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Good morning.

This is Laura.

Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.

Today's tip is to be open to hearing about other people's passions, even if you don't share those passions yourself.

When there is something that other people are really excited about, try to find out why.

You'll get a window into these other people's lives, and even if you don't

become an expert, you might have one more interesting thing to talk about. At a dinner at a

conference a few years ago, I found myself sitting near two linguistics experts who were talking about the language

Dothraki in the HBO series Game of Thrones.

I hadn't watched a single episode of the show, and I'm not particularly into linguistics,

but their conversation was captivating.

They were passionate about the way languages were created and how they evolved.

The conversation referenced the quirks of numerous world languages, historic languages,

and pretend languages.

I didn't become a Game of Thrones fan, but I did learn a lot about how one might create a language

and how languages came to be. I bet you can recall a time you met a fan of a particular sports

team or musical artist or an aficionado of wine or gaudy architecture, or an enthusiast

for a seemingly random sport or hobby, and you are unexpectedly intrigued by what they had to say.

Or maybe you overheard two experts talking and just had to listen in.

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