Episode 295: Paula Marantz Cohen
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Keeping the Conversation Going
Conversation and communication with others is a natural human urge, as well as a skill that can be developed and honed like any other. The power of conversation has been long known in society, and still, there are regular efforts to preserve and maintain the spaces and opportunities for genuine conversation in today’s world of screens and distractions.
Paula Marantz Cohen is the Dean of the Pennoni Honors College and a Distinguished Professor of English at Drexel University. She is also the author of several books. Her latest, which is titled Talking Cure: An Essay on the Civilizing Power of Conversation, is all about the art of good conversation and examining how it connects us all.
Paula and Greg discuss the connection with Sigmund Freud and her own book’s title, as well as the connections and differences between conversation and therapy. Paula sheds some light on good practices in conversation and how to carry on civilly on issues that parties disagree with or are controversial. Greg and Paula discuss dinner parties and the false idea that all professors were constantly having them. They discuss the differences between French and American culture and also the idea that there must be a conventional hero and villain in circumstances that may be more nuanced than that.
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Episode Quotes:
Are we professionalizing conversation by hiring people to have conversations with us?
35:15: We're outsourcing conversation to our therapist. Yeah, that's a sad thing to think of because it also reflects the isolation of the individual. We're alone in ultimately anyway. And this seems to reinforce it further and make it less and less necessary to reach out to other people if we have that weekly appointment with the therapist whom we pay to listen to us and not agree with us but make us the center of focus. So that reinforces the fact that we don't really need anybody else to help us.
Conversation is about the exercise of the mind
47:34: I think we could sell conversation if we said it was about exercise for the mind, but then we might defeat the purpose.
On forging bonds with people through conversation
35:15: Finding points of divergence is a lot of fun. As long as goodwill is involved, as soon as there's animus involved, it's not fun anymore, and as soon as it becomes a matter of winning or losing, which is detrimental to conversation, I know people who can only converse or only discuss things they disagree with if they can win. And I didn't realize until recently that I just don't want to do that anymore.
Why is dynamic so inherent in our nature?
28:59: Many young people are trying desperately to get out of that dynamic of othering because they find it not virtuous. On the other hand, for the sake of intimacy, there has to be a little bit of that we versus they.
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