Flow: better conversation in a complex world

Joelle Prevost, registered clinical counsellor, helps us understand how to approach setting boundaries and why we should do it more regularly. If boundaries normally conjure up a block, like a big wall, that keeps people out, years of practice and study have shown Joelle that in conversation boundaries are really quite different and can make relationships closer. So instead of letting our resentme...

Today we explore talking while walking with best-selling author Annabel Streets. What I learn from this intersection is pretty cool: that our conversations flow not only from our minds but our bodies. We look at walking and talking whether we’re with others or musing with ourselves. Annabel will take us through the regular offshoots of ambling about - pace, purpose, sights and smells - and how the...

Best-selling author David Sax joins me to discuss "analog” as in non-digital conversations and why he believes face-to-face conversations will always be a must in a truly human world. As everyone lived the lockdown phases of pandemic, we all went through similar experiences of being isolated from family and friends, colleagues and classmates and even acquaintances and strangers who aren’t par...

Bruce Kuwabara, one of Canada’s leading architects, makes stories — stories full of characters and rich with themes. Today he joins me to discuss how he crafts multi-layered stories and enables dialogue through his built spaces. That dialogue begins in the earliest stages of designing a new building. It continues through cultivating connections with the past while serving, sometimes showcasing, th...

Sandi Mann helps us confront one of our deepest fears in conversation: am I boring?!  And its twin, what to do when someone is boring us! Like you, I'm sure, I have been bored and sometimes I`ve been caught in conversation with someone one might call a bore. But the more I have studied this phenomenon, the more I got pulled in to learn more. My first guest this season Haesun Moon awakened me t...

Behavioral psychologist Nick Epley joins me to discuss small talk with strangers, and how certain misconceptions keep us from saying hello more often or getting deeper into more meaningful conversations. If we can understand that we have “miscalibrated expectations” about others` interest and our own  enjoyment, perhaps we can get over this reluctance to engage with strangers. We confront this wit...

Haesun Moon, communication scientist and coach, takes us to what we all want, be it at work or at home. Through careful study of over ten thousand hours of conversation, Haesun has found patterns to form a new evidence-based guide to better conversations and so, better lives. In our back and forth what emerges is an understanding that we create ourselves through our stories. From this perspective,...

Anne-Marie Lafortune joins me to talk about authentic conversations in a second language. Maybe this is something, being summertime, that makes me think of travel. This year the numbers on international travel are up and we see how ardently people are wanting to explore and connect, even in the face of flight delays and lost luggage. There is no doubt that learning a language helps us explore dist...

Kim Wheeler (top right) and Jolene Banning (bottom left), award-winning writers, producers, podcasters and Indigenous Aunties, share their vision for their podcast Auntie Up!, a program by, for and about Indigenous women. Though a conversation space explicitly created for Indigenous women, they open the circle to all genders and peoples. Here is an opportunity for everyone because these women have...

With social historian Nicholas Terpstra, professor at University of Toronto, we go into the problem of drawing out erased voices of the past, a conversation mediated by manuscripts and transposed over time. We focus our attention on the case of a Renaissance orphanage for young girls, The Pieta, where the girls were dying in frighteningly high numbers. That conversation is filled with a panoply of...

Journalist and writer Anna Goldfarb leads us through both the pitfalls and the fun of conversation on that all important first date. We explore in particular how to cope with the altered dating scene within the current backdrop of the pandemic. I think this is such an important topic at this time, for singles and couples alike, because it is a reminder of that deep human drive to have intimate con...

Marcel Danesi discusses with me the semiotics of teen talk in a moment of major transition, as we are moving more and more from face-to-face conversations and print culture to a digital world. Drawing on Giambattista Vico, he starts by identifying teenage speech as a veritable dialect meant to distinguish itself from the adult world as well as consolidate identities within peer groups. We the...

Laura Bourjolly, who has spent the last 10 years working for various international NGOs, recounts her personal experience in overcoming hurdles listening to locals in the context of humanitarian work. Regularly navigating linguistic and cultural differences in low resource areas or conflict zones — from Togo, Malawi, Haiti, the Central African Republic, and the Democratic Republic of Congo to Gaza...

Dylan Reid explains to Sheila how public space can encourage unexpected encounters and thriving community life. From basic courtesies, small talk, to the buzz of conversation, he explores how talk happens and its effect on us when we are out and about. Key elements of city design that foster these exchanges are outlined as are some ideas we may adopt to foster greater inclusion in public space. Dy...

Lili Petrovic shares her experience as a volunteer carer for the dying in palliative care and hospice, from her time working at the Royal Victoria hospital and the Jewish General hospital in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. In spending time with people at this crucial juncture in their lives, she bears witness to their rawest moments and responds to profound needs. Whereas some may not want conversation...

David Shantz, chaplain with Correctional Service Canada for 25 years, brings us behind the bars into the prison setting. Having worked with inmates throughout their incarceration, he joins me to talk about how inmates’ needs in conversation evolve from the moment they arrive in prison, to solitary confinement, through their ongoing sentence, to their eventual release. Conversation is shown to be a...

Thomas Mulcair reflects on the tone of political discourse throughout his 25 years in politics, having served in Quebec, as Minister of Sustainable Development, Environment and Parks, and in Ottawa as the leader of the New Democratic Party and of the Official Opposition.  Regarded, even by his critics, as one of the most effective leaders of the Opposition, primarily for his prosecutorial style du...