Why Listening is Hard – Youth Aloud Podcast Episode 1

While we all have moments when we find it hard to listen to others, we may not know why. This week’s episode offers research and analysis behind the listening challenge we face every day. Two high school students, Lindsey Lam and Ava Remler, share personal stories and discuss why we need better listeners in today’s world. To kick us off, Lindsey reflects on how her complicated relationship with listening:

“I think when I found that I would like to be listened to started in middle school when adults stopped listening to me and more just talked over me. My friends also stopped listening to me and started talking over me, to the point where I thought, ‘Well hey, stop talking then and just listen because no one is listening to you.’”

To see how we unpacked why listening is so hard, tune into this episode, which includes resources and references on barriers to effective listening from University of Minnesota’s “Communication in the Real World”, Harvard Business Review’s “Listening to People”, and “5 ways to listen better” by sound specialist Julian Treasure.

Resources mentioned in this episode

• University of Minnesota’s “Communication in the Real World”
• Chapter 5.2: Barriers to Effective Listening
• Harvard Business Review’s “Listening to People”
• Julian Treasure TED Talk: “5 Ways to Listen Better”
• “The art of listening,” by Brenda Ueland