How to Click With Anyone, Read Every Room, and Stop Absorbing Other People's Stress | Kate Murphy
10% Happier with Dan Harris
10% Media, LLC
4.6 • 12.9K Ratings
🗓️ 25 May 2026
⏱️ 72 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The neuroscience of human connection: your nervous system is picking up other people's signals all day without your knowledge. Here's how to use that.
Journalist Kate Murphy's eclectic essays and articles for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, Agence France-Presse, and Texas Monthly have been shared and commented on by millions. She is known for her fresh and accessible style and ability to distill complex subjects, particularly the science behind human interactions. Her first book, You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters, was published in thirty-two languages and has become required reading in interpersonal communication courses at high schools, colleges, and universities worldwide.
In this episode we talk about:
- What "interpersonal synchrony" is and the science behind it
- Why some people just click — and others don't
- How individualism and technology are working against our need to connect
- What "affective presence" is –– and how much you can actually change your vibe
- Interoception – and why you need to understand your own body before you can read others
- The dark side of synchrony: emotional fusion and borrowed emotions
- Why audio-only calls are better than Zoom for real connection
- How physical distance controls your ability to sync
- "Emotional aperture" — how to read a room like a trial lawyer
- The secret to bonding with other people
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Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris. |
| 0:07.8 | Hello, everybody. How we doing? Do you ever wonder why you click with some people and not others, |
| 0:24.6 | or why some people are attractive to you either romantically or as a colleague or as a friend, |
| 0:29.2 | and other people just are kind of repellent? And similarly, why some people just don't seem to like you. |
| 0:36.3 | The answer to all of these questions has to do with |
| 0:38.9 | a concept called interpersonal synchrony, which is basically the mind-blowing fact that we are |
| 0:45.0 | constantly and subconsciously mirroring the people around us, sinking with the people around us, |
| 0:51.5 | our brainwaves, our heart rates, our hormones. |
| 0:54.8 | It's wild. |
| 1:00.7 | Today we've got a fascinating and very practical conversation about how you can harness interpersonal synchrony to your advantage at work in your romantic life, with your friends, |
| 1:06.8 | et cetera. |
| 1:07.5 | And specifically, we talk a lot about a very common pain point, which is how to stop |
| 1:12.0 | absorbing other people's bad energy. My guest has a lot of tips for avoiding that problem. |
| 1:18.5 | Said guest is the journalist Kate Murphy, author of a book called Why We Click. In this conversation, |
| 1:24.2 | we talk about how individualism and technology are working against our |
| 1:28.4 | need to connect, our deeply evolutionarily wired need to connect with other human beings, how much |
| 1:34.2 | you can actually change your vibe, how to read the room, like a trial lawyer, the secret to bonding |
| 1:40.8 | with other people. And I love this as somebody who hates Zoom. |
| 1:45.6 | Why audio-only calls are much better if you actually want to connect with the other person. |
| 1:50.8 | Speaking of audio-only, this podcast is usually available on video. |
| 1:55.6 | But this time we did it audio-only, specifically because Kate wanted to connect better with me via audio and instead of having |
| 2:02.8 | to stare at each other through a screen. Before we dive in, just a quick plug for my newsletter. |
... |
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