. And I say, oh, I love interesting names. I read this really fascinating name study in Freakonomics, great book that 2 economists wrote, and we're in the story. So I use that as a trigger whenever it comes up. So I probably shared that thousands of times, and every time it stimulates an interesting conversation about names.

That is a brilliant piece of advice. And so there are 2 things that I want to follow up on there. One is that when people ask me what I do on the weekends, I still avoid saying that I read all weekend, which I do all the time. And I'm the reading guy. So don't feel too guilty if you're doing that, but we all need to change it.

Can we all, can we all make a pact? Like, let's make a pact right now. Like, put your hand in wherever you are. Let's make a pact. That when you're reading an awesome book, you're going to talk about it.

Yes, I'm in. We've made the pact. Everybody listening, say out loud, I'm in, and put your hand forward.

I'm in.

Yes, we're all in. I love that. And on the name thing, the first thing I— the first thing that I thought about was Jim Kwik does quick learning and speed reading. I wonder why that happened.

Yes, that's the perfect example. I'll give you another really funny example. And by the way, I think these All the time I get them in conversation is when I was in 5th grade. This is a ridiculous story. When I was in 5th grade, I made a name, by the way. My initials were VVP. And when I was in 5th grade, they had our first student council elections and it was very quickly apparent that for vice president, VP, people were like, oh, are you going to run for VP? And I was like, um, why? And they're like, Duh, V for VP. It's like you were born for it. And I remember students telling me I was born for it. And so I was like, well, I, I guess I'll run for VP. So I put my name in there and I ran unopposed. And when I heard other students on the playground talk about who they were going to vote for, they would literally say, well, I don't know, I kind of like Sarah more than Bill for president and obviously Vanessa for VP, obviously. And for treasurer, I'm not Just because that was— those were my initials. And by the way, I made campaign posters that were just V for VP. I didn't even have campaign promises. And of course I won because I ran unopposed. So we have a lot of interesting things about names and priming that maybe for another book.

I'm interested to learn more about that subject because I hadn't even really thought about that before. On the same thread that we were talking about before about how to have efficient conversation with people. Books are a great opportunity to take advantage of thread theory, which is thread theory, which is something that you talk a lot about in the book. Could you share what that is?

Yes. Okay. So I, when I was trying to explain the blueprint for conversation, I am not a natural conversationalist. I had to really work at it by studying conversation, by having really bad conversations and wondering what went wrong and then having really good conversations and being like, what went right? And so when I was writing Captivate, I was like, What's the visual way that I can explain this? And the best visual metaphor I could think of was it's like you walk into a conversation, you and me, and we're both holding a bunch of threads in our hand. And as we're talking, we're wondering, can we give a thread to the other person? And so when I say— you say, how was your weekend? And I say, oh, it was great. I found the best book and I just cuddled up and read it all weekend. The other person has an opportunity to pick up that thread. Now they might not, they might say, oh, book, weird. Or they might be like, oh, what book? They've just picked up your thread. So then they pick up your thread and the longer you're able to talk about it and more in depth, the more they're pulling your thread and the more we were creating these ties. And in a really good conversation, you've both handed each other all kinds of threads. So someone says, how was your weekend? And I say, I read a great book. And I take the thread. What book? Oh, it was this great book called Upstream by the Heath brothers, and it was all about upstream thinking. Oh, what's upstream thinking? Pull, pull. Oh, it's about how if you think of a system, you always want to fix the bigger problems, not the smaller problems. Really? I work in government. I pick up a thread. What do you do in government? And so we're actually handing these threads back and forth using this base topic. And the more of those threads you're sharing, the more connected physically or literally you are because you're holding threads for each other.

I love that analogy. And I love that we had— we got books in there for the metaphor. So that's fantastic. And I know that we're kind of running out of time here. So I'd love to finish up with a few book-related pieces of conversation. I know that there's something that you wanted to share with everybody. It's kind of like a secret side hustle or side hobby that you have.

Yes, it is. So, and I've never shared this on a podcast before. So I'm really excited to share it with this audience, which Which is one of my secret passions in life. I call it a book soulmate. And it's that I've read a ton of interesting books and I always want more people to read. I think that reading is just one of the greatest gifts that we're able to have. And so when I meet someone and they're interested in a book or they're like, oh, I don't read very much, but I'd like to, that's like an opportunity. And so my goal is I ask them a ton of questions, like a ton of questions to try to find their book soulmate. A book soulmate is a book that gets someone back into reading, or it's a book that they think about all the time and read multiple times. And so I love playing this game with other readers as well, because sometimes they'll talk about their book soulmates. But I love to send people what I think might be their book soulmate or try to pick one for them that I think will really change their life or inspire them. And so if we have a lot of readers on the podcast and you've read a lot of books, you also have a gift, which is that you could help other people, maybe aspiring readers or occasional readers or toe-dipper readers, like they occasionally dip their toe into a book, that you could try to find their book soulmate for them. And you can ask all kinds of questions like, what was your favorite book growing up? What was your least favorite book growing up? What book did you read that you didn't— that you stopped reading, you couldn't finish? What book have you read that you couldn't put down? What kind of shows do you watch? All of those questions— hey, you get to talk about books for like an hour, right? A book soulmate conversation is an excuse to talk about books for an hour. And you learn so much about them. And I will— I have found that people are also excited by my excitement. So I'm so excited to hear their answers and find that book soulmate for them that they get excited that I— and also honored that I care so much That I really want to find them something. And I found that it's almost the best way to help people without having to give up anything.

There are so many amazing reasons to talk about books, and this is just the perfect one. And so I have these book soulmate conversations in my DMs all the time because people say, hey, what's a good book for this? What's a good book for that? And it's not just like you're saying, it's not as simple as just giving a blanket answer. You need to ask a lot of follow-up questions. And so that process for me is fun. And that's why it doesn't get old no matter how many times I have that conversation with people, because when they come back and they tell you about the book that they've read, that's a beautiful thing too. It's a, it is a reciprocal relationship.

Your answer is always captivate. I'm sure. Oh, sure.

Every time. Now I'm wondering if that's your answer every time you have these. So many conversations.

A running joke that I have on my YouTube channel is whenever I say like, there's this really great book and I'm like, it's called Captivate. No, it's actually called— so I always, as a running joke, why not?

Yeah, I love that. Just like back in, back when you were calling alums, you would always say, or they would say, how's the football team doing? And you're like, oh, we're undefeated.

Inside joke. I went to a school where we didn't have a football team. So the inside joke with other alumni is that they ask how the football team is doing and you say undefeated, but I'm pumped.

I love it. And so let's wrap up with a couple of the books that have had the biggest impact on your life. And I know that there are probably dozens and dozens of them, but when you think back, what are some of the first books that come to mind?

Yep. So the first book that really opened my eyes and changed my life was a book that I stole off my mom's nightstand. And it's Why Men Don't Listen and Why Women Can't Read Maps. by Barbara and Allan Pease. It's actually the first nonfiction book I ever read, and I had no idea that you could have— that nonfiction books were a thing until I read that book. I had only read fiction up at that— up until that point in my life. I think I was like 13 or 14. And it helped me understand the men in my life, like my dad, who I was fighting with all the time at the age of 14, my brother. And so I was like, wow, books can actually change your relationships. are not just imagination journeys. So that was the first one. I think it was probably the first time I ever thought to myself, I want to write a book like this. Who knows, who knew it would happen so many years later? I would say the next, I had a period of time in high school where I was so burnt out on reading things I didn't want to read, right? And this, this is the really hard thing is in high school, very well-intentioned teachers or curriculums will assign books And then you're forced to read them. Like, they literally assign you reading every night, which I think is the wrong way to read, right? You don't get to read based on your interests, based on your timing. You know, you don't get to devour a book if you want to. I remember specifically we weren't allowed to read ahead in our books, which just like was crazy. And so from like 8th grade through maybe 11th grade, I was like off of reading. I only read for school. I stopped reading even though I had read a ton as a a child. And then the first Harry Potter movie came out, and I heard it was a book. I saw the movie first, and then I was like, oh, there's a book? I read the book, of course fell in love with it, and read all of them as they started to come out. And that got me back into reading again, and I'm very, very grateful to that. So I'll say those, those two— a fiction and a nonfiction.

Every time I ask this question, we have a good balance of fiction and nonfiction, and I love that Fiction can play such an important role in somebody's life, especially an author who's written a nonfiction book. And so that's fantastic. Well, for anybody who's looking to learn a little bit more about you or the experiments you're running, the data that you're putting out, where can they find you?

Yep. So everything is at scienceofpeople.com and we publish our That's So Interesting newsletter once a month as well as the other weeks of the month, our new research. New things that we're working on. So if you subscribe to our newsletter, I would love to send you some interesting tidbits. And that's also where I publish all my new work, as well as on YouTube. I'm Vanessa Van Edwards.

Vanessa, it was my pleasure. Thank you so much.

Thanks so much for having me.

And that's a wrap. Thank you so much for listening to my conversation with Vanessa. She is amazing. I really do believe that because we're the average of the 5 people that we spend the most time with, it could benefit you to share this episode with someone in your network that needs to be elevated in the science of succeeding with people. It only takes 60 seconds and it could change their life. Before I go, I want to remind everyone that BookThinkers is both an online community and educational technology company that enables readers to achieve more and live better. That is our goal. And so for more information on our mobile application, our shop, our social pages, or our mission, please check out www.bookthinkers.com. As always, remember that real learning requires education and behavior change. And so with that, I'm signing off. I can't wait for you to listen to another episode of Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books. Bye.