Podcaster. Writer. 👋 Hello, I want us to go from simply having conversations, to actively creating better conversations — https://craigconstantine.com/ has more about me, and my ongoing projects.
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The Asker’s Answer
In 2022, Matthew Jensen co-hosted a podcast with a friend, Mike, who was not a subject expert and took the asking role. Yet when Jensen described their best conversations, Mike’s questions did not come into it. A question shows what someone wants to know. It does not show what they think. Distance from a subject…
What I Might Choose
Linda McLachlan asked the guests on her life-story podcast roughly the same questions, and usually heard their stories before recording. She was often surprised by which moment a guest treated as the turn. Guests were not dodging the hard part; the moment that looked biggest from outside simply was not the one that turned them.…
Granting the 95 Percent
Sam Ardery, who mediates disputes, once spent a lunch listing everything Ardery’s wife was doing wrong. An account of a conflict is a request for a ruling, and agreeing or arguing both give one. The friend did neither. He granted the whole 95 percent as a premise, for one conversation, and agreed to none of…
Not Voiced There
Craig Constantine, who publishes these field notes, set up microphones for three women nobody had really heard, then gave his own part three words: I wasn’t present. Helena Roth, a coach, refused the description. He was not voiced there, she said, but he was still the one who made part of it possible. Voice is…
Seen Before Heard
Simon Ratcliffe has run thousands of group discussions with strangers, and before any gets going he asks each person about their life. Some hang back because they suspect the others know more about the topic. About their own life, nobody in the room knows more. Once they have answered, they stand on a footing the…
The Monologue You Can’t Overhear
Naomi Honey, a parkour and life coach, heard a friend declare herself unable to learn Danish and saw at once that the verdict was wrong. Her own verdict on her parkour she could not hear at all. The talk inside your head arrives as a report rather than as talk, because its only listener is…
Nobody to Call the Game
In capoeira, two players trade kicks and escapes inside a ring of singers, and when one stops responding, someone else calls the game. Paul Graves learned to hold a conversation there. Talk has no such call. A monologue can pass for a dialogue, and the only people positioned to end a one-sided conversation are the…
Talking At
We file the person who will not stop talking under self-absorbed. Craig Constantine, who publishes these field notes, gives an account of his own over-talking that makes that untenable. He watches your micro-expressions, reading your face for the verdict he is trying to outrun. Context is not a route to the point but the postponement…
Nothing to Play Back
Julie Angel judges a conversation by whether she can still tell you what it was about. If she cannot, it was good. Karen Morgan records her stand-up sets and finds lines she never wrote and does not remember, often the funniest ones. Morgan is not Angel’s rebuttal but her evidence: the best material comes from…
Asking Without Armor
Craig Constantine separates asking for a friend from asking as a five-year-old: one is a costume, the other a constraint. A complicated question proves you belong in the room and fences in the answer you can get back. The simple one does neither. We do not fail to think of the five-year-old’s question. We think…