Something You Should Know - The Story of Jeff Bezos and Amazon & How to Be More Interesting

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Starting point is 00:00:27 Download June's Journey now on Android or iOS. Today on Something You Should Know, do people take their shoes off when they come into your home? I'll explain why it's a good idea. Then, how did Amazon get so big? And who is Jeff Bezos anyway? He is, to Amazon employees, certainly an inspirational figure. I think he's an intimidating figure when you're in a meeting.

Starting point is 00:00:53 And I've interviewed him, and when he fixes you with that laser-eyed stare, it is intimidating for sure. Also, why aren't there any windows in grocery stores except in the front? And we speak and listen to people all day long, and we could probably be better at it. Listening is not a capability. We treat it like that. We don't teach it in schools. We expect kids just to pick up how to listen. It is a skill. It's a skill you can master, and it's a skill which, when mastered, gives huge advantages in life. All this today on Something You Should Know. This winter take a trip to Tampa on Porter Airlines. Enjoy the warm Tampa Bay temperatures and warm Porter hospitality on your way there.

Starting point is 00:01:42 All Porter fares include beer, wine, and snacks, and free fast streaming Wi-Fi on planes with no middle seats. And your Tampa Bay vacation includes good times, relaxation, and great Gulf Coast weather. Visit flyporter.com and actually enjoy economy. 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 carothers hello there welcome to something you should know do you take your shoes off when you come into the house and ask other people who come over to do the same thing? We do. We've been doing it. Well, I can't remember not doing it. We've been doing it for a long time

Starting point is 00:02:31 in my house. And it turns out it's a pretty good idea because shoes are gross. I mean, really gross. The Rockport Shoe Company and the University of Arizona did some research on just what you're tracking into your house on your shoes, and it's not very pretty. What you walk on gets picked up by your shoes, and you walk on public streets, public bathrooms, and who knows where else. So you can imagine what sticks to the soles of your shoes. E. coli is a big one. That's on everyone's shoes. Apparently it comes from restrooms, and it can make you sick. The research showed that not only is all this bacteria on your shoes,

Starting point is 00:03:18 it is almost certainly transferred to your floors when you walk into your home. So the recommendation is to ask everyone to remove their shoes or wear protective booties over their shoes and also wash your floors and steam clean your carpets regularly. If you have throw rugs, you should wash them in the laundry every once in a while. And if someone must wear shoes in the house, you could wipe them with disinfectant wipes first. Now that removing your shoes is becoming more acceptable in Western countries, don't be shy to ask.

Starting point is 00:03:53 In fact, a lot of times people come to our house and ask if they should take off their shoes. To which I typically say, sure, that's a good idea. It is your health after all, and most people will comply, including workmen who come into your home. All you have to do is ask. And that is something you should know. It's hard to imagine anyone who doesn't interact somehow with Amazon, at least on a weekly basis.

Starting point is 00:04:24 Either you buy something from them, somehow with Amazon, at least on a weekly basis. Either you buy something from them, or you receive something that someone else bought on Amazon, or maybe you sell products on Amazon, or you see their trucks and vans go by, you have an Alexa speaker or a Kindle, maybe you're an affiliate who puts Amazon ads on your website. So how did this company that started out just as an online bookstore become such a giant retailer of so many things, as well as a movie studio, and just an overall tech giant that shows up in your life somehow on a pretty regular basis?

Starting point is 00:05:02 Brad Stone has some great insight into this. Brad is senior executive editor of global technology at Bloomberg News, and he's author of a new best-selling book called Amazon Unbound, Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire. Hey Brad, welcome to Something You Should Know. Thanks, Mike. So if you had to answer in a sentence or two, how did Amazon become such a huge, huge force? Was it dumb luck? Jeff Bezos is a genius. What's the, you know, the one phrase answer? Certainly there's some luck, but no, he's brilliant. And it's not just the intellect or the ingenuity to come up with things like the Kindle or Alexa or Amazon Web Services. And those were all Jeff

Starting point is 00:05:54 Bezos ideas. But it's the powerful force of the founder, the relentless drive to kind of empire build. Bezos is just a forward propellant, and he is micromanaging teams that are working on new things like Alexa and the cashierless grocery stores. He's coming into businesses that have been autonomous for a decade to make new demands and to tell them they're not profitable enough. He's coming up with ideas that are somewhat disastrous, like HQ2, that auction for Amazon's second headquarters. And I describe Amazon as scaffolding built around Bezos's brain, and it's also around his personality, right, and his charismatic force. And it's a little bit like Steve Jobs at Apple

Starting point is 00:06:41 or some of the other great entrepreneurs in history, Sam Walton at Walmart. He is Amazon. And it's that really unique combination of ambition and drive and intellect and inventiveness that made the company a success. Amazon started as an online bookstore. And so was it always meant to be so much more than that? Or did the idea wasn't just a bookstore. It was an everything store that this new thing called the Internet could allow a kind of endless selection. Even if you didn't have it sitting there in the warehouse, you could just go get it. And books were the beginning. It was a kind of a strategic opening salvo starting point.

Starting point is 00:07:41 But he always he always had those ambitions. And now ambitions. And now he's kind of followed it one by one, opportunities as they arise, cloud computing, e-books, now voice computing, grocery delivery, so much more. I don't think he ever conceived of a $1.6 trillion company, but certainly he was betting on the internet and on this confidence he had that you could build a new business and really a fortune on this new technology. And that was back in 95 or 94 when most of us, to the extent that we use the internet, we thought it was this funny little thing where you could send an email to your high school pal and nothing more than that. So he was a visionary in that respect. What kind of guy is he? Is he a nice guy? Is he a nice

Starting point is 00:08:25 guy? Is he a jerk? Is he, you don't know what? Well, um, he is to Amazon employees, certainly an inspirational figure. I think he's an intimidating figure when you're in a meeting and I've interviewed him and I've been at press conferences and asked him questions. And when he fixes you with that laser eyed stare, you know, it is, uh, it is intimidating for sure. You know, is he, is he nice? I mean, I think he's pretty driven. I look, I don't, I'm not friends with him. Right. And, and he's very guarded when it comes to the press. So I can't speak to his personality, but I think that he is demanding. He'll he'll. I have stories in Amazon Unbound where he takes an underlings document filled with an appendix full of data and numbers, and he spots the mathematical error. And he says, if I can't trust this number, how can I trust anything in this

Starting point is 00:09:22 memo? And he rips it up and he throws it down the table. So, okay, that's not a nice guy. That's a guy with incredibly high standards who's kind of a jerk. So maybe, Mike, that answers the question. He's a jerk like all, you know, like Steve Jobs before him and Bill Gates when he was CEO of Microsoft. The jerks still reign in Silicon Valley in the tech world. When you look at the big milestones in the history of Amazon, like Alexa, like you say, for example, Alexa was his idea. Was it was the whole idea of smart speakers his idea? Yeah. I mean, before Alexa, you know, voice recognition was Google Voice or Siri, where you spoke into your phone, you spoke into a microphone, and it answered a question. And so that existed. But what Bezos wanted from his engineers was, I'm going to use a technical term, far-field voice recognition.

Starting point is 00:10:20 He thought it was awkward to take out your phone and ask it a question. He wanted a speaker that could be across the room or across a garage. And let's say you were changing your oil. It could guide you through it. Or it was in your kitchen and it could recite a recipe. Or it was in your living room and you could have a conversation with it. A kind of Star Trek computer. I don't know, Mike, if you were ever a fan of Star Trek.

Starting point is 00:11:07 But they would have these conversations with this voice in the background. And that was actually, it seems like a small thing because, hey, Siri weed out the echoes, all the acoustic interference, and that technology didn't exist. So that certainly was a Bezos idea. His engineers actually didn't think it could be done. And the other magical skill he has are the resources at his disposal. And he just hired his way and spent his way into making it a reality. Where did his money come from to finance all this? Well, I mean, this was Amazon money. So the company in 2010 is already a $100 billion market cap company. And remember, back then, we're all, you know, the Wall Street world is saying, why is Amazon so unprofitable?

Starting point is 00:11:42 It's losing money every year. This isn't a real business. But what Bezos was doing was taking the profits from the book business and the media business and investing them in things like Alexa. So he's basically created this machine that churns out cash. But instead of giving investors a dividend or buying back Amazon stock, he's investing in new things. And it took a while for the world to figure that out. And it was, I think, deceiving for some competitors. They just thought, well, Amazon's not a real threat. It's losing money. But investors allowed it to do it. And it gave Bezos this big purse, this big war chest with which to go and pursue new industries. And one of the industries he pursued, which seemed a little odd, was a traditional newspaper. Why?

Starting point is 00:12:35 Why did he buy the Washington Post in 2013? It's a great, great question. Part of it is circumstance. The Post is owned at the time by Don Graham or the Graham family. And Graham was a friend of his. The paper was in decline, was for sale. I think Bezos thought, well, you know, this is a relatively kind of minor investment, but maybe he can save an important public institution. Perhaps he had some foresight to to understand that owning a paper might be good for his image. We in the media love a newspaper savior. And Bezos, with a modest investment and the application of his ideas about kind of embracing changes and trends, has become a savior. Like there's lots of reasons to criticize Bezos,

Starting point is 00:13:25 but his ownership of the post is not one of them, right? He saved the post. He turned it around. The newsrooms double the size. The digital subscribers have grown by a factor of five. It's really a remarkable turnaround and maybe got a little lucky with the Trump administration and all media boats floated a little bit in that turbulent time. But he's been good for the Post, and I think it's been good for his image. Now, his image is so bad because people see Amazon as like a dangerous monopolist. And Bezos is the wealthiest guy in the world at a time of terrible income inequality. But I think the Post maybe maybe makes a little bit better.

Starting point is 00:14:13 Is he particularly conscious of his image? Does he worry about his image or he worries about his business? Well, I mean, I think that he's receptive to criticism. And when he reads, you know, criticism of Amazon and its relationship with its workers, I mean, we can criticize them for being too reactive. But, you know, today, the day we're speaking, Amazon said it was hiring 75,000 workers at a $17 an hour wage. And, you know, that's $2 above $15 an hour, which itself was leading when they announced it. And so I think he does worry, maybe not about his image for his image's sake, but about the practical impact of doubt seated in the customer's mind when they're presented with the buy now button on Amazon. And do they feel good about that? Or do they feel like, you know, they're supporting injustice or, or climate change or, you know, any, any ill that Amazon is accused of adding to. And so Bezos, you know, he administers to that. And the last letter that he wrote to investors, probably the last one he will write because he's resigning as CEO was all about image

Starting point is 00:15:22 burnishing and defending Amazon and positioning it as a contributor to society. And so, yeah, I think it really does indicate that he cares a lot about how he's perceived. We're talking about the remarkable success of Amazon and its founder, Jeff Bezos. I'm talking with Brad Stone. He's author of the book, Amazon Unbound, Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire. At Wealthsimple, we're built for whatever you're building. Built for Jane, who wants to break into the housing market. We're built for Ted, who's obsessed with what's happening in the global markets.

Starting point is 00:15:59 And built for Celine, who just wants to retire and explore the world's flea markets. So take a moment and think about what you're building for. We've got the financial tools to help make it happen. Wealthsimple. Built for possibilities. Visit wealthsimple.com slash possibilities. Metrolinks and Crosslinks are reminding everyone to be careful as Eglinton Crosstown LRT train testing is in progress. Please be alert as trains can pass at any time on the tracks.

Starting point is 00:16:31 Remember to follow all traffic signals. Be careful along our tracks and only make left turns where it's safe to do so. Be alert, be aware, and stay safe. So Brad, what about the concern that Amazon is crushing small business, that they can sell virtually anything, often for less, get it there pretty fast, and have selection that, you know, your local store can't have, and that's really hurting small business. I think it's legitimate. Amazon has all the advantages.

Starting point is 00:17:13 It had all the advantages going into the pandemic, and then suddenly people were fearful of going into stores, and it was like Amazon got injected with a dose of steroids. It's incredibly hard for small merchants to compete with Amazon. And if they sell on Amazon, they're subjected to Amazon's rules. They have to compete with sellers around the world who sometimes pay little or no taxes, who might take advantage or try to game Amazon's fraud systems or review systems.

Starting point is 00:17:41 And look, I think there's plenty of room for regulators to look at what Amazon does with the data at its disposal, you know, how it decides what products to launch under its own private brands. And, you know, these big tech companies, they have such wealth right now. And the fact that they've been allowed to acquire smaller companies and get ever bigger, you know, I think that age is coming to an end. There's an understanding in the Biden administration has indicated its sort of willingness to block these kinds of deals because, you know, they don't want to see the big companies get even bigger and stronger. When I look at the success of Amazon, I think,

Starting point is 00:18:19 why him? Why didn't somebody else do this? And why is there no second? Why is there nobody nipping at his heels, you know, like Avis and Hertz or VHS and beta, pick your analogy. But there's Amazon and then it seems there's everybody else. Look, I mean, eBay started around the same time as Amazon and took a different approach and got a little distracted, had a lot of turnover and leadership, and it has faded a little bit. And certainly, you know, other, Walmart and Target are fast growing competitors, but much smaller. And then you have companies like Shopify that do, you know, represent brands selling directly to customers. And those are success stories.

Starting point is 00:19:07 So there are maybe other, there are the other car rental firms, but you're right, no one on equal footing. And, you know, and for a number of reasons, one, Bezos has just been a very clever CEO. He has kept doubling down and investing in new businesses. You know, eBay's CEO, to just use that example, you know, resigned after the first year, Piero Midiar, and turned it over to professional managers, one after another.

Starting point is 00:19:32 But Bezos stayed at the helm all along. So maybe one answer to the question, Mike, is that the CEO, you know, or the founder, who really commands somewhat magical powers at any company when you're the founder, he stayed for the whole ride, and he drove the founder who, who really commands somewhat magical powers at any company, when you're the founder, he stayed for the whole ride and he, he drove the business forward and he took the risks and he, he, he made sure the investors were on board and he, he encoded a kind of operating philosophy in the company and drove the culture. And, you know, and, and the, and the companies

Starting point is 00:20:01 that started at the same time didn't have that. They didn't have their Jeff Bezos. So he's kind of the secret weapon. And we'll see as he moves on to do other things whether that impacts Amazon or whether what he has built is so resistant or so durable that Amazon continues to grow and dominate. What has he gotten really, really wrong? Yeah. Well, a couple of things. A couple of places where Amazon has fallen flat on its face. One place is in China, where he invested billions of dollars over many years,

Starting point is 00:20:38 but not enough to make a difference. And they kind of got crushed by Alibaba. And maybe the Chinese government was never going to let a Western company succeed. That was kind of a difference. And they got kind of got crushed by Alibaba. And maybe the Chinese government was never going to let a Western company succeed. You know, that was kind of a disaster. The sort of famous smartphone, the Fire Phone, Bezos had a vision for that. He, just like he had a vision for Alexa, was kind of far out. His employees didn't believe in it. He didn't really listen to them. And, you know, it made a, it left a crater in the, in the, in the, in the universe of smartphones. Um, so that's another one. And look, the space company that he owns, Blue Origin, uh, still, you know, TBD in terms of its impact, it's, it's far behind

Starting point is 00:21:18 SpaceX. Um, the personal saga, you know, splashed on the, on the tabloid newspapers. He certainly somehow, I, this is a mystery to me, underestimated the interest that people would have in his personal life if he, you know, basically started a relationship while he was married. Um, so that he got wrong. Um, and HQ2 is another good example. I think he, he conceived this process of, you know, Amazon is having a hard time in Seattle.

Starting point is 00:21:48 Let's go to a place that wants us. And he created this bake-off between, uh, between 238 regions around North America. And they had a terrible backlash, uh, because, you know, a billion dollar trillion dollar company was seen as soliciting incentive packages and tax relief. So maybe it's not surprising as you become a multi-billionaire that you kind of lose a little bit of your sense for which way the political winds might blow or how people might perceive you or how receptive customers might be to a new product that you would like, but maybe nobody else would. So look, but his willingness to do these things and to fall on his face and to fail is probably part of the elixir of what makes him successful also. Well, Jeff Bezos certainly is out front there as the face of Amazon, but given all the businesses that they're in and how much money they make and all the things they do,

Starting point is 00:22:45 there must be other people right behind him who I would assume are pretty smart. There's a leadership team there. Andy Jassy, who's taken over as CEO, has run AWS, the cloud business, with a lot of autonomy. That's been incredibly successful and profitable. You know, there's a guy named Dave Clark who runs the operations business, and that includes the vans that drive our roads and the trucks on our highways. And that guy is like a little mini Bezos in some respects, and he's been incredibly successful. This is a company of over a million employees, and Bezos has had an impact and has been inspirational and started some of the most important new products, but it's some of those veterans who have taken his ideas and run with them.

Starting point is 00:23:30 There was a lot of criticism of Amazon during the pandemic and a lot of the criticism coming from within that people who worked there were complaining that they were not being treated well. What was that all about? You know, stores were able to close down. Amazon kept operating. There was a period in March of 2020 when, you know, arguably the CDC was being inconsistent. Amazon, you know, was trying to do the right thing. But, you know, you heard from employees all around the country that they didn't feel safe, that infections were happening inside fulfillment centers. I do think Amazon ultimately kind of got its act together and invested in things like thermal temperature scanners, on-site COVID testing, social distancing,

Starting point is 00:24:17 and did a pretty good job of steering through the pandemic as they fulfilled all of this increased customer demand. but they weren't perfect. And they put their employees at risk. It's hard to tell because employees could have been infected on their way to work, on their way home from work. There were probably some infections in the fulfillment centers. But the other thing they did, which just smells bad, is they ended up firing some of the most prominent internal critics, the employees who were speaking out and saying they didn't feel safe and Amazon needs to do more. And Bezos and his team just seemed to not be able to tolerate any internal criticism. And they fired some of

Starting point is 00:24:57 those employees. And I think that left a bad taste in the mouth of many Amazon employees to see that this company could be so hard on internal dissenters, even dissenters whose values and whose motives are genuinely good. When I think of Amazon, and I think when most people think of Amazon, we think of shopping boxes being left at our front door kind of thing. But Amazon's in a lot of other businesses. You mentioned Kindle, Alexa, but what else do they do that makes money for them that people might not know? Well, the big, one of the big ones is advertising and, you know, you search for anything on Amazon and it used to be this hierarchy of useful results. And now it's basically ads. So sellers are paying to appear in Amazon search

Starting point is 00:25:47 results. It's kind of pay to play. And that is now an enormously successful and profitable business for Amazon. So that's one. I'll give you one other. You know, we all know they bought Whole Foods, but they have been quietly opening grocery stores that they call Amazon Fresh. And the idea there is they've got these grocery carts where if you drop in a package, it'll scan it automatically. And there is another variety of them where there are cameras in the ceiling and weights in the shelves. And if you take an item off a shelf, it'll automatically charge you. And so they've got this idea that they can start opening physical stores and tap that 90% portion of retail that's not online and do it with a kind of technologically sophisticated system. And, you know, if they're successfulores, and then closed them because I guess they weren't making enough money or for whatever reason they closed their bookstores. That's right.

Starting point is 00:26:51 And then these kind of gift stores called four-star stores. So there's a case of America's biggest retailer not being able to make a go of it as a brick and mortar retailer, at least in those bookstores, in those pop-up stores. And then one day somebody's sitting around and says, you know, Amazon needs to be in the movie business. And they start their streaming service and give it away to their Prime members. Let me go through the logical chain. We talked about Amazon being the

Starting point is 00:27:27 everything store, and DVDs and VHS cassettes were a shelf on the everything store. And then what happened in the mid-2000s is that business started to decline, and people started to look to download movies. And so Amazon started a video on demand business. They want to always be there. And then Netflix kind of moved from its envelope service to a subscription video, sign up, pay a monthly fee, uh, stream anything. And Amazon did that too. But, but Bezos knew that the, the catalog wasn't going to be as big as Netflix's and he made it free within Prime. And then Netflix and Amazon start dueling to license catalogs of TV shows and movies and that's really expensive and they make the economic decision

Starting point is 00:28:12 that maybe it'll be better to just do their own movies and TV shows. And so they start Amazon Studios. And then Bezos being Bezos, he wants to do things a little differently and he gets kind of creative and funky and has these grand ideas about how maybe people can vote on what they want to see. None of that quite works out. But it brings us to today, where Amazon's making big movies, TV shows,

Starting point is 00:28:36 and is spending billions of dollars on Lord of the Rings. Well, it is quite a story. And like with any big company, particularly Amazon, which is so in the public eye, you know, it sells direct to consumers, as does Apple and other companies. It's interesting to hear the story behind this very public and visible company. My guest has been Brad Stone. Brad is Senior Executive Editor of Global Technology at Bloomberg News. And the name of his book is Amazon Unbound, Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire. And there's a link to that book at Amazon. See, they're everywhere in the show notes.

Starting point is 00:29:20 Thanks, Brad. Thank you, Mike. Good to be here. From the kitchen to the laundry room, your home deserves the best. Give it the upgrade it deserves at Best Buy's Ultimate Appliance Event. Save up to $1,000 on two or more major appliances. Shop now in-store or online at bestbuy.ca. Exclusions apply.

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Starting point is 00:30:01 Connect with a credentialed therapist by phone, video, or online chat. Visit BetterHelp.com to learn more. That's BetterHelp.com. When you think about it, you spend a pretty good portion of your day speaking and listening. It is the way humans communicate, for the most part, speaking and listening, sound. And since you do it all the time, this speaking and listening, you probably don't think a lot about how you do it. And since you've been doing it all your life, you probably figure you're pretty good at it. And maybe you are. And maybe you could be better. One of the world's leading experts on communication and sound is Julian Treasure.

Starting point is 00:30:46 He has some great TED Talks available if you want to see them, and he also gives workshops on the subject. He's author of a book called How to Be Heard, Secrets for Powerful Speaking and Learning. And after you hear what he has to say, I'm pretty sure you will be a better speaker and a better listener. Hi, Julian. Welcome. Well, thank you, Mike. It's a pleasure to be here. This, as you might imagine, is a topic of interest to me because I make my living talking and listening. It's what I do on this podcast. Why are you so interested in it? Well, it came about from being interested in sound originally.

Starting point is 00:31:25 I got to do a TED Talk in, I think it was 2009, about the effects of sound, which is what I do kind of for a living, which is audio branding for companies. But then I got very fascinated by the fact that companies make a lot of noise, a lot of sound, largely unconsciously. But, of course, companies are just groups of people. And it all comes about fundamentally because most people aren't very good at listening. That's what I realized. We teach reading and writing in schools. We do not teach speaking much at all and listening hardly ever. It's a silent skill.

Starting point is 00:32:06 Most people confuse it with hearing and they're very different things. So that was really the realization. That's what got me on the track. And then I did some more TED Talks about speaking and listening and they became very popular. And I wrote a book and that's really how the focus came about. When you look at people who speak well and people who don't speak well, what's the difference? What is it that people who speak well do that people who don't speak well don't do? I think a lot of people who speak well understand a couple of things. Firstly, that speaking and listening are intimately related. It's not a straight line it's not simple it's not just i speak you listen because the way you listen affects the way i speak and the way i speak

Starting point is 00:32:51 affects the way you listen so there's a kind of dynamic circular relationship going on there so we need to be thinking about listening when we're speaking the best speakers are also good listeners i think and they're very conscious also that they're always speaking into a listening. Now, that's something that most people don't think about. Everybody listens in a different way. Every human being has a unique way of listening, and it changes over time. I mean, you've probably spoken on stages where you get the graveyard slot just after lunch. Well, it's a very different listening that you're speaking into when people are a bit slow and all the blood's at their gut than first thing in the morning or last thing in the evening. Or, you know, you have to ask the question, what's the listening I'm speaking into?

Starting point is 00:33:40 So I think that is probably the biggest single differentiator. It's people who are great at speaking understand but there are a lot of things and I hear them because I talk to people and I notice how people speak things that dilute their message, make them sound like they don't really know what they're talking about, or they don't sound very enthusiastic about their subject and that make it hard to listen to. Yes, sure. I mean, I half humorously call them the seven deadly sins of speaking, which are gossip, condemnation, negativity, complaining, excuses, exaggeration, and dogmatism. We see an awful lot of these things around us in the world today. I mean, you mentioned my mother, that was in relation to negativity, because sadly, in the last years She'd hurt her arm. And I said, oh, look, it's October the 1st today. And she said, I know, isn't it dreadful? Well, if October the 1st is dreadful, what hope is there really? Unfortunately, you know, that was the filter she saw the whole world through. Everything was dreadful. And, you know, when

Starting point is 00:35:20 you're around somebody for whom everything is dreadful, it's very, very difficult. So these are things which we can monitor a little bit. And my whole message really is to become conscious, conscious of what we're doing, conscious of these little habits, which if they get out of control, I mean, they're not bad and wrong. It's not never do them. But if they get excessive, they do make us very hard to listen to it's like being around somebody who's entirely dogmatic you know people confuse opinions with facts and that's unfortunately becoming more and more true so we have this table thumping this dogmatism this making other people wrong all the time. And it's deeply concerning to me that, you know, that's a loss of listening, which is really hurting the world. And it's making the

Starting point is 00:36:12 world a more dangerous place, I'm afraid. Let's talk about listening, because I think people think they listen, because they hear. So if I hear you, I must be listening. But really listening, listening is different than hearing. So talk about what real good listening is. Well, I define listening as making meaning from sound. So you hear everything. But when you listen, you do two things. First of all, you select certain things to pay attention to, not everything you hear, just some things. And then the second thing you do is ascribe meaning to them. Listening is not a capability. We treat it like that. We don't teach it in schools. We expect kids just to pick up how to listen. It is a skill. It's a skill you can practice. It's a skill you can master. And it's a skill which, when mastered, gives huge advantages in life. And that, Mike, I think is the biggest realization that, I mean, hopefully people listening to this might take away. And you practice that skill by doing what well there are lots of exercises that you know some of them I've put into my third TED talk incidentally people value speaking much more highly than listening and it's interesting the TED

Starting point is 00:37:32 talk I gave on listening has got around 1 5th as many views as the TED talk I gave on speaking so we're into sending much more than we are into receiving. And we need to pay much more attention to listening. So there are exercises. I mean, I can recommend a couple right now. Reacquainting yourself with silence is a very, very good idea. Silence is something which we don't encounter that often. And if you can't get silence, which often is the case in a city, you could try simply peace and quiet, you know, relatively quiet places. Nature is very lovely to have around you if you can't get absolute silence,

Starting point is 00:38:12 but silence resets your ears. It recalibrates. It's the baseline for all sound and we don't get enough of it in our lives. So that's one way of practicing. And a great thing to do if you're in any kind of built environment, at home, in the office, even in the car, I guess, is savoring sound. That is like you would food. You're very conscious if you put something bad in your mouth, you'll spit it out. But with our ears, we ignore sound so much.

Starting point is 00:38:41 We kind of become numbed out because there's so much noise around most of the time and it's really important to become sensitive to that again so you can do that by closing your eyes and having somebody walk you around your house or your office and just listen and go wow i never noticed that buzz or that knocking sound before. It's really probably been irritating me for years. And asking the question, is this the most productive and lovely sound I could have in this room for what I want to do there? So then it's into designing rooms and spaces with your ears

Starting point is 00:39:19 as well as with your eyes. I find that I'm more sensitive to sound than I used to be. And I guess what I mean by that is that irritating sounds irritate me more. And, you know, I've noticed that I probably don't hear as well as I once used to. Well, you and everybody else, me included, it's called the cocktail effect because our hearing does degrade as we get older. It falls off. We lose the high end quite a lot.

Starting point is 00:39:50 You know, sadly, the biggest threat to hearing in the modern world is headphones. There are many, many kids, unfortunately, ramming, you know, 100 decibels of music into their ears for hours. And what they don't know is they're flattening those tiny little cells, those hair cells in your ears, which allow you to perceive sound. And once they've been damaged enough times, they give up the ghost and you become deaf. It's a huge problem in the United States, deafness, and it's going to get a lot worse, sadly, because of headphones. So you mentioned that a good way to practice listening is to incorporate some silence into your life and all that. But when you are actually listening to someone, if someone is speaking to you, what is it you're supposed to be doing that makes you a

Starting point is 00:40:39 good listener when you hear the words coming at you? It's about intention, really. So the most important thing in terms of listening to somebody is to give them your full attention. Scott Peck said you cannot truly listen to another human being and do anything else at the same time, and I agree with him completely. We're so used to partial listening, faux listening, doing something else, tapping away on a keyboard or a device and go, yeah, no, I am listening to you. No, you're sending a text.

Starting point is 00:41:10 That's different. So it is attention, first of all. And being conscious that you're doing something is the first part of that battle, really. I talk about four C's of effective listening and consciousness is the first of those. I'm doing something here. I'm not simply not simply you know it's not a background activity the second one is compassion compassion is very important when you're listening attempting to understand the other person is such a wonderful thing you know seeing as seeing the people you meet as opportunities to learn something that is such a transformative way to see people rather than being dismissive and judging the book by the cover and

Starting point is 00:41:52 thinking you know what they're going to say and all that kind of stuff the third c is commitment which is really necessary and that's the scott peck thing of putting everything down. You know, listeners to this, I wonder when the last time is that you absolutely stopped doing everything and gave somebody the incredible gift of your full attention. In the modern world, we're into multitasking with time poor. There's always things going on. You know, there are huge corporations spending billions to get your attention away from the person you're with. So why not try that after you listen to this podcast? You know, sit, look at somebody, listen to them. Don't be preparing what you're going to say next.

Starting point is 00:42:39 That's speech writing. That's not listening. Actually give them full attention. And you'll probably get the reaction, what are you doing? Because they're so unused to that way of communicating. And then the fourth C is curiosity, real ferocious curiosity about what they're going to say and what I might learn and where it could lead. Those are really good places to listen from. And commitment is absolutely critical.

Starting point is 00:43:13 Something interesting I've noticed is that when people speak, sometimes they just speak without putting a lot of thought into what they're going to say. I see this in podcasting a lot. I've asked podcasters, you know, why are you doing a podcast? And sometimes it comes down to, well, it's easier to talk than it would be to say, do a blog and to write everything out and edit it as if talking doesn't require the preparation and the intention of making it interesting. So people will like what they hear and find it interesting and engaging. Oh, definitely. And we're back again, I think, there to the intention and to what's the listening I'm

Starting point is 00:43:52 speaking into. I will say, you know, I train people on public speaking from time to time. And I say, look, the important thing is it's not about you. And I'm sure that's what you feel when you're doing this very successful podcast, Mike. It's not about Mike. It's about what can you give. So the very title of your podcast, Something You Should Know, is about the audience. And if the focus is on them and the gift you're giving to them, then you're in the right place to start with, really, aren't you? It also seems, though, that, and I know a lot of people, I'm sure you talk to people,

Starting point is 00:44:28 who don't really give a thought to making it interesting. That you can tell me things in a really boring way, or you could tell me things in a really interesting way. And listening to you, for example, I mean, you don't um and ah. I don't think I've heard you um or ah since we've been talking. That's not true for most people. It's infectious. I just said um. There are people who don't think about what they're going to say until they say it.

Starting point is 00:45:04 It tends not to be very interesting, and people are bored by it. And yet it doesn't take a lot of thought to put something together in your head that is interesting or more interesting because you've edited things out or you've focused it to the person you're actually talking to. Definitely. I mean, a lot of it's about fear. It's filling space. And one of the reasons that I recommend reacquainting with silence is because that's a great thing to do if you're speaking to an individual or you're on stage in front of a thousand people. When you're on a stage or in a conversation, it's quite okay to pause, to slow down, to gather your thoughts. You don't have to fill it.

Starting point is 00:45:50 The biggest sin that I see people, particularly people who get nervous, committing on stage is gabbling, is thinking they've got to fill every second with lots and lots of words. It's not necessary so i wouldn't do it here on a kind of radio style program a podcast because if you stop for 20 or 30 seconds that's dead air and people think they've lost the program and they go and do something else but if you're standing on a stage i mean i do, I used to do this quite often when we used to stand on stages. I could stop for 20 or 30 seconds quite happily and just stand there and nothing's happening. And the audience are probably thinking, I wonder what I might have for lunch. And they feel quite comfortable because I am obviously not looking uncomfortable.

Starting point is 00:46:41 You know, I'm not sweating and shaking and obviously lost my way and we have a moment and when you get comfortable with silence like that you can slow down you can enjoy the pauses and you do not have to fill them up with filler words so i think that's really where that's come from over the years i've become more and more comfortable with speaking at my own pace without having to gabble and fit every bit of the time with words. Which makes it more interesting because it has peaks and valleys and pauses and it's the way it draws people in when you talk that way as opposed to, and this is another thing I find, that I'll talk to people before I interview them on this podcast and they speak in a very normal way. hesitant, like they're afraid, maybe they're being fact-checked by somebody that they parse out every word and there's a lot of ums and ahs that weren't there beforehand. I guess it's just self-consciousness that now that we're actually doing this, now I have to be really careful what

Starting point is 00:47:59 I say and it screws it up. Breathing is a really good way to counteract that for anybody who has these things happen and isn't used to the situation. They're put in a big, deep breath. You know, if your voice goes a little bit like this when you go on stage, nice, big, deep breath. Because your voice is only breath, it's the fuel for your voice.

Starting point is 00:48:22 It's all it requires, really. And then practice helps. voice is only breath it's the fuel for your voice it's all it requires really and then there's all practice helps you wouldn't go on stage at carnegie hall to play a piece if you've never played the piano before but it's amazing to me how many people will stand up on a stage in front of people or give a webinar in front of people without having practiced using the tools and without having practiced delivering the thing really well you owe it to yourself surely and i think what you just said mike was absolutely on the money about variation whether it's prosody you know the sing song of speech pace volume or volume you know you to vary things is what creates the interest otherwise it's like a

Starting point is 00:49:08 billiard ball it's a featureless thing and people get into repetitive cadences don't they you often hear that in people who are not very good at public speaking where everything goes like this and if everything i said went like this, every single sentence was, you know, eventually I would hypnotize you and you'd be in some sort of comatose condition and go to sleep. So variation is the heart of engaging people's attention. I think you're absolutely right. Well, as I said, this is a topic that's particularly interesting to me, but I think it's interesting to everybody because how we speak and how we listen, our communication skills, it's part of how we navigate through the world. And I think your advice is really helpful. Julian Treasure has been my guest.

Starting point is 00:49:55 He's got some great TED Talks I think you'll enjoy, and I'll put links to them in the show notes. And he is author of the book, How to Be Heard, Secrets for Powerful Speaking and Listening. And there's a link to his book at Amazon in the show notes. Thanks, Julian. Well, thank you, Mike. It's been an absolute pleasure talking to you. The next time you go to your grocery store, you'll notice that there aren't any windows in there, except the ones in the front. Why? Well, it's a component of retail shopping psychology. you'll notice that there aren't any windows in there, except the ones in the front.

Starting point is 00:50:29 Why? Well, it's a component of retail shopping psychology. Retailers try to create an environment where people feel comfortable spending time and money. In the case of windows, well, having no windows creates this sense of suspended time where shoppers won't notice inclement weather or that it's getting dark outside, so they stay longer, and the longer they shop, the more they spend. There are some practical considerations too. Large windows

Starting point is 00:50:55 letting in sunlight can cause fading on packages, which make them seem old and worn to consumers. Also, swapping out valuable wall space for windows would reduce the number of displays and products available to shoppers. And that's why there are no windows. And that is something you should know.

Starting point is 00:51:16 A quick rating and review from you would be really appreciated. You can usually leave a rating and review, and they are most appreciated. They really do help, and it only takes a second. I'm Micah Ruthers. 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.

Starting point is 00:51:45 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 partnership to catch the killer, unearthing secrets that leave Ruth torn between her duty to the law,

Starting point is 00:52:11 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. And though we have seen, of course, every episode many times, we figured, hey, now that we're wrapped, let's watch it all again. And we can't do that alone. So we're inviting the cast and crew that made the show along for the ride.

Starting point is 00:52:52 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

Starting point is 00:53:13 "'Dacovni 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.

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