Celeste Headlee

President & CEO, Headway DEI · 1 appearance on the record.

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Celeste Headlee is a veteran public media journalist and author of books including We Need to Talk and Do Nothing. Over her career, she co-hosted PRI/WNYC's The Takeaway and delivered the viral TEDx talk "10 Ways to Have a Better Conversation".

36statements → 8claims → 7claims resolved → 86%fully supported → 3.86/5average certainty → 1.81/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated →

6 supported 1 partly supported 0 contradicted 1 not checkable as stated how the 8 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

8 assertions · 3 opinions · 25 insights · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 8 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 7 are resolved, and 1 names no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Celeste argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Assertion Supported

Headlee: Email Communication Reduces Cooperation And Escalates Conflict

“I mean, for example, email in email, you're less likely to negotiate. You're less likely to cooperate. You're more likely to escalate conflict.”

Celeste Headlee Feb 5, 2019 ▶ 41:10 #51 Celeste Headlee: The Dying Art of Conversation

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1

none yet certainty 2

100% certainty 3

92% certainty 4

none yet certainty 5

weighted support: a fully supported claim counts one, a partly supported claim counts half. Each filled bar is clickable and opens exactly those claims; "none yet" means nothing said at that certainty level has resolved yet

How they sound: not measured why? →

We measure speaking style by listening to the audio itself, and a fair number needs at least 2,000 words from one person on tape we have measured. There is too little of Celeste Headlee on measured tape to publish a rate. This says nothing about how they speak.

What they said36 Episodes1

Everything Celeste Headlee said on the Knowledge Project that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Insight

Headlee: Stories Require Continuous Momentum Without Gaps to Keep Listeners Engaged

“She used to say that a story is like a shark. It has to keep moving forward or it dies, right? Or you can imagine it as a trapeze, where the listener, you have to provide that next rung for the listener. There can't be any gaps or they fall.”

Celeste Headlee Feb 5, 2019 ▶ 25:18 #51 Celeste Headlee: The Dying Art of Conversation

Opinion

Headlee: Public radio is full of navel-gazers constantly analyzing themselves

“You know, NPR is, public radio is full of naval gazers. We are constantly examining success and failure and, you know, staring inside of our belly buttons.”

Celeste Headlee Feb 5, 2019 ▶ 28:55 #51 Celeste Headlee: The Dying Art of Conversation

Insight

Headlee: Effective conversation requires an equal balance of talking and listening

“The best model for a good conversation is a friendly game of catch. And there's a number of reasons for that. The most obvious is that in a game of catch, you can't throw more than you catch. It's a perfectly even balance between throwing and catching, just as…”

Celeste Headlee Feb 5, 2019 ▶ 36:16 #51 Celeste Headlee: The Dying Art of Conversation

Assertion Supported

Headlee: People leave less than half a second before responding in conversation

“They did this global survey of how much time we spent, we leave in between one person ending a sentence and the other person responding, and it comes out to less than half a second”

Celeste Headlee Feb 5, 2019 ▶ 51:48 #51 Celeste Headlee: The Dying Art of Conversation

Assertion Supported

Hearing Opposing Views Spoken Humanizes Opponents More Than Reading Them

“Just late last year, Nicholas Epley in Chicago and his colleagues released this study in which they were looking at people and how they absorb opinions they don't agree with, and they found out that when you read an opinion you don't agree with in any format…”

Celeste Headlee Feb 5, 2019 ▶ 58:35 #51 Celeste Headlee: The Dying Art of Conversation

Assertion Partly supported

Headlee: Talking About Yourself Triggers The Brain's Pleasure Centers

“In, in 2014, Harvard released this study in which they discovered that talking about yourself activates the same pleasure center in the brain as sex and heroin.”

Celeste Headlee Feb 5, 2019 ▶ 1:08:51 #51 Celeste Headlee: The Dying Art of Conversation

Insight

Headlee: Ensemble musicians must continuously listen to peers, not just conductors

“If you're playing in an orchestra You can't just watch the conductor, right, who's keeping the beat. You have to actually listen to everyone around you. For tuning, you have to be very careful about shifts in tuning, because both choirs and instrumental groups…”

Celeste Headlee Feb 5, 2019 ▶ 4:27 #51 Celeste Headlee: The Dying Art of Conversation

Insight

Headlee: Classical Music Radio Hosting Demands Rare Specialized Domain Knowledge

“Finding classical music hosts, as it turns out, is quite difficult because they have to have all the skills of any other radio host, but then they also have to have very specialized knowledge That allows them to pronounce all those names and works properly. Th…”

Celeste Headlee Feb 5, 2019 ▶ 10:48 #51 Celeste Headlee: The Dying Art of Conversation

Assertion Supported

Headlee: Coach David Candow shaped NPR's signature on-air sound

“He was from Newfoundland, and he was so instrumental in the crafting of the NPR sound. He trained and mentored so many of NPR's anchors and hosts that we used to call him the host whisperer.”

Celeste Headlee Feb 5, 2019 ▶ 20:45 #51 Celeste Headlee: The Dying Art of Conversation

Insight

Headlee: Specific color descriptions make audio storytelling more vivid

“Colors are really powerful to the ear. Don't tell us she was wearing a heavy jacket. Say she was wearing a heaven, a heavy fuchsia jackdown jacket, right, with green and purple and pink. Those are really loud when you hear them.”

Celeste Headlee Feb 5, 2019 ▶ 22:40 #51 Celeste Headlee: The Dying Art of Conversation

Insight

Headlee: Radio broadcasting is fundamentally about people talking about people

“Radio is people talking to people about people. And it doesn't matter if it's an story about Wall Street or the military or whatever it is. In the end, it is people talking to other people about yet other people.”

Celeste Headlee Feb 5, 2019 ▶ 23:20 #51 Celeste Headlee: The Dying Art of Conversation

Assertion Not checkable as stated

Headlee: Barney Frank Hung Up on Her Multiple Times

“We interviewed Barty Frank many times, and he's hung up on me at least two or three times.”

Celeste Headlee Feb 5, 2019 ▶ 32:06 #51 Celeste Headlee: The Dying Art of Conversation

Appearances (1)

Episode	Date	Speaking time
#51 Celeste Headlee: The Dying Art of Conversation	Feb 5, 2019	53m

Celeste Headlee

The record, in short

Their most notable supported claim

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

How they sound: not measured why? →

Appearances (1)

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