How to Talk to Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere

Introduction: We've All Gotta Talk

Larry King made his living with his mouth for thirty-seven years. He sat across the table from Mikhail Gorbachev and Michael Jordan, from presidents and ballplayers and frogs named Kermit. But long before the suspenders and the famous microphone, he was a kid on a Brooklyn street corner with a nickname that told you everything you needed to know about him. They called him "the Mouthpiece."

At seven years old, he would stand on the corner of Eighty-sixth Street and Bay Parkway and announce the makes of the cars rolling past, like a one-boy broadcast booth. His best friend Herb Cohen put it best years later: if Larry went to a game at Ebbets Field and the game lasted two hours and ten minutes, then Larry's description of that game lasted two hours and ten minutes too. The two of them first met in the principal's office when they were ten. Nobody ever confirmed it, but the smart money says they were both there for talking in class.

Here is a number worth sitting with. The average person speaks around eighteen thousand words a day. That is a small novel coming out of your mouth between breakfast and bedtime. Eighteen thousand words, and most of us never stop to think about how we are using them. We talk to strangers at parties and clam up. We sit next to someone fascinating on a plane and stare at the seat-back tray. We walk into a job interview or a first date and feel our throat go dry.

King's whole argument is that this does not have to be the case. Talking well is not a gift handed out at birth to a lucky few. It is a skill. And like any skill, it can be learned, practiced, and improved by anyone willing to pay attention. He should know. He was terrible at it once, and he will tell you the whole embarrassing story himself.