Something You Should Know - How to Get People to Really Like You & Why Humans Can Be So Kind & So Cruel

Episode Date: April 22, 2019

You probably don’t write much with a pen and paper anymore. Most of us type. However, there are a lot of benefits to writing the old-fashion way. I begin this episode with some great reasons why you should write more and type less. (http://mentalfloss.com/article/78182/4-reasons-write-hand-rather-type) Want to be more likeable and attract people to you? Some people are really good at it. They have the ability to draw people to them – almost as if it were magic. How do they do it? Jack Schafer knows. Jack is a former FBI Special Agent who mastered the techniques of making building rapport and getting people to like him in order to get them to confess to crimes and reveal personal information. He is the author of the book, The Like Switch: An Ex-FBI Agent's Guide to Influencing, Attracting, and Winning People Over (https://amzn.to/2DloBK1) and he joins me to share the techniques and the science behind them. Do you like to dance? I hope so because it is apparently really good for your brain. Listen as I explain how dancing and brain health are connected. (http://www.medicaldaily.com/benefits-dancing-neurodegenerative-disease-humanbrain-380835?rel=most_read4) It is called the Goodness Paradox. Simply put, it is the fact that human beings can be so kind and thoughtful on one hand and so evil and aggressive on the other. Harvard anthropology professor Richard Wrangham, comes on the podcast to discuss this fascinating quirk of human behavior that allowed Adolf Hitler to be such a monster and at the same time an animal lover and delightful party host. He reveals that as species we are actually less aggressive than other animals – and we seem to be getting even less aggressive than we used to be. Richard is author of the book The Goodness Paradox (https://amzn.to/2DlF0y5).  This Week’s Sponsors -ADT. To get a secure smart home designed just for you go to www.ADT.com -BetterHelp. Get help with a counselor you will love at www.BetterHelp.com/SYSK -Ollie. For 60% off your first order plus a free bag of dog treats go to www.myollie.com/try/something -Hers. For $10 off your first order (while supplies last) go to www.ForHers.com/something -Capterra To find the best software for your business visit www.Capterra.com/something -Capital One. What's in your wallet? www.CapitalOne.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As a listener to Something You Should Know, I can only assume that you are someone who likes to learn about new and interesting things and bring more knowledge to work for you in your everyday life. I mean, that's kind of what Something You Should Know was all about. And so I want to invite you to listen to another podcast called TED Talks Daily. Now, you know about TED Talks, right? Many of the guests on Something You Should Know have done TED Talks. Well, you see, TED Talks Daily is a podcast that brings you a new TED Talk every weekday in less than 15 minutes. Join host Elise Hu.

She goes beyond the headlines so you can hear about the big ideas shaping our future. Learn about things like sustainable fashion, embracing your entrepreneurial spirit, the future of robotics, and so much more. Like I said, if you like this podcast, Something You Should Know, I'm pretty sure you're going to like TED Talks Daily. And you get TED Talks Daily wherever you get your podcasts. Today on Something You Should Know, we hardly ever write anything anymore with pen and paper, but maybe we should. Then the best way to influence, attract, and win over other people. And it works like this. It's the golden rule of friendship. If every time that I'm with you, I make you feel good about yourself,

you're going to automatically want to come back and talk to me again to get that same good feeling. Plus, how dancing actually improves how your brain works. And the goodness paradox, why humans can be so kind and wonderful and also so mean and aggressive. You can have people like Hitler and Stalin and Pol Pot who were obviously tremendously given to a horrendous form of proactive aggression. In their private lives, people speak about what charming individuals they were. All this today on Something You Should Know. 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.

Hey, welcome. When you hear an advertisement on this podcast, chances are that advertiser has been checked out by me personally. I've either sampled their product, I've looked at their service, and I've probably spoken with people who work there so that you can be confident in doing business with them. You know, we have some really unique and interesting advertisers here, and when you hear an ad that sounds interesting to you, remember that you can always find their website and their promo code or any other information in the show notes.

First up today, how often do you write by hand anymore? It seems that except for the occasional shopping list, hardly anybody uses a pen or a pencil to write anything. It's always on the keyboard. However, writing things with a pen or pencil has some real advantages. For example, it activates the brain. In a study of children who couldn't yet read, it was found that writing letters by hand activated a circuit of neurons in the brain associated with reading. Typing the same letters or tracing them did not do the same thing. It improved spelling. A study found that having kids write words out improved their spelling abilities compared to kids who just type the words on a computer. Writing things out also helps you remember. In another study that compared the memories of university students

who took handwritten notes to university students who took notes on a laptop, found that writing longhand better helps you learn new information. And it helps you think faster. In a study of elementary and middle school kids, students writing by hand were found to write more and write more quickly than those kids who typed on a keyboard. And when children wrote essays, the quality of their writing improved when they wrote with a pen versus a computer. And that is something you should know.

It's human nature to want to get along with other people and to have those people like us. And yet so often we go about it the wrong way. We try to impress people with how smart we are or how great we are. But impressing people isn't what makes you likable. That's according to Dr. Jack Schaefer. He's a former police officer, former FBI special agent, and he is an expert on winning people over and getting them to like you. He's the author of a book called The Like Switch, an ex-FBI agent's guide to influencing, attracting, and winning people over. Hi Jack, welcome. So what makes you an expert on being so likable?

Yeah, I spent five years as a police officer and 20 years as an FBI agent. And I had to deal with people every day and get information from them that they weren't likely to reveal because it would cause them to go to prison for a long time. And the last seven years of my FBI career, I've spent as a behavioral analyst. So I've really focused on techniques to get people to like you or like me or like agents enough to where they want to reveal that information. So the techniques that we use are also applicable to social situations and business situations. So what I did was I kind of translated the techniques I used during my interviews to social and business situations, and they work very effectively in both cases. And so in general, what is it that attracts people to each other? What makes you likable or not likable? You know, the bottom line comes down to this. If you want to get people to like

you, you have to make them feel good about themselves. Because it's not often that we put the focus on other people, and there's nothing people like better than to have people paying attention to them. And it works like this. It's the golden rule of friendship. If every time that I'm with you, I make you feel good about yourself, you're going to automatically want to come back and talk to me again to get that same good feeling. In fact, you won't even have to wait for an invitation because you'll find a way to come back and experience that good feeling again.

So it goes across all cultures and all genders and races and ethnicities because people, bottom line, people want other people to pay attention to them and to respect them and to acknowledge their ideas and existence. And so in a real life example, how does that work? Typically use some rapport building techniques. One of the most effective rapport building techniques is called the empathic statement. What you do is you take what that person said, how they feel or their physical condition, and you reflect that back to them using parallel language. going up and down the elevator with students. And on one particular occasion, I saw a student that was particularly happy. They were smiling and looked very relieved and happy. And the empathic statement I used was, so you are having a good day. And all I'm doing is reflecting back what that student showed me non-verbally. And she said, yes, I passed a test and I studied real hard for it and I passed it and I'm real

happy I said another empathic statement is so your hard work paid off and she said yes it did and that's how you use it in real life and what do people do do you find that perhaps they think works that they think they're getting close to people, but they're actually having the opposite effect? When we talk about ourselves, we try to impress people by all the things that we've done. Let me tell you what I've done. I've achieved this, I've done this, I've done that goal, I've got this thing done. Nobody really cares. And you think that you're impressing that other person. But in reality, you're not impressing that person. And in fact, it may be detrimental

to a relationship. And how many times have we all done that? We've all thought, well, I'll tell them how great I am. And then they'll think I'm wonderful. And it doesn't work. And I confess I'm guilty of that. I think we all are. It's a human condition, I think. And so once you've done that, how do you get closer? How do you move in even closer and become like, not just friends in an elevator, but friends outside the elevator? Well, you continue to use empathic statements. You focus on that other person. And then what you want to do is, if it's a long-term relationship, you don't want to data dump everything that you feel or think or you've done to that other person. That's the tendency. We

first meet somebody, we just tell them everything. What you want to do is use that Hansel and Gretel effect. You just want to tell people piece by piece over a long period of time, because that keeps that relationship novel and more interesting. Because six months down the line, you're still revealing little things about yourself and people, wow, that's interesting. I didn't know that about you. And that keeps that relationship fresh. So people have to refrain from data dumping when they first meet somebody they like. And so how do you know how much is too much? How do you parse out the information in just the right way? Well, this requires you to pay attention to the other person's nonverbal

indicators. A lot of times if you talk too much or reveal too much, people will give you negative verbal indicators. They'll look away, they'll roll their eyes, they'll knit their eyebrows together, and this tells you it's time to be quiet. And this is the problem I think a lot of people have on the internet. When they have internet relationships, they're not exposed to those nonverbal indicators that say it's time for you to cease giving me information. And consequently what they do is they keep providing information and information and information.

They don't have a nonverbal signal that says enough's enough. Well, it's interesting that most of us have a sense when you're talking to someone, you have a sense of when to stop talking, that it's, okay, your turn is over. But then there are other people who don't have that sense, who will just talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk. Yeah, but typically what we do is, we live in a turn-taking society in the Western world, and we nod to let that person know that they can continue talking. It's their turn.

And then when we cease nodding, we look away from them for a nanosecond or two. That lets them know that your turn is up. It's my turn now. And what about nonverbal signals, nonverbal cues when you're communicating like this? How important is that and what works and what doesn't work? Yeah. And in fact, there's basically three nonverbal friend signals that indicate or predispose other people to talk to you or like you. The first one is the eyebrow flash. That's about a quick up and down movement of the eyebrows. It lasts about a 64th of a second.

And that is a distance signal that tells the person you're approaching that you're not a threat. When you approach somebody, they'll eyebrow flash you and then you in turn eyebrow flash them and all you're doing is signaling to them that there is no threat there and a good demonstration of this is when you meet somebody in in the day for the first time you always say hello how are you and they respond hello how are you if you see that person a second time during the day, you typically will just exchange eyebrow flashes as you pass one another. Or guys typically jut out their chin and do what I call the chin thing. Just that's a friend signal that says, I'm not a threat. So the next one is the head tilt. When you tilt your head slightly to the left or slightly to the right, you're exposing your carotid artery. That's a very sensitive part of your body because if it's cut, you only have a few minutes to live.

So basically what you're telling that person is I'm exposing a very vulnerable part of my body and I'm not afraid that you're going to hurt me. So that's an indicator of friendship. A good example of this is anybody who owns a dog. as soon as you go into your house or look at your dog, they'll typically sit there and tilt their head one way or the other. And that's just the dog letting the owner know that the dog's not a threat. Or else the dog will flip over on its back and expose its tummy, which is a very vulnerable part of the animal's body. And that just lets the owner, you know, the dog's telling the owner, I don't see you as a threat and I'm not a threat. And the last one is the smile. When we smile, we release endorphins and endorphins make us

feel good about ourselves. We get a little shot of endorphin so what happens when we smile at somebody they get a little shot of endorphin and they feel good about themselves and that refers back to the golden rule of friendship if you want people to like you you make them feel good about themselves so when we we smile, we do just that. And it's very difficult if you smile at somebody for them not to smile back. So using those simple nonverbal techniques, we can predispose people to like us before we even open our mouths. Jack Schaefer is my guest. He's a former police officer, former FBI special agent,

and author of the book The Like Switch, an ex-FBI agent's guide to influencing, attracting, and winning people over. You know, for many women, perhaps for you if you're a woman, it's important that the skin on your face look great. Problem is that there are a lot of department store products and creams and gimmicky marketing tricks. It's practically impossible to know where to put your trust or your money. Well, now there's a solution. 4HERS.com.

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That's F-O-R-H-E-R-S dot com slash something. Forhers.com slash something. Restrictions apply. See website for full details and safety information. There are times in everyone's life, I don't care who you are, there are times when something interferes with your happiness or prevents you from achieving your goal. If that's happening to you, BetterHelp Online Counseling is there for you. BetterHelp offers licensed professional counselors who are specialized in issues such as depression, stress, relationships, anxiety, family conflicts, grief, and so much more. This is such a great idea. You connect with your professional counselor in a safe, private, online environment. Anything you share is confidential. And it's convenient.

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So why not get started today? Go to betterhelp.com slash S-Y-S-K. You simply fill out a questionnaire to help them assess your needs and get matched with a counselor you will love. Betterhelp.com slash S-Y-S-K. So Jack, I remember hearing in a conversation about this general topic that one way to tell how interested people are in what you're saying is to look at their feet and which direction their feet are pointing. Not so much how they hold their body, but their feet. And if their feet are pointing towards you, then they are interested in what you're saying. If their feet move and are pointed in another direction,

it means they want to get away. They're not interested anymore and they want to move on. Yeah, that's the other thing is I often go into, you know, as part of my FBI duties, I've often gone into large crowds of people I don't know. And you're at a convention, you're at a party, a large party, you don't know people. And you want to know, I want to talk to people, but how do I know who to talk to? So you look at the people in their groups, and then you look at the people's feet. If their feet are all pointed towards one another, pointing inside, in other words, closing off the circle, that means they don't want to talk to anybody else. But groups that are open to new people to come into their group to discuss typically leave a space. So the rule of thumb is if there's a place to put your feet, it's okay to meet. And what about touching?

Because it would seem that in some cases, touching someone could be very helpful in getting them to like you and getting them to feel closer to you. But on the other hand, touching could also be offensive. So how do you know what to touch, who to touch, where to touch them? How do you know? Well, in today's world, especially recently, touching has been a sensitive topic. The places we can touch people in public and not offend that person is typically on the shoulder, from the elbow up, and from the wrist down. And those are the places like with a handshake or some touching on the shoulder is okay. Anything other than that, people tend to consider that to be inappropriate touching.

But what about some people are just huggers, like Vice President Biden was a big hugger, and that got him into trouble. So sometimes it's okay, but sometimes it's not. How do you tell? If you don't know, you don't hug. You don't touch. You know, any touch at any time can be perceived as bad. Even if you've touched somebody before or gave them a little hug before, that was then. This is now.

I have a rule now. I don't touch anybody other than from the wrist down and the elbow up to the shoulder. That's it. One of the things I've wondered about, and maybe it's because I watch too many police shows or too many movies, is when you're an FBI agent like you were or a police officer as you were, why is it so important to, when you're talking to bad people,

to develop this rapport, to get them to like you? Why is it that somebody who's committed a crime is more likely to tell someone who they've just met, but has developed this rapport, why are they more likely to tell you something that could send them to prison? Why is likability such a powerful influencer in that situation? Well, it's for various reasons. Sometimes it's guilt.

Sometimes we feel so guilty we can't live with ourselves. You know, what happens when you feel guilty when you've committed a crime? You typically want to self-medicate with alcohol, with drugs, with cigarette smoking, but, you know, you're going to try to self-diagnose and self-medicate, and you don't sleep well at night. So people want to get rid of that anxiety, and one way to get rid of the anxiety is to confess, and then the anxiety goes away. And so that's, you just want to create an environment where a person feels comfortable in telling them their secrets. Isn't it also true, though, that when you're talking to a suspect and you're developing that rapport and you're trying to make them feel good about themselves, what you're also doing is looking for ways to tell if they're being deceptive,

if they're lying to you, right? Aren't there certain behaviors that people do that make you think, oh, see, he's lying? People will distance themselves from things they don't like, and they'll lean inward towards things they like. And so if you're talking to a person and they're saying something and they lean backwards, even if their head leans backwards slightly, that means that they're distancing themselves. And that's something that makes people anxious. So they want to distance themselves from that lie because they see you as a threat.

And oftentimes we were teaching the Customs and Border Patrol agents how to spot threats when they're coming into the country. And if you ask a person a threatening question like, do you have anything to declare? And their head backs up slightly, that's an indicator that there's possibility of deception because they're distancing themselves from that customs officer's threatening question. And isn't it also true that developing that rapport with suspects, and this probably applies to developing rapport with people who are not suspects, they're just people you want to be connected to. The more time you spend, the better the relationship, just from spending time. There's a principle of duration, frequency and duration. The more time we spend with somebody and the longer periods of time we frequently spend with people,

that predisposes them to feel comfortable and like us enough to want to reveal the secrets. So again, what is it? You have to put the focus on the other person. You have to spend time with the other person. You have to put them first. And that creates that environment where they want to tell you things. It is so simple, and yet it's so true if you stop and think about it,

that we like people who are interested in us. And it's amazing how far and how much we'll like somebody who shows that interest. What people find interesting is it's kind of ironic or counterintuitive. If I make you feel good about yourself, you're going to like me. And if you like me, you're going to want to do everything you can to help me. So it's kind of counterintuitive. You would think if I do you a favor, that I'm going to feel good about you. But it's just the opposite. If I ask somebody for a favor and they do me a favor because they like me, then they're going to feel good about themselves. Because when we do favors for other people, we feel good about ourselves. So we want to help

that other person. So it's like putting the other person first and make them feel good about themselves. They're going to want to help us in any way they can. I know for myself, I mean, I'm kind of an observer and student of this kind of behavior. I watch it in other people. And it is amazing how the things that you're talking about, about putting people first and focusing on them. It is amazing how effective and powerful it is. Yeah, and I've often been told that. People have come up and said, I can't believe I saw the eyebrow flash.

I can't believe I, you know, eye-eyebrow flash. I can't believe that if I put the other person first, you know, even at the complaint desk, if I make an empathic statement, it must be hardworking at a complaint desk. You know, every day people are complaining. And that person then says, wow, they recognize that I have a difficult job. And then you present your, you know, refund or exchange, whatever you want, your complaint is. And they're more receptive because now they think that you understand what they're saying. And it's just that little connection in a short period of time that can give you great benefits. And, you know, the bottom line

is you both feel good about that encounter. And you walk away, you're both better people for it. Well, I appreciate you coming on and explaining this from a very practical point of view as a former police officer and special agent for the FBI. You not only know this stuff, you live this stuff, and you know it works. Dr. Jack Schaefer has been my guest. The name of his book is The Like Switch, L-I-K-E, The Like Switch, an ex-FBI agent's guide to influencing, attracting, and winning people over. You'll find a link to his book at Amazon in the show notes for this episode.

Thanks, Jack. All right. Thank you, sir. If you have a dog, here's a question. Do you know what's in your dog's food? I bet you don't, and you probably don't want to know. Unless, like me, your dog eats Ollie. Ollie puts dogs first with vet-formulated recipes and fully transparent ingredients and delivers them to you on a regular schedule.

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Interesting when you think about it that we can exhibit such extreme behavior as a species and as individuals. Some of the most vicious, murderous villains in history are sometimes described as really nice people in their personal lives. So what's going on here? Well, here to shed some light on this is Richard Wrangham. He is a professor of anthropology at Harvard University and author of the book, The Goodness Paradox. Hi, Professor.

Hey, great. Thanks so much for having me. So we humans are kind and wonderful on one hand, and cruel and aggressive and violent on the other hand. So why is this and what's going on here? Well, I think the first thing we have to recognize is that there are two kinds of aggression. You know, biologists have been very skillful at working out that in our brains, our aggression is controlled in two different pathways. And one of them controls are losing our temper. And the other controls are premeditated, planned, deliberate aggression. So one is called reactive and the other is proactive. And the special thing that's happened in humans is that we have had tremendous reduction in our propensity for reactive aggression. So that's why we're so nice. But on the other hand, we have maintained or maybe exaggerated

a really nasty tendency to use proactive aggression in a very selfish and cruel way. So we're very high on proactive aggression, whereas we're low on reactive aggression. And an example of proactive and reactive aggression would be what? Well, reactive aggression is what happens when you're in a bar late at night and somebody insults your mother and you get into a fight and you take it out into the parking lot and you have a big fight and actually one of you might die. And that is a very common type of murder even nowadays in the United States. And then proactive aggression, you know, the big place where you see this is in war, where one side makes a deliberate attempt to drop a bomb or

do a raid on the other side at very little risk to themselves comparatively. So you tend to kill all of them. And then, of course, they come back and kill you later. So it's a series of exchanges in which there is great planning and intention to avoid being hurt yourself. Why, if you say reactive aggression has been going down, correct? That's what you've been saying. Yeah. Then why do we seemingly see so much more road rage and people at McDonald's going crazy when they run out of chicken McNuggets, which to me would be reactive aggression, yes?

Well, no, you're right. But of course, the thing is that I'm thinking in evolutionary terms. And so what has happened in the last decade or so is not really an issue. Humans as a species are incredibly down-regulated for reactive aggression. So we might think that you always have to walk on eggshells in case somebody loses their temper with you, but compared to chimps, it's ridiculous. You know, there they are, our closest relatives, and they are losing their temper, getting into these little fights at something like a thousand times the frequency that we do. And even the famous bonobo, which is so peaceful,

is still very similar to chimpanzees in the rate at which they get into fights. Now, what's happened more recently, you know, we may think that road rage is on the increase and so on, but actually people have looked pretty carefully at the rates of fighting and they do seem to be going down on the whole because society we may have its problems but nevertheless you know we're pretty good at arranging life so that people are very much discouraged from getting into fights yeah well i always wonder if this has always been going on but now it's just easier because everybody has a camera and so now

we see it more often more than it's actually on the increase. Yeah, no, that's right. I think the statistics are very clear that it feels as though we're exposed to the risk of more violence because we see about it on social media and in the news. But the actual data are that we're living at an increasingly safe time. It's amazing. So how different are humans? Because when I think of animals in the wild, I mean, I see lions and tigers, and they're sitting around playing with their cubs and having what seems to be a good time.

And then they're chasing and killing the antelope and eating it. So are they not also good and aggressive? I mean, obviously, there's great variation among species. But in general, it is difficult to find an animal that is as benign as humans are in our ordinary day to day interactions. So lions, they do cuff each other from time to time. And that's true for the great majority of animals. And it's particularly striking when we look at our two closest relatives, which are fighting with each other hundreds or thousands of times more often per week or month or day than we are. Is it fair or is it even necessary to lump all humans together? It seems that in many societies there are small groups of people who are much more aggressive and violent than others.

They don't represent necessarily the rest of the group. They just happen to be the most violent and aggressive. But not everybody is violent and aggressive, are they? Oh, no, I think that this is something that applies to everybody. I mean, there's a, there's one big difference, of course, which is men and women, you know, men are more given to reactive aggression, they lose their tempers more easily, particularly when a lot is at stake. If you take just trivial episodes of aggression, then you won't find any difference between men and women. But when there's a lot at stake, then men are much more likely to be aggressive.

But that's not what you're thinking of. You're thinking about the fact that within populations, there are some individuals who are much more aggressive than others. We have no evidence that that varies among populations. But also, it's quite clear that the big picture is that everybody is the same. We're all vulnerable to these kinds of emotional responses. And the fact that we might be Buddhist monks or grow up in a sort of vegan chanting environment in which we revile aggression does not stop us from getting involved when things matter enough. When, you know, our children are threatened, when our status is threatened, when somebody steals something from you. a way in which society enables us all to live the incredibly calm, peaceful lives that we do compared to even recent centuries. It's because society is well arranged. It's not because we've become sort of fundamentally such a delightful species that we're not going to get ever given to temptation.

It's interesting to me in individuals who exhibit both good and evil that the two seem somewhat unrelated, that someone can be extremely nice, as evidenced by what people say about them, and also be extremely evil, and that the two don't necessarily influence each other. Right? You can have people like Hitler and Stalin and Pol Pot, you know, these great sort of fearsome politicians of the recent times, who were obviously tremendously given to a horrendous form of proactive aggression.

In their private lives, they were delightful. You know, people speak about what charming, tolerant, peaceful individuals they were. And I mean, it's awkward because one feels even sort of embarrassed to acknowledge the fact that they might have been sort of perfectly amusing in a cocktail party, because it seems as if it sort of moves towards undermining the horror of what they did. But it does seem to me that it's an accurate portrayal of this extraordinary paradox that we find in our amazing species. You said that reactive aggression is on the decrease in human beings. So is being nicer on the increase? In other words, just because you're less aggressive doesn't make you necessarily nicer. But is that happening? Are we becoming nicer than we used to be? I think it's really difficult to see what's happening in the very recent evolutionary past.

So we know that evolutionary changes can happen in just a few thousand years, like since the introduction of eating milk or drinking milk. We've got changes in the milk drinking populations in their genes. So that's in the last 6,000 years. Do we have evidence in the last 6,000 years of people becoming less aggressive? Unfortunately, you know, we don't know enough about the biology to be able to say that. Well, whether it's changing or not, this ability of humans to be kind and also violent and aggressive is just humanness, right? I mean, this is just part of being a human being.

Yes. I mean, I think we are really an extraordinary species. And to take a sort of really big perspective, you've got to go all the way, I think, to some of the social insects to be able to find something as extreme, as so extraordinary. And I'm thinking of things like army ants, where every ant greets every member of its colony extremely warmly. You know, they show no aggression towards them, and yet they meet another colony,

and they're just instantly aggressive to them. So in their biology, they show this same weird mixture that humans do. And I just think it's really, you know, helpful to us sort of psychologically, emotionally to recognize this mixture rather than sort of sweep one aspect of our behavior under the rug. It just makes us more realistic about the way we need to live. Well, it also seems to be partly survival, right? We need to have other people to survive and we need to fight our enemies. But the thing that's so peculiar about humans when you compare with most other primates is that the way in which we compete with members of other groups is in terms of deliberate efforts to kill them. Now, chimpanzees do do that, but most species don't. And the reason that most species don't, apparently, is because

over evolutionary time, they very rarely had the opportunity to have such an overwhelming imbalance of power in their favor when they met members of other groups that they could safely try and kill them. In other words, two groups of baboons, one's got 30 in them, one's got 50. No one's going to get into a fight in which they try and kill a member of another group because you might get hurt yourself. The only circumstances in which animals will do this is when it's perfectly obvious they won't get hurt themselves and that means that they have to be able to have sufficient over sufficiently a large number on your side and small number on their side that you can kill them with very very little risk that they can fight back but that's a rare situation among animals

and in those animals in which that happens there has been evolution of the propensity to look for opportunities to attack and kill. That's the rare situation that happens in humans, just like chimps and wolves. And that's what makes us so peculiar compared to most mammals. It's not just that we are interested in pushing back against the other group and trying to chase them if we can, but we actually have had an evolutionary history in which, unfortunately, our ancestors survived by killing members of the neighboring group. It makes us a really weird group. So in many ways, this aggression that is in us as part of being human is really a relic of survival of early humans where they needed to be aggressive to survive. We don't necessarily need it so much anymore, but nevertheless, there it is. Professor Richard Wrangham has been my guest. He's a professor of anthropology at Harvard, and his book is called The Goodness Paradox. You'll find a link to his book in the show notes.

Thank you, Professor. Thank you for being here. Very good of you to host me. Thanks a lot. Here's something I think you'll find interesting. It turns out that dancing may be particularly good for your brain. In fact, it can dramatically reduce the occurrence of dementia and Alzheimer's disease in later life. A 2013 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found freestyle dancing, which requires rapid-fire decision-making, is essential to keeping a sharp mind because it forces the brain to regularly

rewire its neural pathways, especially in regions involving executive function, which are the mental skills to help us get things done, as well as long-term memory and spatial recognition. Dancing also helps with our muscle memory according to neuroscientist daniel glasser this is when we memorize how to do things so efficiently that they require no conscious effort in dance this is done by constantly repeating movements to the point that they can be performed automatically so muscle memory can help overall brain performance. And that is a reason to dance the night away. And that's the podcast today. I'm Micah Ruthers.

Thanks for listening to Something You Should Know. Do you love Disney? Do you love top 10 lists? 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. The parks, the movies, the music, the food, the lore. There is nothing we don't cover on our show. We are famous for rabbit holes, Disney themed games, and fun facts you didn't know you needed. I had Danielle and Megan record

some answers to seemingly meaningless questions. I asked Danielle, what insect song is typically higher pitched in hotter temperatures and lower pitched in cooler temperatures? You got this. No, I didn't. Don't believe that. About a witch coming true? Well, I didn't either.

Of course, I'm just a cicada. I'm crying. I'm so sorry. You win that one. So if you're looking for a healthy dose of Disney magic, check out Disney Countdown wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, this is Rob Benedict. And I am Richard Spate.

We were both on a little show you might know called Supernatural. It had a pretty good run. 15 seasons, 327 episodes. And though we have seen, of course, every episode many times, we figured, hey, now that we're wrapped, let's watch it all again. And we can't do that alone. So we're inviting the cast and crew that made the show along for the ride. We've got writers, producers, composers, directors, and we'll, of course, have some actors on as well, including some certain guys that played some certain pretty iconic brothers.

It was kind of a little bit of a left field choice in the best way possible. The note from Kripke was, he's great, we love him, but we're looking for like a really intelligent Duchovny type. With 15 seasons to explore, it's going to be the road trip of several lifetimes, so please join us and subscribe to Supernatural then and now.