Coming Home — And Out — In The South

Southword is a collaborative series between NPR and Oxford American magazine, spotlighting the people, places and trends that shape the modern American South. Dave Anderson, filmmaker for Oxford American, teams up with NPR journalists to produce stories about a region that continues to evolve in unexpected ways.

Many years ago, a young Chad Griffin left his hometown of Arkadelphia, Ark., to pursue a career in politics. Today, he's the newest head of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) — a powerful gay rights group based in Washington, D.C.

Together with Oxford American magazine, NPR brings this latest installment of Southword, a series about life in the South. To learn a little bit more about what it's like to be gay below the Mason-Dixon line, we caught up with Griffin — both at his office in Washington and in his hometown of Arkadelphia, Ark., where he spent his first day on the job.

"I never knew that I knew another gay person when I was growing up," Griffin recalls, describing life in Arkadelphia. "I frequently heard things like 'faggot' and 'queer bait.' "

It wasn't until many years later that Griffin would realize he was gay, let alone come out to his mother, which he did in his 20s. By that time, he had already volunteered for Bill Clinton's presidential campaign, and joined that administration in the White House as one of the youngest-ever staffers, at age 19.

Upholding Tradition

"I was raised missionary Baptist. Very conservative," says Griffin's mother, Betty Hightower. "And at first it really was hard for me to say my son was gay." Still, Griffin emphasizes repeatedly, he has always had his mother's support.

Even Jerry Cox, head of the conservative Arkansas Family Council, says homosexuality, per se, is not the issue:

"Most people in Arkansas have a very live-and-let-live attitude," he says. "So if you said, 'What do people say about gays in Arkansas?' They'd be like, 'Eh, whatever.' "

Yet Cox takes issue when certain folks try to change the rules. In 2008, he led an Arkansas ballot initiative banning gay couples from adopting (which was later struck down by the state Supreme Court). And he represents long-standing beliefs about upholding the traditional family unit.

"Where the issue comes in," he says, "is when people come in and say 'I'm gay and I want to redefine what marriage is.' And people say 'Woah, wait a minute, marriage has been this way for thousands of years. We like it the way it is and don't want it to be redefined.' "

The HRC provides support to those opposing positions espoused by Cox. Griffin and his sympathizers might not win all battles, but they have won some: Arkansas is actually one of a few states that has an anti-bullying law with specific protections for sexual orientation.

Life At Home

Of course, what goes on in the legislature doesn't always reflect attitudes at home, which can prove formidable.

Take 19-year-old Alyss Parrish (that's not her real name; it's what she goes by in college in Little Rock). When she's home with her parents, she goes by her birth name. Because when she was 15, her parents found her MySpace page — and saw that she was questioning her sexuality.

"Mom started crying," Alyss recalls at a function for Griffin in Little Rock. "Dad pulled out a bible. Chanting verses, angry, extremely red-faced. I don't think I've ever seen my parents that upset before."

Her dad is a Pentecostal preacher. He said she could continue to live with them under one condition: That she say she's straight. And so she did. If she told them she was actually gay, she fears they would disown her.

Griffin says he goes home so he can hear stories like hers.

"Someone who is that young," he says, "Having to go in and out of the closet so she can hide her identity from her own parents — that's the young person that motivates me day in and day out."

Maybe this is where Griffin's southern roots come in. If he can pivot from pressuring the president one day, and the next, to handing a microphone to closeted kids like Alyss in Arkadelphia — well, she can tell you what that means:

"Having someone from this state president of the HRC? That's big! That's big for Arkansas," she says.

Griffin left the south to pursue big dreams. Alyss, on the other hand, doesn't think she has to leave home to change the world. She wants to be a Supreme Court justice. And change, she says, is already afoot in Arkansas.

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Bob Mondello's Best Movies Of 2012

Cousin Ben (Jason Schwartzman), Sam (Jared Gilman) and Suzy (Kara Hayward) show that nothing can stand in the way of young love in Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom.

Niko Tavernise/Focus Features

A lot of movie box-office records fell in 2012. The comic-book blockbuster The Avengers had the biggest opening weekend in Hollywood history. Skyfall will be the first James Bond film to top $1 billion worldwide. And the box-office year as a whole is easily the movie industry's biggest ever. But what about quality? Perhaps surprisingly, the news is good there, too.

Hollywood is often accused of serving up simple-minded pleasures — either explosions or uplift, frequently both — but a lot of this year's best films were nuanced and complex, and for once, their nuanced complexity was exactly what made them popular. Steven Spielberg's Lincoln, for instance, is no wide-eyed presidential snow job, but a tale of political intrigue where the great good of eradicating slavery requires great compromise on lesser evils. The film has other virtues — terrific performances, gorgeous cinematography — but what's captivating audiences is that it's not the dipped-in-amber civics lesson they expected.

John Chambers (John Goodman) and Lester Siegel (Alan Arkin) help craft a fake movie production in Argo.

Claire Folger/Warner Bros. John Chambers (John Goodman) and Lester Siegel (Alan Arkin) help craft a fake movie production in Argo.

Claire Folger/Warner Bros.

That's also true of the war-on-terrorism chronicle Zero Dark Thirty, a gritty look at the hunt for Osama bin Laden that raises all sorts of moral and ethical questions, and is about as far from a rah-rah, get-the-bad-guy flick as director Kathryn Bigelow could make it.

That's a good thing, because Ben Affleck made a rah-rah, get-away-from-the-bad-guys flick that would be pretty hard to top: the rousing thriller Argo, about how the CIA got six Americans out of Tehran during the Iran hostage crisis by pretending to make a movie.

That's a trio of fact-based stories. Beasts of the Southern Wild, in contrast, is a fable that blends real-world tempests and mythical creatures in telling the tale of a 6-year-old girl named Hushpuppy who lives in a bayou community, hit by a hurricane. Filled with danger, but also warmth, Hushpuppy's world is at once real and magical — as is the movie.

The next three of the year's most compelling pictures hail from overseas. France gives us Michael Haneke's devastating masterwork Amour, about an elderly married couple, played by the great French stars Jean Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva, who find themselves facing the end of life. It's not a pretty end to a love that's lasted decades, but they find joy while they can in things like a brand new motorized wheelchair.

Another French picture, Rust and Bone, is about a love just beginning — between a fighter and a woman who suffers a life-altering accident — one that required some of the year's most arresting special effects.

2012's most compelling documentary, meanwhile, hails from Israel: The Gatekeepers, in which six former heads of Israel's internal security service, Shin Bet, talk about everything from targeted assassinations to being hung out to dry by the politicians who gave them their marching orders. Augmented by news footage, the film offers an alternately fascinating and deeply upsetting perspective on conflict in the Middle East.

Also eye-opening is a far lighter documentary about a 1970s folk singer from Detroit who gave up music after cutting an album that got no traction in the U.S. Unbeknownst to him, it sold like hot cakes in South Africa, where all his fans thought he'd died, until someone went Searching for Sugar Man.

That's eight of my top 10. The last two are by directors named Anderson. Moonrise Kingdom is Wes Anderson's whimsical look at a small New England community's reaction when a 12-year-old orphan who excels at scouting runs off camping with a girlfriend.

That contrasts with the high seriousness Paul Thomas Anderson brings to his midcentury epic, The Master, about a movement called The Cause, its charismatic leader (Philip Seymour Hoffman), and an alcoholic acolyte (Joaquin Phoenix). The film is as intense psychologically as it is ravishing visually.

OK, that's a Top 10, so theoretically, we're done, but the number 10 feels especially arbitrary in a terrific year like this one, so let's keep going. Commercial filmmakers came up with some seriously cool fantasies this year, including two co-starring Joseph Gordon Levitt — the time-travel thrill ride Looper, in which Gordon-Levitt is an assassin who must kill his future self (played by Bruce Willis), and the final episode in Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy, The Dark Knight Rises, in which he's intent on saving children and orphans.

That's a theme that has a particular resonance as 2012 draws to a close, and that was also present in two foreign films earlier in the year — Monsieur Lazhar, about a sensitive substitute teacher from the Middle East, who helps traumatized students deal with their former teacher's suicide at a Canadian primary school; and the Dardenne brothers' The Kid With a Bike, about an abandoned Belgian child and the woman who tames his violent impulses.

Impulse control also figures in two compelling love stories: Keep the Lights On, Ira Sachs' film a clef about a gay love affair undone by drug use; and Silver Linings Playbook, David O. Russell's far happier tale about two damaged, bipolar souls who are heavily medicated.

Another romance steeped in jazz was the year's loveliest animated film — Chico and Rita, a conventionally drawn, unconventionally adult tale of Cuban musicians who come to the U.S. in the 1940s and '50s. And Tim Burton's black and white, stop-motion spoof Frankenweenie was also pretty splendid — the story of a boy who reanimates his dog, Sparky, after an auto accident.

That title's obviously a riff on Frankenstein, which is not the only classic novel to triumph in an unorthodox reworking this year. Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina was vividly reimagined as if taking place literally in a theater, with spoiled Russian aristocrats walking from interiors that are clearly stage sets into the wings, where snow is falling and the real world beckons.

And just as Anna's leapt from page to stage, leaping from the stage to the screen is the musical of Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, with the actors singing on-camera, which proves effective enough that you wonder why they don't do it all the time. Les Miz is not for all tastes, perhaps, but it's catnip for a theater nut like me.

That's a second 10, and if pressed, I could probably even come up with a third. It's been that kind of year: rewarding enough to send film lovers into cineplexes in 2013 feeling downright optimistic.

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Why Black Men Tend To Be Fashion Kings

Hide caption Tell Me More intern Azmi Abusam is dressed in designs by Guess, Aldo and H&M. He got his handmade leather bag from a street dealer in Khartoum, Sudan. Abusam says his style changes every six months, but it's usually based on comfort, quality and personal taste. Hide caption NPR Washington Desk Assistant Editor Brakkton Booker. Hide caption NPR Digital Media's Matt Thompson shows off a plum-colored Express shirt with a lavender DKNY silk tie, charcoal wool vest by Indochino and wool pants by Calvin Klein. He says he keeps things simple for the most part, usually wearing muted colors with one bold accent. Hide caption Tell Me More's Barbershop guy Jimi Izrael wears a Kenneth Cole shirt, Inc jacket and Ray Ban glasses. He says he mostly has his wife's taste in clothes, but also likes unconventional takes on conventional clothing items. Hide caption Kevin Langley of NPR's Operations team dresses in a navy blue pin-striped Calvin Klein suit. Made of cashmere, wool and polyester, the suit has an athletic fit. Langley says his overall style is "business attire," and he's drawn to ties that look expensive and professional, but are cheap and accentuate his shirt or suit. Hide caption Republican strategist Ron Christie wears a tailored three-piece suit from Lord Willy's in New York City. He says the style is bespoke British with irreverent flair. And when Christie isn't dressed for business, he turns to casual Lucky Brand jeans and a sweater. Hide caption Victor Holliday, associate producer of NPR's on-air fundraising, wears a light gray wool suit (DKNY Essentials) under a black vintage overcoat with fine English stitching (Regis Rex). He considers his style "easy elegance." Hide caption NPR Senior Producer Walter Watson pairs his blue Banana Republic sweater with golden brown Lands' End slacks. He calls his style "nothing too fancy office casual wear." Hide caption Tell Me More's Barbershop and political chat contributor Corey Ealons is outfitted in a Joseph Abboud black velvet jacket with a ticket pocket and pink silk handkerchief. Ealons says real men can wear pink with confidence, and that his style is classic and clean with a little edge. Hide caption Maxwell Ealons, 4, enjoys dressing like his father, Corey. His dressy clothes usually come from Children's Place, H&M, Target and Zara. He actually dresses himself for school with Spider-Man, Batman and Redskins shirts, plus jeans or sweat pants.

For many, style is much deeper than articles of clothing; it's a statement of identity. Black men have a unique relationship with fashion, one that can be traced all the way back to the 17th and 18th centuries.

Monica L. Miller, the author of Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity, spoke with Tell Me More's Michel Martin about the past, present and future of black men's fashion.

Miller, an associate professor of English at Barnard College, explains that African-American men have used style as a way to challenge stereotypes about who they are. "Sometimes the well-dressed black man coming down the street is asking you to look and think."

Victor Holliday, associate producer of on-air fundraising at NPR and one of the resident kings of style, tells Martin that he learned about the importance of fashion at an early age. "When I was 5 years old, I knew exactly how I was going to look," he says. "And that was the year I got my first trench coat and my top hat."

Holliday's style icon is his father, who taught him that the main object of dressing up is winning respect. "Because as you present yourself seriously, people tend to take you seriously."

Holliday is one of the men featured in Tell Me More's Kings of Style slideshow.

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Diana Vreeland's Rise To 'Empress Of Fashion'

Diana Vreeland had a troubled childhood; her mother often told her she was ugly. But she later became editor-in-chief of American Vogue and one of the country's most revered fashion icons. Her life is captured in the new biography, Empress of Fashion: A Life of Diana Vreeland. Host Michel Martin talks with author Amanda Mackenzie Stuart.

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A Dangerous World Of Hackers And Ninjas

Nick Harkaway is the author of Angelmaker.

The moment I opened the book, I was snared by the now-iconic first line: "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel." I knew that color; the U.K. had only four TV channels and they didn't broadcast through the night. When nothing was on, the cathode ray screen was a kind of numinous anthracite, the closest thing it could manage to black. If you want to be clever about it — at the time it was a comparison way beyond me — you could call it "darkness visible." Neuromancer lives in that space: It is contradiction, bifurcation, penumbra.

The protagonist, Case, is a burnout. He was a hacker, but he crossed the wrong people, and they crippled his nervous system so that he could no longer work with cyberspace (Gibson made up the word; this book heavily influenced how people imagine data online). Case is living on his luck, and that luck is running out; he's been to the best doctors and they can't fix him, so he's a middleman now, brokering deals for drugs and illegal software.

Until Molly comes along, and her boss, Armitage, offering a deal: Make a run in cyberspace, a really major hack. He'll get cured, get paid. Sweet deal. But in the grand tradition of crime thrillers, the job is more complicated than it seems, and Case is going to be crossing some dangerous people and some very thick red lines.

Despite the breakneck urgency of the action, the hard-boiled story drips with laconic cool. I had never met that before: Hammett, Chandler and Elmore Leonard came later for me. Neuromancer introduced a demimonde of back alleys, sodium streetlamps and the kind of club where you can buy firearms with your whiskey. It whispered of transgression, of sex and booze, and license.

Nick Harkaway is also the author of The Gone-Away World.

Courtesy of Rory Lindsay

The other fictions that framed my world were basically benign. I'd seen Tron and loved it. I was a Star Wars fan. I liked hobbits and the Three Musketeers. But Han Solo wouldn't last 10 minutes in Night City; Frodo would be hooked on a drug with a seven-syllable name inside of an hour. This was a world between the primary color fictions I'd seen and the dangerous nuclear age reality I lived in: In the 1980s it was pretty much established that Britain would burn in the first exchanges of a war between NATO and the Warsaw Pact.

Inevitably, I fell for Molly, the street samurai with mirrors over her eyes and razors in her fingers. In my mind she had a husky, Lauren Bacall voice made from coffee and cigarettes — and I was right. If Bacall's character from To Have and Have Not taught English to Michelle Yeoh's martial artist from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, you'd get someone like Molly.

Even now, she's a rarity. More often than not, Molly is what's missing from contemporary stories of any sort: a woman who is complete unto herself. She didn't need a male senior partner. In fact, she was more connected and streetwise than Case, and more alert to the danger they were both in. Wherever she went, Molly was in charge. In 1985, you could look a long time without finding that anywhere else.

And in a middle-class British school, you could go even longer without hearing the name Marcus Garvey, the Pan-African and black nationalist political leader who influenced Martin Luther King, Haile Selassie and Malcolm X — and the orbit-dwelling Rastafari nation Case and the others encounter in their search for answers. A decade before Google, I had to look Garvey up in the encyclopedia.

Add that to ninjas, amphetamines, extreme body modification, catsuits, gangs, governmental misdeeds, high decadence, Strangelove-esque soldiers and psychotic computers: Neuromancer was and is a treasure house of dangerous ideas.

And yet at the same time, it is secretly a very gentle book. Amid all the grime and grim, it's not hard to know where to put your sympathy or your trust. The bad are bad, the good are good. So despite all this, it's not an unsuitable book for a kid, just a challenging and eye-opening one. And unlike so many improving and notionally educational books, it's stylish, adult, exciting and fun. It's a door to a greater world.

PG-13 is produced and edited by the team at NPR Books.

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Green Grapes And Red Underwear: A Spanish New Year's Eve

Ringing in the New Year in Spain requires eating a dozen grapes and wearing a very specific kind of undergarment.

Jeff Koehler Ringing in the New Year in Spain requires eating a dozen grapes and wearing a very specific kind of undergarment.

Jeff Koehler

If the thought of watching the ball drop in Times Square again is already making you yawn, consider perking your New Year's Eve celebration with this tradition from Spain: As midnight nears on Nochevieja, or "old night," the last day of the year, the entire country gathers in front of television screens or in town squares, clutching a small bowl of green grapes and wearing red underwear. More on the underwear later.

The camera of the main national TV channel focuses on the clock tower of the 18th-century Real Casa de Correos in Madrid's Puerta del Sol while a pair of announcers in formal wear, high above the thousands of revelers packed into the chilly plaza below, quickly repeat instructions one last time. After the bells ring out four times in quick succession — "Wait, wait, ignore those!" — there is a slight pause and then begins a series of 12 chimes — one for each month.

At that first dong, Spaniards from Barcelona to Bilbao to Cadiz pop a grape into their mouths. There is little time to chew and swallow, much less savor, because about two seconds later there is a second dong and a second grape gets popped into the mouth. And on through 12 dongs and las doce uvas de la suerte ("the 12 lucky grapes").

If you eat all 12 by the end of the final bell's toll — and that doesn't mean finishing with a half-chewed mouthful — then you will have good luck in el año nuevo (the new year).

This popular tradition is a century or so old, though its exact origins remain debatable. One oft-repeated story says that growers in Alicante had a bumper 1909 harvest and found a creative way to sell off their surplus.

The traditional variety of grape consumed at the start of the new year is called Aledo. The grapes mature late are not harvested until November and December.

Jeff Koehler The traditional variety of grape consumed at the start of the new year is called Aledo. The grapes mature late are not harvested until November and December.

Jeff Koehler

Recently, though, old newspaper articles have been republished that show the tradition began decades earlier, in the 1880s. These stories tell of bourgeoisie in Madrid copying the French tradition of having grapes and champagne on the last day of the year. Before long this custom had been adopted by certain madrileños who went to Puerta del Sol to see the bells chime at the turning of the year and, most likely in an ironic or mocking manner, to eat grapes like the upper class.

About 80 percent of the "lucky grapes" come from the valley of Vinalopó in central Alicante, on Spain's Mediterranean coast. Fleshy, deliciously sweet, and pale, almost whitish-green in color, they are a traditional Spanish variety called Aledo that, maturing late, are not harvested until November and December.

But these are no ordinary grapes. Protected by Denominación de Origen (designation of origin, or D.O.) status, budding clusters are wrapped in paper bags in June and July and kept covered as they ripen. This was first done in the late 19th century to protect them from a plague of cochylis vine moths. Growers found it also conserved the flavor, aroma and color of the grapes, and slowed their maturation.

According to the regulatory office for D.O., Uva de Mesa Embolsada Vinalopó, bagging the grapes also means that "they form a peel that's much finer by not having to fend off the aggressions of the rain, the sun or the wind."

When I went to Barcelona's iconic La Boqueria market to buy my grapes for this year's festivities, Maria, the seasoned stall owner of Frutas y Verduras E. Lafuente, told me that "having such a fine skin also makes them quicker to eat. There's less to swallow."

Supermarkets sell small tins of 12 seeded and peeled grapes.

Jeff Koehler Supermarkets sell small tins of 12 seeded and peeled grapes.

Jeff Koehler

And, with the bells impatiently tolling, that small detail makes a difference. It is no easy task eating grapes so quickly, especially when each has three or four seeds. (Seedless grapes are a rarity here, though some painstakingly remove the seeds beforehand. Ever more extreme — or modern — are the small tins of 12 seeded and peeled grapes now sold in supermarkets.) The only way to finish all 12 is to not chew, just take a solid bite and then swallow, pips and all.

Such a strategy is easier to plan than to execute, especially by grape number six or seven when, in my experience, the giggles kick in. After 15 years living in Spain, I have learned that the only way to finish all 12 is by concentrating on the chimes and ignoring the rest of the surrounding commotion.

If scoffing grapes at midnight isn't strange enough, convention says you must do so while wearing red ropa interior, or underwear — a bra, a sock, a garter, whatever. And — stranger yet — the undergarment should be given to you by someone else.

Maria, the stall owner, reminded me not to forget a third traditional lucky charm to accompany red underwear and grapes: drop a gold ring into my celebratory glass of cava (local champagne-style bubbly from Catalunya). "Just don't swallow it!" That would, no doubt, be a harbinger of bad luck.

When the 12 dongs finish and the last of the grapes has been swallowed, there are cheek kisses, toasts with glasses of cava, and pieces of turrón (almond and honey nougat from Alicante) passed around as the most expensive commercials of the year play on TV and phone lines jam with the crush of well-wishing calls.

In this year of acute economic hardship in Spain, many will hope that eating the grapes brings better luck in 2013, and try particularly hard to finish them all before the last chime fades to silence and the new year begins.

Jeff Koehler is the author of Morocco: A Culinary Journey With Recipes. His next cookbook, on Spain, will be published in 2013. Visit www.jeff-koehler.com or follow @koehlercooks.

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Death Of The (Predatory) Salesman: These Days, It's A Buyer's Market

The Surprising Truth About Moving Others

by Daniel H. Pink

Hardcover, 260 pages | purchase

close To Sell Is HumanThe Surprising Truth About Moving OthersDaniel H. Pink

The familiar image of the salesman in American culture hasn't always been a flattering one. Just think of Alec Baldwin as the verbally abusive "motivator" of two real estate salesmen in Glengarry Glen Ross.

Daniel H. Pink, author of the new book To Sell is Human, says that this relentless, predator-style approach to selling has become outdated. He believes that the art of sales has changed more in the past 10 years than it did in the previous century.

Pink joins NPR's David Greene to talk about the effect the Internet has had on selling and why he believes almost all American white-collar workers are now in sales.

On why the brutal, Glengarry Glen Ross style of selling has become outdated

"Well, most of what we know about sales was built for a world of information asymmetry — the seller always had more information than the buyer. Twenty years ago, when [David] Mamet wrote that play that [was] made into a movie, when you walked into a Chevy dealer, the Chevy dealer knew a heck of a lot more about cars than you ever could ... you didn't have the adequate information. And so this is why we have the principle of caveat emptor, buyer beware. You gotta beware when the other guy knows a lot more than you.

"Well, something curious has happened in the last 10 years in that you can walk into a car dealership with the invoice price of the car, something that even the salesmen/women at car dealers didn't know too long ago. And so in a world of information parity, or at least something close to it, we've moved — caveat emptor is still good advice, but equally good advice for the sellers is caveat venditor, seller beware."

On why he thinks "we're all in sales"

"There's an idea out there that salespeople have actually been obliterated by the Internet, which is just not supported by the facts. In 2000 ... about 1 in 9 American workers worked in sales. That is, their job was to convince someone else to buy something. So then, what's happened over the last 12 years? Explosion of new technologies. Today, 1 in 9 American workers works in sales. But I think what's interesting is that if you look at that other 8 in 9, they're in sales, too. That is, a huge percentage of what white-collar workers do on the job is what I call nonsales selling — persuading, influencing, convincing other people to part with resources. Pitching ideas in meetings, asking the boss for a raise, trying to raise money from investors. And so, at some level, we're all in sales now."

Daniel H. Pink is the author of five books about the changing world of work, including A Whole New Mind and Drive.

Rebecca Drobis/Courtesy of Riverhead Hardcover Daniel H. Pink is the author of five books about the changing world of work, including A Whole New Mind and Drive.

Rebecca Drobis/Courtesy of Riverhead Hardcover

On why the best salespeople are "ambiverts," not extroverts

"We have this myth that extroverts are better salespeople. As a result, extroverts are more likely to enter sales; extroverts are more likely to get promoted in sales jobs. But if you look at the correlation between extroversion and actual sales performance — that is, how many times the cash register actually rings — the correlation's almost zero. It's really quite remarkable.

"Let's think about a spectrum, and say, on a scale from 1 to 7, where 1 is extremely introverted, 7 is extremely extroverted: The 6s and 7s — the people who get hired, the gregarious, backslapping types of the stereotype — they're not very good. OK, now, why? ... They're just spending too much time talking. ... They don't know when to shut up. They don't listen very well; they're not attuned to the other person; they sometimes can overwhelm people.

"Now ... does that mean that introverts are better? No. The 1s and 2s, they're not very good either. They often are not assertive enough. They're skittish about striking up conversations. What this new research — and it's very exciting, it's accepted for publication but actually not published yet — [says] is the people who do the best are what social psychologists call ambiverts. ... Not totally extroverted, not totally introverted. The 3s, 4s, and 5s. They know when to shut up; they know when to speak up. They know when to push; they know when to hold back. And so the best people at convincing, persuading others, whether in a traditional sales environment or in these other kinds of environments, are these ambiverts."

On the link between improvisational theater skills and selling

"One of the abilities that matters most is this ability of improvisation — that is, if your perfectly attuned, superclear pitch goes awry, as it will, how do you respond? And the principles of improvisational theater help us out on that, things like saying 'Yes, and' instead of 'Yes, but,' ... It's constructive rather than deconstructive.

"[In one improvisational exercise] I had to sit face-to-face with this actually pretty senior executive at a television network, and he had to tell me something that was bothering him, and I had to look him in the eye when he told me that, but I couldn't respond to him for 15 seconds. ... The idea ... is that we tend to move too quickly, and what the best salespeople of any kind know is that it's really about listening; it's really about understanding the other person's perspective, hearing what they're really saying, and one really profound way to do that is to slow down."

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