How to have your way with words.

The Next Big Idea Daily newsletter?(SUBSCRIBE)?is written by me,?Michael Kovnat, and gathers insights from today’s leading non-fiction authors. It’s a companion to our?Next Big Idea Daily?podcast, available on Apple or Spotify.

I don’t know what you do for a living, but I do know you’re in the communications business. We all are. As humans, communicating is just what we do; it’s the key to our genius and the core to our survival. We talk, we gesture, we sing, we write — we even grunt, snarl, or swear if that’s what it takes to get the point across. But even if expressing ourselves is as natural as breathing, most of us don’t spend much time thinking about how we do it. As infants, we simply ingested language like so much breastmilk, and we’ve been spewing out words, mostly untutored and reckless, ever since.

But how you speak or write actually does matter. Of course, it matters professionally if you want to present yourself as capable and intelligent, but it also matters if you simply want to get things done. The right words allow you to persuade, seduce, empower, and connect. They enable you to bend the world to your will.

Hear Jonah Berger explain what words will drive people to action:

My guest all this week was Jonah Berger, a professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and the bestselling author of books like The Catalyst: How to Change Anyone's Mind and the new Magic Words: What to Say to Get Your Way. Jonah isn’t a linguist; he studies and teaches marketing and persuasion, and in his research, he’s figured out that some words are what he calls magic words — with disproportionate power to influence behavior. He found, for example, that inserting the word "because" in a request makes it 50% more effective. And replacing "should" with "could" in a brainstorming session can increase creativity by 300%.

These are just a couple of the ways magic words can work their magic. Listen to my conversation with Jonah on Apple or Spotify to find out how to be a?better communicator, a better friend, and a more confident, effective human being.

Next week

I'll be talking to the inimitable New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik about his new book, The Real Work: The Mystery of Mastery. Join me to find out how you can get better at getting better.

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