Something You Should Know - A Hostage Negotiator’s Advice for Difficult Conversations & How to Stay Alive Longer

Episode Date: July 14, 2025

There is an experience some of us (but not all) are able to have called autonomous sensory meridian response or ASMR. It can be triggered by a soft monotonous voice explaining something as well as other triggers. Sounds weird, right? Listen as I explain how it works, why science doesn’t recognize it as a real thing but for many of us, it is a wonderful sensation, and I will tell you how to experience it. https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/53220/listening-soft-voices-can-cause-brain-orgasms The YouTube video link mentioned is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHiKxytbCWk Difficult conversations are never fun, but they are necessary. Whether you are negotiating for a raise or having a tough conversation with your spouse or friend, there are ways to make these conversations go better for you and everyone involved. Here to offer some expertise on this is Ryan Dunlap a former police detective and hostage negotiator. He has been involved in a lot of high stakes negotiations in his career and he is author of the book How to Untie a Balloon: A Negotiator's Guide to Avoid Popping Under Pressure (https://amzn.to/3Ia2c72) What are the best practices for living a long and healthy life? There are many theories on this but here to discuss the science of longevity is John Tregoning who explains that living a long life may best be accomplished by living a good life. John is Professor of Vaccine Immunology at Imperial College London and has published over sixty academic papers. He is author of the book, Live Forever?: A Curious Scientist's Guide to Wellness, Ageing and Death (https://amzn.to/4kc9B2J). How do you write a good business email? Interestingly, there are some common mistakes people make that water down the message in business emails by making them sound more like personal emails. Listen as I reveal how to avoid that. https://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/7-common-habits-that-kill-credibility.html#ixzz3c6aUXNnN PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS!!! SHOPIFY: Shopify is the commerce platform for millions of businesses around the world! To start selling today, sign up for your $1 per month trial at⁠ https://Shopify.com/sysk⁠ INDEED: Get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Indeed.com/SOMETHING⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ right now! QUINCE: Stick to the staples that last, with elevated essentials from Quince! Go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Quince.com/sysk⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns! HERS: Hers is transforming women’s healthcare by providing access to affordable weight loss treatment plans, delivered straight to your door, if prescribed. Start your initial free online visit today at ⁠https://forhers.com/something⁠ DELL: The Black Friday in July event from Dell Technologies is here. Upgrade for a limited-time only at ⁠https://Dell.com/deals⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today, on Something You Should Know, how watching someone fold towels could be the best few moments of your entire day. Then advice for the next negotiation or difficult conversation you have to have. The goal here is to be able to tell somebody else what they want so accurately that when you're done describing their side of the argument, they say, yes, that's exactly what I'm looking for. Because when people feel heard and felt and seen, their guard decreases. Also a great way to improve your email messaging and the latest science on how to live a long and healthy life.

This idea that actually quality has a quantity of its own, that if you improve the quality of your life, you can actually increase the quantity too. Doing things that you love with people that you love will increase the quality and quantity of your life. All this today on Something You Should Know. Hi, I'm Adam Gitwitz, host of Grim, Grimmer, Grimmest. On every episode, we tell a grim fairy tale. Not the cute, sweet versions of the fairy tales that your children have heard so many times.

No. We tell the real grim fairy tales. They're funny. They're weird. Sometimes they're a little bit scary. But don't worry. We rate every episode, Grim, Grimmer, or or grimist. So you, your child, your family can choose the episode that's the right level of scary for you.

Tune in to Grim, Grimmer, Grimist and our new season available now. Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts and practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. I think I may have mentioned this years ago on this podcast but it just came up in conversation and I think it's worth repeating if you haven't heard about it. Hi and welcome to this episode of Something You Should Know. So there is an 18 minute YouTube video and it's about how to fold towels.

Yeah, right, fold towels. And it's narrated by a woman who barely speaks above a whisper. Over two million people have viewed this video so far and most likely not because they need to learn how to fold towels. Instead it's because an increasing number of people report experiencing something called Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response, ASMR, and it's a whole body tingling that listening to soft monotone voices can trigger. ASMR is a neurological experience that causes some

people, not everybody, but some people, including me, to experience what has been termed a brain orgasm, a tingling pleasurable sensation similar to goosebumps. It begins at the head or neck and works its way throughout the entire body. The most common triggers of this sensation include educational videos, having your haircut, feeling empathetic, enjoying music or art, and listening to slow enunciated speech or experiencing close personal contact with someone. It feels so good that people keep rewatching this incredibly dull video just to get that experience over and over again. What's interesting is that

science does not recognize this as a thing. It doesn't ever appear to have been studied or written about scientifically. It is simply a self-reported experience, meaning people say it happens to them, but no one really knows what it is or why. Nevertheless, it feels good and I'll put the link to that video in the show notes. And that is something you should know. Every day you negotiate with your family members, people at work, strangers, even with yourself, to navigate in this world requires that you negotiate what you're going to do, what you want other

people to do, and to deal with conflicts. It's all a negotiation. And there are some strategies anyone can use to be better at it, even if you don't consider yourself a big negotiator. Here with some insight into this is Ryan Dunlap. His negotiation expertise comes from being a former police detective, a SWAT hostage negotiator and crisis intervention officer. Ryan has facilitated hundreds of high-stakes interviews, interrogations, and negotiations. He's author of a book called, How to Untie a Balloon,

a Negotiator's Guide to Avoid Popping Under Pressure. Hi, Ryan, welcome to Something You Should Know. Thanks so much for having me, Mike. So, before we get to dealing with difficult conversations and negotiations, since you're a hostage negotiator, I'm always curious, because we see it on TV and that's really the only place we see it, most of us. I'm curious, what do you have to negotiate?

Because I don't know if this really happens, but on TV, they want a plane and they're gonna fly to South America and they want $10 million in cash, and you're not gonna give them that. So what is there to negotiate? So it's a good question. A lot of times what we're doing in negotiation is deescalating someone and bringing them down to reality.

They found themselves in a situation that they probably didn't expect to be in because of emotions, as we started our conversation with, and now they're having an unreasonable response to pressure, fear, and stress. And so they're looking for an escape measure. And so in those situations, really what we're doing is deescalating, and we are reality testing,

and we are helping them recognize the real possibilities of that conversation. So it was not uncommon to go into some of these situations and tell people, hey, what's your understanding of how you're going to get out of this? Because the helicopter is not a realistic thing. Me bringing a truck and letting you disappear out of here with $10 million cash, not a realistic thing. And so in those situations, there are some strategy to navigating these conversations

with people. You don't want to lie, but you also want to avoid telling them no. And so that kind of gets into a thicker conversation of how to navigate these conversations. But really what you're doing is you're helping them rationally assess reality. And the hard thing about negotiation is a lot of times you can't move the conversation forward if people are unreasonable, irrational, or not ready. And I think that's the big thing that you have to take away from this is that irrational people and unreasonable people can't be negotiated with. We're not negotiating with them. We're deescalating. Hostage negotiators are 94%

successful in these difficult conversations, but not 100%. And sometimes it doesn't work. Sometimes words fail. You know, my last negotiation is a great example of that. The gentleman I was negotiating with, unfortunately, did not heed warning and was subsequently shot by a sniper. He lived, which is why I tell the story. I remember a conversation at the end of the ordeal when he was being wheeled into an ambulance. He was tearful. He says, man, I can't believe they shot me. And I said, well, I told you they would.

I also think it's important to recognize that hostage negotiations are incredibly rare. A vast majority of what we dealt with were crisis negotiations, people who had exceeded their ability to cope with present circumstances. These were mental health crises or momentary crises of just emotional exhaustion. Most of these people weren't bad folks. They were having bad days. And so bringing them back down to reality is much easier than the one off that you get with with a terrorist or someone whose aim is to just hurt people. That's a very different style of negotiation for sure.

So I'm curious, when people find out that your world is the world of negotiation and conflict resolution, what do people say to you? What do people think of that? What is their response to finding that out? I think the general sense that we get from people is that they're a little intimidated by the process of either negotiation or conflict res. Most people

will tell you they don't like it. In fact research will tell you 89% of people avoid it and so we're really trying to pull people into their their courage so that they can navigate difficult negotiations or difficult conflicts well. Well my sense is and my experience is is, there's no one right strategy for negotiating. There's no, this is how you be a negotiator because negotiations are so varied. Every conversation is different. Is it contentious or collaborative?

The way I'm gonna collaborate or negotiate with someone in a collaborative setting is gonna be very different than in a contentious setting. In one setting, I might be free to express my needs and put those things on the table and say, hey, here's what I'm looking for and listen freely to someone else, say, hey, here's what I need. And then we talk things out. And a contentious negotiation, it's a little different.

In those spaces, you might have to use a number of different persuasion or influence strategies to try to either elicit truth from someone, help someone find their voice because sometimes people know that they need something but they don't know exactly what it is that they need. Sometimes we're competing against someone when we feel like we can't get our needs met. And so it looks very, very different depending on what we're negotiating. But generally the sense becomes the same. There's a process of

communication across the table. Both people have a perspective that needs to be heard, and at some point we're going to find some consensus about how we're going to move forward. Whether we get all of what we want, some of what we want, or none of what we want, the goal is to have a conversation where we can understand those needs and see how reasonable it is to have those needs met. So one of the things that happens when you're negotiating, depending on what it is, of course, but emotions seem to get in the way.

People get upset, people get angry, people think you're being a jerk for wanting what you want or whatever, and those emotions can derail everything can't they? They absolutely can that's probably the biggest problem that we have when it comes to navigating difficult conversations and negotiations It's wrestling with our own internal feelings because we usually go to the conversation with a good sense of what we know We should do we know we should listen Well, we know we should communicate effectively We know we should listen well. We know we should communicate effectively,

give other people an opportunity to be heard. The challenge comes in when we try to do that when we're feeling offended or unheard, misheard, misconstrued when we're upset or angry in some way. Those emotions can come in and completely derail a conversation. So the first thing that we really have to understand about negotiation is that we have to be able to regulate

our own emotions on the front end so that we can navigate an effective conversation through the back end. And how maybe an example would help of how you would do that? In the moment, it's a little bit hard if you haven't practiced it. And really, that's the challenge here Is if you show up to a fight and the first time you want to learn how to throw punches in the middle of a fight

You're probably not gonna do too. Well Understanding how to regulate emotions as a process. It starts well beyond or well before rather the actual Conversation takes place. There are three things that are that are most important when it comes to regulating emotions Self-awareness, which is how well you know yourself. Self-confidence, which is how well you trust yourself. And self-control, how well you control yourself. And so all of those things take practice. How well do you know who you are

so that when you show up to a conversation, you're not searching for yourself? How well do you trust yourself to adhere to your beliefs and stated values, right? If I say I'm a good person, will I maintain that good character all the way throughout a contentious conversation?

If I know that I've got these particular principles and these boundaries that I don't want crossed from someone else on the other side of the conversation, am I willing to hold myself to said boundaries as well? These are all things that tend to happen. And so what we really have to do is be in tune with who we are, trust ourselves in the process, and control ourselves. That takes a lot of practice.

But if we're in the moment, let's say we haven't done the work, we haven't done the practice, one of the greatest things that we can do in the moment when we recognize, say, this is a tough conversation, and I'm not quite sure I've got the right mindset to navigate this in such a way that I'll be proud of myself when the conversation's over.

Giving yourself space and grace to pause and think through it and to ask for those things and say, hey, I recognize this right now in the moment. I'm feeling stressed out. I'm feeling overwhelmed. Is it possible we could revisit this conversation? So when we give ourselves space, time and an opportunity to regroup, we can usually come back into a conversation. And even if the emotions haven't subsided, we can at least acknowledge them and it makes

it easier for us to move through those emotions. We're talking about navigating life's difficult conversations and negotiations. And my guest is Ryan Dunlap, author of How to Untie a Balloon, a negotiator's guide to avoid popping under pressure. Hey, it's Hillary Frank from The Longest Shortest Time, an award-winning podcast about parenthood and reproductive health. We talk about things like sex ed, birth control,

pregnancy, bodily autonomy, and of course, kids of all ages. But you don't have to be a parent to listen. If you like surprising, funny, poignant stories about human relationships and, you know, periods, The Longest Shortest Time is for you. Find us in any podcast app or at longestshortesttime.com. From the podcast that brought you to each of the last lesbian bars in the country and back in time through the sapphic history

that shaped them comes a brand new season of Cruising Beyond the Bars. This is your host, Sara Gabrielli, and I've spent the past year interviewing history-making lesbians and queer folks about all kinds of queer spaces, from bookstores to farms to line dancing and much more. You can listen to Cruising on Apple Podcasts, Spotify,

or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes air every other Tuesday, starting February 4th. So Ryan, let's get real specific here and talk about, if you could pick like a specific negotiation or difficult conversation, and then how people can best deal with it and what are the kind of problems that people run into. I think one of the

conversations that a lot of people can really connect to here would be a conversation with a significant other or spouse. When you go into a debate or a conversation, it's just not a debate, might feel like one, but you go into a conversation with a significant other and maybe it's just simply on the basis of a misunderstanding That's the simple way a lot of conflicts happen. You had an unspoken expectation and your significant other didn't meet that expectation And now you've got to have a conversation until someone comes up and says hey You didn't do the thing I needed you to do and however they said it

raises some Some hair on the back of your neck. And rather than meeting them where they're at and saying, oh, you know, I apologize, it wasn't my intention, maybe we defend ourselves because that's what happens with pride and ego, right? And we say, well, yeah, I might not have done that, but you didn't do this. And it becomes a blame shifting conversation. A lot of times what happens is we find ourselves in these really difficult conversations because

of misunderstanding or expectations that haven't been met and not clearly articulated. And so rather than escalating those tensions, we can become really, really good listeners when someone calls something out and says, hey, you didn't meet my need this way, or you said something that hurt me in some way. Instead of protecting ourselves, which is what our natural inclination is, we do is say, hey, tell me more about that. Help me understand what it was that I did that caused you to feel the way you did.

We validate those feelings first. And then we offer perspective. Hey, that's not what my intentions were. Do you mind if I take a moment to explain why I did what I did or why I didn't do what I did? What is it going to take for me to help make this right? That's a lot of what conversation is. It's not just talking about what hurt me.

It's being willing to listen to how we might have unintentionally hurt others without taking it personally and giving them an opportunity to express themselves, giving us an opportunity to express ourselves and trying to meet in the middle. So again, so those needs can be met and both people walk away from the conversation feeling like they've been heard, that they've been valued and that they're appreciated.

Well that meet in the middle thing, I think that stumps a lot of people. The purpose of negotiating is to compromise, that that's the goal is, I want $100, you only want to pay 50, and we settle at 75, and there, there's a negotiation. But that doesn't seem right to me. Well, and that's not always the truth. There's a great illustration of this where, in the negotiation space, when we teach and train on this, it's the problem of

the orange. Both people are negotiating or arguing over an orange. And the initial problem would be or solution would be to cut the orange in half and give one party half and the other part of the other half. And you think that they would be equally satisfied because at least they got some orange. The problem is during the inquiry you discover that one person needed the skin of the orange for orange zest and the other person was hungry and wanted to eat the substance in the middle. And in that space you could actually satisfy both of their needs by giving one person 100% of the skin and the other person 100% of what was on the inside that can be consumed. So one of the challenges with negotiating is assuming that we know

what the other person actually wants or needs. And so what we do is we break this down into the difference between someone's position, what they say they need, and their actual interests and needs, what they actually need. And so through conversation, if we can give ourselves to the process, we might discover that it's not 50-50 always. It can be a hundred-a hundred. It can be win-win because we don't always fully articulate what it is that we want because we don't always know. And so that's where dialogue comes in and makes things very very helpful and I can get the skin and you can get the substance and we can both be satisfied sometimes. Not always, but sometimes. Well, when somebody says, well, what is it you really want?

I think people get very protective, like, well, I don't want to show all my cards here. So they don't tell what they really want because they want to hold something back. There are a lot of reasons why people hold back. Sometimes there's a lack of psychological safety or in a space like what you just suggested here, there's an adversarial approach and so we feel like holding on to some information gives us some benefit that allows us to navigate the conversation better. Again, every negotiation is different, but I think one of the things that we have to do is recognize that every negotiation doesn't have to be contentious.

If we approach it with the mindset that sometimes, even though the other person might represent a barrier for you getting what you want, it doesn't necessarily mean that you're working against them. And there are some ways that we can use conversation and mutual appeals to connect with a person on a human level and still express the things that we fully want without losing an edge in the conversation. There are a lot of different schools of thought on this and research goes one way or the other. Some people say, never speak first. Other schools of thought say, always speak first.

Some people say, don't show all your cards. Other people say, show your cards. And really what it comes down to, Mike Mike is what is your primary tactic and technique for navigating negotiation that allows you to maintain your authenticity to approach the conversation the best way you can? For me I'm a diplomat. I'm not going to be a person who goes into a negotiation and strong arms anybody and I'm more likely to put all my cards on the table and have an intellectual conversation about all of the factors as opposed to someone who comes in and reveals a little bit, uses a communication style known as strategic ambiguity to drip a little bit of information to try to control

the tone of the conversation. But that's because I'm not good at strategic ambiguity. And if I negotiated that way, I'd fail miserably every single time. So diplomacy works for me. It might not work for all people. And the real strategy here is recognizing that there are different appropriate strategies for different problems. And this was something that we experienced as hostage negotiators. At any given time, I think TV makes it seem like it's just one guy or gal who shows up

and tries to save the world That's that's not the case when we would show up at situations and scenes. There were usually ten of us We all had a different style and approach and depending on what we were facing We would deploy the right style and approach for that particular situation and the same is true for us in our personal lives Well, I think what you said is really important that not every difficult conversation or negotiation has to be contentious, because I think there's a belief that that it is because that's why we're negotiating that because we're this we disagree, we're on opposite sides of the table here. And so by definition, it's contentious. The context that I have for going into this is even in difficult business negotiations

That that I've been in or difficult marital negotiations that I've been in with my wife or life-and-death negotiations. I've been in Sometimes the most contentious conversation that I think I'm going to go into is really just a really big misunderstanding that is intertwined with strong emotions and feelings and And what it is, is that we defend ourselves from the illusion of threat or the feeling of threat. And so we end up gearing ourselves up for this really contentious conversation where we could also spend time, energy, and effort into connection and making sure that we fully understand who's on the other side of the table and what they need. And what you'll find is that you can take what started as a continuous conversation

and make it very collaborative or it can make or it can remain competing. It just depends. But I'm careful to always assume that negotiations start from a place of an adversarial positioning between two sides because it simply isn't always the case. It is sometimes and when that happens, you do have to approach it with a different strategy. But more oftentimes than not, we can be two people on opposing teams moving towards the same goal.

So can you, maybe with an example, explain how you take a contentious conversation and turn it into a collaborative conversation? Ass know, assuming that you are navigating a conversation with someone and you come to the table and you think you want completely different things, you might start, rather than stating your position, asking more questions. You can never go wrong with asking questions. Tell me more about what you need. What is it you're looking for? what is this going to do for you that you can't currently do? And by understanding how someone is going to use or deploy or access or benefit from whatever this thing is

that we're negotiating, what it does is it equips you and arms you with the understanding of how to approach that conversation in a way that benefits you and them. Right, so what we're doing is we're building rapport. Rapport is the key that opens the door for more. We're demonstrating that we're listening and we're understanding because we're reframing and regurgitating what that person is saying in our own words. And the goal here is to be able to tell somebody else what they want so accurately that when

you're done describing their side of the argument, they say, yes, absolutely. That's exactly what I'm looking for. Because when people feel heard and felt and seen, their guard decreases. And now you can approach that conversation and say, man, that's so good. Thank you so much for sharing. I appreciate that. Here are some things that I was looking at. Here are some things that I need.

Here are some things that are going to work best for me. Here's where I think we're aligned We focus more on where we connect rather than where we disconnect we focus more on building bridges Than building barriers and what it does is it gives the other person an opportunity to see another potential outcome other than the principled outcome They came to the conversation with so that by the end of the conversation, you've made an ally, not an enemy. So a common negotiation almost everybody, I don't know, a lot of people have is, you know, to ask for a raise and you go into your boss and really it's a fairly simple thing on the table that you want more money and they probably don't want to give you

a lot more money and you'd want to get as much as you can get but there aren't a lot of other seemingly issues on the table it's strictly money and how do you when it when there aren't a lot of other issues how do you discuss it? Yeah so what we have to do before we go into a conversation to ask someone for a raise is we have to put ourselves in their shoes. So the first question I'd ask is, what restrictions or restraints does your boss have? What are the things they can't control? What are the lines on the field, so to speak, that they cannot move?

Because it's always more than money. There's always something else happening. The boss that you're talking to may absolutely want to give you a pay raise, but their hands might be tied from HR. The other side of this though, is that if you're going to ask for a raise, simply going to a business and saying, hey, pay me more money. Here's how much revenue you have. Take a bigger truck and give it to me.

Without connecting that to some benefit for the organization is really a lost cause. Most folks are going to say no. The other side of this is people like to go in with some hostilities and say, well, I've put my name in a hat for another business, they're going to pay me 20% more, and if you don't pay me a raise, then I'll take that. That sometimes can work until it doesn't. What I think is most important is we go in and understand what the limitations are for the person we're asking, what are the organization's

goals as it pertains to the role that you're in, go in with some information about understanding what the industry norm is for your particular role to know whether or not you're at the bottom 50%, top 50%, top 10%. So you can actually speak to a number that makes sense. But I think what's really important here is understanding what's important to your supervisor. Do you have context for how they see you? Have you taken the time to ask questions about your performance and what's most important to them, where the value is? Because if you go into the conversation understanding how the organization defines value,

you will recognize that there could be a gap between what they see as valuable and what you see as valuable. And the more you can shrink that gap, the more effective you're going to be at saying, I've done these things for the organization that are in alignment with what you see as valuable. And because of these things and industry norms

and just that and the other thing, here's what I'm asking for. Well, I suspect it's safe to say that most of us are never too far away from our next difficult conversation or negotiation, whether at work or at home or somewhere out in the world. And this is really helpful advice. I've been speaking with Ryan Dunlap, he's a former police detective and hostage negotiator who's been involved in a lot of high-stakes negotiations and

he is author of a book called How to Untie a Balloon, a negotiator's guide to avoid popping under pressure and you will find a link to his book at Amazon in the show notes. Thank you, Ryan. I appreciate you coming on. That was great. I appreciate you. Do you love Disney? Then you are going to love our hit podcast, Disney Countdown. I'm Megan, the Magical Millennial. And I'm the dapper Danielle. On every episode of our fun and family-friendly show, we count down our top 10 lists of all things Disney.

There is nothing we don't cover. We are famous for rabbit holes, Disney themed games, and fun facts you didn't know you needed but you definitely need in your life. So if you're looking for a healthy dose of Disney magic, check out Disney Countdown wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everyone, join me, Megan Rinks. And me, Melissa DeMontz for Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong? Each week we deliver four fun-filled shows.

And Don't Blame Me, we tackle our listeners' dilemmas with hilariously honest advice. Then we have But Am I Wrong? which is for the listeners that didn't take our advice. Plus, we share our hot takes on current events. Then tune in to See You Next Tuesday for our listener poll results from But Am I Wrong? And finally, wrap up your week with Fisting Friday, where we catch up and talk all things pop culture. Listen to Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. I imagine as we all get older, we spend at least a little time thinking about things

like how long will I live? What will I die from? What will finally get me? What can I do to postpone that inevitable end as long as possible and live as well and as healthy as possible? And certainly there's no shortage of advice for any of that. But Professor John Tregonning has studied the science of all this and he is here to talk about the best ways to live long and stay healthy.

John is Professor of Vaccine Immunology at Imperial College London and has published over 60 academic papers. He's author of a book called, Live Forever, A Curious Scientist's Guide to Wellness, Aging and Death. Hi John, welcome to Something You Should Know. Hi, thanks for having me on. So explain how you came at this because you're a scientist, but you're also a human being who thinks about the same things

about your life as I do about mine, like, you know, how long will I live? Were you just curious about these questions and decided to do some research? I mean, what got you going on this? Where I started was I was entering my kind of late forties. I was beginning to creek a bit around the edges and I started worrying about, you know, how am I going to get sick? How am I going to die? And I did start looking across all these systems and I think the where it ended up was that actually relative there's relatively little we can do to change things. There are obviously some key things and we can talk

about those, but this idea that actually quality has a quantity of its own, that if you improve the quality of your life, you can actually increase the quantity too. And when you say improve the quality of your life, you mean by doing things like what? There are some very simple things, which and the ones which will come as no surprise

to many people, you you know don't smoke, do regular exercise, eat well, reduce the amount you're drinking but I think the really key one that I ended up on is that social connectivity and doing things that you love with people that you love will increase the quality and quantity of your life. But the things that will get us, will get us no matter what. I mean, something's gonna get you at the end, right? Yeah, absolutely. Health is a sort of zero sum situation.

You know, since we are all going to die, there is always gonna be a main cause of death. That has changed over the last 150 years. It used to be that many, many more people died of infectious diseases and because of vaccination and clean water that has changed to the majority of people die of heart attacks. And actually through preventative medicine and through surgery, the number of people who the sort of proportion of people who die of heart attacks is declining and the proportion of people who the sort of proportion of people who die of heart attacks is Declining and the proportion of people who say die of cancer is increasing

But there's always because that that kind of pie chart always has to stay at 100% Things are going to change as we get better at preventing different types of infect different types of disease But when you look at the individual pieces of that pie when you say cancer is increasing, is the piece of the pie increasing or it's only increasing because the heart disease one is decreasing? It's much more like that. So heart disease is decreasing and therefore something else has to replace it within the pie. And that's, that's inevitably going to be the case. And I think, I guess the longer term challenge is thinking about well what is the thing that where we say you know if people are going to die the majority of people are dying

of this is is an okay within our health care system within our society is that is what was the kind of preferential end that we expect people to have and in your view what is that the the nicest idea I heard was this idea of health span I suppose to lifespan. So if you can increase the amount of time that you're healthy and happy then maybe you're increasing your lifespan is a bit less important. So if you die and you've been healthy very close to the point of death then maybe that's that's an okay way and and the challenge is because everything's so interconnected you know often people say oh having a you know a

sudden cardiac arrest in your sleep might be the best way but there's two bits that first is if you're having a heart attack is probably there are other factors in your life where there might be risk as well so you can't like guarantee that particular way but the other other thing is it gives the people who love you less time to say goodbye. So actually if you if I was to drop dead today, that would be an enormous shock for people to, you know, to process. Whereas if you have six months where you're still able to talk and process it, that maybe because societally that's a better way.

One of the things that caught my interest when I was looking at your book is the fact that there are so many things that could get us. There are so many diseases and there are so many poisons in the world and so many, it's amazing that we're here. It's extraordinary. The human biology and biology in general is wonderfully complicated and I'm so lucky to be a research scientist and to be pulling apart a string in the enormous kind of jumper of humanity. But because it's so complex, that means there are lots and lots of ways for it to go wrong. And you're right, the kind of extraordinary thing is

that most of the time it doesn't go wrong. We have all these kind of working parts, and somehow they have tolerance in them, and they've evolved this tolerance so that we do survive through thick and thin. There is certainly a push, and has been for a couple of decades now, of people trying to be healthy, and eating right, and exercising, and then we hear all these little tricks like,

only eat between certain hours of the day. And what do we know works? The very simple message is that if you can match calories in to exercise or expenditure out, you'll maintain a healthy weight. Different people need to approach that in different ways so some people may be able to comply through exercise. I personally, the way I manage my weight is by doing more exercise rather than controlling the amount of food I take in

but other people find that doing intermittent fasting is beneficial so they can say actually if I don't eat on these two days or eat less than these two days, it manages my calorie intake for the week. So that's good for them. And then other people say, we prefer to not eat breakfast. So there are different methods. But actually, the simplest thing is controlling your balancing your in and out on calories. And then on top of that is thinking about

the quality of the food intake that you're having. And so talk about this idea, because we've heard a lot about it lately, of calorie restriction, that thin people live longer than fat people. And I guess we maybe know that, but there's something more to that, isn't there? I guess we maybe know that, but there's something more to that, isn't there?

There seems to be in laboratory models. So if you look at fruit flies, if you restrict their calories, they can live longer. And the reason people use fruit flies is because they don't live very long. So you can fit more experiments into a certain amount of time. Whether that really translates into humans but with the kind of much more complicated lives and behaviors that we have

it's not yet clear but the calorie restriction the theory is that you can kind of tip the clock back or at least slow the clock of kind of of degenerating or reverse damage to your body. of kind of degenerating or reverse damage to your body. I think personally it's within the broader category of maintaining a healthy weight for your lifestyle. Well, that certainly makes sense. I mean, we know that people who are very heavy have a shorter life expectancy than people who are thin. I mean, that's pretty well accepted, right?

Absolutely. So the living with excess weight, living with obesity comes with a range of health risks. There's type 2 diabetes, there is putting stress on the heart, there is damage potentially to the kind of to the joints and it is all very cumulative. So excess weight is definitely a problem and losing that excess weight, however you can approach it, undo it, is going to give you certainly an improved health span and probably lifespan as well. That seems too simple though. It's just too simple that people want to complicate it somehow.

Yeah, and I think that's the point, right? So I think it is simple. I think, sorry, I think the ideas are simple. I think compliance is hard. I think changing the way we behave is difficult. So I might be sounding preachy, but you know, I know that drinking beer isn't good for me and yet I carry on drinking beer. So it's very easy for me to talk about things that I don't do

and then act as if that's very easy to change. It's hard to change ingrained behaviours, it's hard to change the things that we kind of enjoy even though we know they're not necessarily doing us any good. So when you say, I think this confuses people, confuses me, when you say, I know drinking beer isn't good for me, what does that mean? It isn't good for you. Alcohol is a poison and the more alcohol you drink, the more damage you do to your body. The biggest area of damage it does is to your liver, but it can also cause cancers, it increases not only in your liver, but in your guts and in actually in other parts of cause cancers, it increases not only in your liver but in your guts and in actually in other parts of the body it causes inflammation and it's a sort of logarithmic scale

so one drink is somewhat bad, two is more, three is really bad, four is very bad and it's the cumulative effects if you're doing if you're drinking four alcoholic drinks a day every day you are going to do continuous damage to yourself. So it we have to appreciate there is a risk to drinking alcohol. I'll say the flip side because I do think that there's some interesting data the other way around and that is that way around and that is that there is some evidence that having one drink a day maybe have some some protective effect over all cause mortality and I think that may be more to do with the social aspects between the interrelation rather than the alcohol itself. But it doesn't affect everybody the same and I think

that's baffling to some extent because there are some people who drink a lot and end up living a long time and dying of something completely unrelated. And then there are other people who drink a lot and die from the drinking or drinking related problems. And when you say drinking a lot, you know, if you're into the sort of bottle of whiskey a day territory, you will almost certainly die in your 50s. There are certain thresholds beyond which everyone is at very high risk. But coming back to the question of like why can, why do we all know somebody or have heard

of somebody who smoked and drank until they were 95 and seemed to be very well, is that you have to think about humanity as a very heterogeneous population, very, very different and diverse, and that means that different people will behave differently with different stimulation, so different kind of toxins or different poisons. And I think medicine as a discipline, we tend to think about statistical likelihoods and population. So you could look in a room of a hundred people and you could say 70 of these people would be more likely to die if they do this, but that means 30 of the people who won't be. So we can like reduce it down and say this is the risk of this.

What you don't know as an individual is whether you're in the 70% of people who will die if you drink heavily or the 30% who won't die and you'll only find that out by testing it and unfortunately testing it may well lead to you dying. What about the difference between men and women in in all of this discussion? Is there much of a difference? Is there any protective benefits of being one or the other in any of these things? Yes, there is. So women are much more likely to have autoimmune conditions. So autoimmunity is where your body's immune system

turns on itself and starts attacking bits of your body. So things like lupus or MS or type 1 diabetes, these are all autoimmune conditions and they tend to be a bit more prevalent in women. Whereas men are more likely, it depends a bit on the age of the men, young men are more likely to die of violent death or accidental death, older men are more likely to die of heart attacks and maybe drinking and smoking related injuries. So there are some things driven by biology and some things driven by society, which will affect the causes of death in men and women. When you look at the way people die or when they get sick, how much of it seems to be related to family history?

Because we hear it's related. We hear there's, if your father had a heart attack, you were more likely to have a heart attack. But how much more? We are a product of our genes and our environment. The nice phrase is that the genes load the gun, the environment pulls the trigger. And so if you say you look at me and my father or something in the father, if the father's died of a heart attack, some of it may be that it's environmental that if you live in a family who

has a tradition of eating too much or, you know, exposure to risk factors may be similar across families. But there is a genetic element to a lot of our health and some conditions are very obviously genetically driven. So there's a disease called cystic fibrosis where the lungs are unable to pump the mucus out. They get very much damaged and that's a single gene and if you have that you're going to get that condition. Whereas there are other things which are like increase the risk so the breast cancer there's a gene associated with breast cancer called BRCA1, BRCA2. If you have those you are more likely to get breast cancer and so there there's a sliding scale of things that will definitely cause disease things that will increase your risk and then things that if you don't

Expose yourself to those kind of environmental damage agents. You won't get those diseases So as people get older we often see that they deteriorate so that Even though they're living longer life in old age can be very difficult. Are we making any progress on that? It's like that old saying about how you'd like to have more years, but you'd like to have them in your 20s and 30s and 40s, rather than in your 90s and 100s.

I think you can delay the onset of that frailty. And that's where the doing exercise and mixing in, you know, cardio and strengthening and stretching exercises is where reducing your exposure to risk factors, all of which will reduce frailty, but frailty is inevitable and it's kind of inbuilt into our systems. The basically the bits of our body that replaces our skin, they're called stem cells, that they stop producing as many cells. So your skin becomes more paper thin. The same happens in our muscles.

The regenerative properties of our bodies decline. So as they get damaged and cut over time, they don't get replaced as well. So I think that is the inevitable path we're on, but we can delay the kind of damage aspects of that. And actually, if we look better into old age care, we can improve that. We can connect people better.

We can make sure that when they reach that point in their lives, they are well cared for. Is life expectancy Going up at all. In fact, I had heard it was going down in the West But where are we with that? It depends on the country There is some fairly bleak data that I've seen about the USA that does say is coming down and that's not about people Into their old age. It's a increase maybe in drug related and violent death

in the kind of 20s and 30s. So, you know, there are, as societies change, we are gonna see patterns changing. So I don't, it's quite uncertain times we're living in and I don't know where it will go. But do, where are we now? Do you know what the life expectancy for men and women is? It's about 78. Probably 78 for men, 80 for women. It's pretty stable around that number.

From all the research you did into this, is there one piece of advice, one thing that came out of that that you think you really want to emphasize to people? Just I think I come back to the social element I think in the end I think one of the way one of the things that I Kind of learned as I was researching the book is to do things that link cognitive social and physical together and you get much more synergistic benefits so going dancing because you're thinking about what you're doing because you're moving because you're with people is really good for you so look for activities

that combine physical and social and cognitive and you'll get much more benefits from doing those. Well I like your idea of health span rather than just lifespan that that it's not always just about how long you live but how I'm doing nice. Well, I like your idea of health span rather than just lifespan, that it's not always just about how long you live, but how well you live into your old age, and then the steps you take to get there. I've been speaking with John Traganing. He is a professor of vaccine immunology

at Imperial College London and author of the book Live Forever, A Curious Scientist's Guide to Wellness, Aging and Death. And there's a link to his book at Amazon in the show notes. Professor, thank you for this discussion. Okay, lovely to speak to you. writing a business email is different than writing a personal email,

especially when it comes to the use of emotions. And according to Ink Magazine, there are a few things we should stop doing. First of all, expressing fake concern. Many business emails, especially to strangers, will begin with sentences like, I hope you're well. The implication is, I've now expressed interest in you, so therefore you're now obligated to read the rest of this message. However, the recipient knows you don't really care about him or her as a person, so the phrase comes off as fake and manipulative.

It would be better to just get to the point. Or discussing your own emotions. Today's social media-centric culture has strengthened the belief that expressing your emotions makes you seem more authentic and more real and therefore more credible. In business however, nobody really cares about your emotions unless you're actually friends. So it's best to drop emotions out of what you write. Instead of saying I would be delighted to speak with you personally about this and would love to tell of saying, I would be delighted to speak with you personally about this and would love to tell you more,

it would be better to say, are you open to a brief telephone call to discuss this? And that is something you should know. I would love to read your review of this podcast and all you have to do is post it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Castbox, wherever you listen. We read them, we appreciate them, and having a lot of reviews helps us. So please leave a rating and review when you have a moment.

I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Hey, it's Hillary Frank from The Longest Shortest Time, an award-winning podcast about parenthood and reproductive health. There is so much going on right now in the world of reproductive health, and we're covering it all. Birth control, pregnancy, gender, bodily autonomy, menopause, consent, sperm, so many stories about sperm, and of course the joys and absurdities of raising kids of all

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