Spirit in Action

Dying to Be Heard - Ben Merens

Ben Merens is well-known throughout Wisconsin and beyond for his 21 years on WPR and, especially, for his years as host of At Issue. His latest book is People Are Dying to Be Heard, where he shares his lessons & insights about listening, silence, and being heard.

Duration:: 55m
Broadcast on:: 23 Nov 2014
Audio Format:: other

(upbeat music) ♪ Let us sing this song for the healing of the world ♪ ♪ That we may hear as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ ♪ And our lives will feel the echo of our healing ♪ - Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark helps me. Each week, I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service, hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred food in your own life. ♪ Let us sing this song for the dreaming of the world ♪ ♪ That we may dream as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ - We've got a wonderful guest here today for Spirit in Action. Ben Marins was on the radio airwaves of Wisconsin Public Radio for more than 20 years, including his signature show, At Issue. He left that role last year following other muses, and one of the fruits of that change is his latest book. People are dying to be heard, a guide to listening for a lifetime of communication. Ben Marins joins us today by phone from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Ben, I'm really excited to have you here today for Spirit in Action. - Mark, it's a pleasure. I thank you for inviting me. - Phil is in a little bit on what you've been doing since you left Wisconsin Public Radio. - I left Public Radio officially May 19th of 2013, and the next chapter became teaching at Marquette University and some communications and reporting and public relations classes, and did some public speaking work, which I'm continuing to do, which I had been doing, and I prayed some music and whatever. I could get somebody paid me some money for that. That was just an added bonus. Then the last half year, I've been working with a company called VISTALAR. It's a company in Milwaukee that practices conflict management, something we call verbal defense and influence, and at the heart of the methodology we teach that you keep built with dignity in order to earn the respect, and that we assume conflict will happen. So we teach how to manage it, as opposed to how to avoid it. The verbal defense and influence tenets, and we go through them in the interview if you'd like, but at the heart of it, it's similar to the five maxims, which talk about how you treat people, and I realized when I learned what verbal defense and influence is, without knowing what it was called, I practiced it for 21 years at Wisconsin Public Radio, and again, at the heart of that was treating all my guests and all my callers with dignity to earn their respect, and ultimately the respect of those who are listening. - How did you like your 21 years of working at Wisconsin Public Radio? - You know, it's funny, the dream come true, and that my wife and I, Michelle, when we got together said, we will help each other chase our dreams while one works. We'll get in and you can't chase your dream and make a living, my life is awry. Michelle is a writer and a playwright and a teacher, so she would work and I would sort of dabble in whatever, stand for comedy for a while and some music, but at one point I had a class in Chicago, at Columbia College, and I was asking all my students, what do you want to be your first job, 'cause you gotta know what that is, and the students didn't know, and I said, you know, you're competing with students at all these universities in Chicago, and they all have jobs, you better find one. One of the students said, you're a relatively young man, I was 29, I was kind of, what do you want to be? And I said, well, first of all, I want to kick them out of class, 'cause it was a really hard question. But I couldn't do that, I said, I'll have an answer at the end of the term, and I spent time on a couple of my mentors, they were friends, fathers of my friends, who were in the journalism world, and I was trying to find my place, and one of them sat me down and said, you know Ben, I never got the feeling you love sitting down with a pen, and writing a story, or typing the story, as much as you did doing the interviewing, if you thought about being in talk radio, or talk television, I said, no, I didn't know you'd do that. Well, I had taken a newspaper job, and the newspaper job had a benefit, that at the time I didn't know it was a benefit, a reporter was leaving, and asked me if I wanted to co-host a public access Sunday night live call-in TV show, an hour from my home. So I said, sure, it sounded great, I'm gonna be on TV. So every Sunday I got my car, I go over at least an hour, sometimes an hour and a half depending on weather and traffic, to sit in the studio, and take calls, if there were any, about, well, we did shows on gangs, and HIV/AIDS, and property taxes, and some other really, really dry issues. My co-host was the state senator from the district. When we did the show on gangs and HIV/AIDS in the suburbs, we got lots of calls. I drive home every Sunday, and why am I doing this show? I didn't really care for the reporting job I had to go to the next day. Wasn't I getting any money, wasn't having any fun? And then this job ad showed up for Wisconsin Public Radio. The network wanted a host, a hosted business show. I had all the necessary requirements, but they also said they wanted to hear talk radio experience, and I had none. My wife said, yeah, but we have the audio from your public access show that you said wasn't worth any of your time. But now it seems like it was. So she dubbed the sound for me and sent to Capen, and it was me saying, okay, well, you know, senator, we go next to Joan in this town, and she wants to talk about this subject, and they had a couple cuts, and that was all I needed to get the interview. - And the rest is history. - Well, yes and no. So I take the job, and it's in Milwaukee. So I became the fifth member of the new office, and hosted a business show for four and a half years called Everybody's Business. - What was your major? What did you study at university or whatever? - The University of Wisconsin, Madison, I studied public relations and basic journalism. Then I spent a year singing telegrams for a living and taking comedy at Second City. I think that was going to be the next Chevy chase at Bull Murray, and that wasn't going there as well as I hoped so I had a scholarship offered to go to Northwestern's Medill School and get a masters in print journalism, which I did. Those days, she stood in line to pull cards to register, there was no computer. And in registration line was Michelle Ellis of Long Island, New York, who has been Michelle Maron's now for 29 years. So my degrees are both in public relations and journalism and print journalism writing and reporting. - And yet you're doing a business show, what's your expertise in business? - I left Northwestern and took a job as a business reporter in an electronics industry newspaper in New York. So I did that for a couple of years, and then I also wrote for Creme's Chicago Business, and I wrote some articles for the Chicago Tribune, the economics area. So I don't know if it's expertise, but it was enough understanding of the lingo to host talk shows on it. And I tell people, I almost got my radio MBA for four and a half years because I did lots of shows and things I didn't understand when I started, everything from micro and macroeconomic policy and theory to property tax proposals and healthcare reform, cost, respect, and I, so I learned a lot hosting that show, but it turns out, as you all know, as a host, you don't have to be an expert in anything, except listening. If you're good at listening and you ask a good question, your guest is gonna tell you what you need to know. So I didn't have to be a business expert, but I learned a lot about business 'cause I was paying attention, and I got to do it every night for four and a half years. - Well, that brings us to the real reason that I have you on the program today. Ben Marrens is author of a new book. People are dying to be heard, a guide to listening for a lifetime of communication. And Spirit and Action is all about trying to heal the world, make it a better place. And listening has such a role in this. Have you always been a big listener? Would your wife say, if we talk to Michelle, would she say, Ben has always been the consummate listener in our relationship? - Well, it's really not a fair question, Mark. (laughing) So of course you would increase my wife. We're toughest on actually those we are closest with. And I talk about that in my book, and I talk about the idea that we need to have to create patience with those we live with and love with because we just challenge them a lot. But I think what I would say is, I was a middle child. So I came to my journalism career biologically as well as educationally. I had a lower back fusion when I was 16, after the junior year of my high school experience. And they fused my spine because I had popped my L5 disc when I was water skiing when I did it. And they did a surgery in the back and surgery in the front. So it was in the hospital month for the two surgeries. And then I spent the summer in a body cast. It plastered, coughing, if you will, from my shoulders to my knees. So my grade point went up. And I learned to sit, Barry. I cannot even do besides that. My mom would let me drink some beer. But I learned to sit very still because although I could feel physically free of what felt like a jail sentence was to be extremely still. And I remember two of the nurses when I was in the hospital would talk to me about going through this experience a moment at a time and letting me though, I can't survive this. So I learned a lot about listening back then. And I didn't realize it, I think, at the time, of course. But now I look back and my sort of Jewish kid becomes slightly zen Buddhist in his patient mantra started that summer. - And did you get that? I don't know if it's intelligence, experience, talent for being still. Did you get that out of your religious background? I mean, like, if you're doing Davening or something like that, where did you actually get any native intelligence for silence? - I don't know if it was religious. I mean, I'm active in my synagogue, but the progression, and again, we'll jump forward a while. I became a host of public radio where people said, what a great job you get paid to speak. And again, Mark, you know, this host get paid to listen. You'll get paid to talk. And I learned to sit still. In fact, there were moments where I allowed silence on the air because I knew it would draw the ears of my audience in. And there's a value to silence without the "um" and "you know" and "but" to silence. So I would sit and allow some silence on the air when I didn't hear a lot of it in other places on the radio. And I also, and this is what a title from the book comes from, I would watch people sit online, waiting to get on the air, and they'd sit on the phone like 25 and 30 minutes to get on the air for two minutes. And it dawned on me, these people I've nobody to talk to, so they're calling a stranger, even though they may feel they know me, they don't personally know me. And yet, if they had somebody to sit down and talk with, they wouldn't call me. I'm only giving them two minutes. But they were talking about important issues, and their thoughts about them. Sharing them with some of they do will be listening. And I thought, man, there's a huge need in this world for people to sit and listen to that just on the radio, and I love doing it. But one on one, if it's a coffee shop or in a car with a friend or sitting in the back porch, I coupled that with the basic experience of sitting so still the summer I was in the plaster cast, and found that there's a real power just sitting still. There's also another reason. Well, there's six. I used to sit in my grandma's happy living room. Her name was Harriet, but from age two, she was always smiling, so her name quickly became happy. And grandma's happy, and I would sit silently on her couch. And we'd look out the window, she lived by Lake Michigan, so we could see the water. And after about 10 minutes of silence, grandma's happy would say, Benny, what you thinking? If she was trained at the University of Chicago, so her addiction was perfect, but she would sort of playfully ask me that because she was teaching me two things. One, it's okay to be with somebody and be in silence. And the other is, it's respectful when you're in silence of someone. Then pause and ask them what they're thinking about, because their thoughts validate who they are, and grandma's happy taught me that when I was six years old. - And you evidently learned it well. I have to agree with you, by the way, then. Being a host here for a radio program has taught me to listen increasingly well in my life. I really think it's improved my relationship at home and with everybody else in my life, because I now listen more deeply than I ever did before. So it changed me. Did you feel like your 21 years changed you in that direction? - Yeah, and I'm glad you mentioned that, because you know, it was real basic physiology for me. I found when I would go into the studio and close the door for an hour's interview, it could be about property taxes in Wisconsin or political upheaval in China. I closed the door and outside this door for all the issues that were problems or needs or wants in my life. And in that studio was just what I was talking about. And I noticed that my breath would deepen while I was on the air. I would use the diaphragm and my pulse would drop. I could feel the heart rate dropping. Two hours a day, or three hours a day, depending on the time I was there. I had the blessing of sitting still and getting paid for it. And that itself was beneficial to me. And then in addition to that, my job was, while I was, again, talk to a host, was talk to a listener and giving people the chance to be heard. It was very beneficial to my marriage. And again, it's gone up and down the marriage, that is what they all do. But at the heart of our relationship there's an endless number of conversations you've had and the ability to hear each other for them. And then there's an added benefit because we're parents of a daughter named Hope. And I had the chance to sit still or get in my hands and knees with her and really hear her when she was a kid. And it's made for a wonderful ride. She's now out of the house. She's just left for the college this year. But the benefits to learning how to listen well and then transmit that information. I think it's been very, very important. - Well, again, the book is people are dying to be heard. How literally or how close to literally do you feel that the dying is true? Are people really dying? If they're not heard, does that mean literal death? - There's a reason the cover of the book has the word dying in italics because I want people to think about the fact that maybe it's not literal, but it's spiritual and it's emotional. It's people who don't get the connection, the chance to be talking about what they think and feel and share the journey they've been on, like you're doing with me. It's been a long day for me. But sitting here, when I get off the phone and we're no longer talking, the energy level is going to be sky high because you're filling my cup, right? You're asking me to explain where I've been and how I've gotten there, where I'm going. And as we journey, I think that's really important 'cause we're all on that same path. We don't know where it ends up, but that's why it is we're here. And we're trying to figure out how we get from point A to B to G to Z, we just don't know. So yeah, I think that when you don't get a chance to do that, some part of your soul dies. I don't physically, people will die 'cause you're not listening to, I think you can die of a broken heart and loneliness. But what I'm saying is we have a chance to validate other people, where we make the choice to give them our time as opposed to check our email or watch some silly TV show or run off to an air and to buy something we really don't need. Some of those things are necessary in our lives. Nothing's more necessary than making time to hear ourselves and other people. So in the course of the book, I talked about three, four, and five. There's key numbers. The three levels of listening, the four faces of empathic listening, and the five maxims, which are part of the verbal defense and influence conflict management training. And we can talk about those down the road here. - Maybe it is a good time to head to VDI, verbal defense and influence. There was one last thing I wanted to ask you about your radio experience before we get into the details of people are dying to be heard. And that is, did you feel like you got to be heard when you're on the radio program? You did some wonderful listening. And I felt like there is a whole bunch about Ben Marins that we didn't get to hear. - Yeah, I asked that question, Marcus, no. I met a woman who had sent me a predicate. Her name is Colleen Hickman. It sent me a yellow predicate. I'm not sure what it was about, except for her, it was her business. She was promoting it. And at the time I received it, I was going through a blue period that led into depression. I called her and I said, I'm not sure on Colleen. It's not that I want to have you on the air, but I think I'm supposed to talk to you. And she met me and she said, what's wrong? I said, why do you think something wrong? She said, well, I can hear it on the air. I listened very carefully and something. Isn't the same about you? And I said, well, I'm suffering. I'm not sure why. Part of its depression, I couldn't explain it. Part of it was a feeling I wasn't saying anything. And it wasn't a charter, not to speak about my politics or which side I'm on and whatever debate, gun debate, abortion debate, Republican Democrat debate. And I didn't want to, but I felt that I'd be doing something somewhere in my life where I was speaking up. So what do you want to speak about? I said, well, the subject I seen you know the most about is listening, because we'll write a book. And I looked at it and said, really? It's like, give me an anchor. Tell me to go swimming. Write a whole book. You're like, do that. He said, why don't you start out writing a list of things you know about listening? So that started a long friendship. And I wrote a list and ended up writing a small book. And so small, I didn't mean it was worthy to call it a book. So I recorded it. And my first audio book was called Unitasking. 25 Tips to Better Listening. It was about listening. And it also sort of my statement that all the rage in the '90s was multitasking. And to this day, I think that's wrong. It's the wrong message for our kids and for ourselves. That we're really wired to do one thing at a time really well. When we do multiple things, research shows we're actually bouncing between one and the other in our brain at lightning-fast speeds. But we're not really able to do more than one thing at a time. So that was my first audio book. And it was driven from the fact that I just didn't feel I had a voice. And yet I was on the radio every day for three hours. And I thought that was such an odd contrast to be. Anyway, so that audio book led to another one, which was that realization of people are waiting around and trying to get on the air because someone's listening to them. And the people are dying to be heard was then born. So you did your show on Wisconsin Public Radio. At issue, you listened. You facilitated. You had questions. You engaged in learning and drawing people forth. How does that compare with people-- Rush Limbaugh, I think, is a very good example. He gives a lot of his opinions on air. Does that mean that he doesn't listen? Is that still journalism in the sense that you'd like to see it be done in the world? Two questions. If you listen, I don't know. I think to some degree, but for the most part, commercial talk radio hosts and the majority of them now, the pendulum is to the right. But it could swing to the left at some point. Are more about show and entertainment than real discourse. It's just the nature of the business. My only issue with people who are one-sided that don't allow another voice to be heard and must be heard so they can be set up or belittled is they forget one key ingredient, even with technology and the ability online to be podcasting, if you will. Those airwaves, if you go on the AM or FM dial, are the public airwaves. They're only licensed to the people who run the stations, hire the hosts, and put them on the air. Somewhere in that discourse, I think, needs to be a balance, so the other side, whatever the other side is, gets to be heard. And then a real dialogue takes place because there's so much radio, and this is a journalism part of your question, it doesn't ring true because there's just people who are going through the motions. There was a morning, it's a morning show, it's not exactly a talk show host, but when they do the morning show on the local AM station, they had a woman on who was really upset because there's this store and it's for little girls' clothes and you can only be one size. And the woman's complaint was, oh, awful it is, that there's only one size, so if you're a heavy girl, you don't sit in and you don't get to buy the clothes so you don't have a member of the end club, and she thought this was terrible, and I appreciate her position. And as a father of a daughter who had to go through what it was like to see her body not be what everybody said should be at times on TV, I could see that there's a problem with that. But the journalism side me listened to this guy who basically said her softballs agreed with her and he could almost see him not his head. And at no point did he ask the question I wanted to ask, which was, this is a capitalist society, the idea that you can complain, say somebody shouldn't do something, or you can do something to balance it. So what if you came up with a real girl clothes store, real girls by our clothes, because they're all shapes, they're all sizes, and that's the way it's supposed to be. And you compete, you do the same thing the other store did, but you've got a lot bigger market, because most of the girls are either too big or too small for the clothes that are being sold by that one store. So why don't you make that the commercial outlier, and make this commercial inlier? He didn't ask the question, because curiosity wasn't there. He was just there to sort of stroke her, promote her, and move on to the next traffic and weather break. It just wasn't very interesting, but I just felt sorry for him, he wasn't very engaged. He really wasn't listening. He was just sort of going through the motion. - Does this mean, Ben, that you have an opinion one way or another about, well, you know what the fairness doctrine used to be. It originated in the late 1940s, and in the late 1980s, it was abolished. It was no longer the standard to which broadcasters had to adhere. You were doing radio for many years after that. Is the loss of the fairness doctrine in broadcasting? Is that a good or bad thing in your opinion? - You don't have to have the doctrine there, sir. I like the idea of letting people have firm opinions and challenging them. I met a guy in Madison, and I was just doing many, and his big button on his shirt in the red question authority. I walked up to him and I said, "Who are you?" And he looked at me and said, "What, who are you?" (laughing) Then I laughed at you, and he laughed, and he got it. There was a way, and again, this goes back to Grandma Happy's training. Then he said, "If you don't have anything nice to say to you, "don't say anything at all." When you do have something to say, even if you don't agree with somebody, be respectful. So I was never of that Sam Donaldson Ilger. I wanted to yell, "Mr. President, "are you indeed a crook or rapist in a murderer?" I was like, "Well, there's another way to ask the question." And asking a hard question in a gentle manner, I think makes you a much better journalist. It's much more entertaining. It's much more information getting because a person doesn't feel threatened when you ask it. And your audience appreciates it because you're really furthering the dialogue. I don't need a law to tell me that fairness and balance should be there. I just think that should be a tenant of what we practice as journalists. And I think the public is best served by it. And that's essentially who we serve. It's our audiences out there. I mean, you and I are doing this, and I'm loving the conversation. But I'm really loving that there will be an audience to hear it. - Well, we are speaking with Ben Marins, and this is Spirit in Action, which is a Norton Spirit Radio production, on the web at northernspiritradio.org. That's O-R-G, like in organic, not commercial. On that website, you will find more than nine years of programs for free listening and download. You'll find connections to our guests, like to find Ben Marins. You can follow the link to benmarins.com or to vistolour.com, which he works with now. And you'll find out more about his book, People Are Dying to Be Heard. - By the way, Mark, I was just gonna say, one of the things we started at VISTA law is something called Podcast Network International. And the idea there was people who want their own show, want some professional guidance from me, can get it. The other idea there is that we bring ad issue back. So there are a couple episodes of ad issue. They're rather short. They're me talking a little bit about where I've been. The idea is, when I can figure out a way to get my life in a regular pattern at work, 'cause there's a lot going on there, that I will try to get ad issue once a week at least. So people can hear ad issue again with me speaking and eventually with guests. Let's podcastnetworkinternational.com. - So you can go to podcastnetworkinternational.com. Also, so Ben Marrons, vistolour.com, and podcastnetworkinternational.com. All of those will be present on nordancepiritradio.org. And when you visit, leave us a comment. We love two-way communication, as Ben says. This is about listening. We want to hear both directions. Also, there's a place to donate. That is how we fund this full-time work. Click on the donate button, even more than that. I'd love it if you would support your local community radio station. They provide you a slice of news and of music that you get nowhere else on the American dial. So please start by supporting your local community radio station. Again, Ben Marrons is here for 21 years. He was on Wisconsin Public Radio. Ad issue was the program that I listened to many hours of and got to know and love this person, although I still didn't know much about him. So I'm so glad that he's here with us today. - Mark, before you continue with your questions for me, I want to echo what you said about supporting your community radio and Northern spirit radio, because more and more we hear on radio stations, whether you're in Cincinnati or Sacramento or Philadelphia, the same station, essentially, where the local radio is being drowned out by the bigger conglomerate stations that are running the Clear Channel-esque-type programs. There is a place for that, but there's really an important role for local radio, too, but where it used to be something the government made sure it had money for. Right now, we know governments have trouble getting to the other parts of their budgets, and sometimes radio takes a hit, but it doesn't have to because you can help support it. So I certainly echo Mark's comments down. I'm gonna take a stand for something here and look for a program. I say, "Yeah, support stations like Northern spirit radio "and the programs you're listening to right now." - And I also want you to remember to get Ben's book, People Are Dying to Be Heard a Guide to Listening for a Lifetime of Communications. There's deep truth in that. I asked you earlier, Ben, if that dying was literal, and I suspect that a number of the suicides are from people who didn't feel that they were heard, that people, in fact, do die for lack of that connection, that embedding in human society, in addition to the spiritual and emotional deaths that people can go, and yet we do so many things that militate against us getting heard. We put on noise that interrupts. It's like the way people these days, they'll take a smartphone and they'll be texting and they'll do all that. Instead of being present with the people that they're at, you talk about that in the book. Do you have a smartphone? - I have a smartphone. In fact, I have a smartphone. I have a MacBook, and I just had a birthday, and my wife bought me, and I've had a phone. Why did you do that? If you're driving, you see, you've talked about it. I said, "Yeah, but you know if I open it, I'm gonna use it." And then you're gonna say, "I'm one more addicted tool "in the technology, I'm gonna return it." I want to tell you something, you talk about the dying that we heard, one night I was coming home and the fact is a local store, and the guy who manages to store, Kim came up to me to tell me a story, and he was telling me this is, I realized the product that I wanted was not on the shelf, they were out of it. And it was late, it was cold, it was the middle of the winter, and I was wishing I'd gone home because I was tired, cranky, and hungry. And I also know that people expect me to sit for a story because it's what I do. So when he said, "Hey, you know, I got a story for you "about Steve, you remember Steve, "don't you worked here last summer?" I looked there and said, "No, I don't." He said, "Yeah, you do, big tall guy, blonde hair. "He's young guys, can I?" I really don't remember Steve, "What's the story about Steve?" And I'm thinking, "I gotta just wish I hadn't stopped." He told me the story, "Now, I'm thrilled I stopped." He said, "Steve and his girlfriend live in San Francisco, "and they were in a park by a bridge over a river, "and they were sitting on the bench "when they saw a man who appeared to be a homeless man, "get to the railing of the bridge "and begin to climb it to jump." And Steve ran over to the man saying, "Excuse me, what are you doing?" And they said, "I have nothing to live for, "and I was gonna end my life. "I am ending my life." And Steve said, "Give me your hand, I'll help you." The guy looked and was, "There's a better way." And the guy looked up at him, "You can get down to the water, a different path. "But why don't you come over to my bench "and talk to my girlfriend and me and tell us "why you do this?" So for half an hour they talked, and as I said, "I don't know Steve, so I don't know what they talked about." But after half an hour listening to this guy's stories, he thanked them for listening, and he got up and he walked in the opposite direction of the bridge. And I love this story because it is a real extreme case of how listening literally saved somebody's life. We never know if we're gonna have an impact on somebody. We only know about the missed opportunity when we don't take it. So I do have to get out listening to these people because that storytelling is critical. And for this one man, it saved his life literally. You know, my memory is confusing me at the moment, but was it in the book or was it in a recent news article that I read about a guy who lives near a place, a bridge somewhere? And over the last 21 years or something, he saved the lives of, I don't know, 50 people who were gonna jump. Did you see that or was that in the book? - I have not seen it. It's not my book, but I love the image. She lives by the river where people, the bridge where people would jump and help save them. - Yeah, it was within the last couple of days I read this. - What it says to me is this message is spot on and that you can make a difference just by listening. I tell people that, and I've talked to 13-year-old kids in religious school ethics classes, here the world is an extremely different place because each of us is here. Not cataclysmically different, but extremely different. If you hadn't been here, or I hadn't been here, and go back with all the people you've touched, there are hundreds of thousands of dominoes, millions of moments that would be different. And I think valuing the importance of our individual presence is critical. And at the heart of that, is how we interact with other people and how we take time to hear what they have to say. I think that's just paramount. - Tell us a little bit more about the verbal defense and influence, VDI, that this still our uses has taught you, I guess. I think maybe you knew it intuitively before. - Yeah, when I learned what it was, I realized I had been practicing it. Verbal defense and influence was initially known by many around the country as verbal judo, and morphed into verbal defense and influence with VISTA-R. At the heart of verbal defense and influence, which is teaching others conflict management, started with law enforcement. So a police officer warned you over, wouldn't just yell at you to get your license, but they would use a universal greeting. And we advocate using this greeting in all we do, which is essentially, good morning. My name is Officer Marens. The reason I pulled you over is that you're going 35 and a 20. And I want to make sure, first of all, is everything okay? Are you rushing into the hospital or something? Because that obviously gives some context. And if they say no, you say, "Well, I need to see a licensed registration to have it, please." So you've given a sanitation, which is kind, and it opens up a dialogue. You've explained who you are and what your authority is, then you've asked a relevant question. And that universal greeting morphs into the five maxims at the heart of which is treat people's dignity to earn their respect. So we teach this to law enforcement, health care, the business world, and educators. And we even use some of these principles to help kids fight off bullying, because it's very effective when you teach kids some of the principles. At the heart of the five maxims is the first maximum of listening, really actively listening and being engaged with your heart, mind, and soul. The second maximum is when you're trying to get in information or help doing something that you ask for help. You don't tell people what they have to do. When that can be a co-worker, that can be my daughter who didn't want to clean her room. If I tell her to clean her room, most times that can work so well. But if I ask her, could you possibly clean your room in less past summers, could you clean your room somewhere in the next couple of weeks? The third maximum is context of why. And I said, "Could you clean your room?" And then I asked a couple of weeks before you pack to go to college, because they're two distinct jobs, one's cleaning out what you don't want, and the other's packing what you do. And I think the second process will go easier if you do the first separate. So now she's got context and I've asked her. Then you give options. That's the fourth maximum. It's up to you how to do it. You can clean your clothes first, you can clean your closets first, you can clean under your bed first. I don't care, it's your room. You need to clean it. I'm asking you to, and I'm giving you options of how to do it. Now at the workplace it could be, can you get that project done by Friday? And I'm not going to tell you if you do step one first, step three first, that's up to you. So we want to make people feel empowered. They tend to buy in when they get context, a third maximum, and they get options, the fourth maximum. The fifth maximum is my favorite, because it says, "Give somebody a second chance." Because we all fail, we're all human beings, and we all don't get it right the first time. In fact, most of us don't get things right the first time. So the five maximums ends with, you know what, I'll give you another chance. We all deserve that. But not 10 chances, if I'm asking you to do something, expect somewhere along the line you're going to pick it up, where you're going to try harder. To hide that relate to radio, you call the show. Mark joins me next from Eau Claire. I welcome you, I ask if you have a question for the guest, and I say something like, "Mark, I need you to make your best point. I only have two minutes because I've got to get to the news break. So can you stay on topic and just give me your best point?" Now, sometimes my caller would go all over the place, or they wouldn't, they'd go, "Well, I've got three points of question, a comment, and a follow-up." That's, I know that I only have time for one question, and they would need to do what I asked, or they wouldn't. So they got their second chance, and at the heart of it, when we've got options, because also when you don't comply, we've got options, good options, and bad. In the case of the caller who wouldn't respond correctly, we have good options, you can respond correctly, I'm giving you a second chance. For bad options, I'm going to have to take you off the air. So if I have to off-fade somebody off the air, which is kind of a nice gentle way of getting somebody to stop doing what they're doing, sometimes we might have a fader in our offices, in our cars, in our homes, but we don't put to the radio purposes, there I am practicing the five maxims, and it made for a really successful radio experience for 21 years. And I'm wondering if it made for a really successful parenting. It sounds like maybe there was a big issue of room cleaning between you and your daughter, Hope, that you had to practice all of those stages with her. Has this been successful in your life personally and professionally? - But that was personally. I talk about the fact that our lives are lived in moments. And you asked earlier about loved ones and being hard on them, certainly harder on Michelle than anybody in this world, but I also have given and gotten more from her than anybody in this world. And we've had millions of conversations. You think about that. A lot of moments sitting there, having discussions about everything from if you want toast with your eggs to what you think about the latest story in the news about the war in Iraq or what's going on in Israel or what's happening in Wisconsin. So we had all these interactions just sitting there and listening to each other. I think the value in that has been sometimes when we both stopped talking, so we both listened to the silence we shared, and we're comfortable with that. With hope, it wouldn't happen at school today question. All the parents ask it and they don't know much. But I said, "Tell me what you did at school today." And she starts talking. And she didn't see me get my phone. She didn't see me turn on the TV and see the sports game. She didn't see me read the newspaper. She saw me looking at her. That she realized I was listening to her. And that made for an extremely nice bond. And there were times when I didn't do it. And she'd say, and Michelle has no problem saying this. Oh yeah, Mr. Wissner, people are dying to hear it. You didn't hear what I just said. And it reminds me that this is an education, not only do I teach others, but I need to remind and teach myself constantly. You talk a lot about the importance of silence. And it seems like a major critique of our society. No, you know, I'm Quaker. And our form of worship is actually in our silence. You mentioned something about kind of the Buddhist Jewish influence in your life. That the listening, the quieting down is something that's so very foreign to our society. Fill up every moment, have a TV and a radio and something running. Don't allow a moment of silence. Aren't you afraid that you're swimming so far counter culturally that no one can accept this message? I hope not. Because I think when people do get it, they appreciate it. I was speaking at a conference. And I do a listening drill because I found out that a radio show on anger, an anger management, that research shows when you get angry or have an emotional reaction, there's no adrenaline rush. It takes about 90 seconds to process. So if I'm really upset with you, Mark, and I don't take 90 seconds to sit still, I may say something and I'm going to regret it. But if I sit still for two minutes, I allow the adrenaline to process. So I do an exercise. I go to conferences or speeches and I say, I don't want everybody to close their eyes. I don't want you to count, but on my mark, I want you to feel two minutes. Raise your hand when you think two minutes has passed. You used to do it with three minutes, but nobody could hand hold it. So the two minute exercise would get half the room with a hand raised at 60 seconds. Three-quarters of the room with their hands raised is about 90 seconds. In only about 20% of the people, the room will still be hands and laugh at two minutes. And I point out, you know why this is important? In part, because you don't allow the 90 seconds to process the adrenaline when emotional reaction happens. And you don't want it to be reaction, but response. And we need to teach our kids what it is to be still, to be still to share, to be still to listen, to be still to learn, just to be still. And if we don't have time since this time, that's really, really an impossibility. I think this is critical. And the role of silence fits into that also, in that I recently contacted Milwaukee magazine, and I asked them if they would write an article about my book, if I'm trying to promote the fact I have a book, but people are trying to be heard. And he said to me, now we really don't do that, but if you would write me a thousand words, I'll edit it down a little bit, but I'll print it. And we talked for a while, and he said, I'd like to focus to be the role of silence in listening. So here's a magazine editor of the magazine that a lot of people will read that'll have a column in it that talks about this. So I hope it gets people's thinking, because when I get this exercise at one conference, a woman at the end, we're kind of reviewing some things. You know, when we all were silent, that was really uncomfortable. But as it ended, I was thinking how cool this is. And I'm gonna try to be silent more often. It actually felt pretty good when I finally allowed myself to get there. - You know, there's another part of this listening and the silence that I really wonder about. I have had encounters a couple times with people who it seems to me would talk endlessly. And they had a need to be heard, but I don't think that it ever got filled for them because I don't know if they knew they were heard because they didn't stop talking long enough to know that they were heard. Well, I had a roommate at one point, a housemate. Jerry would talk on and on and on, and I felt like it was fighting to get any word in with him. And so one time I just let him talk and I watched the clock. And without a single word for me, he talked on for 22 minutes. And I think that probably he has a thirst, he's dying to be heard, but he doesn't have the mechanism to let himself know that he's been heard. Is that part of the training, VDI, or other things that you use in whatever presentations you do? - It is part of the training. And it's part of the message more than the training. And the message is prioritize what you have to say because you don't have time to say everything that you wanna say. So it's nice that you sat so still for so long for Jerry, but I let people know that if we're talking and they wanna tell me a story, if they haven't asked you to have time to hear it and I don't have a lot of time, I will say, you know, I've gotta be someone 10 minutes or go ahead and tell me your story. But I only got 10 minutes. And my younger brother and I talk a lot on the phone to me, Ms. Josh, we will riff for 20, 30, 40 minutes, and sometimes we've got the same stuff. It's just so this catharsis conversation we have, which drives Michelle a little crazy, but it's good for us. But there are times when we're both busy. And I also Josh, I'm gonna have 10 minutes and he's going on and I give Josh a one minute warning. I said, Josh, I got a minute before I gotta go wrap it up. I'm not being rude. I'm just getting into guidelines because your willingness to listen isn't an obligation to be taken to damage them. I also talk about interrupting with intention because there are times people are speaking. If you want to know you're listening to them, it's not that you sit there, don't, uh-huh, yeah? Yeah, really, oh yeah, yeah. You stop and say, hold on a second. You just said A, B, C, D, E, F, G, but I thought you were gonna talk to me about X, Y, Z? I said, oh, no, no, no, it's not about X, Y, Z, Ben. I'm really glad you asked me that question. And you keep them focusing what they said they're gonna talk about. If you interrupt with intention, that shows you're listening. If you interrupt and ask a question that shows you weren't paying any attention at all, that's where interruption becomes rude. But I was raised in the Midwest, you don't interrupt, that's rude. But when I teach people else who do interrupt because you want clarification, or you want some explanation, it's also the idea that good listening is a slow game of ping-pong, if you will. It's back in force, it's not just one way. So if we learned as a society, what you are actively teaching us, both through your book, people are dying to be heard and through the workshops and presentations that you give, if we learned verbal defense and influence, if we learned communication, listening, using silence, how do you think our world would be different? If everyone was a little more patient with each other, if everyone was a little more comfortable with a little silence, if everyone was willing to hear what somebody else said because we're all worthy of respect. You know, kind of legitimate world, I guess. The idea that you can hear other people, that the idea that silence has a place, because we've got so many places, and instead of silence, like we could have our cars, which sort of surround sound system living rooms on wheels, or the elevator, or even if you're the movie theater, it used to be time to explore the movie as quiet, but now, 20 minutes for the movie, there's commercials being played, then there's highlights and then there's the urgency to make sure you're buying more popcorn and you're told to turn yourself on. There's no point we just sit in the theater and have the experience of hearing the other people in the theater. I think, institutionally, we could embrace silence a little more. I noticed when Hope was a freshman in high school, I went to the school between periods. They just spent, you know, 50 minutes learning something. Hopefully learning something. And now you think, well, I don't come into to think about it, but they got out of the classroom, and music was blaring at them. And I like music at the floor, but I also love it as a place for non-sound, so you can come out of class and think a little bit about the series that you were just discussing. And then what they would do after four minutes is they'd turn the music off, and the kids would make a mad rush to the classroom, because that was sort of a path, rosy in training. You've got 60 seconds to get to your seat, or you'll get a demerit. So there was no real desire to create a culture of thinking between classes. It was more sort of, you know, see if you could teach the rats in the maze how to get to the end of the maze in time so you don't get punished. That's just a terrible lesson all the way around. There's just a role for assignments, and there's a role for understanding how we share the silence. When Michelle and I moved back to Southwest suburban Chicago from New York before ending up in Wisconsin, we had a friend from New York come out who was really, very hyper, really interesting guy. Just sitting still wasn't in his belly wick, and he said, "What do you guys do out here "in the middle of nothing in the dead of winter?" And he said, "Well, you know, we get friends "and play music and go out." A lot of nights we have a really long couch, and we sit at opposite ends of the couch, and we share a blanket, and we read. We read our own books, you know. He said, "No, really, what do you do?" (laughing) Yeah, I knew that was coming. Well, he was single, and they just didn't get that two people could sit silently and share the time. So you ask, "How would the world be a better place?" It wouldn't hurt to be a little more silent muscle when you allow for silence, you get to hear the world around you. That's sometimes the cruel winds, cold harsh winds of winter that are starting now, as we speak. Couple months from now, we're gonna hear the chirping of the birds, and you'll know if the spring is coming, but if you're listening to the snow blower, or the leaf blower, you're not gonna get to hear the birds. And I miss that when I sit on my porch and I wanna hear nature. It's then I hear the latest gizmo from Farm and Fleet. - I like the image of the world that you've been painting again. Again, Ben Marin's book is, People Are Dying to Be Heard, A Guide to Listening for a Lifetime of Communication. Follow the links from NortonSpiritRadio.org. You can get to benmarons.com, to vistalar.com, to podcastnetworkinternational.com, all these places where you'll find the fruits of Ben's work. I wanna tell you one little story Ben before we go, and then I think we'll listen to one of your songs. It's about the background that led to Norton Spirit Radio existing. I've worked in computers, computer programming, consulting for 30 years. I still do a little bit of it, although I've been doing the radio program primarily since 2005. When I was trying to decide what to do, because I knew that I didn't want to be sitting with computers anymore. That wasn't my soul's work. People ask me, well, what do you want to do? And the image that I could come up with, that was the clearest to me. And I told this to the Clearness Committee from the Quaker meeting that was helping me try and visualize what I wanted to do. I said, the clearest thing for me is that, in an older world, a world that we don't really have now, what I would have been is the old man who sits in the middle of town on the bench and talks to everyone who comes by. He would listen to the kids and the older people and someone who's just lost their spouse or whatever. I'd be the person sitting there and I'd be a listening ear. And they would feel a little bit more the sense of community and wholeness and hope for life because they know that they got to be heard. So your story here, what you're trying to lead people to, the silence, the listening and the change that that can bring about in our life is exactly so close to my heart. - That's a great image Mark. I can see you doing that. And what a valuable resource. And you wouldn't think, well, we'd pay somebody. The full-time job is park bench listener. But think how valuable it would be if we all know who should go somewhere. And, you know, I mean, the whole idea, you know, if a church is confession and, you know, something will pay a therapist, the whole idea is we're trying to talk about something that's important to us. You don't need church for that, you can't have that. You don't need therapy for that, you can't have that. You just need somebody out there who's willing to take a couple minutes and hear what you have to say. And that to me is, you know, much heaven on earth and a blessing is there could be. - Yes, and so it's a blessing that you're encouraging to us through your books. So thank you for doing that then. And especially, thank you for joining me today for Spirit in Action. - Mark, I appreciate you making the time to contact me and read the book and then have me on the program. I truly am touched and greatly benefited by this. - Thank you. - And let's go out with one of your songs. How about Babylon? What do you think? - I love that. What about Savior? - You know, Babylon, two things about Babylon. One, it's 137th song. I didn't know that when I learned it. And when I first heard it by Don McLean or by the reggae groups who play it. The other thing about Babylon at the heart of its message is that no matter how down you are, no matter how enslaved you are in your life, we all have a voice that's worthy to be heard, and no one can ever take our voice away from us. We can deny it, but if we choose to have it, it can never be stripped from us. And I think that you'll hear the passion I play that song with, and I play that song with the passion because its meaning is so dear to me and everything else I'm doing. We all deserve to have a voice, and that is coupled with the fact that we all deserve to have that voice heard. - Absolutely. Thank you so much Ben. We'll end with Ben Marins playing Babylon and we'll see you next week for Spirit in Action. By the waters, by the waters of Babylon. We let down and we're laid down and we're out for these Zion. We, we remember, we remember these Zion. May the woods of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in the high sighs. O Lord, my ride, and my redeemer. By the waters, by the waters of Babylon. We, we let down and we're laid down and we're with these Zion. We, we remember, we remember these Zion. By, by, by, by the waters, by the waters of Babylon. May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable. May the sighs, O Lord, my ride, and my redeemer. By, by, by the waters, by the waters of Babylon. We, we, we, we, we. The theme music for this program is Turning of the World, performed by Sarah Thompson. This Spirit in Action program is an effort of Northern Spirit Radio. You can listen to our programs and find links and information about us and our guests on our website, northernspiritradio.org. Thank you for listening. I am your host, Mark Helpsmeet, and I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit. May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light. This is Spirit in Action. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along, and our lives will feel the echo of our healing.