"I wonder if there's anything else that would work the same way."
"I knew somebody once who got people to lean in very close to listen to her by talking extremely quietly all the time. You don't necessarily have to command attention by demanding attention."
"No, I don't mean you should do that specifically, it's just an example."
"Acoustics does that. I'm sort of trying to draw a distinction between being easy to hear and easy to listen to."
"I'm trying to reverse-engineer that right now, I haven't given the question much thought before. Let's see. I think Rúmil's easy to listen to. I'm not a good judge of whether I am..."
"I have noticed and I appreciate that, but I'm not sure if that's me being easy to listen to in general or just us happening to click right."
"I think the summary I want to make is, 'If someone is easy to listen to it's because it will never be a waste of time or emotion to listen to them'."
"It's hard to listen to somebody who uses twice as many words as they need, or who says things that you wind up wishing you hadn't bothered with, or who asks questions they don't really want the answers to, because that's a waste of time; and it's hard to listen to somebody who's trying to elicit strong feelings - or not even trying, necessarily - that aren't how you want to feel about something and that you'll feel weird about later, or that make you spend the conversation resentful or anxious or frustrated. I think what I'm worried about is that people might be resentful if you're bossy; I'm not worried about you wasting people's time pretty much at all."
"Because they could have been right without bossing you around, and that would have been pleasanter and they still would have been right?"
"Of course you don't. Are you bossing them because you don't want them to think you're small?"