My guest Kate Murphy is a Houston, Texas-based reporter who's writing has appeared in the New

York Times' conumist, Texas Monthly, and so many other places, but she didn't start out

or have a dream to be a journalist or even a writer in the beginning. In fact, she was

doing a PhD in psych, focused on business, industrial psych. When she left and started doing

a bit of writing for a small, local, free paper with no background in journalism or writing

as a way to pay her bills, not realizing that the company also owned similar and larger

journals around the country. And the work that she was creating for them would end up

being distributed in a wide variety of newspapers all over the country, giving her exposure,

and launching a career in journalism where she's been entirely self-taught. And along

the way, she would discover the importance of listening and became really curious about

the state of listening in the world. This led to a deep dive in eventually a new book,

You're Not Listening, that is fun and an insightful chore through the world of listening.

We explore Kate's journey, along with some really eye-opening and surprising science

and insights about listening in today's conversation. She even explains why I, as a

lefty, always listen to podcasts with only one ear in my right ear. It was kind of fascinating.

So excited to share this conversation with you on Jonathan Fields and this is Good Life Project.

I never set out to be a journalist. And so I've always been a listener and I fell into being a

journalist. So what's the backstory there? You know, I was in a PhD program for

Industrial Organizational Psychology. And I hated it. You know, I got into it with this idea

that I wanted to make the world better for people because they spend most of their day at work.

And so I wanted to find ways to make that more pleasurable. But once I got into the program,

it was mainly statistics and it was creating employment tests to weed out the wackos,

...