Something You Should Know - The Science and Myths of Living Healthy & Negotiation Advice from a Legend

Episode Date: November 9, 2020

What happens if you work hard to build up your FICO credit score but then you make a mistake and miss a payment? This episode begins by explaining what could happen and how to protect yourself from a drastic drop in your FICO score. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/does-one-late-payment-hurt-my-credit-score-11604078238?mod=personal-finance While there is a lot of science about what it takes to live a long and healthy life, there are also a lot of myths and misinformation. Joining me to set the record straight is Graham Lawton. He is a science journalist who has researched the data on what we should and shouldn’t do to stay healthy. Graham is the author of the book This Book Could Save Your Life: The Science of Living Longer Better (https://amzn.to/2I0ZiCJ) Being nice is underrated. Listen as I explain a few interesting examples of how former U.S. Presidents used the power of being nice to their ultimate advantage. Source: Linda Kaplan Thaler, co-author of The Power Of Nice (https://amzn.to/2U07J3r) Even if you don’t like to negotiate you are going to love my conversation with Herb Cohen. Herb is legendary negotiator who has been involved in some very high-profile negotiations over the years. He is also a real character who has some great advice and insight on how you can be a great negotiator. And it isn’t by being smart – it’s more about playing dumb. Listen, you’ll really enjoy it. Herb is the author of a couple of books including You Can Negotiate Anything. (https://amzn.to/3mXUMnj) PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS! 1-800-BUY-DELL https://deals.dell.com/en-us/mpp For the best Dell Black Friday Deals The Jordan Harbinger Show https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-jordan-harbinger-show/id1344999619 https://www.phone.com Promo Code: Something (for 20% off first 3 months) Lampsplus.com/something for up to 50% off https://www.lampsplus.com/?src=verit&mdm=display&cmp=new&trm=pod&cnt=something&sourceid=MEVERITPODSOMETHING HelixSleep.com/sysk (for up to $200 off and two free pillows!) https://helixsleep.com/pages/landing-page?promo=sysk https://monday.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 is 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, what happens to your credit score if you miss a payment

on a credit card? Then, the science of living long and staying healthy. What's true and what isn't true about diet, exercise, social connection, and sleep? The truth about sleep is slightly less clear-cut than people think. I mean, there's a widespread belief that there's an epidemic of sleeplessness, that we all sleep less than we used to, that everyone doesn't get enough sleep, and there just isn't any evidence that that is true. Also, the power of being nice, how a couple of former presidents used it effectively, and how to negotiate better from a true legend in negotiation.

In negotiation, dumb is better than smart. Inarticulate is better than articulate. And you want to train yourself to say, I don't know, I don't understand, help me. All this today on Something You Should Know. Since I host a podcast, it's pretty common for me to be asked to recommend a podcast. And I tell people, if you like Something You Should Know, you're going to like The Jordan Harbinger Show. Every episode is a conversation with a fascinating guest. Of course, a lot of podcasts are conversations with guests, but Jordan does it better than most. Recently, he had a fascinating conversation with a British woman who was recruited and radicalized by ISIS and went to prison for three years.

She now works to raise awareness on this issue. It's a great conversation. And he spoke with Dr. Sarah Hill about how taking birth control not only prevents pregnancy, it can influence a woman's partner preferences, career choices, and overall behavior due to the hormonal changes it causes. Apple named The Jordan Harbinger Show

one of the best podcasts a few years back, and in a nutshell, the show is aimed at making you a better, more informed critical thinker. Check out The Jordan Harbinger Show. There's so much for you in this podcast. The Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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. Hi, and welcome to Something You Should Know. Something I like to remind you from time to time, especially if you're a relatively new listener, is that there are a lot of other episodes of this podcast to listen to.

We are fast approaching episode 500. We're just a few, I think just a few episodes away from episode 500. And you can go back and listen to all the previous episodes. And most of them hold up over time. And I think you'll find them really interesting. So wherever you're listening to this podcast, I invite you to go back and listen to the previous episodes as well. First up today, if you have good credit, even excellent credit, you probably have a high FICO score.

And that's great. There are a lot of benefits to achieving and maintaining a high credit score. So what happens if you make a mistake and miss a payment on one of your credit cards or on your car loan? Well, according to MarketWatch.com, the penalty can be quite severe. It turns out your credit score could drop as much as 180 points, depending on your credit history and the severity of the late payment. And it could take quite a while to get it back.

The overall impact of the late payment diminishes over time and eventually goes away, but it does stay there for quite a while. The better your credit, the more you may feel the sting of that late payment. In fact, that potential 180-point drop is likely to happen to somebody with excellent credit. In other words, the higher the credit score, the farther it has to fall. If you missed your credit payment by a day or so, you probably don't need to worry. In most cases,

lenders and creditors do have a grace period that can range from a few days up to 30 days. You might still get hit with a late charge, but they won't necessarily report it. Still, if you are late with a payment, it's a good idea to call and ask for forgiveness. If it's something you don't do very often, they will probably

accommodate you. And that is something you should know. When you think about taking care of your health, and you probably think about that quite a bit. You likely think about diet and exercise and maybe sleep and social connection, but there is a lot of confusion and misinformation on those topics. So if you want to live a long and healthy life, what does the latest science say to do? Well, that's what Graham Lawton is here to discuss. He's a science journalist who has studied this, and he's author of a book called This Book Could Save Your Life. Hi, Graham. Oh, thanks for having me on, Mike.

Sure. So let's start with diet, and let's start with breakfast. Is, according to the science, is breakfast the most important meal of the day? Breakfast is a really difficult one, and one of the things that we find in nutrition science is that individual people are incredibly different from one another. And one person's meat is another person's poison. So for some people, breakfast is probably the most important meal of the day. For others, not so. I've certainly recently been practicing intermittent fasting, which is a fasting regime where I don't eat for 16 or 18 hours and then have an eating window. And that entails skipping breakfast largely, quit eating about 8 o'clock at night and resume about midday or 1 o'clock in the afternoon.

And I find that really works for me. And I'm a bit wary of the people saying it works for me because anecdote anecdote is not the singular of data but i think when it comes to breakfast i think it's a kind of personal choice some people choose to fast some people feel better when they've eaten breakfast and in this case i think it really is a case of what makes you feel better and healthier is what you should follow and so that's a good example of you are doing intermittent fasting where you stop eating at 8 and you don't eat again until 1 o'clock in the afternoon the next day and it works for you. What does that mean, really good for you for many reasons it helps to maintain decent blood sugar levels it helps to maintain weight and it also cleans out a lot of the kind of gubbins i don't know if that's a word that americans are familiar with but it's a great word i think the kind of

detritus that builds up in people's cells and we know is directly responsible for age-related diseases like diabetes heart, and those kinds of things. So that's the science behind fasting. And the personal take on it for me is that I find that it makes me, it helps me to maintain my weight, which I've always struggled a little bit with, many people do. It gives me a lot of mental clarity, which is again, explicable through kind of evolutionary science. The assumption there is that people who are hungry needed to be mentally clear in order to produce decent hunting strategies. Talk about metabolism. That's one of these words that gets tossed around a lot. And I don't think

people have any idea what they're talking about, where, you know, oh, you've got to, you know, speed up your metabolism or this food speeds it up. So what is it and how do you affect it? Metabolism really is just the sum total of all of the biochemical reactions that are going on in your body at any one time. And people seem to think that it means the digestion of food, and that's part of metabolism, but it's only a small part of metabolism. So I think I'll be very wary of somebody who says you know this food will speed up your metabolism there isn't really any evidence that people have faster or slower metabolisms by which we tend to mean

they burn more energy from their food i mean metabolism is such a broad concept that i don't think it's actually particularly useful in terms of diet and fitness and health and we could talk about small parts of people's metabolism so i could return back to the idea of autophagy which is what um fasting tends to produce that's a metabolic reaction that cleans out old proteins and that's a good thing that's helpful and useful for you and there are probably other tricks that you can pull with your metabolism if you wish. One of them is simply to eat whole foods. We know that ultra processed foods, even lightly processed foods, produce large glucose spikes when you eat them and those are bad for you. They tend to lead to diabetes. They produce

spikes of fat which also tend to produce cardiovascular disease. So yeah, I would be wary of anyone who gives you advice about something to tweak your metabolism unless they give you some more specifics. Well, often you hear that exercise increases your metabolism. True? If you mean it increases the amount of energy that you burn, then definitely true. You have to burn energy in order to exercise. It's kind of a given. But the thing about exercise is it's fabulous. People always say if it was available in pill form, everyone would be taking it. And that is true because exercise really is the route to slowing down the aging process, to staying fit and healthy, having better metabolic health and fitness.

It's not actually a very good weight loss strategy, believe it or not. There's a saying that you can't outrun a bad diet and what tends to happen is people will exercise they burn a lot of energy they feel very hungry and also very virtuous so might kind of reach for that extra slice of cake or another sandwich or whatever and kind of out they completely cancel out all of the calorific gains they've made but that doesn't mean that exercise is not good for you it's extremely good good for most of the organ systems, all of the organ systems in your body, including your brain. But if you want to rely on it to get thin, you also need to go on a diet.

Let's talk about calories, because there was a time when a calorie was a calorie, and then people said, no, it's the carb calories that are really the bad ones, and sugar calories are really bad. But there are still people who say, no, a calorie is a calorie. So what does the science say? Yeah, I mean, from a completely sort of thermodynamic point of view, a calorie is a calorie. But I think it's probably true that different people respond to different calories in different ways, and that's largely down to the gut microbiome so the the bugs they have growing

in their gut some people are have a microbiome that's more efficient at extracting energy from certain foods and less efficient at extracting energy from other foods um and the there's also the fact that calories on food labels are derived from basically exploding the food in a special chamber and finding out how much heat comes off it. Now, that doesn't exactly mimic how our digestive systems deal with calories. So they're not entirely accurate food labels, but within reason, they're not far off. To a first approximation, they'll tell you how much energy is in the food.

Carbs versus fats versus proteins. Yeah, again, there's some evidence that particularly proteins are a little bit harder to digest, a little bit harder to get the energy out of. So if you're eating your calories in protein form, you're probably getting less calories out of the food than are in it in the first place, if that makes sense. Carbs and fats, we digest quite easily. The difference with those is that carbs will produce a glucose spike in your bloodstream,

fats will produce a fat spike, neither of which are good, but they're bad in different ways. What about alcohol? There has always been this mantra of alcohol in moderation is fine, or maybe a little red wine is okay, might even be good for you. What's the state of affairs with alcohol? I think the definitive word on that came out from the World Health Organization, which is, I know it's an organization that isn't held in particularly high esteem in certain circles in the United States, but it still is the most authoritative global source of health advice. And they essentially concluded that there is no such thing as a healthy dose of alcohol. Now, that doesn't mean you shouldn't drink. There are some

reasons to think that alcohol might be beneficial in small amounts. It can help relieve stress, for example. Red wine definitely contains some compounds that may be kind of antioxidant properties, and maybe we'll get onto antioxidants at some point. Another problem with health, particularly nutrition research, is an awful lot of it is funded by industries that have a stake, that have a skin in the game. And if you look at some of the alcohol research that suggests alcohol is good for you, you can often find the fingerprints of the alcohol industry all over it. So I would take the WHO advice and say that if you want to drink, you need to accept that it's not good for you. But hey, come on, it's worth it. You know, life's too short sometimes to live like a monk.

We hear a lot lately about the importance of sleep and that people don't get enough sleep. It does seem that sleep is really something we need to pay attention to. Absolutely right. But again, the truth about sleep is sort of slightly less clear-cut than people think. I mean, there's a widespread belief that there's an epidemic of sleeplessness, that we all sleep less than we used to, that everyone's terribly busy and doesn't get enough sleep. And there just isn't any evidence that that is true. But the average person needs about seven and a half hours of decent sleep a night to get enough. And having more than that or less than that comes with all kinds of health problems.

Now, people struggle to sleep for all kinds of reasons. People who work on sleep say that it's kind of the pillar, the third pillar of good health alongside diet and exercise. And you have to pay as much attention to your sleep as you do to what you eat and how much you work out. And there's all these kind of sleep hygiene regimes that you should follow to try and get good sleep. And they're kind of well known. They're things like, you know, sleep in a dark, quiet room. Yeah, obviously. Don't use your bedroom as a place to watch movies or to do anything sort of recreational other than what people do in their bedrooms. And if you follow those kind of sleep hygiene regimes you probably sleep better probably feel better and it has knock-on effects too so we know that bad sleep is associated with

some of those other cardiovascular problems diabetes those kind of things as is too much sleep and there are links between too little sleep and obesity and too much sleep and obesity so they're all kind of they're all kind of interlinked with one another. But I think that having talked about, you know, we can't all live like monks, I think if you actually followed all of the sleep hygiene advice, life would become, in many cases, quite tedious. So it's really difficult to follow a really good sleep regime. But I think, you know, ultimately, unless you have some kind of serious insomnia problem,

your body will guide you towards getting the right amount of sleep. And that can include kind of catching up at the weekend, which is not ideal, but it's better than not catching up at all. We are discussing the science behind how to live a long and healthy life. And my guest is science journalist Graham Lawton. The name of his book is This Book Could Save Your Life. 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. People who listen to something you should know 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. That's pretty cool.

And writer, podcaster, and filmmaker John Ronson discussing the rise of conspiracies and culture wars. Intelligence Squared is the kind of podcast that gets you thinking a little more openly about the important conversations going on today. Being curious, you're probably just the type of person Intelligence Squared is meant for. Check out Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts. All right, Graham, so let's switch gears here and talk about the science of weight loss, because losing weight is a big goal for so many people. It's very, very hard. So what does the science say?

Is there one best way to lose weight? Yeah, there is one way to lose weight, and that is to eat less. That's the only way to guarantee. The calories in, calories out equation is rock solid, and you will hear people saying it's not. We've already talked about calories a little bit, but ultimately that thermodynamic equation of energy in versus energy out

is the only thing that can cause you to shed fat, which is basically calories packed around your your middle um there was a big study done a few years ago looking at all kinds of weight loss diets you know atkins diet f plan diet you know you name it they looked at it and what it found was that as long as a diet meant that you ate fewer calories than you burned you would lose weight regardless of the content of the diet. And they concluded from that that it is really all about energy in versus energy out. I agree with you. It's really difficult.

We're surrounded by cheap, delicious, fat and sugar laden food. And, you know, it takes you maybe five seconds to eat as many calories as you would burn if you ran for an hour. So it's very, very easy to tip the equation in the wrong direction. And unfortunately, the only answer really is discipline. What about vitamin supplements? On the whole, just don't. They really are not worth it. There are a few exceptions.

One of them is vitamin D. We know that people, certainly people living at the latitude that I live at in cold, rainy Britain, don't get enough sunshine in the winter to produce vitamin D naturally, and you do need a bit of supplementation. But pretty much every supplement that you can think of actually either doesn't work or is actively dangerous. The details are complicated, but I would recommend if you're interested in taking supplements, certainly avoid multivitamins, certainly avoid vitamin E, which has been linked with cancer. They simply don't work. If you want vitamins, eat whole foods, particularly vegetables. They're full of them, including the antioxidants that people take, which also don't work. If you want vitamins, eat whole foods, particularly vegetables. They're full of them, including the antioxidants that people take, which also don't work.

So yeah, be really wary. I would actually also add that folic acid is definitely something that people who are trying to get pregnant or are pregnant should take. And that's men and women alike, because we know that can prevent neural tube defects, things like spina bifida. So that's one of the ones which gets the thumbs up but most of them are just a waste of money there is that philosophy that it's it's just an insurance policy if i take a multivitamin every day i'm just covering my bases in case my diet is deficient is and that you say is not a valid philosophy

no most of those multivitamins contain vitamin E, which, as I said, oral vitamin E is clearly linked with cancer for reasons that are not particularly well understood. But huge studies have found that people who take vitamin E get more cancer than people who don't. I mean, they also tend to contain iron, which is bad for you to take in supplement format. So yeah, it feels like an insurance policy. But why do you need an insurance policy when you can just eat some fruit and vegetables? What about salt? We hear bad things about salt. Others say, well, unless you have high blood pressure, it's probably not so bad. So how horrible is salt? Salt is pretty horrible. And this actually is a thing that comes up repeatedly. There's a small

kind of vocal group of people largely funded by Big Salt. There's a thing called the Salt Institute, which is actually a very profitable industry organization that likes to promote the idea that the salt scare is overblown. You know, we've heard this kind of stuff before from the tobacco industry and the alcohol industry and so on. science is pretty clear we don't need anything like as much salt as we eat and the more salt we eat the more fluid we retain the higher our blood pressure and the greater the risk of cardiovascular disease so yet again i'm afraid that the the truth as it were is the boring old advice that you will hear uh is to try to cut down on salt now doing that actually is possibly even harder than trying to cut down on salt. Now, doing that actually is possibly even harder than trying to cut down on calories

because as soon as you eat anything that you didn't prepare yourself, you've probably busted your salt budget for the day because processed food is crammed full of salt. It's tasty, it's cheap. Processed food companies put it into their products to make them tastier. And, you know, you really only have to eat

a couple of slices of commercially produced bread, and I'm afraid your salt budget has gone out the window for that day. I mean, another reason for thinking about cutting down on salt is because it causes fluid retention. Most people are carrying around one or two kilos of extra water that they really don't need. So if you're interested in losing a couple of kilos, quite easily ditch the salt. Cook the food yourself.

What about loneliness? It's kind of a little different than most of the other topics, but it does play a role, yes? Yeah. I mean, loneliness is actually considered to be one of the most neglected public health problems in the world. And I haven't seen any recent research on it, but I imagine it's probably got much worse with lockdowns and social distancing and so on with the pandemic and yeah humans are evolved to be a social species and we require social interaction it's not a nice to have it's a must-have for human well-being particularly mental health and people who are lonely tend to have worse health than people who smoke. It's been compared to kind of having a 20 or 30 a day cigarette habit.

That's how bad it is for you to be lonely. I mean, again, there are kind of obvious ways to try and combat loneliness, which is reach out to people, try and maintain a kind of healthy social networks. It's not always possible. And I accept that some people are kind of chronically lonely. But yeah, it's one of those things that people neglect, or they assume that it's people just kind of like bellyaching about being lonely, but it's a genuine health problem. And it's getting worse. And it's particularly bad in Western countries where people spend an awful lot of time on social media, which is a pretty poor substitute for actual social interaction, or they watch TV. What's the latest on red meat? People, you know,

take a lot of pride in saying, you know, I don't eat red meat, as if that means that they're healthier. Are they? Yeah, there was a recent sort of U-turn, a bit like the ones that you were mentioning on, I think wine was the one that you picked out, where suddenly red meat, which had been seen as being quite unhealthy, suddenly was claimed to be healthy again. Well, that research turned out to be not particularly well done. And I think, again, the consensus still stands is that red meat is in large quantities, which by which we mean something like more than, say, two burgers a week, is not good for you for various reasons. It's very high in the bad fats. It contains lots and lots of iron-type compounds, which are not necessarily that good for you. I know people take pride in eating red meat as if they're kind of sticking twos up at their kind of health police. But I

think it's worth bearing in mind, again, let's return to the World Health Organization. A few years ago, they had a look at everything that supposedly caused cancer. And they found that very few of the things that supposedly cause cancer in people's diets, that is, are carcinogenic. But the one thing that they could definitely say was carcinogenic was red and processed meat. So processed red meat is particularly bad. Again, I don't think anyone would say never eat red meat. You know, if you eat red meat, you're going to drop dead at the drop of a hat. You're not, but it's not a particularly healthy food in large quantities. If you want to live a long, healthy life, what's the best advice there is yeah so aging is a kind of we understand very well now what's going on in aging but all of the things that happen to you all the

kind of kind of frightening and horrible things can be slowed down by eating well by exercising well by maintaining a decent weight by sleeping well If you follow this kind of anti-aging regime that I've laid out, according to the best science that we have, you will postpone that moment when you unfortunately have to sort of shuffle off. Because aging is a malleable process. Exercise in particular is really good at retarding aging. One of the reasons that I fast is that fasting is also a pretty well proven anti-aging strategy. So unfortunately, you know, there's that old saying, isn't there, that fasting and exercising won't necessarily make you live forever, but it'll make it feel like that.

But the problem, of course, is that you can live longer, but you get those extra years really late in life when it's nowhere near as much fun as if you had more of your 20s or 30s yeah of course now in aging circles there is no longer a kind of focus on longevity uh on lifespan per se what they all talk about is this thing called health span which is the idea that you get more healthy years so you don't just sort of pile up years at the end of life when you're decrepit and suffering from all kinds of age-related disorders. The idea really is to compress that period of late-life morbidity into the shortest possible period of time so that the idea is that you'll be healthy and fairly youthful up to, say, 80, 85, and then decline quite rapidly

and die. That's really now the goal of anti-aging research. So rather than prolonging people's agony, you prolong their pleasure. Well, this is good information I think people need to hear. And I like the fact that it's coming from you. You're a science journalist. You have no particular axe to grind. You don't come from a particular point of view. You're just investigating and reporting the science. Graham Lawton has been my guest, and the name of his book is This Book Could Save Your Life, and you'll find a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks for being here, Graham. Thanks, Mike. It's been a real pleasure to be on your show. 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. 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. Several years ago, when I first started interviewing people for my radio show, one of the very first interviews I ever did was with a man named Herb Cohen. At the time, he was one of the best

known experts on negotiation, and throughout his career, he has been involved in some very high-profile negotiations, as you're about to hear. And he believes anyone can negotiate just about anything better. Back then, he wrote a book called You Can Negotiate Anything, and that book is still one of the best books out there on negotiation. And he's still going strong. Herb Cohen is a great guy, a real character, and it's a pleasure to have him on the podcast today to talk about negotiation. Hi, Herb. Well, thank you very much. Thank you for having me. So when you say you can negotiate anything, people think of negotiation as being the thing you do with a car and a house and maybe the bigger things in life.

And you say, no, there's other things you can negotiate, which I think people don't even think about. Anything that is the product of a negotiation that comes into being as a result of a negotiation is negotiable. And people have more power than they think they have. And I like to believe there is a lot of injustice in this world. And people can do something about that. In fact, I always believe the door of justice swings open, but only if you're willing to push. I often tell the story about a prisoner being in solitary confinement and you know, when you're in solitary confinement, Michael,

you walk around without a belt or shoelaces and so this guy's holding up his pants and the prisoner desires a cigarette. He knocks on the steel door and the guard swings the slot open and says, well, what do you want? He said, I'd like a cigarette, please. The guard slams the bolt. He comes back and says, I'd like to speak to you. And the guard says, what do you want?

And he said, look, I want a cigarette. And if I don't get a cigarette within one minute, I intend to bang my head up against that stone wall until I'm unconscious. And when they revive me, I intend to tell them you did it. Now, they won't believe me. But ultimately, think about all the hearings you'll be attending, the paperwork you'll be filling out. So I asked the question, can the guy get that cigarette? Probably yes. In other words, people have more power than they realize.

And if you start out thinking that virtually everything is negotiable, it is. And it's simple to believe you've got power and you could impact on your surroundings. And so when you're going to negotiate something that maybe most people don't think of as negotiable, how do you start the conversation? How do you bring up negotiation into a conversation that normally doesn't get negotiated? And maybe using an example would help. First of all, you want to regard negotiation as a game. And that's why I say you want to care about this. You really care, but not that much.

And so you don't fall in love what you're negotiating over. You fall in like, and you recognize you've got options. And so it's a game, and it's best played as a game of addition, not subtraction or exclusion. In other words, you don't want the other guy to be a loser. You want a deal where both of you feel good about it and both of you gain. And that's possible if you see negotiation as something rather simple and take the emotions out of it. And so I always start every negotiations off in a collaborative way, in a congenial manner,

with what I refer to as a low key pose of calculated incompetence. And I tell them if I'm buying, let's say, in a retail store, I really like your item. I appreciate how much time you're spending with me. But unfortunately, I don't have that kind of money. Can you help me? And invariably, the salesperson or everyone you're interacting with tends to help you. Now, are there some people who are ruthless and say, hey, I could take this guy? Yes, there are. And you know what those people do? They invest in the relationship. They spend more time because they think they're going to victimize you. And once people invest, it's hard for them to divest. So I get what you're saying, that you don't want to care too much,

that you don't want to be too wrapped up in whatever you're negotiating. And I also know that you're a big proponent of be prepared to walk away. So talk about that. I don't know whether you remember this. About 25, 30 years ago, General Motors had this Oldsmobile car and they had the rocket Olds engine. Well, they ran out of rocket Olds engines, so they decided quietly to put Chevrolet engines in this Oldsmobile car. When the public found out about it, the consumers who bought the car, they were very upset.

And it was a big class action lawsuit, And it went on for a couple years. And finally, I was brought in to try to settle it. And I'm sitting there with the plaintiffs on one side of the table. This is at the Hyatt House in Chicago. And all of General Motors' big wigs were on the other side. So they were saying, you know, they didn't like my attitude because I was taking this hard line. And one of the people who represented GM said, you know, we're a pretty big company, not just our company, but our suppliers, and you'll never work for General Motors again. At this point, I stood up, and I remember saying, I'm 60 years of age. And when I look back on my life, I could say it was a good life. I have a wonderful wife and nice children, and things have been good for me. I make a living, and I have nice friends.

And so if I die tomorrow, even though I've never negotiated a deal or worked for General Motors, I could still say it's a good life. So I don't really care. At this point, I sat down at the table. The General Motors spokesman said, okay, we offer you $20 million. In other words, I, in effect, said I have other options. I care, not that much. I'm prepared to walk away. And that's how you want to see negotiations. Have you ever been in a negotiation where somebody walked away from you? Many a time. Concessions and agreements occur in proximity to a deadline. And so very often, you know, I am calm at the deadline. I've had these people, they close their briefcase, their books, they're packing up, they're leaving.

And I turn to them and I say, now that it's over, where did I go wrong? What could I have done? What should I have done? Help me. These guys think it's over. I'll tell them. And they tell me, well, if you took this approach or that approach, and so you know what I do? I take this approach or that approach. And so I resurrect deals that have already gone down. Breakdowns are potential breakthroughs. Every exit is an entrance someplace else.

And so I don't despair. You said in the beginning that you more or less play dumb, that you pretend you're not that bright. And I think most people will go into a negotiation armed with all the information that they know everything. Well, that's a mistake. See, in negotiation, dumb is better than smart. Inarticulate is better than articulate.

And you want to train yourself to say, I don't know. I don't understand, help me. Think, who are the best negotiators in our culture? Probably it's children. Children are little people in a big person's world. They are people without formal authority, yet they seem to get what they want. Now, how do kids do it? Number one, they aim high. Kids expect more, and they know if you expect more, you tend to get more, and so they make unreasonable demands. The second thing that kids do is they understand that no is an opening bargaining position. And so they tend to persist. No means no right this second.

And I'll ask 20 minutes later. You have been negotiating for a long time and you are considered one of the experts on the topic and one of the best negotiators around. So talk a little bit about some of the negotiations, the high profile negotiations that you have personally been involved in. We have one treaty that has held up with Russia or the Soviet Union, and that's long him on that negotiation. The Soviet Union had like 500 missiles. Each one could blow up the planet. And we had like 2,700. This was, by the way, in 1985. I negotiated that. I gave President Carter advice on the Iran hostage crisis. And people say afterward, you should have listened to me. And I understood the Iranians. See, one of the things you want to do is get into the world of the other side.

You want to try to see things the way they see it, because we don't see things as they are. Each of us see things as we are. I was one of the people involved in setting up the FBI's hostage negotiating program. I was involved in the NFL football players strike. I work for the then NFL Players Association. So what is your advice strategically when you're negotiating with somebody? At what point do you feel comfortable asking for what you want? This is what I want. I start out having an objective in mind. And the objective is generally quantifiable, specific, precise. It's measurable. So very often I'm surprised that I could do better than my objective. But people should always set objectives, always should

set goals. Because if you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there. In fact, if you don't know where you're going, you can never get lost. And if you don't know where you're going, when you get there, you're not even sure you're there. So I generally have an objective in mind. I'm willing to use time and I'm willing to recognize that sometimes dumb is better. I realize that the most effective negotiations are in person. And so I could personalize the situation. The worst negotiations are via email or anything where you can't see the person to get feedback. So the second best thing after in-person negotiations is to negotiate on the phone.

Then I try to differentiate my offer from other people. For example, I once went to buy a condo in Vail. We saw this condo, and it was $600,000. They already had two offers for $600,000. And they already had two offers for $600,000. And so I said, you know, to my wife, I'll get this for less. She said, how could you do that? I said, I'll show you. So I offered, I think, like $580,000.

And they said, please, Mr. Cohn we avail uh we don't haggle or chisel here at Vail so what I did was I changed my offer I still offered 580 only the other people's often was subject to their obtaining a mortgage at a certain rate within a certain period of time so i offered 580 cash right on the head i'll pay you No mortgage, no conditions, you know, and they took it. I got it. And the next week I spent my time running around the banks because I didn't have any cash trying to get a loan. And I did get a loan. And ultimately, I had that condo for about 30 years. When you talk to people or you watch other people negotiate and watch mistakes they make, what advice can you give that maybe people don't think about that would make them a better negotiator?

What people should learn to do is ask more questions rather than give answers. Listen more, you know, rather than talk. When people tell you things, take notes. Now, individuals say to me, I'm dealing with idiots. I don't want to take notes. But it's very effective because that so-called idiot sees you writing down what he said and he's appreciative it's like you're the first guy that's ever written down anything he ever said so you really improve the climate see the key thing to negotiating is how you do it how is more important than what so that's the key nugget I would pass along. Your approach. And I continually use what I call

the magic words of negotiation. These are words that three letters, no big deal. And the first one is spelled H-U-H and it's pronounced, huh? And the second one is W-H-A. There's no T on this, and it's pronounced, and I integrate the two. Oh, wow. And instantly, you find that the other side relates to you. In other words, one of my strategies in life is to make people feel superior to me. In some cases, I concede you have to work very hard.

But nevertheless, this is a game. Have fun. Well, if I'm going to take advice on how to be a better negotiator, I'm going to take it from you. You've been doing this a long time, and you sure seem to know what you're doing. Herb Cohen has been my guest. He is a legendary negotiation expert, and the name of his book, he's got several, one is called You Can Negotiate Anything, and there's a link to that book at Amazon in the show notes. Thank you, Herb. Thanks, Mark. Bye-bye. sometimes gets a bad rap. But it shouldn't, because being nice has real benefits, according to Linda Kaplan Thaler, who is author of a book called The Power of Nice,

and she has been a guest on this program. She points out that a couple of former U.S. presidents used the power of nice to be successful. For example, in the Revolutionary War, when Americans captured British soldiers, to be successful. For example, in the Revolutionary War, when Americans captured British soldiers, George Washington made sure that the prisoners were treated like kings. His soldiers thought he was crazy,

and he said, no, you don't understand. These prisoners are the future citizens of the United States. And that's exactly what happened. Those prisoners were treated so well that many ended up coming over to our side and staying here. Letting someone else take credit for

your ideas might sound like you're being too nice, maybe even a doormat, but President Harry Truman once said you can accomplish anything in your lifetime as long as you're willing to not worry about who takes credit for it. Being nice can usually get you a lot further in life than being a jerk.

And that is something you should know. I hope if you enjoyed this podcast, you will subscribe if you don't already and share it with someone you know so they too can enjoy it. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Welcome to the small town of Chinook, where faith runs deep and secrets run deeper. In this new thriller, religion and crime collide when a gruesome murder rocks the isolated Montana community. Everyone is quick to point their fingers at a drug-addicted teenager, but local deputy Ruth Vogel isn't convinced. She suspects connections to a powerful religious group.

Enter federal agent V.B. Loro, who has been investigating a local church for possible criminal activity. The pair form an unlikely partnership to catch the killer, unearthing secrets that leave Ruth torn between her duty to the law, her religious convictions,

and her very own family. But something more sinister than murder is afoot, and someone is watching Ruth. Chinook. Starring Kelly Marie Tran and Sanaa Lathan. Listen to Chinook wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Jennifer, a founder of the Go Kid Go Network. At Go Kid Go, putting kids first

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