Something You Should Know - The Science of Persuasion & Understanding How the World Works

Episode Date: May 28, 2020

Some days it is just hard to get up and get going. So this episode begins with some interesting ways to get motivated and accomplish your goals on those days. All these strategies I discuss have been scientifically researched. http://www.purewow.com/wellness/time-management-tips-for-procrastinators If you would like to be more persuasive, you really need to hear what James Crimmins has to say. James has spent his career in advertising and the world of persuasion. He has a unique definition of what persuasion is and discusses the science that anyone can use to help get people to do what you want. James is the author of the book 7 Secrets of Persuasion (https://amzn.to/2LVqf97) If you own land, how far down do your rights extend – and how far up in the sky. Listen as I explain how much of the earth and sky is yours. http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/3216/how-far-down-do-property-lines-go Would you consider yourself “globally literate”? To be globally literate is to understand how the world works, who the key players are, where the trouble is and who the troublemakers are. Someone who can help you be a lot more globally literate is Richard Haas. He has advised 4 U.S. presidents and is currently the president of the Council on Foreign Relations. He served as the senior Middle East adviser to President George H. W. Bush, as director of the Policy Planning Staff under Secretary of State Colin Powell, and as the U.S. envoy to both the Cyprus and Northern Ireland peace talks. A recipient of the Presidential Citizens Medal, the State Department’s Distinguished Honor Award – and he is author of several books – his latest is big best seller called The World: A Brief Introduction. (https://amzn.to/36uddsH). Listen as he explains – how the world works. 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. We'll be right back. The usual definition of persuasion is convincing by means of reasoned argument. But a much better definition would be getting people to do what you'd like them to do. And reasoned argument is rarely the way to get someone to do what you'd like them to do. Also, if you own land, just how far down into the ground do you own?

And understanding how the world works and why it's so hard to solve the world's problems. Things don't always have to get that much better, and our criteria for judging what we do in the world shouldn't be whether we necessarily solve situations. Sometimes it's enough to keep a bad situation from becoming a terrible one. 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. Hello. Welcome to Something You Should Know. Something I've noticed in myself since we've been in this coronavirus lockdown mode for some time, that some days, and I guess it's because every day kind of runs into every other day and every day is kind of the same, but some days it's just hard to get motivated to get going, to do the work you're supposed to do. You know that feeling you're ready to start a project and then all of a sudden you go have a cup of coffee or you go clean the kitchen or whatever. So how do you stop procrastinating and get on with what you have to do?

Well, here are some suggestions. First, surround yourself with color. Color psychology and visual cues can actually play a big role in motivating behavior. A study published by Frontiers in Human Neuroscience found that red, for example,

has been shown to increase attentiveness. And a separate study by the University of British Columbia found that blue can boost creativity. Take a shower. It's hard to explain why, but research proves it works. It's comparable to cleaning off your workspace, except you're cleaning off yourself, ready to start anew. Hang out with doers.

Not that you can right now, but when you can, you should hang out with doers because being around people who get things done will rub off on you. And get up earlier. Knocking off a few tasks first thing in the morning is positive reinforcement and gets your momentum going. And that is something you should know. I love the topic of persuasion. It's so interesting to me how some people are so persuasive

and other people are not. What is it that those people have that gets people to do whatever they want? Can we all learn to be more persuasive? that those people have that gets people to do whatever they want. Can we all learn to be more persuasive? Here with a scientific approach, as well as some really good advice on how to be more persuasive, is James Crimmins. He spent his career in advertising and the world of persuasion, and he's author of the book, The Seven Secrets of Persuasion. Hi, James. Hi, James.

Hi, Mike. Thanks for having me. So I sometimes think that persuasive people are just gifted that way, that there's something they have. It's kind of an indefinable quality that makes them persuasive. But apparently, as you say, there's more science to it than that. There is a lot more science to it than most of us tend to believe. We've discovered largely in the last 40 years that we have two ways of thinking. One is often called thinking slow and the other thinking fast. Thinking slow is conscious and deliberate

and great for all those things that evolution didn't prepare us for, like finding a way in a strange city or learning a language, new language as an adult, or multiplying 35 times 74. All of those things take heavy concentration, and we think slowly in doing them. The other way of thinking is fast and automatic, much more intuitive. Then it's also non-conscious and remarkably powerful. The key in persuasion is the second mental system, the non-conscious mental system,

because strange as it seems, all of our decisions are heavily influenced by that non-conscious mental system. So in order to be a good persuader, one has to be able to understand how to influence the non-conscious. Is it just a matter of knowing the right buttons to push, the right tactics, has to be able to understand how to influence the non-conscious. Is it just a matter of knowing the right buttons to push, the right tactics, or is it deeper than that? Both. It is knowing the right tactics, and there is a certain skill in applying those tactics. The great intuitive persuaders of the past didn't understand exactly why it worked, but they knew how to persuade, like Dale Carnegie of how to win friends and influence people. He knew how to persuade, but he didn't understand the different mental systems. The understanding of the mental systems can make a lot of people better persuaders.

So help me understand them and help me be a better persuader. What can I do to be more persuasive? Okay, well, first of all, you can think about the language of this non-conscious mental system. Non-conscious mental system pays attention to all sorts of things that are different from what our deliberative conscious mental system pays attention to. It pays attention to what pops immediately in the mind. We all put a lot of more faith in what comes immediately to mind, and we like it a little bit better. You can become more persuasive if you can make your option the option you'd like people to take pop in the mind a little more quickly.

Can you give me an example of that? Everything that advertisers do, for example, is to make their brand pop in the mind immediately. So when you win the store, the first thing that jumps into your mind is their brand, and you are a little more positive toward it. This automatic mental system has a hard time distinguishing accuracy from familiarity. So politicians take advantage of this because they know that if they tell a lie and they repeat that lie over and over and over again using the same language, the very familiarity of the lie begins to give it a ring of truth. Another way the non-conscious mental system goes by and that we can all use is that the non-conscious mental system

pays a lot of attention to action and ignores motivation. So you have to pay a lot of attention to how you behave and you don't have to worry so much. The non-conscious mental system won't pay a lot of attention to why you do it. You are what you do regardless of why you do it. If you make a huge donation to a university or hospital, you'll be perceived as a generous person. The non-conscious mental system will ignore the fact that your true motivation might have been to reduce your taxes. A good example of how this worked is the brand Marlboro.

Back in the 50s, and before the 50s, Marlboro was a cigarette for women. It even had, for a while, red tips to mask lipstick smears. And back in the 50s, Marlboro, Philip Morris, made a decision based purely on profit to change things, reposition it, make it a cigarette for manly men. So they changed the package, put it in a flipped-out box, and portrayed it as being the choice of longshoremen and cowboys,

and eventually they committed to cowboys. But it was a purely profit decision. But the automatic mental system ignored the motive and went with the action. The brand appears to be the choice of cowboys. It must be a manly cigarette, and it changed the experience of smoking the cigarette.

On an everyday, day-to-day, when we're trying to convince somebody at work to do something, you're trying to convince your kids to do something, what fundamentally are we doing with persuasion? What is persuasion, and What is persuasion and what is persuasion not? Persuasion is often thought of as trying to change what someone wants. That's not it at all. It's showing people a better way to get something they want. I'll give you an example. You mentioned kids. When our boys were adolescents, they shared a large bedroom that was heated by electric baseboard heat and cooled by a window air conditioner.

And the slightest bit they'd get cool, they cranked up the heat. The slightest bit they got warm, they cranked up the air conditioning, and the electric meter ran like crazy. Our lectures to them about the importance of saving energy went in one ear and out the other. But we found a way to not try to change what they wanted, but try to show them a better way to get something they did want. They wanted an allowance. And we said, well, I'll tell you what, everything we save off our electric bill will give you as allowance. It changed their behavior completely. The bedroom was warmer in the summer and cooler in the winter, and they were thrilled.

We didn't change what they wanted. We showed them how to get something they wanted, and that's exactly how you persuade anyone. When you boil it down to that, boy, it does change the game. It makes you realize that you're probably wasting a lot of time and effort trying to change what people want, rather than help them get what they want. Yes, attitudes are very resistant to change. Actually, it's easier to change the circumstances. So what we do is a result of our attitudes and the circumstances. And the attitudes are often very resistant to change. But circumstances, we're pretty willing to adapt to circumstances.

So you can do something as simple as, let's say, you want to help someone choose a pair instead of a candy bar for a snack. Well, the attitudes toward pairs and candy bars are probably pretty well fixed. They prefer a candy bar over a pear. But you just change the circumstances, not the attitudes. Put the candy bar away in the cabinet, out of sight, out of mind. Put the pear in the middle of the counter. You've raised the probability the pear will be selected as a snack. You haven't changed attitudes at all, but you've changed behavior. And it works for simple things like pears and candy bars.

It also works for serious things like vaccinations for kids. Attitudes about vaccinations are really hard to change. However, if we change the circumstances, we might be able to change behavior. If municipalities go back to requiring a regular series of vaccination, a record of a regular series of vaccinations before the child can attend school, and we make exceptions for religious and philosophical reasons a lot more difficult to get. Parents will have their kids vaccinated. They want those kids to be in school. And the interesting thing is the act of having that vaccination

will actually cause those parents to modify their attitude about vaccinations a little bit. They become a lot more positive about vaccinations than they would be otherwise. It's strange how behavior, in a lot of ways, works backward, and we adopt an attitude that justifies our behavior. Yeah. We're talking about how you can be more persuasive, and my guest is James Crimmins. He's author of the book Seven Secrets of Persuasion.

Hi, I'm Jennifer, a founder of the Go Kid Go Network. At Go Kid Go, putting kids first is at the heart of every show that we produce. That's why we're so excited to introduce a brand new show to our network called The Search for the Silver Lining, a fantasy adventure series about a spirited young girl named Isla who time travels to the mythical land of Camelot. Look for The Search for the Silver Lining on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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. So James, it's pretty clear that people tend not to change.

They don't like new things. But sometimes they do. Sometimes people go for new things, right? Sure. The toughest thing to get people to adopt new is things that are good for them. You got people who are smoking, you want them to stop smoking. Well, how do you do that? That's a challenge because, in lot more people will take the $100. And if I stretch it out a little further, $100 now or $110 in a year, almost everybody would take the $100 now. Smoking is like that. It's a delayed reward. To smoke to not get cancer, the cancer is far from the future

and it's not sure if you're going to get it or prevent it by not smoking. But you can change a delayed reward into an immediate reward by focusing on feelings. Rather than talking about smoking as avoiding cancer, if we talk about quit smoking and you'll feel like a good father who's doing his best to be there for his kids, that's a feeling you can have every time you resist the urge to smoke. It's immediate, it's certain, and it's emotional, whereas the other is delayed, uncertain, and rational. So it seems like we spend a lot of time trying to rationally explain things when what you're pointing out is that that's really not ringing any bells for anybody to explain the features of this or the rational benefits of this. It doesn't do much. Absolutely true.

The usual definition of persuasion is convincing by means of reasoned argument. But a much better definition would be getting people to do what you'd like them to do. And reasoned argument is rarely the way to get someone to do what you'd like them to do. And yet people think that. They think that reasoned argument makes sense, and when you hear that it's what you said, getting people what you want them to do, it sounds very manipulative. It does, but that, in a sense, is the nature of persuasion. In persuasion, you are trying to get someone to do something you would like them to do,

whether it's to vote for your candidate or to stop smoking or to save money for their retirement, whatever the case may be. You would like to encourage these people to do this. And so you are, it is somewhat manipulative. And so be it. The object of persuasion is to change the way people behave. And if you don't want to do that, then no point in participating in persuasion. What is it that you find, or people tell you they find surprising about what the science says? What's the, if there is anything, what would that be? Many things, actually, but one that comes to mind is the ability of expectation to change experience.

We tend to experience what we expect to experience. There's classic experiments I'm sure you're familiar with where scientists looked at the brain activity and preferences of people and where they had the identical beverage, Coke, labeled and Coke unlabeled. And they saw, of course, that people much preferred labeled Coke to unlabeled Coke, even though the beverage was identical. But what was surprising, particularly surprising, when they looked at brain activity, the brain activity was different.

When people took a sip of labeled Coke and a sip of unlabeled Coke, the expectation had the ability to change the chemistry of experience. That's remarkable to be anyway. It's a remarkable thing. So setting up the right expectation for whatever you're about to do can dramatically affect the experience of everybody else. So can you give me an example of how you would set up that expectation in a one-on-one or in a more personal way, how you would set up that expectation so that people got what they expected? Okay, let's say your podcast. If you can talk to people in advance of your podcast, you have a particular guest on, and you explain, boy, I have this guest coming on, and he has very interesting and surprising things to say about

whatever the case may be, when those people listen to that podcast, they will find it more interesting and more surprising because you have let up and given them the right expectation of what they're going to experience. Well, that's exactly what I do. Well, there you go. But it sounds like it's also like on a menu. When the menu description makes this thing sound so amazingly spectacular, you kind of expect it to be.

Absolutely. It does. You can maybe take it a little too far sometimes and overpromise, but by and large, that's exactly right. A menu can do a lot to change the quality of the dining experience. Well, you look at the commercials for fast food hamburgers, and they look so beautiful, and then you go buy one, and it doesn't look anything like that, and it's quite disappointing. Yes, it can be. That reminds me of another aspect. We used to work a lot in fast food, and the fast food manufacturers would spend a lot of time trying to figure out what it is that gets someone to say, yeah, this is one of my favorite,

or recommend it as a place to someone else. They would study this. As they studied it, what they learned was that it was very hard to, if you asked people what was important, they would say, okay, it's quality, and it's price, and it's all the things that one might naturally expect. But when you looked at it, you saw that all of these fast food restaurants appeared to have about the same perception of quality and about the same perception of price, and that those two things did very little to predict which fast food restaurant someone went to. And if they looked further and they saw that often it was something as simple as how the counter people acted,

how friendly they were, how receptive and smiling and courteous and everything else they were. That made a big difference between places and was actually a better predictor of which fast food restaurant you were going to go to. So the things that are most important, this gets to another important fact that people are very poor at saying why they do what they do, because they don't really know why they do what they do, because they don't really know why they do what they do. The Republican voters, when asked in 2016 about what was most important in a presidential candidate, this was back when they had 13 or 14 presidential candidates, they all said, by far,

political experience was the number one most important thing but at the end of the primaries the candidate they chose was the one candidate out of 15 who had zero political experience political experience had nothing to do with their choice people don't know what influences their choice so it's a waste of time to ask them. If you ask them, you are just likely to be misled. You can find out through analysis and observation, but you cannot find out by asking them. So we really should be playing to people's emotions when we're trying to persuade them more than reason, which is basically what you've been

saying all along. Yes. People are far more motivated by how they feel. The way to persuade someone is to talk about the way they will feel when they do what you want them to do. And people will change their behavior on the basis of the feeling they expect to have. Well, it's interesting to listen to you talk because everything you're saying sounds right, and yet how often do we pay attention to that? How often instead do we try to reason people into doing something when, as you point out, it just doesn't work.

James Crimmins has been my guest. He is author of the book, The Seven Secrets of Persuasion. And you'll find a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks for being here, James. Well, thank you, Mike. It was a pleasure talking to you. Hey, everyone. Join me, Megan Rinks. And me, Melissa Demonts, for Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong? Each week, we deliver four fun-filled shows. In Don't Blame Me, we tackle our listeners' dilemmas with hilariously honest advice.

Then we have But Am I Wrong?, which is for the listeners that didn't take our advice. Plus, we share our hot takes on current events. Then tune in to see you next Tuesday for our Lister 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. 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. What a world we live in. And today, as we have all seen from the spread of the coronavirus, what starts or happens in one part of the world can have a profound effect on people in other parts of the world. So it can be nothing but helpful to have a basic understanding of just how the world works, what happens where, and why. In other words, to be globally literate.

Joining me to discuss this is Richard Haass. He is President of the Council on Foreign Relations. He served as the senior Middle East advisor to President George H.W. Bush as director of the policy planning staff under Secretary of State Colin Powell, and as the U.S. envoy to both Cyprus and Northern Ireland peace talks. He's a recipient of the Presidential Citizens Medal, the State Department's Distinguished Honor Award, and he's author of several books. His latest is a big bestseller called The World, A Brief Introduction.

Hey, Richard, welcome. Thank you. Good to be with you. So what does it mean to be globally literate? What does that term mean? It's a term we coined in order to reflect a basic knowledge of the world, how it works, what its importance is. The way I sometimes describe it, it's not fluent in the sense of a language, but it'd be conversant. So to understand the basics of why the world matters, essentially how the operation of the world affects you. And is that more important today than ever, I suspect? I suspect you're right, that it is more important. Look, it's always been important, arguably.

History is about, in part, the importance of the world. We went through two world wars and a Cold War in the last century. But I think what makes it particularly important now is we not only face all the traditional kinds of questions of war and peace, great power competition and all that, the normal stuff of history, but now we also have an entire new overlay of these global challenges, like pandemics, like climate change, like terrorism, what have you. And these are situations you could deny, you can hide from, but you can't escape. You can't, at the end of the day, avoid them. But in many ways, I think people assume that that's the government's problem, that there's not much I'm going to be able to do about these things. This is a very high-end government world leader kind of thing.

But government leaders, whether they're the president or senators or congressmen or governors or mayors or what have you, in this country, they're all elected. They're all responsible. So as citizens, I would argue that we have the opportunity, but also the obligation to ask questions and then to hold them to account. We've got to decide if we elect them, do we want to reelect them? So we need to be involved. Plus, we also have to be involved at our businesses.

We can be involved, you know, if you're at a religious organization. I always remind people that God created the heavens and the earth. We've all been individuals, churches, synagogues, and mosques. Why aren't we involved in the planet? Why don't we think about climate change? So I actually think all these questions are something that people can get involved in through traditional politics, but also can get involved with in any number of ways in life, whether it's their work or their leisure time or even when they go to church.

Why is it, and which ones are, countries are more influential, and why does that happen? Why aren't we all more or less on an equal playing field? It's interesting. On one level, we are all equal. If you think about a place like the United Nations General Assembly, we all have one vote. But in the real world, we're not all equal. If you think about a place like the United Nations General Assembly, we all have one vote. But in the real world, we're not all equal. Some of us are more powerful either economically or militarily or diplomatically or sitting on some energy resource or what have you. So every era of history has its countries that are the most powerful and usually

then the most influential. And this year, I would argue it's the United States and China are by far the world's two most influential countries, both in what they do, but also the examples they set. But there's other places of influence, too. I mean, Russia still has one of the two largest nuclear arsenals in the world, has a lot of military forces that it can and does use that give it influence. Europe is still about one quarter of the world's economy. Japan is still the world's third largest economy. So there's lots of places which have influence.

Indeed, one of the interesting things about the world we now live in is even though the United States and China are by far the two most powerful countries, there's more power of different kinds in more hands than arguably ever before in history. Indeed, some of those hands aren't even countries. And here we are living through a pandemic, and the Gates Foundation turns out to be incredibly powerful. Or when it comes to cyber and digital issues, Google and Facebook and Twitter and all these companies are incredibly powerful. Or when it comes to cyber and digital issues, Google and Facebook and Twitter

and all these companies are incredibly powerful. So it's a really interesting time of history where you've got a lot of different kinds of pieces on a very crowded chessboard. When you look at the world today, it seems very chaotic. It seems like there's a lot of problems, a lot of trouble, a lot of conflict. Is it really that much different than before, and we just see it more because of the media and the ability to communicate over great distances? Or are things really much worse today than before? It's an interesting question. I think it's slightly more complicated for several reasons. One is, say, for four decades, from after World discussing, more players, countries, entities that have power.

So it's not just two sides. It's much more complicated than that. Plus, now you've got all these global issues on top of it all. Plus, you've got these new technologies that have empowered individuals and so forth. So we have, you know, when I grew up, you had three television networks. Well, now you have hundreds of television networks, plus you've got the Internet and literally an unlimited number of sources of information. Things have sped up.

So I actually do think it's a more complicated world. I think it's a more decentralized world. Indeed, at one and the same time, it's a contradiction, but I kind of think it's interesting. You've got a world that's coming apart because of all these technologies. At the same time, because of globalization, what happens anywhere can travel anywhere else in a millisecond. So once you have a world that's both coming apart, you're coming together. And that's what makes it so difficult to manage. Is it more dangerous?

Well, the world's been pretty dangerous in different ways for some time. During the first half of the 20th century, you had two world wars. It's hard to compete with that. Is it more dangerous? Well, the world's been pretty dangerous in different ways for some time. During the first half of the 20th century, you had two world wars. It's hard to compete with that. You had the Cold War. That was pretty dangerous a few times, like during the Cuban Missile Crisis. I think this is dangerous because, again, you still have all the old challenges. The United States and Russia still have thousands of nuclear devices. But now you have, because of proliferation, now you have a North Korea,

you have India, Pakistan, and others that have nuclear weapons, plus you have terrorist groups, plus because of globalization, you have things like climate and disease, which are not about groups or countries, but are just simply phenomena. So I do think it's slightly more dangerous. I think there's more things out there, it's more challenges, more threats in more hands, and our ability to organize against them is not what it needs to be. So there may not be anything as big singly as all-out nuclear war that dominated us during the Cold War, but if you add up all the dangers in the world, I would say, yes, the world is a more dangerous place.

And from your perspective, looking at where we've been and where we are, where are we going? Will things get worse? Will things get better? Is there hope? What's your optimistic or pessimistic view of the future? Well, my short answer to your question is yes. Look, history can go in lots of ways.

I've been lucky. I've worked for four different presidents. I worked for Carter, Reagan, Bush, and Bush. And the more I was around presidents and senior people, the more I realized that almost nothing was inevitable, almost nothing was baked into the cake. So things could go in lots of ways. Take where we are now.

We could come out of this crisis and things could get worse. All the old problems still exist, plus now there'll be a tendency to look inwards. Our bandwidth will be used up just focusing with the unemployment and the problems we have here at home. Or you could imagine a more optimistic scenario where the United States and other countries would come out of this and say, hey, the world really is a dangerous place. We can't ignore it. We've got to work together. Let's improve global health machinery. Let's build some better machinery to deal with climate change or other challenges. It could go either way. And the optimist would say people will learn the lessons, the right lessons and act on it. And the pessimist will say history is often about people not learning the right lessons.

So my view is, and it's what I tell young people, get involved because nothing, there's very little in life, very little in history that's inevitable. It does seem, especially when you have this pandemic that just pops up, that like it's so unpredictable. I mean, who knew who would have figured four months ago that we'd be where we are, that it's just it's such a crapshoot, it seems. Well, it's a crapshoot in the specifics. We didn't know the COVID-19, we didn't know it started in Wuhan, China. But this pandemic, a pandemic, if not this specific one, was predicted by all sorts of people. George W. Bush, speaking in 2005, said it was coming. The United States had to prepare for it.

Bill Gates said it was coming. So this was, in principle, predicted, and it was all predictable. And in many cases, we just chose, we, the United States and other countries, chose not to heed those predictions. It's a little bit like an insurance policy. We all buy, well, not all, but most of us buy fire insurance or life insurance, not because we know when there's weather or if there's going to be a fire, much less when, or life insurance and so forth. But we do just protect ourselves against the uncertainties of the future. And we knew that something like this was coming. We just didn't know the specifics,

and we chose not to prepare as we could and should have. Well, but that always seems to happen. I mean, everybody looks back Monday morning and says, well, see, we should have, but we didn't. We never do, it seems. Well, we could have. I mean, World War II, you had somebody like Churchill warning. His warnings were ignored, and the rest, as they say, is history. You had specific warnings before 9-11 that were not taken as seriously as they could have. You often don't know every detail. You don't know it's going to be at 10 o'clock on a Monday and so forth.

We didn't know that about this, but we knew in general it was coming. But you're right. I think there's a tendency to discount the future. Take climate change. We know it's not just that it's coming, it's happening. Yet we still don't take the steps we could about it. And I think it's because people still think of it as in the future. It's kind of a slow motion thing. So all of us are willing to take a degree of risk rather than pay an insurance premium against things that might happen rather than are certain to happen. And almost always that turns out to be short-sighted. What areas of the world do you think are the most concerning right now?

It's a good question. I would say, look, the Middle East has been, is, and will be in some ways the messiest. So it's concerning in that way. A lot of what we've done in the world the last 30 years has been preoccupied with the Middle East. But I'd probably give you a different answer. I would say Asia is concerning because it's been wildly successful. It's been stable. It's been economically growing. The question is, can it continue to?

I don't know. Africa is concerning for another reason. Almost all the increase in population in the world over the next three or four decades is going to take place in Africa. And the question is, will it be able to handle an extra billion, billion and a half people? India and Pakistan are concerning. They both have nuclear weapons, but it's a really bad relationship. And the possibility of a nuclear war, I think, in that part of the world can't be dismissed. Closer to home, we have problems with Venezuela, problems with Central America. So essentially, wherever you look, you can see all sorts of situations that would more than check your box that you call concerning. There's also some good trends in the world, and I don't want to sound like I'm just negative. People are living

longer, standards of living are higher, we don't have great power conflicts, so there are positive things to look at. But I think if you're not concerned right now, you're probably not paying attention. It does seem, and I think people, one of the reasons people yawn after a while is, in a lot of ways, things don't change. I mean, you look at the Middle East, the conflicts in the Middle East have been going on for forever, it seems. Nothing really seems to change that much. It doesn't seem to get much better. I guess I would take issue. Things don't always have to get that much better. I mean, I understand our argument. Things don't always have to get that much better. I mean, I understand our argument. They don't always get that much better, but they can also get a lot

worse. And our criteria for judging what we do in the world shouldn't be whether we necessarily solve situations. Sometimes it's enough to keep a bad situation from becoming a terrible one. So, and even in the Middle East, we've made some progress, say, between Israel and Egypt. You have peace, Israel and Jordan. You have peace, Israel and Jordan. You have peace. You don't have peace between Israelis and Palestinians, and I don't know if you ever will. But, okay, it's far, far, far from perfect, but I can imagine the situation being worse, and I could talk about other parts of the world in that same vein.

I think as Americans, we like to see things solved. I get it. I understand it. But sometimes we have to content ourselves with managing a situation, a kind of floor so it doesn't go below a certain point. And sometimes good enough. I remember when we were involved in Afghanistan and Iraq heavily, some of the generals would say our goal is Iraq good enough or Afghanistan good enough.

And that meant not that we would make it a perfect democracy and a perfectly stable, friendly place, enough or Afghanistan good enough. And that meant not that we would make it a perfect democracy and a perfectly stable, friendly place, but at least a place where people are not killing each other wholesale and where terrorists could not operate out of. I think sometimes you have to judge success by relative terms. Since you've worked for presidents and you have a sense of the lay of the land here, you know, there's so much talk, particularly right now about this pandemic, that it started in China, and then there's people who say it was deliberate, and that this is just China run amok.

And what do you say? Well, there's zero evidence that it was deliberate. I think the only debate is how did it start in China? Did it start in these so-called wet markets? Was it an accident that escaped somehow from this laboratory? Did it start some other way? That we don't know, and the Chinese have not cooperated fully. The Chinese have behaved badly throughout this crisis in terms of silencing experts and not controlling the outbreak early on. I understand all that, but we can't blame China for what has happened since the virus reached here. China can't be

blamed for our lack of stockpiled equipment. China can't be blamed that here we are in, what, four or five months into the crisis. We still don't have anything near what we need to have in the way of testing. So I think one could overdo the criticism of China, and it's merited. And I think more broadly, we can't base American foreign policy going forward simply on hostility to China. I think that exaggerates China's goals. I think it underestimates its limits. And most important, it's irrelevant to a lot of what you and I have been talking about.

We could stop China in its tracks, and we still will not have dealt with climate change or terrorism or disease. So U.S. foreign policy has to be larger than simply a preoccupation with China. And is that what it is? Big debate going on right now. It's really interesting. And you have voices in both parties suggesting that China ought to be at the center of American foreign policy. I disagree with that, as you can tell from what I just said. But that's being debated for three decades since the end of the Cold War. U.S. foreign policy has been casting a bout for a compass.

We don't have one that's widely agreed on. And a lot of people are saying that dealing with a rising China needs to be the focal point of what we do in the world. Again, I think it's misplaced, and I think it's inadequate. But that's a debate that is going on. And again, coming back to the book, one of the reasons I wrote a book like this is to help people observe that debate, maybe even pass judgment on it. We're going to be voting for people in November, and depending upon how you vote, it's going to have real implications for America's role in the world, what we do about China or climate change or pandemic. So it seems to me, as citizens, we might as well make informed votes.

Something I've thought about and observed for a long time is that, you know, we in the United States, we look at the world and want it to be a better place. And we say that as we look at the world through our lens of what we think the world should do. That's not necessarily what everybody else in the world thinks we should do. And so there's always going to be that tension and that, that, I mean, for example, in this country, we think of stealing someone's intellectual property as a very bad thing to do. In China, they don't necessarily think it's as bad a thing to do. So we don't look at those things the same way. So I don't know how we resolve those things the same way.

One way to think about foreign policy, though, is you want to persuade, one way or another, others to see the world more in the terms you want them to see it. So in the case of China, we would want to discourage them from continuing to steal intellectual property. So either we have to make it harder to do, or we have to raise the cost of doing so, or we have to live with it. That's essentially the foreign policy choice we have to make. Well, given your insight and experience,

you have a unique perspective on the world, and I appreciate you sharing it with us. Richard Haass has been my guest. He is president of the Council on Foreign Relations, former advisor to four presidents, and author of several books. His latest is called The World, A Brief Introduction, and you'll find a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks for being here, Richard.

Thanks. Enjoyed the conversation. Take care. If you own land, you've probably wondered just how far down do your rights go and how far up? Well, for a long time, it was assumed that you owned rights to the center of the earth and up to the heavens. But the heavens part started to come apart in 1926 when airplanes started flying. In 1946, the Supreme Court ruled that you've got air rights above your land only insofar as they are essential to the use and enjoyment of your land. But you cannot forbid airplanes from flying over your house.

As for the other direction, it's generally believed that you have land rights down to the center of the earth. But that's not actually written in any law. So it gets a little murky. The courts generally uphold a landowner's subterranean rights near the surface,

but the deeper the dispute, the less likely the courts are to recognize the surface owner's rights. Whether or not you have rights more than two miles down has never been legally tested. It also depends on what you're doing down there. In the U.S., anything you can produce from a vertically drilled well on your property is yours, even if it comes from underneath your neighbor's land. And that is something you should know. Remember to subscribe to this podcast on

Apple Podcasts. It's really easy to do, and then the episodes come straight to you. And it's free. 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 VB 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 co-founder

of the Go Kid Go Network. At Go Kid Go, putting kids first is at the heart of every show that we produce. That's why we're so excited to introduce a brand new show to our network called The Search for the Silver Lightning, a fantasy adventure series about a spirited young girl named Isla who time travels

to the mythical land of Camelot. During her journey, Isla meets new friends including King Arthur and his Knights of the Thank you. and an all-star cast of actors, including Liam Neeson, Emily Blunt, Kristen Bell, Chris Hemsworth, among many others, in welcoming the Search for the Silver Lining podcast to the Go Kid Go network by listening today. Look for the Search for the Silver Lining on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts.