Something You Should Know - SYSK Choice: How to Successfully Negotiate Anything & The Unknown Benefits of Walking

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Starting point is 00:00:31 Today on Something You Should Know, why do most people love the smell of cut grass? And how to negotiate better by asking the right questions and adopting the right approach. I wanted to let people know that negotiation really is for everybody. And whether you're a management consultant, a mechanic, or a mom, you too can feel really confident doing it. Then, how to make sure hackers can't hijack your webcam and watch what you're doing.

Starting point is 00:01:02 And the fascinating backstory of walking, what it does for you and society in general. Walking allows you to have kind of random interactions with people that you wouldn't otherwise be able to have. And those kinds of things build social trust within society. And societies that have lots of walking tend to be societies where there's a greater degree of interpersonal trust. All this today on Something You Should Know.

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Starting point is 00:02:34 And scientists have studied how smells can affect you, and some of this is really interesting. For example, the smell of fresh-cut grass makes you feel good. Scent researchers found that a chemical released by a newly mowed lawn can actually make you feel joyful and relaxed. The aroma may also prevent mental decline as you grow older. Lavender can help you sleep. In a study of 42 college women, researchers found that the fragrance effectively eased sleep problems and depression. Cinnamon makes you smarter. Participants in a study who took a whiff of cinnamon improved in cognitive functions like visual motor response,

Starting point is 00:03:13 working memory, and attention span. Citrus, the smell of citrus, is a pick-me-up. Simply sniffing lemons and oranges can help boost energy and alertness. Vanilla elevates your mood. Researchers found that taking a whiff of vanilla bean elevated participants' feelings of joy and relaxation. And peppermint improves concentration. Smelling peppermint could be linked to greater cognitive stamina,

Starting point is 00:03:42 motivation, and overall performance. Known for invigorating the mind, peppermint has even been used as an aid for students when taking tests. And that is something you should know. When you want something that someone else has, you negotiate to get it. That's how it all works. We do it all the time, at work, at home, when you buy a car, you negotiate. It may not always feel like a negotiation, but it is.

Starting point is 00:04:14 So how good you are at negotiating really matters. And here to make you better at it is Alexandra Carter. She is a clinical professor of law and director of the Mediation Clinic at Columbia Law School, and she spent the last several years helping thousands of people negotiate better, build relationships, and reach their goals. She's the author of a book titled Ask for More, 10 Questions to Negotiate Anything. Welcome to Something You Should Know. Thanks so much for having me. It's great to be here. I think a lot of people look at negotiating as a game, a game they're not particularly good at, and so they don't like playing it because they're not very good at it. And it can get messy,

Starting point is 00:04:59 and it's just something we'd rather not do. How do you look at it? A lot of people, and this used to include me, think that it's just a back and forth over money, and they can only negotiate well if they're senior business people or politicians, or if they're the biggest, most aggressive person in the room. And that's the only kind of person who can really negotiate well. And I wanted to let people know person who can really negotiate well. And I wanted to let people know that negotiation really is for everybody. And whether you're a management

Starting point is 00:05:32 consultant, a mechanic, or a mom, you too can feel really confident doing it. Yeah, I like that biggest person in the room thing, because I think there is a lot of intimidation, at least in people's perception about negotiation. The guy that can, you know, swing around in the room and be big is the person who often wins. Totally. You know, and let me just tell you, I'm never the biggest person in the room. In fact, I'm 5'2 in sneakers. They don't even see me coming. And what I want people to know is there's a different way that you can be an excellent negotiator. You don't have to go through life settling for less just because you're not the biggest, most aggressive person in the room. You can be really, really excellent at negotiation simply by asking the right questions.

Starting point is 00:06:27 Well, before we get into the specific questions, I imagine there's something of a mindset that you approach. Like what's the goal? What are you trying to do with these questions to get where you want to go? It's really simple. Negotiation is just about steering relationships. It's about teaching people how to value you from the first conversation you have all the way through the money conversations and beyond. And the other thing about steering relationships is, you know, what's the most important relationship of your life? It's the one you have with yourself. And I find that that is where negotiation has to start. You know, a lot of people think it starts from the moment you sit down with somebody else, and that's too

Starting point is 00:07:16 late. You know, it starts by sitting down with yourself and asking the right questions so that you go into that negotiation with power. Power is actually not about bluster or aggression. Power is about knowledge. And the more you know about yourself and about your situation by raising the right questions, the more I have seen people go in and perform with tremendous confidence. So let's talk about the 10 questions that you suggest people ask in a negotiation. The first five questions are what I call the mirror

Starting point is 00:07:52 questions. And those are ones, as the name would suggest, where you are asking yourself. And it's five great questions that you can do in 30 minutes or less to really give you that incredible clarity and peace and perspective that you need when you're going in. And then the second five questions are the window questions. And those, you know, for your listeners, if anybody has ever gotten in a room with somebody else or sat down and blanked on what they wanted to say, you're never going to do that again, because you're going to have at your fingertips say, you're never going to do that again, because you're going to have at your fingertips, five great questions that are going to produce a lot of value in any conversation you have. So it's mirror and window.

Starting point is 00:08:35 And so let's, let's talk about some of the specific questions, starting with the mirror questions. What, what are they? A lot of times people assume, because I coach a lot of folks in negotiation, they assume that they need to start with the solution. You know, let's say you're sitting down with a contractor to talk about a bathroom renovation, and they think they should just go in and start talking about the numbers. That is not the question you need to ask. The first place to start every negotiation is asking this question, what's the problem I want to solve? We always have to start by thinking about what it is that

Starting point is 00:09:12 we're actually trying to accomplish. Let's take the bathroom, right? So let's say, for example, the problem you're trying to solve is that you're renovating your bathroom because you're going to sell your house. That is one set of decisions, right? Maybe you're putting stuff in there that you think other people will like. Or are you renovating the bathroom because you're going to live there for the next 30 years? Or maybe even that your spouse had an accident and you need wheelchair access. In that case, thinking about the problem you're trying to solve, all of your decisions flow from that. So whether you're talking to your child about screen time in the home or whether you're negotiating for more salary, what's the problem I want to solve is the first question you should ask. Great. So give me another one of the mirror questions.

Starting point is 00:10:00 You know, a lot of times, especially during times of uncertainty or crisis, we're facing a situation and we're anxious about it. You know, maybe we're trying to negotiate for flex time, you know, or child care as, you know, companies return to work. Or maybe we've got issues in the home. And here's a question that I find helps people to gain that confidence. And the question is, how have I handled this successfully in the past? This is a great question to ask before you go into any conversation for two reasons. The first is that simply asking the question acts as what we call a power prime. What does that mean? It means that simply by recalling a previous success before you go in

Starting point is 00:10:46 to negotiate, you are proven to perform better. There's been research to demonstrate it. The second reason to ask this really powerful question is that oftentimes when we look back at a prior success, this is a data generator. If we write down in detail strategies that we've used before, chances are that at least one of those is going to work for us again. Now, I just want to answer a question that some of your listeners may be thinking, which is, you know, Alex, I've never dealt with coronavirus before, you know, or I've never been through this kind of a pandemic. And that's fine. None of us has. But I'm willing to bet that a lot of people have been through this kind of a pandemic. And that's fine. None of us has. But I'm willing to bet that a lot of people have been through situations before where they had to pivot and adapt.

Starting point is 00:11:32 Maybe it was 2008. Maybe it was another time, you know, in your business or in your life when you went through a time of uncertainty. And so even if it's not exactly like this situation, look at something similar, write down what you did, and I know you're going to find something to help you here. All right. And so now you're primed and ready to go. You've done your inward thinking, and now you're going to go start negotiating with the other guy.

Starting point is 00:12:00 And the first question I'm going to tell you that people should ask on every occasion, it's kind of a trick because it doesn't have a question mark on it at all. It's two magic words, and those words are, tell me. You know, it's amazing to me that even as a conflict resolution expert and professional, a few years into my work, I was still coming home and asking my spouse or my child questions like, did you have a good day? And when you ask somebody a question like that, whether it's an employee or somebody in your home, what's the answer that you're going to get? Usually it's a, huh, yeah, okay. You don't get a lot from that question. Similar to when you go in, let's

Starting point is 00:12:46 imagine you're going to ask for more salary. And your first question is, can we increase me by 10%? Again, what are the possible answers to that? It's a yes or no. And when you ask somebody a yes or no question, what's the easiest thing for them to answer? No. And so I want you to change that question. I want you instead to ask questions that start with, tell me. Tell me how we can work together to get my compensation to the level that this position demands. Tell me what I need to do to demonstrate to you that I'm ready for the next level of management. Or even at home, you know, tell me, I've noticed you've been on your screens a lot today. Tell me more about what that's doing for you. You know, it sounds crazy, but that kind

Starting point is 00:13:39 of question, even with a child, produces so much more information than you would get by asking a closed question. When I learned how to start my conversations with tell me, I made more deals, I had better relationships. And to be honest, you know, it affected even just the amount of, you know, peace and happiness I felt every day. Wow, that's pretty powerful. I'm speaking with Alexandra Carter. She is author of the book, Ask for More, 10 Questions to Negotiate Anything. Metrolinks and Crosslinks are reminding everyone to be careful as Eglinton Crosstown LRT train testing is in progress.

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Starting point is 00:14:48 What about hello, handsome? Who knew you could give yourself the ick? That's why Bumble is changing how you start conversations. You can now make the first move or not. With opening moves, you simply choose a question to be automatically sent to your matches. Then sit back and let your matches start the chat. Download Bumble and try it for yourself. So, Alex, when people talk about negotiating, it seems we're typically talking about money,

Starting point is 00:15:17 how to pay less for something or how to get more out of someone. But I know you have examples of times when, yes, the money's important, but there are other things to work into the equation. So the first time I ever negotiated for a speaking gig, I was a fairly young professor, and somebody approached me. It was the dad of one of the little babies that my daughter played with. And he said, we'd love to bring you in. So I negotiated with them. This was my first time. And pretty quickly, I maxed them out on the money. And I was convinced that they had given me all they could. And so instead of seeing this as

Starting point is 00:15:58 a win-lose, right, either I need to get more money or this deal is done, I said, okay, tell me more about the event. They gave me a bunch of information and I said, all right, here's what we're going to do. So you're going to pay me this fee, which is under market, but I'm going to do it if you can get me this. You've told me you have a professional photographer. I would like you to have that person take pictures of me with your company logo in the background while I'm on stage and give those to me to use for my portfolio. I'd also like to know a very senior department head who's willing to serve as a reference for me for my future engagements. The value of those additional

Starting point is 00:16:37 things turned out to be not only more than the difference between what they paid me and market value. But I went on to generate probably 50 times that in all of the referrals that I got from that one deal. So they got what they needed, which was a great speaker at an under market price. And I got what I needed. When you negotiate from your needs, you can create that mutual win. After you ask the tell me question, what's another one? So I think I just previewed it. But one of the questions I love is, what do you need? You know, I think a lot of times people assume that they have to come in. It's not just us. Sometimes the person on the other side assumes that they're going to have to come in with a full suit of armor and demand, demand, demand. When we ask people what they need, this question has an

Starting point is 00:17:32 amazing way of kind of cutting through, you know, some of the BS that you were talking about, even in a situation where it's a car, you know, sale. I've gone in before and said, look, I know you're a human being and I know you're a person who's trying to support your family also. I'm doing the same. So what do you need to get this done? Here's what I need. I've told you my constraints. What do you need to show here to make this workable? And it's amazing how when you do that, it takes down some of the defensiveness and the person actually will, you know, give you a better deal or level with you about what it is they need to show. This can work with a car dealer. It's also great if you're working with a landlord during coronavirus. You know, asking them what they need, landlords have needs too.

Starting point is 00:18:28 They may need not to have evictions. They may need to show occupancy. They may need to have some cash coming in the door, even if it's not the full amount of the rent. And so when you ask somebody what they need, you get the keys to the kingdom so that you can then, again, find that target and hit it for a mutual win. One of the things that I think people feel they don't have the ability to do in negotiations that they see great negotiators do is keep their emotions out of it. They don't take it personally. You know what I mean? That a really good negotiator is a good negotiator and doesn't let feelings get in the way. Yeah, you know, feelings are really important.

Starting point is 00:19:14 It's interesting because I think a lot of times people assume that they need to make decisions based only on facts. But actually, research shows that for most of us, no matter how calm we think we are, emotions are how we make decisions. You know, advertising executives know this. They know that the way they can get people to spend their time and their money is by appealing to people's emotions. But you're right. We don't want to get in the room and have our emotions get the best of us, right? So that we're not giving our best at the table. So here's how we do that. First, one of the questions in the mirror section asks people basically to write down how they feel, because I found that if you're feeling anxious and you write that down, if you're feeling angry at somebody and you write that down, you know, if you grapple with it before you get in the room, rather than pretending you don't have emotions,

Starting point is 00:20:11 you're going to do much better. You'll feel calmer. There's a way in which, you know, writing down what you feel ahead of time helps you release it so that then you can get to the table and you also, you know what to do. We haven't really talked too much about tactics, negotiating tactics that you hear a lot about. And I don't know where you stand and which ones you use, but let me ask you about one. And that is the tactic of walking away. Walking away can be really effective when it comes from the right place. You know, for example, these are times when I might think about walking away. I'm really clear on what I need, and it seems likely that we're not going to be able to

Starting point is 00:20:58 get there, at least for right now. Or, you know, let's say I'm getting what I would call some really unproductive behavior from the other person. You know, I help people resolve conflict in a lot of New York City courts. And so I've seen all sorts of, you know, interesting, quote unquote, offers for how to solve situations. If you get really, really challenging behavior from somebody else, you can also say, you know what, this isn't a productive conversation. And, you know, when you're ready emotionally overwhelmed. And just a last note on that, right now, during, you know, the pandemic, I'm finding that even very rational people can get emotionally overwhelmed. And so sometimes, I don't know that I would call it walking away,

Starting point is 00:21:59 I think I would call it taking a break. Sometimes taking a break and letting somebody sit on something can be really helpful. So I get that. I get the taking a break thing. But I've often heard it argued that the strategy of getting up and walking away is telling the other person, hey, the deal is walking out the door. Maybe you need to change your mind a little bit here. And that it's a tactic to get people to kind of, it's like a slap in the face that the deal's about to end. And that very often, the deal changes. So in other words, you know, saying I'm gonna walk out as a way of communicating the window is closing. My preference would simply be to say, you know,

Starting point is 00:22:48 instead of getting up and storming out, I like to be transparent and let people know what their window is. You know, like we have another couple of days that this proposal can work. And after this time, it's not going to work anymore. Or, you know, I have a limited amount of time today. I've got 10 more minutes. And after that time, you know, I'm going to have to move on to my next meeting. It is absolutely true. You know, what you're talking about is called scarcity. And when people realize that your time or your money is a scarce resource, they may

Starting point is 00:23:24 well be prompted to act. I am not a huge fan of tactics like getting up and walking away from the table. I am a trust negotiator. I have found that when I level with my clients, when I level with the people that I'm negotiating with, when I simply tell them that something won't work for me and we need to try again, or that we're running out of time for one reason or another, if I do that from a place of integrity, I find that not only do I land that deal, but then people know they can trust me and they come back for the next one. And when I say I need something or we're out of time, it's not a tactic. It's the truth. And how do you deal with jerks? I would imagine working in the New York

Starting point is 00:24:12 City court system that you come across the occasional jerk. And that brings with it a whole set of other problems, I suspect, because you're dealing with a big personality problem more than you're maybe necessarily dealing with the problem supposedly at hand. What's your attitude towards morons? You know, everybody is capable of having a bad day, I think is a good way to put it. But you're right. I've dealt with some really challenging behavior. And in fact, in the book, I talk about a situation where somebody said, you know, Alex, I've got an idea for what we can do here today. You can blank my blank. And suffice it to say, he was not suggesting that I read his proposal or water his plants. OK, so we get somebody who's

Starting point is 00:25:03 really made an unproductive suggestion. And my tactic for that is I simply look at the person and say, um, how does blanking your blank help us here today? Right. I've had people say something like, I'm going to flip the table over. And I simply look at them and say, how is flipping the table over going to help you achieve your goals today? Deadpan. I don't react. I keep it calm. And I'm telling you that a lot of the time when I ask people how that unproductive behavior is going to help them reach their goals, they can take a moment and they can recollect themselves.

Starting point is 00:25:40 Sometimes that's enough to bring them back from the brink. But when it's not just a tactic like I'm going to turn the table over, but it's just a jerk in general who says, look, honey, this is how it's going to go. And they try to intimidate you. How do you handle that? How do you respond to, look, honey, this is how it's going to go. I did have somebody call me honey and I simply laughed and said, hey, that's my husband's name for me. So you're going to have to pick another. I use a lot of humor when I'm responding to people. I try, first of all, to stay calm and be the grownup no matter what. And where I need to, I simply revert back to, that's not going to help us here today. What you've told me is, you know, here's what your goals are. And here's what I'm telling you we need to get there. And I repeat and rinse and repeat

Starting point is 00:26:40 as necessary. I stay calm. Sometimes I'll even summarize what they say. If they're going off on a ridiculous rant, I'll say, hold on a second. I just want to make sure I heard you right. And I will repeat some of the ridiculous rant. It's amazing how sometimes when people have left their senses, they hear their own words played back to them And it's kind of sobering. So I stay calm. I summarize. I repeat that that behavior is not going to help them get to the goal that they want. And then if it persists, I simply say, you know, thanks for your time. And when you're ready to have a more productive discussion, give me a call. Well, I admire your thoughtfulness and self-control. I imagine that's come with a lot of practice. I've been speaking with Alexandra Carter. She's a clinical professor of law and

Starting point is 00:27:32 director of the Mediation Clinic at Columbia Law School. And she's author of the book, Ask for More, 10 Questions to Negotiate Anything. And you'll find a link to that book at Amazon in the show notes for this episode. Thanks, Alex. All right. Well, thanks so much. I hope this was helpful. People who listen to Something You Should Know

Starting point is 00:27:53 are curious about the world, looking to hear new ideas and perspectives. So I want to tell you about a podcast that is full of new ideas and perspectives, and one I've started listening to called Intelligence Squared. It's the podcast where great minds meet. Listen in for some great talks on science, tech, politics, creativity, wellness, and a lot more. A couple of recent examples, Mustafa Suleiman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, discussing the future of technology.

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Starting point is 00:30:01 or wherever you get your podcasts. Unless you have a disability that prevents it, one thing I'm sure you're going to do today and every day of your life is walk. It's how humans and a lot of other creatures get around all the time. And you probably don't think a lot about your walking, but it turns out to be pretty fascinating in ways you probably don't realize. Here to fill you in on that is Shane O'Mara. He is a professor of experimental brain research at Trinity College in Dublin and author of the book In Praise of Walking, A New Scientific Exploration.

Starting point is 00:30:45 Hi, Shane. Thank you, Mike. It's great to be here. So you don't have to think for very long about how important walking is to us as individuals and as a society as a whole, but we really don't ever stop and think about it. Perhaps we should. That's absolutely correct. I think walking is one of these things that we overlook in everyday life and we forget or perhaps don't know that it has wonderful effects on our brains, wonderful effects on our bodies and wonderful effects on our society at large. Well, so dive in and tell me how so.

Starting point is 00:31:18 And maybe start with how is walking a benefit to society? How does my walking benefit society at large? So think about walking as opposed to any other mode of transport. If you're on a bicycle, you're traveling at speed, it's hard to catch somebody's eyes. If you're in a car, it's the same kind of thing. Walking allows you or affords you the opportunity to have kind of random interactions with people that you wouldn't otherwise be able to have. And those kinds of things build social trust within society. And societies that have lots of walking tend to be societies where there's a greater degree of

Starting point is 00:31:58 interpersonal trust. Isn't that interesting? Yes, it is. It is quite remarkable. But we shouldn't be really perplexed by this. If we consider how humans came to walk, we're bipedal apes. We're unique in the fact that we walk around on two limbs, on our two legs. But our walking evolved in a social context. We didn't conquer the world when we walked out of Africa, you know, 100,000 or so years ago. One guy with a spear going off into the bush. It was in small migratory tribes. It was in groups.

Starting point is 00:32:35 And we're astonishingly sensitive to the cues that we give off when we're walking. Just a little tidbit for you. One thing that's really remarkable, if you put somebody in a brain scanner and you just play them the sounds of footsteps, the auditory parts of the brain light up, but so too do the social parts of the brain. We're attuned to the noise that others make, whether it signals threat or other things. How did walking come about? I mean, was it just because people have to move and then if you can't move, you can't really exist? I mean, why do we walk the way we walk and how did we get here? So that's one of those enormous questions and it would take quite a while to unpack. So I'll try and give you some quick answers. So let's step back from walking for a moment and ask a question that you've probably never considered, which is, why do you have a brain? Or put it

Starting point is 00:33:31 another way, what problem does having a brain solve for you? So trees don't have brains, hedges don't have brains, and organisms that are stuck in one place like anemones, sea anemones or sea squirts don't have brains. So this gives us a very important clue. Having a brain solves a particular problem and it solves the problem of movement. The reason we have a brain is to get around safely in the world. So we want to find food, we want to find shelter, we want to find mates. We want to avoid predators, all of those kinds of things. And movement evolved in animals in that context all those hundreds of millions of years ago. And it evolved on the ocean floor. We now know, for example, from genetic studies that limbed animals were wandering around on the ocean floor about 400 million years ago. So this is something that reaches deep back into time

Starting point is 00:34:27 and is something that is with us right up to the present. Well, I think it's interesting what you said at the beginning about how it has a social component to it. And when I think back to, you know, not that far long ago, kids walked to school more. There was just more walking. And we also consequently knew our neighbors. And today it's, you know, everybody's driven everywhere.

Starting point is 00:34:55 And we don't know our neighbors. We don't know a lot of people that we would have otherwise known maybe 10, 20 years ago. Yeah, those random conversations that you have when you're on foot, where you meet the familiar stranger every day, those have kind of disappeared. And we have actually engineered walking out of our everyday lives. So if you consider, you know, 120 years ago, so the turn of the 20th century, around 1900, the average working man in London walked somewhere between eight and 12 miles a day. And then cars came along and the world changed. And the average person now in a high income

Starting point is 00:35:34 society walks somewhere around about four and a half thousand steps a day. So really not much at all. Whereas hunter gatherers who are living in South America, for example, or in Africa, walk of the order of about 10 or 12 kilometers a day. And they have astonishingly great heart health as a result. Walking has gotten a bit of a bad rap. It's kind of the low man on the totem pole of exercise. Like you could really exercise, but at least you could walk because if you don't do anything, just walk around the block

Starting point is 00:36:11 because it's something. It's not much, but it's something. Yeah, absolutely. So again, some movement is better than no movement. We know this for certain. And more movement, again, is better than some movement.

Starting point is 00:36:24 So we should be moving much more than we are. Now, if you're exercising or using walking to exercise, well, really, you need to be walking at quite a clip, you know, sort of at a speed that causes you to have difficulty talking to another person, having difficulty listening to a podcast. So sort of, let's say, five and a half to six kilometers an hour, something of that kind of order. You should be breaking into a kind of a light sweat and you should be doing that for about 30 minutes, four or five times a week, minimal. Walking is the form of movement that we evolved to engage in from very early in life, from around

Starting point is 00:37:04 about a year, a year and a half of age, all the way through to our 80s and 90s. And we're capable of cranking out 12, 14, 15,000 steps a day, every day, more or less, with ease. And this has really positive feedback effects on the brain and body at large. And it's that kind of movement that I think we really need to try and capture back into our lives again. And so what are those benefits to our brain and body? So there's what we should think about really is kind of two ways of thinking about how the benefits arise. So when you decide to walk, there's a feed forward signal, a command signal comes from the brain instructing your limbs to get up and get moving. And when you walk, you get feedback

Starting point is 00:37:52 signals. So molecules are produced that come back in, that circulate freely in the brain and body that benefit the functions of both. So when you're moving, your senses are sharpened, your acuity for hearing, for example, goes up a little, your vision improves a little, and you're exercising parts of the brain that were previously quiet, which really do need regular outings. So one of the problems, of course, that happens with aging is frailty and loss of balance. And we now know through many studies that actually one of the easiest ways to overcome the problems of frailty and loss of balance as you get older is literally to put on your shoes and get lots of walking in over surfaces that are a little bit demanding, that require you to rebalance yourself consistently. And by the

Starting point is 00:38:47 same token, getting out and moving stops blood pooling in the kind of lower extremities in the limbs. And you get these wonderful molecules known as myokines, which are molecules produced by muscle cells that help build the blood vessels of the body and also help build the fabric of the brain. Is walking walking? I mean, can you improve? Can you get better at it? Do we just get better naturally because we walk a lot or could we get better at it? You do, of course, get better at it. You got better at it as you transitioned from being on four limbs at the age of 10 or 11 or 12 months. And what we know is that when infants first start to walk, they're quite clumsy, but they make what's called an obligate transition. You know, you just do this. You don't have to be trained to walk. The genes in your spinal cord and other

Starting point is 00:39:46 parts and in the brain make this demand of you. And when you start to walk at first, you are not very good. You fall regularly. We know from studies of infants learning to walk that they fall as many as 17 times an hour and that they walk maybe 2000, 3000 steps an hour. So this is something that is intensely demanding on you. And you don't become a skilled walker at that age until you've put in something like six months or so of continuous practice. And if you're frail, for example, if you've ended up in hospital and you've ended up in your back for a long time. You lose some of the ability to walk. Some of your muscular control is gone. You lose muscle volume. You lose muscle strength. And you have to build that back up again. So this is one of the jobs of rehabilitation after surgery

Starting point is 00:40:39 is to get you moving in a way that allows you not to fall over when you're moving. Well, one interesting change in the way people walk today is a lot of people walk while their neck is bent looking down at their phone. Absolutely. And of course, there were lots of scare stories about people stepping off the edge of the sidewalk and getting hit by cars and things like that at first. But what we now know actually quite remarkably is that with a little bit of practice, your peripheral vision actually improves when you're walking around like that. And there's a really easy way to demonstrate this. If you ever fly through Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam, They've done something really clever. In the old part of the airport where the railway station is, they have metal pillars or iron pillars that are,

Starting point is 00:41:31 I guess, 100 or so years old. And walkers were kind of bumping into these. So they've put tiles that reflect a little flanking these pillars. And people catch them in their peripheral vision while they're walking and they don't bump into them anymore. What's happening is you're training your peripheral vision. If you focus your vision on this thing that's sitting in your hand, that's quite a dangerous thing to do. So the brain, being a clever device, kind of reallocates a little bit of attention to your peripheral vision so that you can engage in a collision avoidance.

Starting point is 00:42:10 What is it about walking that you think is most interesting to you? What do you find really fascinating that maybe people don't know about walking? Let me pick on two areas. One is that walking is possibly the most effective boost to creativity that we know of. So psychologists are clever and a little bit evil. So when they want to test your creativity, they bring you to the lab and they hand you a succession of objects. That might be a writing pen, it might be paperclip or whatever it happens to be. And they tell you, come up with as many uses for this object as you can in the next 30 seconds. And you might come up with seven or

Starting point is 00:42:51 eight uses. And they give you a succession of these. And what you find is that people vary in their ability to come up with what are called alternative uses. And people who engage in what's known as knowledge work, so work with your brain rather than with your hands, tend to be very good at these kinds of tasks. However, if instead of just getting people to do the task, you get them to walk for eight or 10 minutes beforehand, what you find is that the number of alternative uses that people generate about doubles, which is really quite something. And there's also another remarkable effect. It works independent of age. So a very clever group in Japan conducted exactly this experiment, which had originally been done on college students, and they did it in elders, so people in their 70s, and compared them with a group in their 20s. And what they found was that the people in their 70s who went

Starting point is 00:43:53 for a 10 minute walk before generating the alternative uses came up with about twice as many ideas as the seated 20 year olds. So it gives a boost to creative idea production. And I think we kind of know this, actually, because, you know, if you've got a difficult problem to solve, go for a walk. We kind of know that it's a good way of focusing our thoughts around the thing that we want to solve. So that's one thing I'd say. So the other area I point to is that walking and mental health are remarkably tied up together in ways that people take every day over 8, 10, 12 years and the likelihood that, for example, they might succumb to major depressive disorder, which is a really terrible problem, particularly in the Western world. And one recent study, for example, of about 35,000 Australians showed that the risk of succumbing to major depressive disorder in a

Starting point is 00:45:06 group without psychiatric impairment, so they are not starting with any psychiatric problems, falls by about 12 or 15 or so percent in the people of a hidden benefit to taking extra steps every day in terms go walk to, you know, kind of reset my brain. Yeah. And there's a lot of wisdom in that phrase. People, I think, don't quite appreciate just how good a walk will make them feel. Again, lots of other studies have shown if you can put some nature into the walk, some trees, some plants, watercourses, a little bit of wildlife, even if it's just insect life or something like that, or bird life, that improves how people feel again, even more. What do we know, if anything, about the difference between

Starting point is 00:46:21 walking outside and walking on a treadmill. This is one of these interesting paradoxes. We know an awful lot about the physiology of walking from treadmills. So you can bring people in, you can split the treadmill belt, you can make one leg run a little bit oddly compared to the other. You can hook people up to electrodes and things like this. So we know a lot about that. and we've learned an awful lot about how the spinal cord controls movement and all these other things um but what we know for sure is that getting people to walk outdoors in nature where they're actually feeling um nature on their faces whether it's the sun the rain the wind or whatever, and where they can see other life around them.

Starting point is 00:47:06 That has a marked effect in terms of how good they feel in the moment. So there's little doubt that walking is good for you, even if it is on a treadmill. If you can't get any other form of walking in, please do that. But if you want to get an extra buzz, get outdoors, put your coat on if you have to or whatever, you'll feel the benefit of it. You said at the beginning of our conversation that, and I think this is important, that the kind of walking you do matters, that in other words, taking kind of a leisurely stroll is not going to give you

Starting point is 00:47:46 the benefits of a brisk walk. Yes, certainly for heart health. But I think we should be thinking about walking in terms of different types of walking and the purpose that you're engaging in for that kind of walking. So I do a lot of writing, for example, by dictation and I do it out and walking and I dictate from bullet points. I can't walk fast when I do that kind of walking. There's social walking. I go out for a walk with a friend or go out for a walk with my family, which is, again, quite a different type of walking. And then there's walking with purpose to the shops to pick up food or whatever it happens to be. So walking serves lots and lots

Starting point is 00:48:30 of different purposes. And it would be nice if we had lots of different words for these things, but I don't think we really do. I think we kind of have to think about, you know, walking for problem solving, walking for social purposes or for social engagement, walking because we're going to get food or whatever it happens to be. There's many different

Starting point is 00:48:52 types. And I think intuitively we know this. It's just we I don't think we have good labels for these different types of walking. Well, who knew? And I think it's interesting to talk about something so pedestrian as walking. But there is a lot to it. My guest has been Shane O'Mara. He is a professor of experimental brain research at Trinity College in Dublin. And the name of his book is In Praise of Walking, A New Scientific Exploration. There's a link to the book at Amazon in the show notes. from Norton Antivirus. Don't click on suspicious attachments, especially sites offering free downloads of music, TV shows, or videos that could activate the camera.

Starting point is 00:49:52 Don't keep PCs with webcams in your bedroom and remind family members not to do anything in front of a webcam that they don't want the whole world to see. Secure your wireless connection. Make sure its connection is protected with a unique password. Be really careful about accepting technical help. Would-be hackers have been known to ingratiate themselves with people online, offering help and then rigging the webcam so they can spy through it.

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Starting point is 00:50:48 It takes just a second. It's simply to share it with someone you know. I'm Micah Ruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Do you love Disney? Do you love Top Ten lists? Then you are going to love our hit podcast, Disney Countdown. I'm Megan, the Magical Millennial.

Starting point is 00:51:05 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

Starting point is 00:51:35 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 either. Of course, I'm just a cicada. I'm crying.

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Something You Should Know - SYSK Choice: How to Successfully Negotiate Anything & The Unknown Benefits of Walking

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