The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Revolutionizing Flood Defense: The Future of Inflatable Barriers with FlowStop at CES Show 2025

Episode Date: December 26, 2024

Revolutionizing Flood Defense: The Future of Inflatable Barriers with FlowStop at CES Show 2025 Flowstop.co About the Guest(s): Alex Cammarano is a French entrepreneur with over a decade of experience in the U.S., currently the Founder and Senior Managing Director of FlowStop US, an American subsidiary of FlowStop Industry. Based in Oakland, California, Alex has a diverse entrepreneurial background, having started his career as the founder and CEO of an innovative art platform, Lighted, which aimed at digitizing and democratizing art. He was also on the founding team of Atra Health, a biotech company researching psychedelics for menopause and PMS. His journey led him to FlowStop through a mutual investment that evolved into a full-time role, where he's now focused on innovating flood barrier solutions. Episode Summary: In this enlightening episode of The Chris Voss Show, host Chris Voss welcomes Alex Cammarano, a visionary in the field of flood prevention technology. Centrally focused on the innovation and evolution of FlowStop, an inflatable flood barrier, Alex delves into the intricacies and advantages of this cutting-edge product. With global climate change driving an increase in natural disasters like floods, FlowStop offers a convenient, reliable solution that replaces traditional sandbags and aids in preventing water damage to buildings. The conversation touches on the challenges faced due to changing weather patterns, the importance of proactive disaster readiness, and how FlowStop's unique inflatable design helps mitigate risk effectively. Alex shares insights about the journey of launching in the U.S., the potential for insurance incentives, and FlowStop's presence at CES 2025. With an emphasis on strategic business development and harnessing innovation, Alex envisions a future where homes and critical infrastructures, such as nuclear facilities and commercial buildings, are equipped with efficient flood barriers. As this technology continues to expand globally, FlowStop stands as a testament to entrepreneurial resilience and ingenuity. Key Takeaways: FlowStop is a customizable, inflatable flood barrier designed for easy deployment to protect buildings from water damage. Natural disasters related to flooding account for a significant portion of worldwide insurance claims, highlighting the need for innovative solutions like FlowStop. The product has received endorsements from nuclear facilities in France and has a growing presence across Europe and the United States. Alex Cammarano's entrepreneurial journey leverages previous experiences with startups in art digitization and health biotech to bring flood protection innovations to market. FlowStop is seeking to collaborate with insurance companies to provide homeowners with effective, financially accessible means of flood prevention. Notable Quotes: "Flooding is one of the worst natural disasters in the world, affecting 90% of all national disasters." "FlowStop is a revolutionary inflatable barrier designed to efficiently and easily protect structures from floods." "The beauty of FlowStop is its simplicity and effectiveness, replacing heavy sandbags with a lightweight, durable alternative." "In areas of rising climate change threats, solutions like Flow Stop are crucial for both residential and commercial safety." "In France, insurance companies are already adopting FlowStop, and soon, we hope the U.S. will follow."

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. It's Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the big show. We certainly appreciate you guys. For 16 darn years, my back is tired. We brought you over 2,200 shows.

The CEOs, the billionaires, the White House presidential advisors, Pulitzer Prizes winners, the governors, the congressmen, all the smartest people in the world that bring you their stories, their journeys, their lessons of life, things to make your life better. And if it doesn't make your life better, I'm going to pull the car over and come back there, damn it. So be better or else anyway they're gonna be giving us their insights today on how to make your life better and deal with conflict resilience this is probably a great book if you're married or you have teenagers so i'm not sure about that it might be just good for business their new book is out march 18th, 2025. My God,

we're in 2025 already. It is entitled Conflict Resilience, Negotiating Disagreement Without Giving Up or Giving In. Robert Bordone is on the show with us today and Joelle Salinas is on the show. Welcome to the show, gentlemen. Give us your dot coms. Where can people find you on the interwebs? Great. Well, first of all, thrilled to be here. And I can be found at BobBordone.com. That's B-O-B-B-O-R-D-O-N-E.com. And Dr. Salinas, where can they find you? Well, SalinasMD.com. And you can find out more about a book at ConflictResilienceBook.com. ConflictResilienceBook.com. That's where we want you to go right now. So my first question to you guys is why didn't you add at the end of it, how to negotiate disagree without giving up or giving in and choking out the

other person? Why did you leave that in part off? No, that's a, that's a good question. See, this is why you need me to write the titles for these. This is how we get stuff sold.

So if you would, please, I'll give each of you a shot at it. Tell us 30,000 over you, what's inside your new book? Sure. Great. So our book is called Conflict Resilience, and it is a book about how to handle conflict. But the subtitle, I think, belies something that can be surprising to people, because it's really not a book about conflict resolution, but it's really a book about how do you disagree with other people and stand your ground, but also maintain the relationship and stay connected to them.

And we think the book is really timely because right now in this polarized moment in business and in families and in communities, we see so many people either exiting or thinking that the only choice is to fight. We think there is a different way and that's what the book is about. But also as the added bonus, and I'm going to invite my colleague to speak about this, that as the added bonus of bringing to it, not just strategies, but also the brain science behind it and some brain hacks so that this feels implementable, real, and grounded in science. Awesome. Science is great.

Yeah, yeah. And I'm a neurologist, researcher. My background is at Mass General Harvard Medical School, faculty at NYU Langone Health, and chief medical medical officer co-founder of a company called Isaac Health to provide services for people with brain health issues and you know Bob and I started working on this when we both kind of in our own kind of spheres were seeing people having a harder and harder time just sitting with disagreement just really having a hard time tolerating when somebody was different than you or kind of disagreed with you. And Bob has his wealth of experience as like an internationally renowned kind of negotiator, mediator, kind of in this area. But from my perspective, you know, I've done a lot of research in social connection and social relationships.

And there's this real kind of brain wiring that we all have kind of built into each other that makes it so hard to be able to put up with the people around us as you kind of mentioned kind of choking people out and yeah you know we could have as as d'andre thawes like out in the savannah there's mechanisms there that made it a lot very easy for us to want to take the other out right to survive and that makes it really hard in the world that we are in today to be able to not hurt other people across the table from us. And really kind of what we're doing with the book is helping us to retrain or rewire our brain as well to be able to kind of better sit in those situations, but to better get to the objectives that you want out of that situation. And we need more of that now than ever, as you guys mentioned there. I mean, we've gone from the Savannah where it was probably legal to choke someone out. And don't do that, folks. It's

just jokes. Don't write me, please. Seriously. The attorney made me say that. I just got a text from the to now, you know, like Facebook, you know, there's a lot of Facebook and social media resolutions. I probably blocked, I don't know, half a million people, I think at this point over politics and, and stupidity, like conspiracy theories and, you know, the world is flat. Everybody knows it's a triangle. It's not a circle. It's not flat. That's just kidding people. Stop it. Don't start a cult. The cults that I started in the Chris Voshoff jokes are just massive. But do you guys discuss maybe how to deal with some of the social media? Yeah. I mean, you know, Chris, so much of what drove this, I think, at the beginning, you know,

I spent 20 years teaching full time at Harvard Law School. And in my last five years teaching there, what I started to notice was, you know, we spend, this is a school that spends thousands and thousands of dollars to recruit really diverse people from all over the world. And we do a good job of that. And I knew that because I was on the admissions committee. But then you're sitting in a classroom, and it's as boring as hell. And it's as boring as hell, because nobody will actually speak what they actually think, because they're afraid of getting canceled, getting called out, making a mistake. And so, what we realized, what I was observing, and Joel was observing similarly in his own universe was, we can bring all these really interesting people together, but if there's no ability to actually bring out our differences and talk about them, then what's the point?

And I think what you said is really powerful, which is part of the reason why I think we don't engage anymore, is it's so easy to go to those social media cocoons of comfort, right? And be surrounded by the people that think like us and like us and approve of us. And then the algorithm the people that think like us and like us and approve of us. And then the algorithm actually supports that. And it's easy to kind of cancel the other out. And you know what? In our social spaces, that's probably fine. But in our businesses, in our schools, in our medical centers, in our government, we can't have that and survive, right?

Your mother-in-law is always going to be your mother-in-law. Your sister is going to be your sister. And you got to figure out a way if you want that relationship to persist, not to agree, but to actually disagree better and not choke them or just hope you see them for 45 minutes every Thanksgiving. Yeah. I mean, this is an important book you're putting out in March. Why couldn't you have this for my Christmas dinner that I'm going to be having up here soon with the family what's going on guys yeah i know yeah timing is timing is maybe everything although you know part of part of what we were thinking is that especially coming out of the election right people are some people are obviously rejoicing and some people are looking their wounds i know people

who said you know i'm putting up the up the Christmas tree on November 1st. And we were thinking that like people need a few months to just kind of sit with whatever their new reality is. And we're hoping that people will be ready to engage and interested in realizing that, listen, after the first hundred days of Trump, there's going to be three years and nine months to go. And maybe people will be a little bit ready wherever they sit on that political fence, because this is not a political book, really. It's a book of tools. It's a book of brain hacks. And so, you know, we don't know if the timing's right, but we think that that's when people might be hungering and hoping for something different. You know, it's probably available in Canada, too. There'll be a lot of Democrats moving up there. It'll be in Canada and all sorts of other places where they might use it. Yeah.

Joel, did you want to jump in here on that? Yeah. I mean, I think the timing is just so important in addition to kind of the political climate that we're in, but in the where social media is at, I think we're just seeing a real decline in the ability to develop those social skills to be in kind of these conflict situations with each other. And I think one of the things that we really harp on in the book is that it's not just being in conflict for the sake of being in conflict, it's that there's something in it for you to engage in that conflict to really get out of it. So whether it's something at work or something related to your family members, it's really important to know that there is something to be gained that will meet your own kind of needs by sitting and being with that situation. You learn about the other person, you learn about the perspective.

It doesn't mean you agree with them, but you know more about the world and you're better able to trust each other in that relationship. You can actually accomplish something else. Our own brain systems are really wired to label people as trustworthy or not. And it happens pretty, pretty quickly

within just a matter of seconds. And there's this kind of reaction that your brain has when you don't trust others and certain kind of things that your brain will let slide when you do trust them. And if you want to develop a really strong relationship with kind of co-workers or partners or anybody else in your life, I mean, I think it behooves you to develop a relationship of trust so that way you can actually work together to accomplish whatever it is that you want to accomplish. We didn't do bios on both of you guys. Give me a rundown on your backgrounds. How did you guys grow up? What motivated you to go down the road you led down? And then the

proponent that led to the book? Yeah, sure. Gosh, where to start? By training, I'm a lawyer, although I haven't practiced law very much. I spent 21 years on the faculty at Harvard Law School, where I founded the school's negotiation mediation clinical program, and really started my kind of professional interest around the idea of problem solving, around the idea of collaborative negotiating. How can we come together and create value? That was something that i think always was interesting to me it's probably part of what sent me to law school a part of what made me not be a lawyer to be honest was feeling that so much of lawyering is about ends up being

about making problems worse but the part that appealed to me was the problem-solving instinct. And yes, started a clinic there. And over the years that I was doing my work, I had a growing interest in the kind of psychological and emotional and identity-based parts of conflict. Many times people are fighting about an issue, but it's not about the issue. It's about something mom did, you know, 15 years ago, that's still rubbing me the wrong way, or deep insecurities. And so a lot of my writing started and interest started to shift to helping people kind of think about their internal conflicts. And then starting to really realize that so much of the problem wasn't about the fact that we disagree. It was that we didn't know how to disagree. And so, I continue to be

really interested. I do a lot of professional training in negotiation and mediation. I run a small boutique firm called the Cambridge Negotiation Institute. But this book for me, and the collaboration with Joelle has in many respects been a real pinnacle because it's allowing me to marry and hopefully this book marries the cusp of business, but also personal transformation and having that be kind of betrothed by kind of brain research and actual academic backgrounds. So that ability to combine both the skills and real life piece with the research piece. That's probably way too much and you wanted to know. I'm sure Joel is going to do a much better job of talking about himself

than I just did. I grew up in Miami, Florida know, I think what led me into the medical field and specifically into neurology was really a deep fascination for, you know, understanding, you know, why we think what we think, feel what we feel, do what we do. You know, really just trying to understand what makes people tick. And, you know, I got drawn in more and more into the specific field of neurology called behavioral neurology, which is really focused on kind of our brain and our behaviors. And, you know, we often manage people who have conditions like Alzheimer's disease, and other kind of memory and thinking related changes. But for me, it was a really important way to understand kind of that question of like, why we do what we do. I did all my clinical training at Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women's Hospital, was faculty at Mass General and Harvard Medical School for many years, helped to develop their Center for Brain Health and served as clinical director. Then in 2020, moved to New York, where I became faculty at NYU Langone, continues to see patients there. And then in the last kind of three years, I've

also done a lot of work in helping to found and serve as chief medical officer for this online memory center that I mentioned called Isaac Health to really improve access to care. But a lot of my career has also been defined by research that I've done, really looking at social relationships, how the people around us shape our brain and how our brain shapes kind of the world around us. And in kind of making a connection with Bob on this topic, it just felt really important. I think one of the things that we've seen in the research world is that things like social isolation and loneliness are not only, you know, really important in determining your health. Being lonely is about as risky, if not more risky than smoking and obesity for your health, but it's becoming more common. And it's becoming more common in people who are over 65, but it's also becoming a lot more common in younger people too.

And this is going to have a real impact on public health and in the future. And so one component of that is this really social relationships piece of one connection. And if you, you know, if you don't have the tools or the skills to be able to connect with others, certainly you're going to find yourself in a position where you're very, very isolated. And of course, with that, very, very lonely. So I see it as a public health imperative to be able to help us kind of grin and bear working with each other. And God forbid, actually enjoy kind of working with each other despite disagreeing with each other. I mean, I think an important piece, if I could just pick up on what Joelle said, right? I think of this book that, and that we want to drive, right,

is that sometimes people think conflict is bad. And the reality is conflict can be bad, worse than bad. It affects your actual health. But if you handle it well, it isn't bad, right? So, the avoidance, the anxiety, the stress of the avoidance that leads to the disconnection and the end of the relationship, that is what's bad, right? Or, you know, take it the other direction, the after class one day, you know, I feel like the worry about having that difficult conversation was way worse than the difficult conversation. And that insight, I think I have found to be the case over and over and over again. That when we think about what are the, we often focus on the like fears of having a hard conversation

but we're not taking account of the cost of avoiding and those costs are high that's an interesting thing to think about the cost we'll pay the price but we won't pay the cost as you know pierce said several things there that are kind of interesting one joel was talking about the brain health and stuff and you know i've i've talked with my mom who's 82 it's important you know that you know she's gotten isolated she's aged and most most older folks do these days they get isolated and you know then it seems like dementia and alzheimer seems to accelerate my sister has ms and she's been in care centers for probably 10 15 years now and you know she's at a point where dementia is decelerating is is accelerating

and um you know and and her being technically isolated in a home is bad one thing that and i think you're right you know there's there's sometimes you avoid that person on Facebook who has the conspiracy theories and or has the political things that are very toxic or racist. I think that's one of the hardest things that people have had with the Trump thing is it's not about, you know, you're a Republican, I'm a Democrat, and you believe in big government, and I believe in Less government, you know, whatever the hell it used to be before that which where it just became on full-on racism and xenophobia and You know tossing out kind of the norms of decency that we used to have, you know encouraging violence and stuff and And it's hard to have that discussion with people because you're like, I'd love to get along, but I don't want to be seen with you because one of the problems you have is if

you go hang out with KKK members all day long, people think you're with them. Yeah. You know, and I had people reaching out to me on Facebook, you know, because we have a big brand there, going, you're still friends with this guy. And, you know, he's pretty, you know, he's repeating a lot of racist stuff from the thing. And so you agree with him? And you're like, whoa.

And, you know, a lot of brands, I think, kind of felt that way. But you're right, you know, trying to consider the costs. cost and you mentioned bob the the loss of it you know i've had friends that i was been friends with for a million years i thought i knew them i thought i always thought they were good people and i think deep down they mostly are but you know one day someone said it was okay to spout racist epithets and that that's politically expedient and they copied it and normalized it and you're just like i i i'm gonna lose you know we have to block them finally it hurts yeah i mean yeah there's still people that i kind of grieve for that i've lost throughout my life because they can't you know they they bought the tesla, you know, had to enfriend all those people and block them. I'm just teasing.

But hey, Chris, can I make two? I think there's two things, two threads I'd love to take from what you said. It's just an ugly truck. That was all. It's not even a truck. My next door neighbor has a Tesla. So there's literally, we share a driveway. Call the HOA.

But, you know, anyway. But the two things, two serious things I want to take from what you're saying that I think we want to stress. The first, right, I think is, and we try to really thread this needle carefully in what we write. that need that quality or belief that we feel that people need to develop some toughness for being uncomfortable and difficult conversations from you should subject yourself to abuse and trauma, because that is not what this book is about. And we really want to make that distinction. And we offer some guidance for that because there is a line between this is unpleasant and uncomfortable you know what life like lots of things in life are uncomfortable including sometimes conflict from this is damaging right so that's one thing i'd

want to say the other thing i think that you said as such a big challenge in this moment is when you're hearing from other people saying, why are you consorting with A, B, C, or D? And part of what we want to try to address here is, and I think it's a personal concern of mine, and I think Joelle is all he can speak for himself, is that as we have become more tribal, there is a cost of engaging across the lines, right? Our people say your even decision to consort with them is a betrayal. One of the people who endorses our book, and I've had the real honor of doing some work with, is former Congressman Adam Kinzinger. And here's a guy who his politics are extremely conservative.

I mean, his politics are not my politics. Just the fact, though, that he has worked across the line on, I would argue, issues of basic decency and integrity have made him a persona non grata. And so, that's something that, you know, you just talked about that in your own life, right? And it makes it harder to kind of cross the transept when even that decision to do a little engagement is experienced by the other as betrayal. Yeah, I like how you said that it's the tribalness. Joel, did you want to jump in? Yeah, yeah. And I think this element of like tribalism, and there is this, you know, going back to this idea of like how we survive in the savannah, right, is, you know, potential threats, you know, is what helps us to survive, being able to predict the potential threat, you know, being able to hear a rustling in the bush and think that, you know, that's a saber tooth tiger, and giving us to survive and evolve. But those same mechanisms are still in our brain now. And so what ends up happening is if we begin to perceive others, or kind of what they do, or kind of the groups that we label them as being a part of as a threat or potential threat,

and this thing, you know, they may be an actual threat, but even just kind of a slight kind of relation to that, that thing that you can perceive as a threat can trigger these systems in your brain that are kind of very similar to kind of that Neanderthal in the savannah. So for example, you have these parts of the brain called like salient systems and valence systems that really help to like trigger alarms and kind of pull your attention, start to kind of activate. And then if those get to a certain point, then you get more of that fight or flight response that then floods kind of making your heart rate increase, your respiratory rate increase, blood pressure go up,

muscles contract. And now you're in this kind of place where you're ready to fight or run away or avoid. And the more you try to respond with to that by kind of avoiding completely like blocking people right on social media, or supplanting them kind of just like saying, this is my point. And then there's no other, there's no other point of view there, but ends up happening is that your brain starts to then kind of increase the wiring there. So that way the volume of that becomes even greater and greater. And so now even like the slightest kind of threat,

you're just so sensitized to it. You're much more likely to flee or kind of supplanted altogether, however you typically react to these conflict situations. And it just makes it way, way worse and much more difficult to manage. And so, what we want with the book is to find ways to kind of really have a circuit breaker in that system. And even if it's just a matter of being aware of what's going on in your brain and your body in these conflict situations, because awareness is really more than half the battle here.

And we know that's really interesting to know because with trauma, people probably build those same sort of the, the brain thing that you were talking about, you know, the fight or flight, you know, one of the problems I had from childhood trauma and I was unresolved at the time was in 2016 when I don't respond well to gaslighting. And I go to that fight or flight, you know, angry. And I think for four years I was a keyboard warrior of, you know, whatever. And that was a big waste of time, I guess, in my life.

But the other thing I was going to fall back with you and i think you said it bob is covid really in isolation and we talked about it with old people really hurt people and and may have stunted their brains or stunted their psychology you guys are the professionals on this i'm not i'm just some guy with a mic and but i run a big singles group and there's about 3 400 people in it and what i've tried to do because dating apps are just you know they're not designed to get you in relationships they're designed to keep you paying the money for attorneys yeah that's so the cats eat you keep swiping yeah and so i do a thing because i come from old world dating i'm like you know about 100 years older than you guys and back then we used to take the women on these dates we'd ask them out we'd be

like hey you're pretty you want to go on a date and then we take them like dinner it's really cool and they didn't have netflix and chill back then but and we started and that's how people used to meet each other you know they'd usually meet through family or work. And then we outlawed all that, you know, family and work. And we have these meetups where a couple times a month, all the singles get together and mix and mingle and, you know, stuff happens. And, but what's funny to me is we've had trouble getting people out. We have 400 people in the group and we can barely get like 50 to 100 people out. Yeah. And I'll talk to both

women and men it's not a sex issue maybe they're afraid of having sex with each other i don't know but it's a male or female issue and they'll tell me they're like i'm scared to go out and you know meet strangers and these aren't 20 year olds like when i was 20 i was you know and they're interested in dating yeah and they're dating you know and and we're in a group on facebook so everybody can see each other and we were trying to run a real positive healthy group but they're just so afraid and i'm like you go into a place with strangers at 7 11 at the gas station. You're walking into strangers' places all day long. But because we got so isolated with COVID and remote working,

it seems like they've either lost the skill or development. Maybe, Joel, they've lost whatever that brain muscle was, you know? I think what you're totally right. I mean, sorry, you go, Joel. You go first. No, I was just going to say that, you know, there's this extreme sensitization, you know, that's going on in the brain. And maybe they did kind of were in a situation where they were with a stranger and it was really, really negative. But I think this point about being afraid to be in a situation where someone is, you know, has a very different political belief than you or different ideology from you and not wanting to even engage because of what might happen or how how how negative that experience will be you're

missing out on a lot i mean if you if you if you look around you see that there are plenty of relationships where both people are ideologically or value kind of wise or aligned but there are also relationships where one person is extremely liberal and the other person is really conservative and outside of the political beliefs they're actually a really great couple if if you're not able to manage somebody having a different viewpoint of your own one you're missing out on potentially like the love of your life yeah i mean it used to be that was kind of normal right yeah yeah yeah and i think you you're, this thing, this observation you're making Chris about dating, right. Is one that I think is being replicated in all sorts of contexts. I mean,

I got to tell you, I have had a non-trivial amount of business that has come around conflicts between folks who want people to come back to in-person work and folks who don't. And it's not just about the commute, right? It's about anxiety around needing to kind of show up, the generative what happens is the fact that we're physically there. Not like we're all in the same space every second, but it's what do we do when we're getting a coffee or if I have an idea and I jump into your office. And we all know that there's like qualitative difference between a meeting on Zoom. I mean, it's really nice to be with you, Chris, this way, but we probably have a lot more fun if I could be in Utah right now and Joel could be with us, right? And it's not to say that there aren't good and valuable things happening in this space. But I think that this kind of this is like almost an extreme form of not having that kind of conflict resilience

that we're talking about. And, you know, I think it's interesting, right? Joel talks about, and a lot of his work is looking at this kind of social isolation you brought up with your mom. But we see that also with young people, right? That loneliness. And so, that's why in some sense, right, the book, in some ways is born of this polarized moment, but it's, I think, so much broader than that. And if there was a certain urgency, I mean, in this weird way, right, Joelle and I, we just kind of met as friends. I mean, we didn't come together originally for this collaboration, but just the more we spoke, the more we were like, you know, we think we have to do something here or at least try and you know hopefully someone will be interested and we can produce something you know we we don't know what'll happen yet because

the book's not out but but we really think that this is not like a non-trivial thing we're talking about you guys are probably saving some lives and saving maybe saving our society if we can get enough people to read the book it's interesting to me because a lot of the people who give me this anxiety thing about coming out and we don't have there's no formal dating thing it's not like a you know I hate those dating things where they assign you people and you you kind of like reject them I don't like this person can we said someone else you know it's just a mix and mingle and we've had so many people make friends.

And, you know, I preach about building your social graph and how important it is to have a good friend. Don't worry about dating. If you build your social graph, if you build a good friend's graph, you'll meet those people. Like we just had somebody get into a relationship. They met a friend at our meetups. And that friend referred them to somebody else. And that used to be the way we'd engage in this. But to see people in their 50s struggling with this, I mean, I get it when you're young.

I used to be afraid of adults when I was 20, and I was a young kid, and I was like, oh, man, these guys, they're smart, and I'm kind of figuring out, but, and then the other thing is too, is, you know, my business partner when, and I, when we broke up in 2004, I've been running our companies or what used to be our companies. That was weird. Since 2004, I'm working from home. Yeah. I've been working from home. And to me, I'm hyper social. So it's like super important to me to have lots of friends.

It's super important to me to get to of friends it's super important to me to get to these four walls you know to keep from going insane and although some people think i've already been insane yeah it's kind of really interesting how how that is and and i think you guys bring up a good point that i'm going to be thinking about that it's the anxiety that there might be conflict when they go it might show up and there might be a political discussion and that never happens. But you might get rejected. Yeah.

Hey, I like you. Can I get your number? Oh, no. Welcome to life. I mean, Chris, at the heart of, I think, so much conflict avoidance is that fear of rejection. So part of putting your full self forward in a way that others can hear,

but that's authentic, is showing some vulnerability. It's also part of what makes life interesting. Relationships are real and genuine, right? I always feel like whenever I hear someone, they're like, oh, we've been dating for six months and we haven't had a fight i'm like oh my gosh something's wrong that's about it that's that's one of those avalanches about to yeah it's one of those ticking palms yeah yeah i'm always interested in not not oh you're both yankees fans i'm like how do you manage the like yankees versus

red socks no that's what i'm really interested in how do you manage the Yankees versus Red Sox? That's what I'm really interested in. I'm a Bears fan. I can't live with myself. I mean, so much of what really underlies the book is really kind of developing almost like this prerequisite sort of skills for managing conflicts and negotiations. There's tons of negotiation books out there, right? There's tons of books that tell you, do this, do that, say this, don't say that. But what we're arguing here is that there's a whole set of skills before you even enter into the negotiation that you need to master. It's kind of like if you can't stand the heat in the

kitchen, how do you expect to learn how to cook? Yeah. How do these people expect to get in a relationship, these dating people? Young men are having this problem too. I mean, we've had lots of different psychologists about young men, and a lot of the school shooters are disenfranchised young men, disaffected young men. We just saw what is, in my opinion, the masculinity vote of men embracing, you know, a fascism authoritarian type leader. You study history and the rise of fascism. It follows women's and minorities' rights becoming more powerful than men's. And when men reach a point that they can't procreate, they can't create they clap back and it's usually a very powerful and ugly clap back and and overextended but you know you you see these people that are having these challenges and a lot of young men i we

have big gaming communities too i'm see i'm a hyper and so i run gaming communities too so i'm talking to a lot of young men and you know i gotta have something to do when i'm playing black hop six plus those young people are carrying me through the game you know yeah we got the old guy in the back we put up with him he fills out the team his eyesight's shit and his his reflexes are gone but you know he's got some funny jokes and he tells us to quit using the n-word all the time. He's kind of like having a dad that we never had. That's a whole other. I'm just going to leave that joke alone.

Anyway, I just tell him, I'm like, hey, I'm sorry. I went for the milk and the eggs. Never came back, kids. I'm here now. But they talk about women and dating. And they have almost no interest in forming families getting married and part of it is they see what women are up to on tiktok and some of the you know women on social media don't talk to men very well or talk about them very well as people and and they

just they're just checking out yeah and so between them and the single people, it's like, how are you guys ever going to have families in a relationship? How are you going to have the fun of being able to fight over that vase and the divorce if you don't just learn to get along first and have some kids? Some of this is, I think it really is driven by our brains, right? Our brain, more than anything is a fortune-telling machine you know our brains evolved to be able to take information that we've kind of gathered that we've experienced and then to tell us kind of what's coming so we can take an action

to in response to that and what ends up happening a lot of these situations that you're describing is you know people have had some experience whether it's kind of social media what they're told by kind of what's out in the general media about kind of what people are like or what they are and then they're making predictions like their brain is making this kind of almost involuntary predictions about kind of who these people will be and what they will do and what that experience of being together will look like and it can get really demonized, right? In one extreme where just engaging with somebody who, you know, believes a certain way will probably kill you or hurt you or say something that will deeply offend you or just going

to be a big mess. And kind of like, as Bob had mentioned before, oftentimes it's that kind of like anxiety or distress around what's potential that actually is more the problem than the actual engagement with the other person. And I think one of the things we talk about in the book, just to build on what Joelle said, is part of the retraining of the brain has to be able to see what we call the BBO, the bigger, better offer, right? Because if your brain is in this kind of loop, then why would you change unless you can see something else on offer? And I think when you talk about, without knowing this for sure, Chris, of course, but like a situation with young men, right? I

think part of it might be that there's not seeing that, right? They're not seeing the path and then they're in this. So, their brain is doing what the brain does. They're in a social context that is not feeding that possibility. And in the end, everyone is, you know, they're individually underserved. Obviously, you know, the culture and society is underserved and, and it's not inevitable. Right. I mean, I think that, I think for, for me, there's been lots of fun aspects of writing the book, including, you know, the hard parts of writing the book.

But one of the really interesting parts for me as somebody who does a lot of, you know, I did a lot of law school teaching and writing on the topic and does a lot of executive coaching and executive education. But working with Joelle, right, has kind of really been able to understand. There are like, you know, it's easy to think, oh, you can't change your brain, right? It's like you can change what you say or do, but your brain is your brain. And that's actually not true i mean you're not going to implant new cells into your brain but there are some yeah yeah maybe he can yeah yeah maybe that's gonna maybe maybe that's gonna happen it'll come with driving when it finally arrives yeah but

there's a certain by becoming aware of what's going on, there are like actual hacks that real people, you know, I'm like, you know, I always think of, you know, Joel's a neurologist. He's not a real person, but I'm a real, I'm just like an average real person. A real person can do it, you know, I mean, he's, you know, this, you know, but he's like this kind of expert in this. And, and, but that's kind of what's been really, really fun for me is to come marry these things and then see how they kind of play out with real people. You know, one thing I do, and I don't know if this speaks to what you're talking about, but I've in recent years after healing my trauma, I started studying stoicism. And I got introduced to it through that one guy who writes a lot of great stoicism books. And you may know who I'm talking about. I can't place his name off the top.

But he's got a great YouTube channel. And he kind of interprets what was being said. But, you know, so I study a lot of Marcus Aurelius meditations. It's interesting to me, a lot of the, you know, we've had a lot of generals. And I don't know if we've had official generals. But we've had, and I believe we have. I mean, we have people that have run the head of the Theodore Roosevelt during the Trump administration, and he had the COVID crisis. And they stood up, and we had all sorts of great military people on the show.

And it's funny. They'll talk to me. We'll talk maybe in the green room or something and they're in the bible their their bible is meditations marcus aurelius and other states system when you think about the conflict that they have to go through you know especially when they're decision making when you're running a nuclear a nuclear aircraft carrier and you've got to make decisions that are probably gonna you know if you make the wrong decisions and launch nuclear weapons that you're responsible there's no redo yeah there's no redo yeah i mean there's there's there's going to be conflict you know his one of i forget the

name of the gentleman i can pull it up here but you know he had trump attacking him on social media he was removed to his command and he had to make a decision to try and save his people and his crew as COVID was running through the smallest quarters on an aircraft carrier to try and offload them to Guam. And it wasn't getting up the chain of command to the Pentagon fast enough or risk putting his job and his livelihood and his career at an end you know there's a conflict resolution for you there and then of course you know we've had a number of people on the show who got on the wrong side of that donald trump tweets

and and you know i'm like what is that like and so a lot of times you know meditations marcus rose is one of those things and that stoicism is one of those things that's really helped me try and stay in negotiations, as you guys said in the book, not give up. And to try and learn to ride it through. I've been a single guy all my life. I've dated wonderful women all my life. But it's, number one, I can't afford the divorces. And I'm saving up a few million dollars now. I think I'm about $3 million in.

So I'm almost to the point where I can afford divorce. Then I'll get married. It's a real cheap joke, isn't it? You know, sometimes when you're dealing with people that are high in their emotions, whether men or women, and they're deep in their experience or their trauma reactions we talked about it's really hard to ride that hurricane and so stoicism really helped me do that and yeah meant be a core of what you guys are talking about i mean chris it is so much a part and we don't use the word stoicism but but but so much a part of our advice is about the pause and about the mindfulness. And it's really interesting. I'm going to let you all speak about the science. I mean, but as early as 2004, Harvard Law School,

we had a symposium on conflict resolution and mindfulness. And I think there were some people who were like, oh my gosh, what has become of, this is what Harvard Law School is doing, mindfulness, what's the connection? There is a deep, deep connection. And in the actual practice of this, it's something that we really talk about and give some examples of,

and also in the science. Joelle. Yeah, no, there's, I i mean i think this meditation mindfulness some people describe it as like a metacognition thinking about thinking i mean these these types of exercises is a way of retraining your brain we're retraining our brain to really strengthen those brain muscles that help to kind of control our attention and our own emotions to regulate our kind of heart rate blood pressure muscle contraction as best as possible so that way we can be not just in the moment but also make decisions that you know are more voluntary more deliberate as opposed to just

being guided by whatever our brain just kind of barks at it tells tells us what to do. It's how do you get out of the act-react cycle so that each move you make is driven by a purpose. And, you know, that example you used about, you know, kind of nuclear war escalation, right? In the negotiation world, right, so much of that was modeled through, like, game theory and prisoner's dilemmas and iterative game theory. And it's so consequential

because things can escalate you know and if if you don't have the ability to take the pause if you don't have the ability then do the perspective taking uh then your move isn't going to be a purpose of move it's going to be a reactive move yeah and if your default is to run for the hills that's what you're going to do and if your default is to throw a grenade back that's what you're going to do and could there be times in life when running for the hills or throwing a grenade is the right thing absolutely absolutely but it should never be done as a reaction that isn't driven by thoughtful purpose of this yeah so what i was talking about before is is you know during the trump administration's first thing

i mean i i didn't understand how much my unresolved trauma was being set off by was being gaslit and that's what i really i think somewhere around there i just discovered the term gas lighting and what it meant and the trigger that it was having with me and so now i can sit through a lot of stuff like you know people come to me and said you know trump's going to do this and he's gonna do that and i'm like just see if rfk gets appointed wait for the senate hearing and see if they're going to actually appoint the guy hold Hold your breath. You know, like I'm, I have a feeling it's not going to pass, you know, anything can happen, but, and so now I can kind of ride through it. Now I can go, Oh, I have a covert narcissist gaslighting me. Okay. That's fine. All right. Let's try and, you know, ride it and understand where they're coming from. Let's try and finesse it and not react emotionally

you know i try and monitor my emotions during those times and and so hopefully you know i've been doing what you guys have talked about where i'm trying to build that muscle and and then i choke them out no i'm just you're doing pretty good there ch Chris. Yeah, yeah. I'm still working on building that muscle. But that naming piece is so good. That's what we, you know, and we have some stories in there. I mean, Joel tells a really great story about being in his gym and just this kind of being ability to kind of take the pause. And naming to himself what's going on so that his next move would be driven from a place of just purpose instead of reaction. And all the emotions that come up in that reaction, particularly if there's trauma, right?

Whether that's shame or, you know, fear, anxiety. It brings you, it's like a time capsule that can bring you back. And you're not totally aware, but you're back to being that whatever it is 10 year old or nine year or whatever that trauma happened and you know it sounds like you've done some like really really good and important work to like be able to just you know there's a lobotomy mostly yeah i mean by the end of this podcast people will have a very different brain than when they started they better damn it they better you know it's funny i think i get more out of the podcast our guests than anybody does i mean you have you have a fascinating job

chris you get to talk to all these amazing people i mean accepting ourselves we're just we're just delighted to be able to talk to you but you get to learn so much and and i think listen like it's a dream my my alternate career was to be a journalist, actually. Yeah. Because you just learn a lot being a journalist. Plus, what I love is, you know, we monitor the channels. A lot of people come on from the big book publishers that you're from. You know, they'll do CNN, MSNBC, CBS, and then they're on our show.

And we'll be watching them live. And there's, you know, those big news agencies, they only have, you know, 30 seconds to three minutes or something. You know, we had Peter Strzok on the show. It really bothered me that, you know, Peter Strzok, the FBI agent who was on the Mueller commission. And, you know, he, he did what a lot of guys do or have been married for a long time. And, you know, he had an affair, you know, a lot of my guy friends around me, you know, sometimes it's the wife too, you know, but I was more concerned about my democracy and I'm like, why, why are they filling every three minutes of the spots about his messages and the salaciousness of a, you know, some chick.

I don't want to get to the stuff about my democracy and whether or not we're going to have capitalism and shit tomorrow. And so I was able to get get into the stuff about my democracy and whether or not we're going to have capitalism and shit tomorrow. And so I was able to get him on the show. And the other thing we were able to do was humanize him. Who are you? Why did you name these things after Rolling Stones? And really talk about what a human being these people were. And so it was really nice to get that fleshed out and see somebody and see a different side of him

You know, we had demo that's partner what we're talking about We had the Tiger King lady on the show and the end of the show I said what's something no one knows about you and she goes she goes I'm allergic to cats about felt That's why my eyes are always red and I look puffy and I'm like you you work in this pit, okay It's like me saying I'm allergic to microphones. Yeah. Yeah. But even Brett Crozier was the Navy captain.

Brett Crozier was the one I was referencing earlier. Oh yeah. He had the episode where, you know, I mean, Trump was assailing him, want to remove one of them, you know, they want to take his retirement or everything is ugly and he's on the show. It's the most funniest thing to watch and he really taught me a lot about you know i'm used to being a bombastic ceo and leader i'm used to you know getting up on the soapbox and being the cheerleader and the drum beat you know but he really showed me that there's a different side to being a leader that can be quiet yet powerful and i asked him on the show, I said,

so what does it feel like? I asked Peter this and a few other people that have been in the Trump game. What's it like to have the president of the free world, the most powerful guy, have a number on you? And Brett Kosher just as calmly, and we talked before the show, his Bible is meditations.

And I go go what's that like and as calmly and as nonchalant and as you could tell there was no emotional damage or no emotional sort of footprint of what happened left behind he just goes man everybody has their own opinion anybody has their everybody's entitled their. That's what he said. I about fell off my fucking chair because he just said it just like it was nothing. Yeah. Yeah. That's a lot of, there's a lot of self-work in that, right? Yeah.

And having that stillness, that calmness, that pause that you guys talk about. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, so now I think the hardest part for me is recognizing when we've entered the conflict zone with some people. Because sometimes you're talking to someone and you think, hey, we're just shooting the shit over coffee. And then you don't realize you've stepped into conspiracy theory number five billion. Yeah.

You know, Chris, it's interesting. We talk about that, right? That's a very specific thing that we call conflict tolerance. And we divide into two different things, right? What we call conflict recognition and conflict holding. So it's a lot of jargon, but just, it is what you said, right? That there are times I experienced this and Joelle does as well, where I'm, I'm having a fun debate, right?

Whenever we're talking about some policy, I don't experience it as conflict at all the other person thinks the relationship is on the line we have different levels of what what's qualifying or recognizing as conflict joelle and i have very different ones i have a very high conflict recognition i can be going at it with him and meanwhile he i mean now i know this about him right but before this right he might be feeling like oh my gosh like bob is so upset and i'll just go on to the next event right the other piece of conflict tolerance so we call conflict holding right once we've kind of calling it a conflict how well do we hold or do we run for the hills and for me sometimes once

i feel like oh now we're in conflict i can get avoidant because my issue i struggle with is always wanting to preserve the relationship so i'll be in a big conflict i'll be in a big back and forth of you thinking it's the relationship's not a stake because we're just having fun yeah but as soon as i think oh you're really actually upset with me now now it changes. And so each of us have these different thresholds on this. Yeah. It's interesting.

I would go far into it because I was kind of like you. And I'm like thinking, okay, we're joking around. And okay, maybe you got conspiracy theories and whatever. But then you realize that, oh, this is battle and i'm not really i got a sword sticking out the back of me now and yeah and i'm like wow and then i have to be careful because of that trauma that i don't go full you know warrior mode and like we're gonna fight now let's bring let's go next level you brought a on I brought a you know you brought a knife I brought a gun and you brought a nuclear weapon and you know and then you're not friends anymore yeah and so how do you how do

you deal how do you deal you know this is probably some people should read the book as we always say we like to just tease things out but you know I the one thing I have lost with people is is the conf is the is the conspiracy theory stuff and part of it is it's even worse sometimes the religion because they can spout off just a logistics timeline or spire of data they can just start whipping shit at you and somehow they've connected it all you know the the billboard family's connected to the smog in the sky and the frogs that are turning gay i guess and you know but they've they can pounce it out so far that it's hard to break that up if you argue with with me a point, I go, okay, let's take this part

of what you're talking about and let's tear that down and deal with it. And then we'll move to the next one. But when somebody's just, it's that onslaught and it doesn't even have to be a lot. It's just, they've connected so many dots to so many extremities of possibility that you're just like, holy fucking shit, where do I even start? Yeah. In the last part of our book, one of the things we try to give some guidance on is how do you make that call about whether to stay in this or not? And I think that's what you're talking about here, right? And we have some diagnostic questions, which I would send people to, right? But at the most most basic level i think there has to be a question of not whether they're skillful or whether they're good listeners or but whether

you think they're there in any way in good faith and i think if the answer to that question is no, they're in a silo, they're not in connection or relationship with you, then the question is, like, how do I exit? Because, again, going back to what we were saying earlier, right, this is a book that, and this is about how do we sit with the discomfort of our disagreement it is not a book of how do we sit with people who are of bad faith are wholly unhinged and yeah are like you know won't actually listen and do a bit of reciprocation which is different from whether they're skillful right i mean you're, you're talking about Elon Musk on Twitter, right? Say it again. Yeah. Yeah.

It's teasing. But, you know, you bring up a good point. I was going to bring this up earlier in the show because we kind of touched on how the fabric of our society is coming apart. And the UnitedHealthcare CEO uh, the murder of him by that young boy. I'm not going to repeat his name to see so many people in our society celebrate that, the killing of another human being over a differentiation of ideas. And, you know, maybe I've just had too many historians

and too many psychologists on the show I don't claim to be smart but I think I understand where a society goes if it if it decides that violence really is the answer instead of what we've talked about here healthy debate and you know like I was even kind of shocked by shocked by some of my friends online that were dancing over it. And I'm like, do you understand where this leads to? You know, I mean, the guillotines are great, but whoever rolls out the guillotines first ends up on the guillotines last. You know, you got to be careful about these things, but you know, you guys, we spoke earlier in the show about how we've kind of reached the

point of a society where we're kind of turning to violence because of the tribalism and, and all that stuff. And it's not going to end well for anybody. So it is not going to end well, you know, my mentor, the person who in many ways animated why I pursued the career that I have was a guy named Roger Fisher. So he wrote a very famous book called Getting to Yes, which you may have heard of. Yeah, yeah, I read it. And founded the Harvard Negotiation Project. He was a, he interrupted his studies at Harvard to fight in World War II.

When he returned, all of his roommates were dead. Wow. And he set for himself a goal of trying to work on the idea of the non that he said, which I think I haven't struggled with, but it is that all violence is at some basic level a failure of our empathy to understand the perspective of the other. Which doesn't mean we would agree with them. It doesn't mean we would join with them. But that somehow if we saw the world the way they saw it, we would do something different or have some different feeling. And, you know, to think about that World War II generation, that greatest generation that's almost not with us anymore, and then a world that's moving back in some of the dangerous directions

that brought that world on feels deeply saddening to me. But, you know, it's within each individual one of our power to try to change and shift and reverse that in some way. And I think if we bring these types of skills to more people, especially young people, I think that starts to give me a sense of hope. I mean, i think there's this one story in the book about kind of a preschool in the netherlands where they're trying to introduce conflict mediation with amongst the kids and there's somebody who wears

like a like a blue hat and so whenever kids get into a fight or they disagree on something they'll go to that person wearing the blue hat and they'll they'll talk through kind of the issues and they'll they'll kind of navigate it together but what was really fascinating to me was not the fact that this kind of mediation kind of person existed in the playground but that the person wearing the blue hat was a kid it was another one of their classmates another preschooler so these are skills that any of us can learn and i think it's the kinds of skills that we need to start instilling more and more across everybody we're in contact with because it is a matter of sort of societal existence you know you guys spoke to how the empathy and trying to understand each other there's two things that I found have worked well for me.

One is, first I have to determine if the person I'm talking to really wants to debate politics is a person that we can have a mature debate and a fairly calm debate. There's certain people that you've probably seen them on videos of being interviewed at rallies. There's no way you can have a calm conversation with them. But there's ways to debate. So usually when I sit down with people on that and I go, okay, look, I'm a Democrat. I'm a moderate Democrat. Actually, now I'm an independent. But we need to clean up the Democratic Party.

But, you know, I've been a Republican. I've been a liberal. They moved the goalposts on me. Those Ham a republican i've been a liberal they moved the goalposts on me those hamas people there at harvard did they do that at harvard and anyway we won't get into it but you know they did a lot of colleges which is interesting but and so i say look but we're going to have this debate as americans you and i are americans this country is founded on the the ideal of being amer together, we're in the same boat. So this isn't about your party versus mine.

This is about how do we live together and agree and make compromise as Americans. And any time it gets into the Democrats do this, liberals do that, GOP does that, and Republicans do that, and whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. And so some of it is like boundaries a little bit you know being able to establish those boundaries in the thing recently i had a good friend that came back into and my friendship in my life from high school and just it was like i don't know it's just wonderful to have a friend from that era again and we were getting along fine and then i discovered that they're really into conspiracy theories and like they make who's the conspiracy guy who had the radio channel and he just paid like a billion bucks and stuff oh alex jones yeah the the um

yeah alex jones so they make alex jones look like an amateur. And so what I had to finally do, because it was starting to come out and bleed out, and they kind of knew that this wasn't going to go well with me. And so I had to sit down with them and go, I love you and I care about you as a friend, but there's a certain boundary that we have to establish. You're welcome to believe what you want to believe. I'm not going to try and debate or change what you feel about that. But I can't have that conversation with you. I don't want to go down that road. And so, we're going to have this boundary. So, I don't know if you guys talk about boundaries in the book too, establishing these things. I mean, we absolutely do. The last part of our book really talks about kind of what are the ground rules or boundaries, right? And how do we choose together,

right? Whether we're going to talk about something. And if the answer is yes, how we're going to talk about it. And because we may decide, right? I mean, and then sometimes we even talk about, do I want to stay engaged on this issue with you or not? And if so, what are the ground rules? But then there's a second level that we can't always actually have a choice over. But do I want to stay engaged with you, period? So now with you and your high school friend, right, you could make the decision to say, you know what? Sayonara.

That's a little bit harder to do if it's your you know sister i mean i mean you could you could choose to limit how your number of interactions but at some level your sister's sister and but but we do really talk about and i actually think this is a best practice talking about like mutually talking about what are the hard conversations we're willing to have with each other? And then how are we going to do that? We have an example in the book of siblings, both of whom actually want to engage really hard conversations, but they're doing it in a way where one of them is getting

consistently shut down. And so, in order to be able to succeed at the conversation that they actually want to have, they have to have a prerequisite conversation of why is the way we're doing this constantly resulting in bad feeling and shut down? And can we do it differently? And so those are all really critical, important choices that need to be made as part of being conflict resilient. Joel, do you want to jump in here at all? I mean, I think, yeah. I mean, this figuring out kind of how we engage with each other. I mean, these are more of kind of these skills that we've learned from kind of emulating the people around us, right?

So if we kind of followed kind of how our parents kind of read the day with each other, right? And not everybody has a really healthy kind of childhood experience. I mean, these are the things that especially at a young age really become imprinted in our brain. And this is kind of our expectation of what engaging in a difficult situation is. And I think what's helpful is to be able to kind of spot that for yourself first, kind of that internal work. And I think this is kind of a core part of what we're kind of addressing here which is counterintuitive is kind of doing that internal work because you often think it's the other person that's the problem and you know sometimes they they are part of the problem but they're not 100 percent the problem because problem that is kind of how you're responding to it and your decision

or kind of your contribution to the situation and so we want to help people to be able to kind of develop a new framework or a new template for what these conversations can look like and the change is not going to be easy it's going to be pretty awkward actually especially when you're bringing up in certain contexts where you haven't used it like at work or with a sibling right to say hey i want to have a conversation with you and that is i think the way that we're having these conversations at the dinner table over the holiday you know are not productive or really end up with me or you kind of or kind of being upset or upsetting the people at the table and so let's have an open conversation about maybe a new way that we can do things that maybe that situation will blow up in your face

but i think more likely and this is kind of part of what bob and i really believe strongly is that this will open a new door to be able to think of a new way to engage with things. Because we don't have the imagination to see kind of how things could be. We end up feeling a sense of a lack of agency. or these kind of behaviors that are just very reactive and inconsistent with our values, like violence, like cutting people out in your life who you deeply value. You know, I don't know if you get it into victimhood in the book, but a lot of our society has turned into a very emotionalism victimhood society. And sometimes that's hard to overcome, but people definitely need to buy your book and read it. Final thoughts as we go out, give people a pitch on where to pick up the book and get to know you guys better, dot coms, et cetera, et cetera. Great. For our book, go to conflictresiliencebook.com.

You can buy the book right now at any of your favorite booksellers. Just also to say, this is a topic that we think cuts across age groups, as this conversation has said, across professional contexts. Wherever you sit in the world, if you have a relationship, then you have some conflict. And wherever you sit on your capability, whether you are deathly afraid of it and want to avoid or feel like your whole life is a big battle, you have a capacity and ability to improve at this. And yeah, that is kind of the promise and hope of the book. Joelle. Yeah. Conflict is everywhere, right?

It's breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And the skills that we're kind of proposing here are really a combination of kind of life skills, but also leadership skills, and they're also business skills. So we think that they're extremely valuable skills for anybody. And regardless of whether or not you decide to buy this book, I think just being aware of how you handle conflict and kind of your reaction to it will be a big help for you. And so we're here to help to kind of provide a little bit more of that framework and it go away, and really focus on what else can we get from this situation if we just are able to sit and kind of be with that discomfort. Guys, I hope a lot of people read the book and we can change the world and get back to talking to each other. I think it's really important. You know, I became a moderate Democrat, Democrat I don't know two or three years ago and I really tried to focus on looking at both sides of the party and

You know, we had we had some people that used to you know, Reagan and Tip O'Neill used to work together Amen, who's the guy who said hard line was a hardball hardest Matthews? In the show and he talked about how Tip O'Neill, you know, back in the day, you know, they would try and find consensus. And, you know, those are the conversations I have where we go, we're both Americans here. You know, I can see why, you know, you're for abortion, you're against abortion. We have to live together. So we have to compromise. You know, married people have to compromise.

You know, we all have to compromise. Yeah. And, you know, married people have to compromise, you know, we have, we all have to compromise. Yeah. And you know, how do we make it work? We can't just have this, you know, we talked about the tribalism of my way or the highway, you know, we need to ship the X, Y, Z party out and everybody in it to an Island. You know, you can't do that. We're in a, we're in a big country. We've got to get along.

And I mean, thankfully we're kind of blessed with democracy where we're supposed to talk out our issues but you know so i hope people read the book and i'll be reading it and in march 2025 it comes out folks order up wherever fine books are sold pre-order it now conflict resolution it's been a long time it's a word it's a word mouth it's a big word conflict resilience negotiating disagreement without giving up or giving in and then second book should be coming out the year after and not choking the person out i'm kidding we're all professionals here but it's a nice thought yeah you can think of it just don't do it anyway guys thanks for tuning in thanks to my guests for being with us in the show go to goodreads.com fortress chris fuss linkedin.com fortress chris fuss chris fuss one of the tiktokity and violence is never the

answer folks be good to each other stay safe we'll see you next time that should have us out