This is the transcript of a podcast episode. You can listen to the episode here. Transcript has been edited for clarity.
Katharine: I’m happy to be talking today with Maryann Karinch. Maryann’s the author of 32 works of non-fiction, most of which focus on human behavior and put the spotlight on reading and using body language. In 2004, Maryann founded the Rudy Agency, a literary agency specializing in non-fiction. She holds Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC.
She is also my literary agent and I am so lucky to have her. Welcome, Maryann.
Maryann: Hello, Kate. It’s nice to be with you.
Katharine: I have just a few little intro questions to help people get to know you a little bit better. The first one is where did you grow up?
Maryann: I grew up in Karinchville. You think I’m making that up, don’t you? I’m not. The name of my town and there is even a plaque that says it, is Karinchville. My uncle founded it. He built it and we all lived there. So I was surrounded by cousins and uncles and aunts.
And it’s a good place. It’s near Hershey in Pennsylvania.
Katharine: Oh, my gosh. I have to go. That’s not that far for me. I’m dying to see it. All right. And where do you live now?
Maryann: Now I live in Estes Park, Colorado, and it’s beautiful. It’s the gateway community to Rocky Mountain National Park on the Denver side of the park. It’s the East side of the park and a good chunk of it, about 200,000 acres of it just burned. So we went through, we went through an evacuation, just a few days ago, but all is well now I think we have some snow on the ground.
Katharine: [00:01:40] And your home and land is all okay?
Maryann: Everything is okay. Yep. So far.
Katharine: What was your first job?
Maryann: [00:02:05] Oh, my first real job. Let’s see. I was an administrative assistant to somebody and I caught him embezzling and he was fired. And then I had to take over the office for a little bit. it was an adventure.
Katharine: How old were you?
Maryann: Well, that was my first job out of college. So I was I was 21 years old.
Katharine: I want you to describe your current job and we just heard your bio. So what I want you to do is something a little bit different, which is to describe your current job, but only by using three verbs.
Maryann: Write. Pitch. Celebrate.
Katharine: [00:02:53] Those are excellent. Okay. And then one more, what is something that has made you happy lately? It could be anything, a book, a TV show, some new hobby or activity you’ve picked up.
Maryann: How about getting back into my home after evacuation? That made me really happy.
Katharine: [00:03:14] That’s definitely it a cause for celebration.
Maryann: My cats were happy too
Katharine: Oh, I bet. How many cats do you have?
Maryann: Two, and they were not quite pleased with having to live with two dogs. Our friends have two dogs.
Katharine: Aw. Yeah, they’re happy to be home. All right. You have written on so many different topics over 32 books, but today I want to focus in particular on body language, which is an area of expertise for you. First off, why is body language so important?
Maryann: We leak emotions and thoughts with our body language and what comes out of our mouth is not necessarily what we really are thinking or feeling. By reading body language, we can get to the truth a lot of times more quickly and accurately than we could if we just listened.
Katharine: What are some of the things that we are missing when we don’t understand body language?
Maryann: You know how children sometimes pick up on people and they say, Oh, mommy, I really like her, or Mommy, I don’t really like her, or something like that. That childlike intuition–it’s not really intuition, it’s an observation without a lot of filters.
We put filters on as we grow older. And so what we miss is what children often pick up, which is the authentic message of a person. Just knowing that person really likes me. And that person is kind. Children of course can make mistakes, but they have fewer filters and the filters that they do have, they generally get from the adults around them.
What we try to do in teaching how to read body language is go back to having fewer filters. And with a certain amount of innocence, look for the authenticity in the person’s message and that message will come through with body language. It will come through with tone of voice. It will come through in a lot of ways that we don’t necessarily pick up on if all we’re doing is listening to the words.
Katharine: So, how do you do that? How do you get rid of those filters?
Maryann: Well, you have to work on it. It’s not something that, Oh, just read my book and you’ll be there. No, not necessarily. You will need to be observant and practice. A good way to do that is by turning the sound off the TV, which probably is beneficial for lots of reasons. If you’re watching the news anyway–see what you see, what you find out.
What I do is a lot of debate commentary, so what I will do is I’ll watch the presidential debate with the sound off and with the sound on, and I will ascertain from having the sound off what I think the attitude of the person is, what the subject matter even is.
All I do is just pay attention to the way the hands are moving, the squinching of the eyes, the tilt of the head, the angle of the body toward or away from the opponent. And then I’ll turn the sound on in a replay and see, well, how right was I, was this really about race? Was this about immigration? Was this about COVID and because you can tell so much even subject matter based on how a person moves, so that’s what I’d recommend. Do those exercises. Also watch cartoons. If you have kids and they like cartoons, watch cartoons. A lot of times they are a great way to learn body language.
Katharine: Oh, this is so fascinating. I love that exercise of turning off the sound because it forces you to really study the movements to see what’s being communicated. And I’ve got to say the idea that you could tell whether somebody is discussing immigration versus COVID by the way they’re holding their body, that is sort of mind blowing to me.
Maryann: Well, here’s a perfect example. This is a very clear example in the vice-presidential debate. Kamala Harris, when she was talking about race, she had a very deliberate, confident way of moving. And it was a little different–it was much more passionate than a lot of the other subjects that she discussed.
I thought, I know exactly what she’s talking about. I don’t even need the sound and sure enough, that’s what she was talking about, but that’s a very clear example. That’s a very important issue for her, and so you’re going to see more animation. There’s a kind of vitality of expression that’s very telling.
Katharine: How has this helped you in your working life? I mean, how do you use this when you’re in a negotiation or when you’re talking with somebody in a pitch meeting, something like that.
Maryann: Right. I was just going to say that negotiation is where really plays out. I can often tell right when I’m negotiating with somebody about a deal, how strongly they feel about their position or whether or not they have any wiggle room.
There are certain ways that people back off of a topic or turn away, in a face to face. You can really tell when the eyes go away from you, and there’s a thought process going on. It’s usually what that signals to me is I have some wiggle room here, I wonder how much I have, as opposed to just looking at me straight on and saying, Hey, it’s $10,000 and not a dime more, in which case you can say, well, okay, they probably mean that. But you can tell there’s a certain fidgeting, there’s a certain angling of the body. Also mirroring is very telling in a negotiation. If somebody is basically mirroring my postures, not mimicking, but mirroring in a very natural way, that means that they’re really hearing me. They’re connecting with me and I have more of an ability to move them in my direction.
Katharine: [00:09:50] Yeah. Mirroring, as you know is something that I talk about in my book and how it is something that you can also use affirmatively, to build a connection with somebody.
Maryann: Yes, absolutely.
Katharine: To me, it’s part of building rapport that people. Mirroring is something that people do naturally, when they are in sync like you’re describing, you guys are on the same wavelength, and you’re really connecting you automatically mirror, but it’s also something where if you are trying to build a stronger connection, you can sort of adopt it. It has to be subtle, right? Or else it’s a little bit creepy, but you can do it in subtle ways.
Maryann: Yes, it can go from mirroring to mimicking, but one of the exercises that Greg Hartley, my coauthor on these body language books, and I have done is we went to a lot of restaurants, bars, places where people go on dates and we would look at different couples and be able to tell whether or not they were getting along.
You know, we didn’t know if they were on a first date or if they were married or whatever, but we would look at the relative level that they were mirroring or not, or absolutely breaking connection by leaning back in a chair when the other person is moving forward toward the table. And you could tell so much about whether or not the couple was connecting and really wanting to be together by the level of natural mirroring.
Katharine: [00:11:26] Oh, that’s so interesting. I also like to watch other groups in restaurants and one of the things I’ve noticed is the couples where they don’t speak at all during the entire meal, but I haven’t paid attention to the body language. That’s really interesting. I really want to try that when we get back in restaurants.
Maryann: I was just going to say, I’ve seen entire families not talk because they’re on their devices. And I think why are they even going out to dinner together? Because there’s nothing together about this.
Katharine: Yeah, you could all just be at home in your separate rooms right now.
Maryann: Just order takeout and forget it.
Katharine: Yeah. Well, so you know, this idea of restaurants now obviously is challenging and it’s something that I think we are all struggling with a little bit right now is how to build and maintain connection with people when we are over the phone or on Zoom or something like that. Do you have any advice for how do we enhance our connection when we’re not face-to-face, we’re not in the same room together?
Maryann: [00:12:34] Right. Well, let’s look at this both when we’re not in the same room together and when we are, but we have masks on. But when we’re not in the same room, the warmth with which we communicate still needs to be there. You know, Kate, I enjoy you so much, and I feel like, hopefully everything I say to you, you feel it, whether it’s the tone of my voice, that there are ways that we smile. Those things are very important. Don’t neglect it. I have a very good friend who works for NPR and I know when we talk on the phone that she’s smiling. I feel it. I hear it.
When we are face-to-face, but we’re in the grocery store and we have masks on, we can’t get close, but we can smile and a genuine smile shows in the eyes. I do blogging for Psychology Today. And one of my blog posts was about smiling beyond that mask. We know that somebody is happy to see us, even with the mask on, we don’t see the face, the lips, the teeth, but we do see the eyes crinkle at the corners. And we know that’s a smile. It’s important to remember when we see somebody not to be frozen by the mask. That, and hopefully one of the new normal things that we will be able to do is express ourselves more with our faces, even with a mask so that people know that we’re happy to see them.
Katharine: Yeah, fascinating. I didn’t even think about that. The way that it’s probably going to change our communication, that we will work on communicating more with our eyes.
Maryann: Yes, absolutely. And there’s. You know, the eyes being the window to the soul. That’s not a joke. That’s not just some cliché. It’s true. We can see real happiness and sadness, concern, isolation. We can see all of the emotions with the eyes.
Katharine: will you tell me a little bit more about that? What are some things that you’re able to see when you are focusing on someone’s eyes? And do you have advice for people to get better at that, to understand that a little bit more?
Maryann: I really look up to Paul Ekman, Dr. Ekman, and his work with facial gestures, and I’ve learned so much from him over the years since I’ve been studying body language. He has a wonderful website and some videos that will demonstrate how much eyes tell you about your emotions. I would just say pay attention. We have a great opportunity really, to learn more about this part of our body language, because we’re wearing masks. Look at other people’s eyes, look at how they communicate with somebody that they are with and that they know. And look how, if they’re alone in a grocery store, how so many people now look frightened, they look really scared.
There there’s a sense of, I’m not connected. I can’t connect because they’re not, they don’t want to even want to look at somebody else. Try to make eye contact, try to smile with your eyes so you can relax people, give them a sense of connection. I see so many disconnected souls, just walking around with their masks on and not really communicating any emotion or anything other than just a sense of isolation, the mask seems to take away–it does seem to freeze them. It seems to take away their ability to show who they are and how they feel.
Katharine: Yeah, absolutely. It is disorienting and it’s something that you can’t forget, that you have this thing on your face, and it does feel very distancing.
Maryann: Right, right. Well, we, do have to work at getting past that, work at that smile that shows that we have emotions that are positive and, reflect our desire to connect with others.
Katharine: Interesting. I think it’s about curiosity, like approach with openness and a curiosity, instead of immediately shutting people down.
Maryann: Curiosity. Absolutely. If I were God, I would give everybody another injection of curiosity. Just like you get a booster vaccine every year for your flu, I’d do the same thing with curiosity. I would just pump everybody full of it, because that’s really one of the biggest things that helps us connect.
We can see that, we can see that in each other’s eyes, if we are together having a conversation and you say something that really strikes a chord with me, you will see my eyes just light up. I want to know more. I’ll lean toward you. My whole body language says, tell me more. I’m interested in that sort of thing.
If we could do that more with each other, rather than back away, which is what happens a lot, just instinctively. We have fear and we back away. If we could go the other direction, just go toward, open those eyes and listen and pay attention and be curious and learn something.
Katharine: Oh, yeah, absolutely. I think you’re absolutely right. People in conversations are often only on transmit and they’re not looking for what they can learn and they aren’t even looking for is what I’m saying getting across, you know, that spark that you mentioned. A lot of people aren’t really looking for that.
They just, Oh gosh, I just have to get this story or this point across.
Maryann: They talk past people. They talk through people, they talk over people.
Katharine: I also want to talk to you cause I know one of the things that you are good at is something that I struggle with, which is how do you understand or comprehend when somebody is maybe not telling you the truth or is, maybe doesn’t have your best interests at heart or something like that.
Are there clues in their body language that maybe we need to go into protective mode?
Maryann: Most people are not good liars, so they get tense. And when they get tense, there are signs of stress that we can look for. We can look for it in a type of fidgeting, rubbing your hands together or some fidgeting. It’s a self-soothing gesture that you’re doing because you feel tense. Some people will put up a barrier. Suddenly the phone will go up in front of them or they’ll clutch something to separate themselves from the other person. And that could mean, you know, don’t want you to know too much about me. Another thing is the clenched mouth. There’s a real pressure there, like holding something back. That could also be a sign that you want to look for. And sometimes, you know, with women, it would be more of a, pursed lips, like a sort of a tight line on the face. So, you know, all those things, they could show tension, the desire to hold something back. There may be a lack of eye contact, whereas before, there was eye contact. A lot of this, Kate, goes back to base-lining. When you are paying attention to someone else, you observe what it is normal for them. There’s a certain cadence in their speech. There are certain ways that they move that they sit and that’s just perfectly normal.
When you see a deviation from normal, a deviation from the baseline, stress is present. Now stress is not necessarily bad if you’re on a great first date, but stress, a lot of times is a sign of something’s not quite right.
Maybe the whole truth is not being told. Maybe a flat out lie is being told. Maybe there’s just a nervousness, but why are you nervous? Look for that tension as a sign.
Katharine: It does also come back to this idea of be curious so, if you are watching, and not completely swept up in your own head and everything you want to say or get across, you are more likely to recognize, well, this is a little different. Why is he suddenly not making eye contact with me anymore? Or why is she suddenly gotten kind of fidgety?
And maybe then, you know, she’s short on time or whatever it is, you see maybe there is a reason for that. Or maybe there’s something that you don’t understand right now. And you need to explore further to understand why is this person suddenly nervous.
Maryann: Right. Exactly. One of the things that you can do as a fun exercise is to watch late night television shows. Now it’s a little bit harder because people are not on set with each other, but normally if you have a celebrity onset with the host and the host and the celebrity they’re getting along well, everything’s going fine.
Then maybe the host asks a question about their recent divorce and watch the change in body language. It’s very interesting because then you have somebody who’s used to the camera, who’s used to talking, used to performing and all of a sudden this authentic sense of tension comes bleeding out.
And you can’t help but see it, just look for moments like that in any interview situation. Even with the fact that people are not necessarily in studio right now, you can see the split screen of the interviewer and then maybe it’s somebody from one camp or another in the presidential situation here that we have.
Yu can see, Oh, they didn’t like that question. Look at the eyes, squinted, the head tilted. There’s this gulping — that’s another one. So all of those things, look for those little glitches and we’ll just call them glitches. They’re one off things that that person, if that person were at ease, really at ease, just telling the truth, having a good time, that stuff wouldn’t happen.
Katharine: This is fascinating, Maryann. Then what about our own body language. So you, I’m sure, have to sometimes deliver bad news or you have to go into a negotiation where things are not going well and you probably feel a little tension around that. Do you have any advice for managing your own body language in a difficult conversation?
Maryann: I try to focus on the other person. What is going to make that other person comfortable? What is going to help that person and the practical outcome for me is that I calm myself down. I’m going to give you a very difficult, personal, very personal example of this. When six years ago, a doctor had to call me and tell me that I had cancer.
I knew his wife had died of a very similar cancer. I knew that this doctor had gone through this and I said, Dr. K, this must be so much harder for you than it is for me. We’ll get through this. And all of a sudden, I felt good. I felt better. I felt like I could take that news and make something positive out of it.
And he appreciated the fact that even though he was on the other end of a phone, it was like I was holding his hand. For him to have to tell another woman after his wife had just died, that she had this cancer was very hard for him. Now I’m here. Six years later. I’m clear. I’m fine. So don’t worry about me, all right? But that is an example of the kind of thing. That’s an extreme example of the kind of thing that you can do with another person by paying attention to that person and not putting it on yourself.
Katharine: Wow. That is amazing. That in that moment, when you’re getting that news, you were able to shift your focus and recognize how hard that was for him.
Maryann: It’s a thing that we can all do, if we just realize that making someone else more relaxed will help us.
Katharine: Well, it helps everybody, right?
Maryann: Yes, there’s no loser in that. There is no loser in that.
Katharine: Yeah, absolutely. Interesting. And also, you know, I think sometimes people are afraid to acknowledge that somebody else is having a hard time because they think, maybe they’re going to cry. Maybe I’m going to make it worse if I acknowledge that this person is struggling right now, when in fact the opposite is true, you’re able to have a moment of real connection. And often that is what is needed to build a stronger bond and really provide comfort to them and to you.
Maryann: Absolutely. Absolutely. And to go back to the mask issue, those people who look isolated, probably feel isolated, give them someone to connect, to give them you. To give them your smile, give them a look that says, Hey, I’m here. Just, I’m here. That’s all. We can do that with each other in a way that is, it’s personal.
We’re human beings. We need to let each other know that, Hey, I’m here. I’m right near you. That means a lot, especially like up here where I live, there are a lot of people who are older, they’re retired. They really, really want to know that they’re connected to the world, that they’re still connected to the world.
It’s up to us to enjoy being human beings enough to let them know that we’re here. We know that.
Katharine: I love that. It’s up to us to, how did you put it? Show that we enjoy being human beings?
Maryann: We do. We enjoy being human beings. Let’s share that.
Katharine: I think that it’s such a wonderful point in part because through doing that, we pull ourselves out of our own funk. You know, if I am in a really bad mood and just everything is going awful, one of the things I try to do is write a thank you note to somebody and it can be a physical, you know, a card, but also just an email, something where I thank somebody, because I know that that is great for them, but also it forces me to get out of my little self-obsessed hamster mind for a minute.
Maryann: That’s exactly right. Every single day, we need to be expressing gratitude, and we express gratitude to each other. We express gratitude to the universe. But especially to each other. That’s a beautiful thing that you do.
Katharine: Okay. Well, you know, it’s like you said, it’s, it’s maybe not selfish, but it is perhaps self-serving, but it really does help. It works well. And I am certainly grateful to you. My goodness.
Maryann: Well, you did it. Okay? We’re partners and you did the work, and I was really proud to be there supporting you throughout the whole process.
Katharine: Ah, thank you. I am so grateful. All right. I want to get from you, since you are the most prolific writer I know: How on earth are you able to get 32 books published? What is your writing routine? What advice do you have? What is this magic elixir that you are drinking that allows you to write so many words so beautifully?
Maryann: Well, thank you. The magic elixir is that I work with other people, whether I’m the solo author on a book or whether I’m co-authoring with someone else, other people are always involved. My energy, it comes from them, and hopefully it flows back to them. I constantly learn things from all of these amazing people that I coauthored books with, or that I interview for the books that I write on my own.
And that I cannot tell you how enriching that is to be able to have conversations on a daily basis with people who know more than I do about whatever subject we’re talking about. They’re experts and I just suck it up. I learn, and I feel like they’re really passionate about that subject matter.
And you know, some aspect of human behavior or health or fitness or all of the things that I write about, and I’m just learning so much. And then I can turn around and give it to other people. And that again, energizes me. So it’s like, I feel like I’m in graduate school all the time. I know that sounds kind of weird, but I loved school.
I really loved school from first grade all the way up through however long they let me stay in school. I just kept learning stuff and thought this is great. Wouldn’t it be great if I had a whole life where I could just learn something all the time? And well, that’s the life I have.
It’s back to curiosity and the more that you indulge yourself and satisfying that curiosity, the more curiosity you have, I’m convinced of it. It’s just one of those things that grows. It’s the addiction that everyone should have.
Katharine: Yep. Absolutely. That’s great. So what is the next book you have coming out?
Maryann: The next book coming out is Cosmic Careers, HarperCollins Leadership. I co-authored with Alister Brown. And it is about all of the careers you can possibly have in space. Things that would surprise you like right now, there are so many careers that you can get, that are space-related. For a taste of that, there’s actually a website called spacetalent.org. And, there are zillions of jobs that are listed there, many of which would surprise you, things that have to do with, say, 3D printing and pharmaceuticals and bear biology. I’m not kidding. All these different things that have to do with careers you can have in space. So, what we do in Cosmic Careers is tell stories about people who have unusual careers, about research that’s going on, about startup companies that are just small companies that have a footprint on the ISS and other places related to space.
And just anybody who wants to get out there and be a Star Trekkie. You can do it.
Katharine: I can already think of a few friends who are space obsessed, who would love that. I also think, especially for people who are in college or new graduates, this seems like a really, really phenomenal resource.
Maryann: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And even people who are retired from their first career and think, well, I’m interested in space. There’s probably something you can do to get involved. There’s all kinds of research, for example. So if you have a whole career in some aspect of science and you think, well, I wonder if that would be applicable to space. You bet it is.
Katharine: Amazing. When does it come out?
Maryann: The book comes out February 9th and it comes out, as I said, from HarperCollins Leadership. And we’re, we’re just so excited. So it will be available everywhere and it’s a fun book. We really, we made sure that we told a lot of fun stories. We’re giving you information that’s useful, but it’s in a very fun way.
Katharine: Oh, that’s so great. And where can people find you?
Maryann: People can find me at the agency, rudyagency.com. They can also find me on karinch.com, which one of these days I’ll update with my last two books. But you know, these things, my mother always says you write faster than I can read. Well, okay. Where did I get that talent?
Katharine: If people are writers and they’re interested in your agency, do you have particular types of works that you’re looking for?
Maryann: I do primarily nonfiction, although I do have a small fiction list. If it’s nonfiction, I prefer someone like you, who is a genuine expert about the subject matter, and who has the desire to reach out to people so that people know about the book. And that’s, that’s pretty much it. I have the basics of proposal writing on the website, but also let me put in a little plug for my game plan for getting published, which is a slim, funny volume telling you how to write a book proposal. It’s an entertaining way to learn how to write a book proposal. And if you follow my book, I’m obviously going to like it.
Katharine: That’s a really phenomenal resource, because I know there are a lot of people out there who are, as you said, subject matter experts who know a lot in their field and recognize that writing a non-fiction book is a way to amplify their message, but aren’t really sure how to start. So that’s a really great thing for them to know about.
Katharine: I very much appreciate your time today, Maryann, it is always a pleasure to talk with you. We will, as I said, include in the show notes links for how to find you, both your books and your work with the Rudy Agency. And really just so grateful for your time. So thank you so much, Maryann Karinch.