You're Not Listening by Kate Murphy — book cover

You're Not Listening

Kate Murphy · 2020

You're Not Listening (2020) is a book by Kate Murphy on Active listening. A New York Times journalist reframes listening as an active, curiosity-driven skill, not a bag of eye-contact tricks, and shows, through hostage negotiators and neuroscience, how reclaiming it restores connection and understanding.

11 min read · 8 chapters · Communication

Why it’s on the shelf

A working journalist's case that listening isn't a technique you perform but a curiosity you cultivate, and the most underrated skill of a connected, lonely age.

Two of the ideas you’ll keep

The Clif summary of You're Not Listening pulls out 7 insights. Here are the first two.

  1. The Support response vs. the Shift response (sociologist Charles Derber's framework for 'conversational narcissism'): a shift response drags focus back to you ('That happened to me too'), a support response keeps it on the speaker ('Where did you find your dog?'). Most people default to shifting.
  2. Neural coupling, from neuroscientist Uri Hasson: when genuine understanding happens, a listener's brain activity comes to mirror the speaker's, 'that syncing feeling', and rehearsing your reply or interrupting breaks the sync.

The other 5 — and the full 11-minute summary — are in the app.

What’s inside: 8 chapters

The whole summary runs about 11 minutes, read or listened to.

  1. The Lost Art of Listening
  2. That Syncing Feeling
  3. The Curiosity Engine
  4. Assumptions as Earplugs
  5. The Shift and the Support
  6. Lessons from the Master Listeners
  7. Addicted to Distraction
  8. When to Stop Listening

Finish You're Not Listening tonight.

Read or listen to the full summary in about 11 minutes, then keep the ideas with a minute of review a day. Start with the 2-minute quiz — no card required.

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