The two words 'information' and 'communication' are often used

Host: The office was quiet after hours, its long corridors echoing with the hollow hum of forgotten emails and fluorescent lights. Rows of desks lay deserted, each screen still glowing faintly with unread messages — digital ghosts of conversations that never quite became understanding.

Outside, the city pulsed in blue and white — the constant, restless heartbeat of a world that never stops talking but rarely listens.

At the far end of the open space, Jack stood before a whiteboard covered in words — diagrams, notes, arrows looping endlessly. He stared at it like a man confronting a maze of his own making.

Across from him, Jeeny sat on a desk, barefoot, coffee in hand, her hair slightly messy, her expression calm, even amused. She looked like someone who had made peace with confusion.

Pinned above the whiteboard, half-hidden beneath a cluster of sticky notes, was a single printed quote:
“The two words ‘information’ and ‘communication’ are often used interchangeably, but they signify quite different things. Information is giving out; communication is getting through.” — Sydney J. Harris.

Jeeny: (reading the quote aloud) “You’ve had that up there for months, Jack. You ever figure out which one you’re actually doing?”

Jack: (sighs) “Information. Always information. It’s what this whole company runs on — data, updates, metrics. We flood people with facts, and then we wonder why no one understands anything.”

Jeeny: (smiling) “Because understanding isn’t in the data. It’s in the delivery.”

Jack: “That’s poetic, Jeeny, but it doesn’t get budgets approved.”

Jeeny: “No, but it gets people to listen. Which is rarer than approval.”

Host: The air conditioner clicked off, leaving the room in a new kind of silence — one that felt intentional, like a pause waiting for honesty to fill it.

Jack: (rubbing his temples) “We’ve built a system that confuses noise for meaning. Every message gets sent, but none of it lands. You’d think we were talking to ghosts.”

Jeeny: “Maybe we are. Modern ghosts — people so flooded with input they forget how to feel.”

Jack: “So what’s the difference, then? Between giving out and getting through?”

Jeeny: “Intent. When you give out, you want to be heard. When you get through, you want to be understood.”

Host: She spoke softly, but the words cut through the static air like clarity through fog. Jack looked up at the whiteboard again, at the chaos of diagrams and numbers, and for the first time, it looked to him less like strategy and more like noise.

Jack: “So we’ve built an empire on the wrong thing.”

Jeeny: “Not wrong — incomplete. Information builds machines. Communication builds people.”

Jack: (sitting down, tired) “And what builds trust?”

Jeeny: “Listening.”

Jack: (smiling faintly) “You make it sound so simple.”

Jeeny: “It is. But simple isn’t easy.”

Host: A soft buzz came from his phone — another notification, another request. He silenced it without looking. The light from the city outside flickered across their faces, a Morse code of civilization: constant, relentless, hungry.

Jeeny: (after a pause) “Do you remember the first time you ever felt truly understood?”

Jack: (thinking) “Yeah. I was a kid. My dad didn’t say much, but one night I messed something up bad — broke a neighbor’s window. He didn’t yell. He just looked at me, handed me the money, and said, ‘You’ll fix it yourself.’ No lecture, no punishment. Just... trust.”

Jeeny: “And that got through.”

Jack: “Yeah. Because he wasn’t informing me. He was teaching me.”

Jeeny: “That’s what communication does. It changes you.”

Host: The rain began outside, light but steady, tapping against the windows like fingers asking for attention. The sound softened the edges of the room.

Jack: (quietly) “You know, I think that’s what’s missing from everything we do here. We’re so obsessed with transmitting that we forgot how to connect.”

Jeeny: “Connection scares people. It requires vulnerability. And vulnerability isn’t measurable.”

Jack: “But it’s the only thing that matters.”

Jeeny: (nodding) “Exactly. You can fill someone’s inbox with a thousand facts and still leave them starving. But speak one truth that touches their heart, and you’ll feed them for years.”

Host: Her words hung in the room — unquantifiable, but undeniable.

Jack: (after a long silence) “You ever think technology made us better at speaking but worse at saying something?”

Jeeny: “Every day. We’ve mistaken reach for depth.”

Jack: “And progress for understanding.”

Jeeny: “And speed for clarity.”

Host: The lights of the city reflected faintly on the glass — emails being sent, calls being made, notifications lighting up phones like tiny artificial stars.

Jeeny: “You can tell when someone’s really listening, you know. It’s in their eyes. That stillness. The moment they stop waiting to respond.”

Jack: “When words finally become bridges instead of bullets.”

Jeeny: “Exactly.”

Host: The clock ticked past midnight. The world outside went on buzzing, but inside, the conversation had slowed into something sacred — a stillness that had weight, like truth settling into soil.

Jack: (smiling faintly) “So maybe Harris was right. We’ve mastered giving out. Now we just have to relearn getting through.”

Jeeny: “And that’s not strategy. That’s empathy.”

Jack: “Which can’t be automated.”

Jeeny: (softly) “That’s what keeps us human.”

Host: She stood, gathering her things. The lights from the monitors flickered across her face, catching the glint in her eyes — part weariness, part wonder.

As she reached the door, she turned back, her voice gentle but deliberate:

Jeeny: “You know, the moment you stop trying to be heard and start trying to understand — that’s when you finally get through.”

Host: Jack watched her go, the door closing softly, leaving only the rain and the hum of a world desperate to communicate but terrified to listen.

He looked once more at the quote on the wall, then erased the whiteboard entirely — the clutter, the noise, the illusion of order.

Only one word remained.

“Through.”

And as the camera pulled back, the room dimmed into quiet, Sydney J. Harris’s truth echoing like a heartbeat in the empty air:

That the art of living isn’t in how much we say,
but in how deeply we are heard.

That information fills the mind,
but communication feeds the soul —
and between the two
lies the whole distance
between talking
and understanding.