I sat and viewed a TV interview on the business channel from last week.....journalists had a CEO of a company which was having a IPO situation (initial public offering of stock).
It was a ten-minute conversation and a chance to hype up the company. Typically, guys or gals who get hired as CEOs.....have to be proficient at interviews.
About a minute into this conversation, I started to notice the guy using the comment "you-know" a lot. Over the remaining 9 minutes of this chat? I'd take a guess that he uttered the comment "you-know" at least forty times.
About nine years ago.....Caroline Kennedy came up for a big interview as a key player of the President Obama organizational committee....and she did the exact same thing, uttering "you-know" at least thirty times in a five to eight minute interview.
I doubt if these people ever realize how bad they got the problem.....until someone rolls the video out and shows the tendency to utter "you-know".
A nervous reaction? To some degree....yes. But they've spent years weaving "you-know" into their reaction for commentary and it's hard to get rid of the habit. You almost need to have some guy there with a electric shock device and throwing some voltage into the guy to condition them to avoid the expression.