The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Unleash Your Primal Brain: Demystifying How We Think and Why We Act by Tim Ash

Episode Date: May 25, 2021

Unleash Your Primal Brain: Demystifying How We Think and Why We Act by Tim Ash Timash.com Understand what makes us human! Unleash Your Primal Brain is about the commonalities all 8,000,000,000 people on earth share. Our ancestors were molded by ruthless survival pressures from the earliest days of life on the planet. Adaptations which worked long ago are still inside of us – also shared with insects and reptiles. Later additions are common to all mammals from the tiniest shrews to the most massive whales. Some capabilities were bolted on relatively recently and are only shared with our primate cousins. And the runaway explosion of humans on the planet can only be explained by our own bizarre species-level evolution. The only way to understand how our brains work is to examine the complete evolutionary arc. The lie of rationality The big picture of brain evolution How we learn and remember The chemistry of happiness The power of pain Demystifying risk Safer in the herd Good night, sweet dreams Monkey see, monkey do Big babies Sexy apes Let me tell you a story How we evolved to be cultural creatures Ownership, fairness, and favors Conformity and integrity Get ready, it’s going to be a wild ride with Unleash Your Primal Brain!

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. 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 this is voss here from the chris voss show.com the chris voss show.com hey we're coming with another great podcast certainly appreciate you guys tuning in have you shared the word of the Chris Voss Show, the podcast, with your friends, neighbors, relatives? Have you gone to them and said, have you heard about our wonderful podcast that we love, the Chris Voss Show?

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He is sought after internationally as a keynote speaker and the best-selling author of the book we just talked about and a landing page optimization. Has over 50,000 copies sold worldwide and translated into six languages. Tim has been mentioned by Forbes as a top 10 online marketing expert. And by Entrepreneur Magazine as an online marketing influencer to watch. And this episode is brought to you by our sponsor, ifi-audio.com. And their micro-iDSD signature is a top of the range desktop transportable dac and headphone app that will supercharge your headphones it has two brown burr dac chips in it and will decode high-res audio and

mqa files we're using in the studio right now i've loved my experience with it so far just makes everything sound so much more richer and better and takes things to the next level ifi audio is an award-winning audio tech company with one aim in mind, to improve your music enjoyment of quality sound, eradicate noise, distortion, and hiss from your listening experience. Check out their new incredible lineup of DACs and audio enhancement devices at ifi-audio.com. And what do you know?

He's right here in the flesh to share it with us tim welcome to the chris faust show how are you well thanks chris if i knew it was going to be in the flesh i would have taken my shirt off but okay i guess that's for the only fan show which is after hours here in the chris faust show that's right they always said i had a body for radio so that works out that's what they say about me too i got I got a radio face, so there you go. All right, Tim, where can we find you on the internet? Where can people look you up and get to know you more? Oh, easy to do. If you're interested in my keynote speaking or corporate marketing training or digital marketing consulting for executives, that's at timash.com. And if

you're interested in my book, Unleash Your Primal Brain, that's at primalbrain.com. There you go. Primal brain. Something that should be on the menu. So what motivated you to write this book? Wow. Great question. As you mentioned, I ran a digital marketing agency that was focused on making websites more effective for over 20 years. And we work with the Siemens and Googles and Facebooks, Expedia's of the world on down and created 1.2 billion in documented value. But the problem is that a lot of big companies and governments essentially have a giant advantage on us as consumers are being manipulated by algorithms

and artificial intelligence. And I just wanted to level the playing field. I saw what they were really doing behind the scenes. And I want to say, look, this is how your brain evolved. This is how you're being manipulated. So it's good to understand the operating system for human beings. So I want to do a bunch of myth busting and write a really accessible book about how our brain really works. There you go. So give us an overview of your book and what's inside. The book itself is very readable. There's not a single footnote table or any kind of diagrams in it.

Good. I'm against those. Yeah, me too. I have a constitution against footnotes. And I also did it as an audio book, which I recorded myself, and that was a lot of fun. So I just wanted to make it easy for people to read. But at the same time, I didn't dumb it down. So it basically covers a whole arc of evolution. If you want to understand where human beings came from early life on earth, a happy chemicals in our brain, learning memory, language, culture, gender differences, our highly social natures, it's all in there.

Nice. So why the title Unleash Your Primal Brain? What's the obsession with the primal brain thing? What is that about? I think in the West, ever since the days of the ancient Greeks, we've had this bias that human beings are rational. If we could only tame the wild horses of our emotions and be like Mr. Spock on Star Trek, we'd all be better off. In fact, that's not true at all. 95% of what happens in your head to help you survive is happening on autopilot. It's emotional based. You literally can't make a decision without involving emotion. And so I wanted to just peel that back and talk

about the part of the brain that's in charge 95% of the time. I feel like I should have brought a spear to this interview. At least a club. Yeah. So when you say unleash your primal brain, what are you hoping people do? Do I need to go grab a spear? No, not necessarily. I'd say the book is a bit of a chameleon. And what I mean by that is I wrote it with obviously a deep marketing background. And if you want to read it for any kind of persuasion, for marketing, sales, leadership, anything like that, how we're obligated by giving each other gifts, all of that tribal stuff, you could read it for that. Or if you want it from a personal development standpoint about sleep, the need to socialize, what drugs do to your body and your brain, understand all that from a personal development level, you could read it that way

too. So it's really human beings 101, the operating system. Wow. The operating system 101. So what are some tips and tricks that you recommend in the book that we can at least tease out to people to get them to order that baby up? One of the things that I think most people underappreciate is how much our brain really looks for threats. So as a marketer, for example, we're always doing what I call marketing happy talk. Hey, you should buy our stuff. All 8 billion people on the planet need to get this now. Order today and you'll have whiter teeth and fresh breath and be better looking.

All of that stuff. That's what I call happy, happy talk. When in reality, our brains are attuned to threats and loss and survival, anything that lessens our chances of surviving. So we actually respond way better to negative messaging. So if you want to persuade me to do something, you first have to move me off my comfortable spot. And to do that, you can use fear or greed and fear works a lot better. So for example, do you like ice cream, Chris? What's your favorite flavor? Does it look like I don't like ice cream or something? I'm not judging. I'm not judging. No. What's your favorite flavor? It is chocolate

mint. Chocolate mint. Okay. So here's a bowl of chocolate mint ice cream. But Chris, as you reach for it, I'm just going to whack you once on the back of the hand with a hammer. Is that okay? Like my mom when I was growing up. Okay. There you go. But just the one time. So what do you think? You want that ice cream still? I don't know, man. You're going to hit me with the hammer, dude. No, just the one time. We have a trust issue now. Okay. I'll stop beating you with the hammer as soon as we're off the air here. Joking aside though, so we know, I know what's going to motivate you more. It's going to be the fear and the pain avoidance and the loss. That's why we have that, the burden of hands were to in the bush where anything that's certain or good is not as it's easier to get than pain avoidance.

So we want to motivate people with pain avoidance. We want to say, Hey, things are really bad. If you stay on your current path, that's why you need to change. So actually rub salt into the wound. If you want to persuade someone, don't start with all the happy talk. Wow. Okay. It sounds like I need to put someone in front of my fridge for my diet with a hammer to keep me out of this stuff. Well, okay. So it's okay if you want to lose weight. I got a few pandemic pounds I'm carrying. Then it's not, oh, it's just another reaching into the pantry for some chips. You'd say, okay, you're going to have arterial sclerosis.

And eventually when you get the diabetes, we'll have to cut your legs off. And then after that, you'll get Alzheimer's and you're going to die alone with your cats. So that's the end of that road, right? That's what motivates you to lose a little weight. It's not that you'll feel better in your clothes. Yeah. I'm into dying with cats i don't know why i'm a cat person in fact i'm a leo so they're my people there's probably a joke there somewhere i'm not even gonna put on the show but anyway the after hours audience again it only fits yeah after i was i mean no you bring up a good point i just got this idea i should probably cover the whole fridge and arterial sclerosis pictures from google i'll just google that and just paste

them all over the fridge put it on the handle so you autopsy photos of morbidly obese people yeah that'll do it that'll do it i'll just shove a camera anyway the uh would be really smart see-through fridges that just occurred to me if you want to sell more food or something i don't know maybe i don't that might be bad for people yeah it's called a store display case i heard oh yeah store display case yeah yeah it's got the thing in there. Yeah. Probably wouldn't be a good idea unless you're trying to sell food. I like this idea. There's marketers have always told me there's two different things that motivate people. There's pain and there's pleasure. So you're saying that a bigger percentage is the pain part.

It's literally two, two and a half, three to one, depending on the circumstances. Yeah. So I hear marketers saying, that's off-brand for us. We don't say mean things, and we don't compare ourselves to our competitors. Great. Keep fighting with one hand tied behind your back. Have fun. That makes sense, though.

So basically, I should start running ads for the Chris Fosch Show podcast saying, do you want your family to die? You should say, do you want to get to die? You should say you want to get stupider and duller. And I don't know, that's a motivation for some people. According to the news I've been watching lately, that's a pleasure point. Oh, actually, hey, let's go in that direction because I'm all in. One of the other things in the book that I talk about is our highly social nature. So in a way, you could say the history of human beings on the planet isn't individual surviving, it's tribe against tribe. And so the most important thing that we can demonstrate is that we're good tribal members. And that means we have to be with the program.

And it's so important for us to transmit cultural knowledge that we're actually willing to do that at the expense of our direct life experience. Wow. Yeah. In other words, what our eyes and ears tell us, we're going to ignore in order to pass on tribal knowledge reliably. And we form into tribes over the most trivial things. But you can see this kind of in our polarized politics right now. That's a very important human characteristic, unfortunately.

I'm in the milk chocolate tribe. I fight anybody who likes Rocky Road. I will kill you, man. I'm in the milk chocolate tribe. I fight anybody who likes Rocky Road. I will kill you, man. I'll take you. I'll eat your flesh. Anyway. Well, I mean, look at this. So I got my Samsung Galaxy S20 Plus 5G. There you go. It kicks ass on your iPhone. I'd start a jihad if I actually said that to an Apple person. Yeah, I do that all the time. I have an S22. I love it. It's the best phone ever. But yeah, I start a lot of fights with the iPhone people. In fact, I'm using one for Clubhouse. I

had to use one, so I bought it from a good friend. And oh my God, what a difference to use that phone. But it's a cult on its own. And that's precisely my point. So mostly we were designed to be in our own tribe. It was probably our relatives running around the plains of East Africa, maybe 100 to 200 people. And so a tribe was obviously that. But now in these complicated, huge societies, we have, like you say, voluntary tribes, like what phone brand we use, or I'm in the streamlined haircut tribe because I shaved my head. But some tribes, like I was born in Russia, that's not a voluntary choice where you're born, who're born to so you can think of us as an overlay of different tribal allegiances and whichever one's active in the current context that's the one we focus on yeah it's uh i'm in the podcast tribe i'm on the chris faust show podcast how many of you are in the podcast show

chris faust show podcast tribe make sure that you subscribe and then bring a spear if you don't subscribe you will die a lonely death you'll die a lonely death i'm seriously rethinking all my ads at this point but we have the chris voss show cup we're gonna have the you need more branding dude that's just not enough visual signage on your podcast yeah we're gonna have the chris voss show spear that's what's coming up next i like. Chris Voss show down the whole spear. ShakaZulu. I'm going to mount it on the back, the ShakaZulu. I'm going to have, I don't know, some other witch doctor sort of element thing going on back here.

We're going to build out the set. Promise you'll have me come back when you do that. I'm ready. I got my caveman cover photo on my book. This is a, I'm ready to rock and roll. He's all going for it. And by the way way i don't need a spear i used to be a saber fencer back in my college days so i'll just whack you with the

sword james bond and shit like fencing or spearing or whatever that is you bring up a good point because when you watch the news if it bleeds it leads the news always does that teaser they go find out how cuddling with teddy bears will kill you just like what what soft screen so soft serve ice cream and the glass chunks in it tonight at 11 and you're just like what the fuck well well you laugh but the way the brain works like the basic operating system is as follows if it's, I deal with it immediately. That's the reactive part of my brain automatically. If it's something that I'm familiar with, I'll ignore it. That's the other thing.

So it's got to be something that cuts through our attention. You go, whoa, what's that? I'm not familiar with it. I better pay attention. The only thing that gets our attention is unexpected stuff. I don't care if you skydive. If you've done it a hundred times, you won't remember your hundred skydive. You will remember your first because that's the one that calibrated your scales.

That'll you remember the first one where your parachute doesn't open. You won't remember that. You will for a very short time, but there'll be that. There'll be that whole experience. You'll be paying attention all the way down. That's right. Yeah. It's always that last jump to catch it. Anyway, that's why they call it

the last jump. See what I did there? What else have we covered in your book? Or should we talk a little bit about your speaking engagements and different things that you do with coaching and things of that nature? Yeah, absolutely. So as I mentioned, for almost 20 years, I ran an interactive agency that focused on what's called conversion rate optimization or making websites more effective. And I wrote a couple of bestselling books. Here's the second edition landing page optimization and started the first worldwide conference series on the subject used to be called conversion conference. You know, it's called digital growth unleashed still happens in Europe, in Germany, UK and in the US in non pandemic years, of course, but now I'm out of the agency, I'm out Germany, UK, and in the US in non-pandemic years, of course.

But now I'm out of the agency, I'm out of the conference, and I'm focusing on the new book. Also, I just dropped the new LinkedIn learning class, if you're on LinkedIn, on neuromarketing. So check that out. I'm forming a mastermind group for marketing executives who want to understand neuromarketing and use that as the basis for driving their business growth. And of course, as you mentioned, keynote speaking, both virtual trainings for companies and organizations as well as in person. So that's coming back now. I've been to Florida. I got another one in San Diego and then Vegas in a couple of months. So the live events are picking back up. Vegas, baby. I'm really excited to see the live events come back i'm

excited to get the hell out of the house and go travel and go uh chase things around vegas i'm not sure what that means but i used to live there so we all know what that means anyway i'm in san diego so for me it's like taking the bus i've been there probably 40 50 times to speak or run my own conference very can't wait for nAB, CES, all the shows, just being able to go do stuff in Vegas. Yeah. That's really important to understand how our social natures really impact our quality of life. There've been the longitudinal studies that basically say not having a good social support network is the medical equivalent of being a two pack a day smoker in terms of life outcomes.

I feel that way after two. Yeah. And so it's really important, I think, especially now as we're coming out of the pandemic. I expect a kind of a rebound. We've been isolated so long that people are going to want some extra mingling, extra connection, extra in person. So go out there and do it and give people hugs if they're vaccinated. Yeah. I've been telling the jokes that I'm going to run around once everyone gets vaccinated.

I'm going to lick everything, lick all the windows. I'm going to walk up to people and go, you want to make out? Dude, what? And I'm just like, dude, we can, man. Let's just do it because we can. Free kissing booth. Free kissing booth, free makes out. I'll have one of those shirts that say hugs here.

And I'm just going to walk around the the mall lick every door handle lick every window and just be like fuck yeah man we can do whatever now we're inoculated against freaking Ebola actually though the the hugging part's important i talk about happy chemicals in my book and one of the things that that triggers um oxytocin is actually hugs that's the feel-good chemical it's not meth there's other feel-good chemicals but i talk not meth? There's other feel-good chemicals, but I talk about the dangers of addiction as well in the book. Note to self, Tim says it's not meth. Meth is not oxytocin. No. Don't do that. No, don't do meth. But joking aside, oxytocin actually gets triggered by 20 seconds of skin contact. So hold the hugs. Americans are, I don't know,

Protestant constipated in that way. Hold the hugs. I'm from Russia. We're huggers. Yeah. I tried that excuse of, hey, I'm holding you. So your oxytocin is increasing. Absolutely. Now I'm banned from all airplanes.

No, I know. I know it's a problem in all, in many of the clubs in Vegas, from what I've heard as well. Yeah. You got to, yeah. You get thrown out of there too. I'm not welcome anywhere. The judge says, anyway, I'm just teasing, but yo, hopefully, I don't know, maybe we become more huggable society and I could use about 50 hugs after this last year. I hear you. I was part, I'm part of this organization called the

Mankind Project and it's this men's initiation weekend you go through and then there are local groups that meet on an ongoing basis. And we've been virtual for over a year, of course, and just had our first in-person meeting. And it was just like so good to just be in real life instead of on a Zoom screen. Yeah, I can't wait. It's like, hey, man, you want to go have coffee today? Hang out with all my friends. Of course, they're still in Vegas. And hang out with my friends and be like, yeah, man, you just sit there. You don't have to have a mask on.

You don't have to be like, what's going on with whatever and have a piece of glass between you. It's going to be awesome. So pretty cool. And I'm proud of my daughter. She's actually right after this recording, I'm going to take her to get her dose one of the Pfizer vaccine. There you go. There you go. And she's only 14 and she's just, yeah.

Oh, so they're just getting out of the teens now, huh? Yeah, you can go all the way down to 12 with the Pfizer and they're talking about soon it's going to be down to two with the Pfizer the only time it's ever been beneficial for me to be fat and old was getting that vaccine like they went from like old people and they're like hey if you're fat with a fat BMI get in here and you can get a shot and I'm like same here I was like I was right there on the tipping point of apparently i'm obese i'm really stocky but five nine two hundred gets you the vaccine i'm really yeah yeah that bmi i remember seeing it and i'm like it's totally bogus yeah i didn't know about that i was like who based this uh bmi but i was like three times the bmi so i was like okay yeah i can

probably fit in there but but good stuff. Anything more we want to comment on the book, Tim, before we go out? No, I just, I'd say that if you really want to understand yourself and take yourself into better account, whether again, it's personal relationships or business, evolutionary psychology is a really great place to start. And I've made it very simple and accessible. It's not some deep science book, but it's packed with good stuff in a very accessible format. So- Shouldn't you be spending this a different way on the promotion? Shouldn't you be saying, if you don't want your children to die alone in an alleyway, buy Tim Ash's book. You're absolutely right. Hopefully I've made it clear what ignorance leads you to cults and death, and you will have

yellow stains under your armpits too. How about that? Unless you get this book. There you go. How's that for a smooth segue? Your teeth will not be fully white. Because you've been doing the meth and they'll fall out anyway. Well, that's true. Yeah. That's what the parole agent tells me. The beautiful part is they can get their teeth whiter by chewing on your book evidently from what i hear that's a rumor i don't know uh yeah just don't try that with the ebook it doesn't work as well when you go on your ipad you just rub against the the screen you just do that and yeah i don't do i don't know that actually might work actually when you think about it's like sandpaper i don't do it. I don't know. That actually might work, actually. When you think about it, it's like sandpaper. I don't know. Don't do that, people. Seriously.

Yeah, do not try this at home. Let's be clear. These are jokes, people. Yeah, these are jokes, people. Don't write us. Anyway, guys, we certainly appreciate you being on the show, Tim, to share all this wonderful knowledge. Thank you very much for spending time with us today. Oh, Chris, it's been my pleasure and my honor.

There you go. So, guys, check him out. Give us your plugs one more time, Tim, so people can find you on the internet. Easy enough. TimAsh.com and the book's at PrimalBrain.com. If you go there, you can check out the table of contents and get the chapter of your choice. Oh, wow. Yeah, absolutely.

That's awesome. Check it out, guys. You better do it or else your local booksellers or Amazon. Check out the Unleash Your Primal Brain. Demystifying How We Think and Why We Act by Tim Ash. Just came out April 6, 2021. And all that good stuff. Go see the video version of this.

Tim's got like a whole array behind him. He's got a really funny sign behind him. And he's got a whole array of all the different shows that he's done so you definitely want to go to the youtube uh thing and check it out youtube.com for this chris voss you haven't subscribed there you're you might die in a fire so go to the chris voss show you are gonna i can tell you're gonna read all your marketing get out of this from here i go to you facebook linkedin goodreads.com, 4chess, Chris Voss. Don't let your children die alone.

Thanks for tuning in, guys. We certainly appreciate it. Be safe. We'll see you next time. Thanks, everyone.