The Daily Stoic - Rich Cohen on the Keys to Negotiation | This Is How To Respond to Everything

Episode Date: May 18, 2022

Ryan reads today’s daily meditation and talks to author RIch Cohen about his new book The Adventures of Herbie Cohen: World's Greatest Negotiator, how to be a great negotiator, his fathers legacy, and more.Rich Cohen is the author of several New York Times bestsellers, including The Chicago Cubs: Story of a Curse and Monsters: The 1985 Chicago Bears and the Wild Heart of Football. Rich is also the author of a book we carry here in the store, Pee Wees: Confessions of a Hockey Parent, where he chronicles the journey of his son’s elite Pee Wee hockey team and his experience as a former player and a devoted hockey parent. This time, Rich and I talk about another father-son relationship - the one he shares with his own father, Herbie Cohen. Rich’s new book The Adventures of Herbie Cohen: World's Greatest Negotiator, which was released last week, is an ode to a remarkable man by an adoring but not undiscerning son, and a treasure trove of hilarious antics and counterintuitive wisdom. Rich is also a co-creator of the HBO series Vinyl and a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and Rolling Stone. He has written for The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and Harper’s Magazine,  among other publications. His stories have been included  in The Best American Essays and The Best American Travel Writing.Kion Aminos is backed by over 20 years of clinical research, has the highest quality ingredients, no fillers or junk, undergoes rigorous quality testing, and tastes amazing with all-natural flavors. Go to getkion.com/dailystoic to save 20% on subscriptions and 10% on one-time purchases.The Jordan Harbinger Show is one of the most interesting podcasts on the web, with guests like Kobe Bryant, Mark Manson, Eric Schmidt, and more. Listen to one of Ryan's episodes right now (1, 2), and subscribe to the Jordan Harbinger Show today.Novo is the #1 Business Banking App - because it’s built from the ground up to be powerfully simple and free business banking that Money Magazine called the Best Business Checking Account of 2021. This year, get your FREE business banking account in just 10 minutes at bank novo.com/STOIC.GiveWell is the best site for figuring out how and where to donate your money to have the greatest impact. Go to Givewell.org to read more about their research or donate to any of their recommended charities. Enter Daily Stoic at checkout so they know we sent you.Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemailCheck out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookFollow Rich Cohen: Homepage, Instagram, See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members. You can listen to the Daily Stoic podcasts early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to the Daily Stoic podcast where each weekday we bring you a Meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics a short passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength and insight here in everyday life. And on Wednesdays, we talk to some of our fellow students of ancient philosophy, well-known and obscure, fascinating and powerful. With them, we discuss the strategies and habits that have helped them become who they are, and also to find peace and wisdom in their actual lives. But first, we've got a quick message from one of our sponsors. Celebrity feuds are high stakes. You never know if you're just gonna end up on Page Six or Du Moir or in court.

I'm Matt Bellesai. And I'm Sydney Battle, and we're the host of Wonder E's new podcast, Dis and Tell, where each episode we unpack a different iconic celebrity feud. From the build-up, why it happened, and the repercussions. What does our obsession with these feud say about us? The first season is packed with some pretty messy pop culture drama, but none is drawn out in personal as Brittany and Jamie Lin Spears. When Brittany's fans form the free Brittany movement

dedicated to fraying her from the infamous conservatorship, Jamie Lynn's lack of public support, it angered some fans, a lot of them. It's a story of two young women who had their choices taken away from them by their controlling parents, but took their anger out on each other. And it's about a movement to save a superstar,

which set its sights upon anyone who failed to fight for Brittany. Follow Dissentel wherever you get your podcast. You can listen ad-free on Amazon Music or The Wondry app. Raising kids can be one of the greatest rewards of a parent's life. But come on, someday, parenting is unbearable. I love my kid, but is a new parenting podcast from Wondry that shares of our freshly honest

and insightful take on parenting. Hosted by myself, Megan Galey, Chris Garcia, and Kurt Brownleur, we will be your resident not-so-expert-expert. Each week we'll share a parenting story that'll have you laughing, nodding, and thinking. Oh yeah, I have absolutely been there. We'll talk about what went right and wrong. What would we do differently?

And the next time you step on yet another stray Lego in the middle of the night, you'll feel less alone. So if you like to laugh with us as we talk about the hardest job in the world, listen to, I love my kid, but wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on the Amazon music or Wondery app. This is how to respond to everything. Life presents us with countless situations, some big, some little, some expected, some quite pointedly the opposite, some dignified, some lowly, some fortunate, some unfortunate. How do we respond to them?

Could these moments require anything in the way of a uniform response? As it happens, yes. The Stokes believed that no matter what was thrown at us, we could always respond with hard work, with honesty, and helping others best. I can't. This was Marcus Aurelius' duty as emperor, just as it was Musoneus' duty as an exile on a chain-gain digging ditches. It was Seneca's role as he recuperated from illness as he worked in the royal court as he scrambled to write in his last days. Doesn't matter who we are, where we are, what sudden reversal or bounty that fate has bestowed on us, doesn't matter for in the middle of a pandemic or a runaway bull market. What the moments demand of us is work, honesty, and compassion.

Good character and acts for the common good as Marcus said, take solace in that. Doesn't matter what you're facing. You're not lost or at a lost. You know exactly what to do. And that's a chapter that's adapted actually from the obstacles the way, which you can pick up a leather bound edition now in the daily stoke store or sign copies in the daily stoke store. Or anywhere books are sold if you haven't read it yet, over a million people all over

the world have. I hope you check it out. The obstacle is the way. The timeless art of turning trials into triumph. My first book on stosism and appreciate everyone that supported it over the years. I can't believe it was 10 years ago now, but it was. At least 10 years ago now, I was in Octavia Books in New Orleans when I lived there. I was just finishing Trustman Mine and may have been actually at the first book event I ever did for one of my books.

I did a talk at Octavia Books for Trust ever did for one of my books. I did a talk at Octavia Books for Trust Me in Line and I saw this book. It was called The Fish That Eight the Whale by Rich Cohen. It's about this guy that Samuel Zamurri, the founder of United Fruit, one of the richest men in New Orleans, one of the most powerful controversial entrepreneurs of the 20th century, who actually had that big sort of wedding cake house and ottoman place in New Orleans. But it was a whole story I'd never heard of.

And I loved it. I wrote a little bit about it in the obstacles away. But more than that book, I just fell in love with the writing of the author. And I, since, when you know when you find an author, you just love and you read all their stuff, I think I have read almost everything Rich Cohen has ever written. I read Tough Jews which he wrote after his book Monsters about the 85 Chicago Bears. His

book about the Chicago Cubs. His book Peewees about youth hockey. I had him on the podcast a couple about a year ago or so, also incredible. His book, which he's ghostwritten for Jerry Weintraub, when I stop talking, you'll know I'm dead. Just seriously, one of the great writers, one of the most prolific writers of our time, and someone I actually interviewed because I wanted to know a little bit more about Zimmeri, who I present to sort of a cautionary but also provocative example in the obstacles the way the way he solved problems. I was really interested in his sort of pragmatism.

I just absolutely love Rich Cohen's work. And I so loved Rich Cohen's work that I read all this stuff and then I read the book that his father wrote. You can negotiate anything which I think he published in the 80s. And it was a great book. It changed how I thought about a lot of things Probably up there as the number one or number two best negotiating book of all time the other Being never split the difference by Chris boss, which is also an incredible book Anyways, I was so excited that rich finally wrote a book about his dad absurd larger than life character and this new book is called The Adventures of Herbie Cohen, The World's Greatest Negotiator. It was just released last week. You know, Rich Cohen knows how to tell the stories of characters. That's what all his books are about. They're about

characters. And I just love Rich Cohen's writing. I was so excited to talk to him. I feel like I owe a debt to him, not just because I loved and I've used examples from his books in my books. But because he was so generous and kind to me when I was just a known writer writing the obstacles away. So I'm excited to bring you rich Cohen once again. He's written for the New Yorker, the Atlantic Harpers, among many other publications. He's been included in the best American essays and the best American travel writing. I recommended a bunch of his books. I'll link to them in the show notes. I would start with the fish that ate the whale. I would read tough Jews next. I think I might read Peewees after that. You really can't go wrong with any of the books, but his new one, The Adventures of Erbikoan, about his father, Fantastic. lots of great stories in there.

And it's just a sweet book, and we really get into it in this conversation. I think you're gonna like it. You can go to Rich Cohen's website, authorrichcoen.com, you can follow him on Twitter, at Rich Cohen, 2003, and you can follow him on Instagram, at author.rich Cohen, great, great interview, enjoy.

So I love the new book. I was thinking about it because I loved P.W. is a bunch too. There's a line you have in the hockey book where you were saying that you're talking to your son's hockey coach and he was like, is your son having fun? You were complaining about playing time or something like this and he said, you know, is your son having fun? And were complaining about playing time or something like this and he said,

you know, as your son having fun and he said, yes, and then he said, then what do you care? Reading about your father, I was curious what you thought he would think if a sports coach had ever said that to you when you were a kid or said that about you when you were a kid. My father truly didn't care about sports, about you sports. I think it's a generational thing. They never saw it as a serious thing, you know, to them like working. I used to ask my father like how he completely missed the Beatles and Elvis Presley. And he said, I was too busy working. I had a job, I had a family. And they saw, I mean, sports were fun, but it was, that's a huge change that's happened in the last 20 or 30

years. It's suddenly these things like sports teams seem important. And like what happens seems important. So he would not have cared. Now, he might have cared about other stuff, college or school, but he didn't even show, he didn't even come to my games. He did, he came to one baseball game and two hockey games and only probably because my mom made him.

Yeah. So, so if it's not sports, what would he have thought of the idea of the, it's whether you're having fun that counts, not who wins? Well, he did not believe that whether you're having fun thing at all. I should say that. So I used to complain to him that I wasn't happy. And he would say, you're not happy? Good.

Happy people have never accomplished anything in the world. It's this satisfaction that breeds progress. So as he's gotten older, he's 89. He's mellowed a little bit on that. But mostly he saw unhappiness as a great engine of history and we should embrace our unhappiness instead of trying to be happy all the time, and being happy all the time was kind of a trap.

Was that hard to grow up with that, like sort of ethos running through the house, or do you think it informed who you are? I think when I was a kid, it was, I had a great childhood and a lot of fun, and I think because I ignored him, and I thought I was ignoring him, but of course it was seeping at at some deep level

that's come out as an adult. So it was fine as a child, but it's made my adult life definitely harder. I feel like driven by an engine, he put into me while I was asleep. Yes, you sort of subconsciously pick up on like what a person should be doing, what a person is allowed to let

themselves get away with and like what's acceptable because that voice in your head of like, would my parents approve of this yes or no sort of looms there always? Right, like I'll give you an example. Yesterday I saw a driving on the road and I saw like a really cool like a rocket car, like out of a cartoon like Red 2 Cedar and I said wow that's a cool car and then I heard my dad's voice go bull shit car that's bullshit because you can't have a 2 Cedar you got a you got a family you idiot how can you have a 2 C car it's a waste of money. Immediately killed my fun internally I had the back and forth tennis match,

and he wasn't even there. Yeah, I think about all the things, like, you know, I bet that's a cost of fortune to take care of. I bet it gets horrible gas mileage. I bet that person actually isn't successful. They're just living way beyond their means. Just sort of, like, that is something I think about a lot.

I think about the sort of internal mon internal monologue, the throwaway judgments that your parents write about things, how those seep into your consciousness. It's not that they were wrong. Sometimes they were wrong. Sometimes they should just kept their mouth shut. Then other times, they were right within the context that they lived or in their economic circumstances. And it's really hard as an adult to go like,

yes, that is an appropriate attitude for someone who makes X to have, but if you make five X, you can throw it away on an inefficient car. It's hard to update those scripts in your head. But one thing, I grew up in Chicago, and some families had a swimming pool He was very against the swimming pool and he would do the math about how

Eight months a year the pool's covered because it's two degrees out then it's gonna rain in other So the way he'd figure the math you can use the swimming pool three days three days is what you wind up with You know and I think but what happens with your parents is sometimes they say stuff when you're a kid And they might not even be serious or they might be not even thinking about it and it becomes hugely important to you and I always think a great example of this is in the movie, you know Taladega Knights when he's a kid its father says you're not first your last and he bases his whole life around it When he brings it back to his father he goes I didn't didn't say that. If I did, I was drunk. That doesn't even make any sense.

And that's like sometimes, you take this stuff so seriously, and it's not, it's an adult feeling with a kid. So, you gotta be careful. Have you read the novel or watched the movie, The Apprenticeship of Daddy Crabbit? Of course. It's sort of of your dad's generation. And you know, he has the grandpa's like,

you're not a man if you don't own any land. And it sort of wrecks, like he ends up, what he ends up doing to get the land, to get his grandfather's approval, is something his grandfather does it, like the penultimate moment of the movie is he's accomplished all the things that he thinks that that generation needs to be proud of him and then

his grandfather doesn't approve because of what he had to do and and that to me is a warning against internalizing those scripts right without the without balancing the madagas well i'll give you an example that which is one thing my father said. He always heard from his great uncle was land, the same dirty crab. And he quoted a thing he said, women may leave, banks may fail, but good land lasts forever. And my father took this into some extent and he was big into buying real estate, I mean, and did very well in the few occasions that he did. And I recently was researching where that came from, that saying, and it was an ad. It was an ad for like the Long Island Housing Development, but it was like on a big printed sign. And it's funny, because my father's whole thing is about questioning authority. And one of

the things he has a lot of suspicion of is our big signs, because they seem like they were printed there by God, but it was just a couple of guys in a big signs because they seem like they were printed there by God, but it was just a couple of guys in a room, smoking cigarettes, writing it out. So, but basically this thing came down as family lore and I think it was an ad by the Long Island Expressway like in the 30s. Yeah, and it's weird how if you just take one piece

of advice, you build your whole life around it, you become this almost cartoon figure. I remember, is that worth it, American Apparel for many years? And Dev sort of similar to like the sort of sweet and low story that you tell about. One of these like hyper successful entrepreneurs, but profoundly flawed individuals, it was so clear to me he was sort of almost in this kind of Gatsby-esque or Dutton Crabitz way, where it's like, he wanted to do this thing to impress these people, but it became such a almost cartoonish pursuit

of this thing, thinking that, like, hey, when I arrive here, I'll feel good, I'll feel happy, I'll be respected, and you never actually get it. You're like, that's me after the light. You never get there. It's, it's, it's, it's always recedes as you reach it. I'll give you, I've experienced it in my whole life,

but I'm a massive cubs fan, you know, I wrote a book about Chicago Cubs. And they won the World Series in 2016 and I wasn't happy, man. I mean, I was glad they won the World Series, but it didn't fulfill me in the way I had expected. And I heard somebody once say, the reason you search for this thing,

and you reach it and it doesn't make you happy, it's because it's not really what you're looking for. You know, it's a substitute of what you're looking for. Are you looking for some kind of truth or something? But you can never get the way that you pursue it. You know? When I remember, I read Daddy Crabitz

because Dave Charnie's like, you gotta read this novel, it's all about about like the it's all about the hustler like I should be like he read the novel and didn't even understand that it was not just satire but that it wasary tale, right? And we sort of hold up these figures as like, look at what they did, and we kind of, we don't go like, yeah, but was it worth it? Right, but everybody makes that mistake with movies because style is so much more powerful than substance, you know? So every gangster movie, which is posed as a cautionary tale, makes everybody want to live like a gangster.

I mean, everybody who reads a great gasp, we think, so I want to have a lot of different colored shirts and cool cars and drink men, jewel ups and live out in a big, you know, when of course that's totally empty life and he's built it on a completely false premise, you know, but that's never the lesson you get. You always get the lesson of awesome.

That's how I want to live. Yeah, you forget that he ends up dead and is swimming pool and nobody comes to his funeral. I mean, think about good fellas. I mean, good fellas, you want to live like those guys and good fellas. You're the worst guys in the world and then they all wind up brutally murdered or hanging from meat hooks. But the thing that sticks with you is you want to be one of those guys hanging out, you

know, in the nightclub sitting at the Copacabana and that overpowers everything else. That's what my father always warned about. So he learned that lesson you feel like? Well, I feel like he grew up as far as the gangsters go. I mean, he lived in a neighborhood at a time where they were and he sort of had more of a realistic view of it. And I grew up in a suburb of Chicago. But I think, you know, one of the things my, one of the things my father did that was

good and bad for me is he sort of say what everything he would always say was bullshit all the time. You never believed the hype about anything to the point where it made it hard to actually enjoy some things because you're like, this is bullshit, this is bullshit. And one of his expressions is always, when you strip away the phony tinsel underneath that, you find the real tinsel. Meaning underneath the fake stuff is more fake stuff. So it's all a recipe for continually traveling and never quite arriving.

Yes, yeah, that's really interesting. Yeah, one of my favorite passages in meditations or markets really is he's like looking at this feast and he's like, well, what is all this stuff? He's like, the wine is sort of rotten grapes and he's like, this is a dead pig, this is a dead bird. You know, it's sort of like that when you strip away the tinsel,

you see what's really there, but even that isn't maybe all that it seems. Yeah, and you could, you're always searching for the, to finally find the real thing. You know, one thing that you would always, when I would come home from trips, my father, he would always look at my pictures, and I would always take pictures of, you know,

monument valley in, you know, out west, and with no people. And he'd be like, where the hell are the people? Let me tell you, you're not going to care about this picture in 10 years about this picture and monument valley. It's going to be your friend's faces that you want to see, and that's what you should be taking pictures of. And I think that's really true that your only hope is sort of to build it on relationships. Well, yeah, flashing forward, obviously your father was very successful, but I remember reading, you mentioned this in some of your other books, those sort of prexfests that he would have at Nate Nell's with Larry King and all these people. that seemed like a kind of wealth that not that many people ever actually accumulate.

But my father, the thing is my father grew up in Larry King. His name is Larry Zagre. They grew up in Brooklyn and they were little kids together and a bunch of other guys who were in this sort of club gang called the Warriors. He had all these lessons about how you should live and how an adult should be. And he wrote, you can negotiate anything, which was a big bestseller,

but it was really, it was a kind of a self-help book. And when I've discovered it's like, and I'm sorry, Dad, but people who write self-help books in my experience are the people most in need of self-help. They're sort of, of course, talking to themselves in the dark. So when he got around Larry and those guys, he was instantly like a 12-year-old kid again and he forgot all that stuff and he just was kind of totally living in the moment.

And as his kid, it was always a little disorienting. You know, and once he took me to a baseball game and we got to go to the field during batting practice, it's a mid-season game, and my father saw frank robinson player you love the new is a kid and he just took off like a kid to go talk to frank robinson and rick suckcliffe who've been a picture for the cup is in the throwing batting practice came up to me saw it happen he said did your dad just ditch you cuz he saw famous person famous person. Yeah, no, as someone who as someone who writes self help books, you, if you didn't need the advice, you probably would understand it at some sort of intuitive level that would make you incapable of rendering the advice. Right.

So you're almost always are writing to yourself. You can, it's like, um, like if Billy Bean was a better baseball player, he probably would have been a worse manager. Right. It's that, Michael Lewis talks about this, but by being just not good enough, you're forced to see it and understand it and articulate it in a way that people who are just actually good at it are not even conceptually aware of. So I think that's probably part of it.

Right, and that I totally, I mean, that's one of the things that fascinates me, like who make good coaches and sports, good players or bad players. It's sometimes there's a good player who's a good coach, but it's unusual. Usually like my father started, he was in the army and he worked as a basketball coach for, you know, basically pro players have the army and he worked as a basketball coach for basically pro players that had been drafted. He played basketball, but he was a pretty mediocre to bad basketball player. That caused him to sit back and analyze and break down the game, which made him a very good coach.

I remember that Ted Williams, the greatest baseball player of all time, was the manager of the Washington, whatever they were before the manager of the, I think the Washington, whatever they were before, the Washington Capitol, Washington Senators. Senators? Yeah. Yeah. And he would, players would be hitting slumps and he would say, well, just hit the ball. Yeah, yeah. You know, Wayne Gratsky, the same thing, just score.

You know, so like, it was very hard for them to teach what came to them very, very naturally. So it's the struggle and the figuring out how to overcome the struggle that certain people who are great coaches are able to then relate to players. Yeah, I mean, you think about Michael Jordan, incredible basketball player. Also, incredible business man, right, creates one of the most valuable shoe companies in the world, really bad NBA team owner. When those two skills should combine perfectly to make you very good at it, but I think probably, if you think about what makes

a good NBA front office, it's personnel. It's working with other people. It's not just identifying talent, but nurturing talent, getting the most out of not that talented people, which is probably what Michael Jordan was worst at as a player. He, Kobe Bryant, other athletes where you have this thing where you're just like, why aren't you as good as I am? And it's almost this inability to comprehend why people just don't go into Michael Jordan gear or Kobe gear or want it as bad almost as unhealthy as Kobe or Jordan does and then that makes it really impossible to just work with a flawed or a mediocre

person but as part of a larger organization. Right and you look at the bulls, you had Jerry Krause who Jordan obviously dismissed and didn't like and was short and fat and all that and was a brilliant basketball guy. And Jordan would go to him. You could go make a list every year that Krause made a draft pick. Jordan went with a different draft pick. And said, I want you to draft this person as if it was up to him. And if you look at the team that he would have drafted, they're terrible.

Because he was just trying to draft Michael Jordan over and over again, whereas the team needed all these different role players. They already had Michael Jordan, you know, there wasn't going to be another Michael Jordan. So they needed John Paxton and all these guys that, you know, that Jordan would not have signed necessarily. Yeah, have you read the, have you read the captain's class? Yes, Sam. Yeah. Yeah, it's like it's all about Bill Cartwright, not Michael Jordan. It's obviously you don't

have the bulls without Michael Jordan, but Michael Jordan on the bulls by himself is not that great. Right. Kobe's kind of the exception because they did win rings after he drove people away, but that's more the testament to Phil Jackson and also the exception to the rule where pretty good athlete, great coach. Yeah, no, I think that it's super interesting. Like one of the, I'm a bulls fan and one of the rubs on Kraus as always. Well, he didn't draft Michael Jordan.

Jordan was there when he got there, but it's like anybody could draft Michael Jordan. All you had to do was be a basketball fan in the early 80s to know that Michael Jordan was the best player in the world or You know very very very good. It's the guy who can draft. I don't know Scotty Pippin You know from a little tiny college and nobody you know or Charles Oakley from a little tiny college That's that's what the sort of great basketball guy does. He finds kind of hidden value He likes Sam's a Murray actually. Yes,

yes. The sort of character, the misfits that end up being the perfect piece in the puzzle. Yeah, they're overlooked because people just can't see them. You have to really understand what you're seeing. Like, you know, so you're seeing this incredible player that's at this school that's off the radar. So going back to your dad, what would your dad think? Because have all your books been with FSG? No. Almost all of them? Yeah.

What would he think about that? I would be curious about how he thinks about how he thought about your career because negotiating contracts, working with agent. How does he think about how you do what you do? Because you're at the highest, you're at a very high level of what you do. How does he think about that? I know he's always suspicious.

He always said that the worst career you could pick if you wanna have a family and make money is ballet dancer. And number two is writer. So he was always kind of very skeptical and always wanted me to go to law school. This was the thing. I wanted to play in the NHL when I was a kid.

He assigned me a favorite hockey player, which was Ken Dryden, who's a goalie for the Canadians, because Ken Dryden had gone to law school. And thereby, you know, always had something to fall back on. And even when my first book, which was Tough Juice, came out and it was successful, I remember we were walking through Riverside Park and I said, what do you think I'll be doing in 10 years? I was 30.

And he said, 10 years will be 40. You'll just be getting out of law school. So I think he looks at the whole thing and he wrote these two books and he wrote a very successful book. But he wasn't really a writer in that, like he doesn't go sit down and write every day. He's a speaker, a teacher, and a storyteller who at some point took a bunch of his stories together and wrote a book in the most ludicrous and sane way possible, which I saw when I was 12 or 11.

He went down to our basement, which was an unfinished basement that flooded every time it rained with yellow legal pads and calligraphy pens and by hand wrote this entire book over six months and didn't eat I think he lost 40 pounds in the process and Making it very hard from the right another book because he's like I don't want to go through that torture again You know he made it so I think that his advice to me has always been you know hurry up and go back to law school I think that his advice to me has always been, you know, hurry up and go back to law school. That's fun. Yeah, I think with my parents, it wasn't until their friends started to be aware of my books that they got it.

Do you know what I mean? It's like, like, because like, there's the, oh, we're proud of you. It's great. But then it's not until it's like something impressive they can talk about to other people that it that they stop being so insecure about it, which is partly I think what like like why do they want kids to be a doctor or a lawyer or whatever one they know it's safe to they know it's you know it's a profession that they they get is like a profession that successful people have, but I think it's always like well I think the most illustrative thing I saw during the varsity blue scandal, you know, where they brought their kids into college.

Some hedge fund manager was he's like, look, I just can't have my son go to ASU. Right. Right. Like, it was like, he didn't want to, because that was a shibbolith is like, I have a dumb kid. Right. Like, like, I have a, I can pay, but my kid didn't get anywhere on his own, right? And like, I think, for a lot of parents, it's like, what doesn't sound like a record scratch when they tell other parents over a cop. Right. Well, first of all, it's the same thing with the youth hockey, who's on the top team. You, I always thought parents are living through their kids and they want kids to be better players

and they had been and to make the right turn instead of the wrong turn But it really was about status now like you you you right you feel like a higher place in the world if your kids on a better team And that's really true for college the joke is my father always want always said and it could have been a joke You can never really tell that he wanted us to go to Yale, one of us to go to Yale. And none of us, I mean, especially me, I was like, didn't do well in school, I was very mediocre student, I was a dumb kid kind of. And at one point, much later, he said to me, you know, if you'd worked harder and really applied yourself, you could have gone to Yale.

And I said to him, said, if you did better, you could have gone to Yale. I said, no, if you did better, you could have gone to Yale. And I said, if you did better, you could have gone to Yale. I said, no, if you did better, I could have gone to Yale. Because that's my takeaway from the varsity blues and everything. You feel like everybody's paying some back door in. But there's a really funny thing where I went to Neutrur High School outside of Chicago, and they're putting together an alumni directory. I went to Tulane, just good school. Yeah.

And my sister went to Tulane, and I won my first book there. Very fun school for BS. So especially if you're from Chicago, we're so cold. And the alumni people called my father, and they said, we're just putting together directory. Where did your son Richard go to school? I might have said, Yale. And they said, well, we have down that he went to Tulane.

He goes, well, you got it down wrong. You went to Yale. And they said, well, we have down that he went to Tulane, he goes, well, you got it down wrong, you went to Yale. And they said, we have Tulane. He's like, then why if you're so sure are even calling me? They said, well, we're just checking because, well, you're being corrected. He went to Yale. So in the new true director, it says that I went to Yale. So at least he got that.

That's amazing. What was the whole thing? Didn't your dad get in a whole fight with the administrators at Tulane? Yes, yeah. Well, not the administrators. It was this kind of crazy thing, which is I took a creative writing class with this guy and I don't have any experience with really writing programs. He was like a guru on the Tulane campus and he was like, you had a way to get into his class. He did this thing, which had a way to get into his class.

And he did this thing, which I'd never seen where you'd read, you have your read a story, you go around in a circle, and he would just rip you to shreds, try to completely humiliate you. And he had these kind of totes who would then join in and amplify whatever he said. And it was just this horrible thing. And it happened to me.

It happened to everybody except a few kids who were his favorites. And I'm like, I want to fight back, but I can't fight back over my own story because it looked like a whiner and a crybaby. And I'm not doing that. So there was a girl that I was friends with outside. She was a business major. She wrote a really good story. He destroyed it.

She ran out of their crying. I felt like I should say something to him. And he said his goal in the class was to leave blood on the floor. And then I responded in a really stupid way, which was he had to write a modern poem. And I wrote a poem with all these funky line breaks that just said, fuck you, you fuck, fuck you. And read it. And that was like, persona non grata after that. He just wouldn't even read my stuff. And he gave me a beat. So I couldn't complain, but he wasn't going to read what I wrote. And it really upset me. And I went home over Christmas break. And I was

telling everybody about it, told my friends, told my mom, told my dad, he didn't care. Nobody cared. And finally, he said, if I sit down and listen to you for five minutes, you just tell the story and then we'll just shut up about it. I'm sick of hearing about it. So I sat down and in the course of telling him, I saw him become enraged at this teacher. And the thing about my father is he would get off,

especially if he was between gigs or had nothing to do. He looked at all this stuff as kind of a game and he saw himself as out there fighting for justice, freelance in the world. And he suddenly, in his head, saw this teacher as somebody that was destroying the creative impulse in people. So he became involved in writing back and forth and fighting with this teacher and then fighting with the whole English department and then traveling down there. Meanwhile, I had graduated from college and gone off and was living my life And I didn't even know this was going on and he was still battling this and it was insane

And then he had kind of a heart issue and he went had to go to the hospital and I had all these letters and I said to him You got to stop the Tulane thing now. It's crazy and he said I will not stop This is like he's on his deathbed. And he said, and your brother has been briefed. And if I should fall in the battle, your brother will continue on and continue waging it. So when it all ended, he got some stupid little concession, like they put a file in the letter guy's file and he had all these demands. And I said, you see, he spent like five years doing this and what'd you get? You got nothing, you got nothing you lost.

And he said, wrong, I won. And I said, how do you think you won? He said, because the next time that teacher is about to destroy a kid in their head they'll have a thought maybe this one's got a greater crazy father too. So that's how he saw it. He was laying down a marker.

How did that make you feel? Because that kind of connects to the P.W. Sake parent thing, like the parent that is crazy enough to fight for their kid. It's also probably completely mortifying. And then also probably a little inspiring. But then also maybe there's this element where you find yourself like getting sucked into pointless power squabbles yourself.

Right. Well, I didn't feel it was like the hockey parent thing because it wasn't about me. Yeah. In that, I was out of school and his one demand was that all the kids retroactively be given A's except me because he didn't want it to seem like it was about me. I keep my B. Everybody else gets A's. So I felt like it was crazy, you know, and this is kind of what he was like in that he

would get, you know, my, like I said, people who write self-help books are most in need of self-help. So one of my father's big things is the key to success is to care, but not that much, to remain detached, to look at this situation, which you're so worried about and say, it's merely a blip on the radar screen of eternity. And he's great at talking me down when I was upset about something, but he himself would have these incidents where it would trigger some value he had or some code would be violated and he would lose all sense of perspective. And it became entertaining, crazy, but also you

could see why he was sort of telling himself that he shouldn't care that much because the human instinct is to overcare. And that's why the hockey thing, because when it's your own kids, you become completely nuts. But with my father, like I said, he didn't care about you sports. He just didn't. But generally, he cared a lot. And that was probably why he has to write the advice, care, but not that much. Well, he has a whole thing where he's great at representing other people in negotiations, one of the best ever, one of the very famous for it.

And he was on the start talks. He negotiated with the Russians over arms. He worked for Carter and for it. And he was on the start talks. He negotiated with the Russians over arms. He worked for Carter and for Reagan. He did hostage negotiations. And the sole thing was because it wasn't his life. He was dealing with. And the sole thing was like, he would say, there was a guy that he was negotiating for.

And the guy had lost all this money, or he had lost it for him. And he said, but the truth is, I cared, but not that much. It wasn't my money. It didn't really care. So because of that, he was able to get the guy's money back because he was very free and loose and willing to walk away. So all this is about being able to recognize when basically you shouldn't be negotiating for yourself. Because it does seem like the two-lane thing and then when he gets what is every author's nightmare

you get sued for plagiarism. Yeah. Especially if you didn't actually do it. It seems like there were a handful of instances where when it actually involved him or his stuff he got sucked away in it and he was good enough he would win but they were purek victories and he was good enough he would win but they were purek victories to stay the least. Well, I remember going to jury duty and they asked me if I had any experience with the legal system and I said,

yeah, my father, these lawsuits, because it was went on for five years and they said how did it work out? I said, well, he won. But it was one of those deals where the trial becomes the punishment. You know, he spent more money on lawyers winning than he probably made on the book. But see, the thing is, for him, he knew that the stories in his book were things that came

out of his life. I knew there was no plagiarism because those stories, like the first story in the books about me, I lived it. It was ridiculous. There were family stories. And his publisher basically said to him, you just got a settle. When a book hits this big, people bring these frivolous lawsuits because you'll just pay them off. And the cheapest thing is a few thousand

dollars, pay them off. But he thought by paying them off, he would be admitting that he did something he didn't do and it became but again, he carried way too much. I thought he made the wrong decision. I think, just move on. You know, just forget it, move on. I think the book is lawyer says, just pay the parking ticket and go back to your car. Yeah.

That is, I think, really good advice across, like I, the Stoke's talking about how there's taxes in life, right? Not the taxes you pay the government, just like everything, there's taxes to everything. There's a tax to being famous, there's a tax to traveling, there's a tax to being a guy, there's a tax to being a woman, there's a tax to being gay,

all the things that you end up being in life, there's a tax, right? And you gotta pay the taxes and move on, pay the ticket and move on. If you get indignant and you take it personally, like you go, this is inditing me as a human being, I will not go along with it. That is the, sometimes you win, but a lot, you usually end up losing even when you win. Well, I lost like five years.

Yeah. You know, I mean, you got to say so. But I think part of the problem was that when they, when they, when this happened, it was big news because the book was such a big hit. And of course, when he won, it wasn't news because that's not an interesting story anymore, you know, but so, but yeah, I mean, based on his experience, I believe you just move on because it's a trap. That's what I think.

All the way, traps, everything's a trap. And the thing is not to get hung up in one of these traps, but to keep moving ahead. You know, I come to see like the whole world is like a series of hooks you're trying out to get caught on. And that was a big, big hook that he got caught on. See that's my favorite story in the fish that ate the whale is, is Zimuri and is, he has the small company that he's fighting off against United Fruit. And they're trying to buy this land at the border. And, you know, the United Fruit with all the lawyers and all the money is like,

well, let's see who owns this, you know, there's, who owns the land? Is it this country? Is it this country? Is it this person? This person, you know, that they go back and forth, they're fighting over it. And Zomeray just goes and he buys it from both people. That's its attack, right? Pay the parking ticket and go back to your car. He's like, I don't care.

It's a Gordian knot, man. Just pull out your knife and cut it in half. And usually my father's like that, actually. And he's very good about seeing things that you don't see. So one stupid example was I was applying for a job, just a summer job, I needed a recommendation as in college and I went to my Spanish teacher and I asked him to write a recommendation

and he said, okay, and my father said, well, what is the recommendation saying? And I said, there's no way I could know because it's this whole seal then below right to the blah, blah, blah. He goes, are you crazy? You can't send a letter out like, information's the most important thing you have.

This whole thing is you need time, information, and power. Tip. That's his rule for negotiation. Information's like one of the most important things and you don't know this. And so I can't find it, how am I gonna find out? He said, tell him that you're applying for an internship at power negotiations, that was his business, and I have them send the

recommendation. I just hadn't even thought of that. And I did. And the recommendation was, I'll just say the first line of it was, though Mr. Cohen is not the smartest person in class, was not a good recommendation. Right. It's the sort of pragmatist approach, not being so precious about it and understanding that it's when you make assumptions, oh, this is fine, it's good enough. That's what's the famous thing you said till you get to it kills you? What was that? You had a great line in the book, I forget what it was. Oh, time will heal all wounds right up until when it kills you.

Yeah, yeah, just the idea. It's like, oh, whatever, I don't care. Whatever, that's great until it gets you. Right. Well, but it's like, I have a friend from college who's always say those are their rules, not mine. You know, so it's like, that was his. Like, that's two lanes rules, not my rule.

So as far as the recommendations go. Also, I always think of there's more than one way to skin a cat. The one great thing about that is many great things about him as a father. One great thing is, he always told me he was looking at stuff like a strategist. No matter what the problem was, there was a solution. There was always something to do and that's his whole thing which is he always wanted people to realize they had power even if they thought they were powerless. That the whole his thing from his first book was power is based upon perception. If you think

you got it, you got it even if you don't got it. So in it was like empowering the weak in situations. So there's always freedom and there's always something to do and there's always a move to be made. And he felt when bad things happen, people immediately give in to despair and quit. And in fact, that's not the end. That's the beginning. That's when you start to operate. And the way you should operate is not at a desperation, but fun. It's fun. Look at it as a game. Play it like a game. And if you see it as a game, you'll have fun. You'll live longer. It's a very big enemy of stress. And actually, you'll be more successful because you'll play loose. That makes sense. Yeah, no, no, I imagine that gives a kid a pretty powerful sense of your own agency. First off, when you come to your parents, it's not a dead end.

I told mom and dad, and now they're mad at me, which is, I think I have a lot of kids. Certainly that was my, if I got in an argument with a teacher, I was struggling with something, I brought that to my parents. I'm not going to do that because it's just gonna add more stress on me. Like it's just, this is just gonna get me yelled at or criticize or I'm gonna be told how this is my fault. I've gotta imagine that for a kid to hear like,

oh, well this is interesting. Let's see what we can do with this corner you've backed yourself into. Like let me see what you're working with and let's see how we can't get you closer to where you wanna go. That seems like it would be not just inspiring, but in a sense, bring you closer together

because you see your parents as the solutions to your problem as opposed to another one of your problems. Right, and one of the things that taught me was question authority, you know, like just because somebody's in this position older than you, it doesn't mean that they know. And one of the things he always said, one of his favorite quotes is, don't put your trust in princes. And this probably had to do with the fact that, you know, where he grew up his parents and he grew up during World War II as a kid and he saw the whole world fall

apart and all these leaders in charge but they let this horrible thing happen. So basically he had this idea that you, it's the position and the person. Like if he would meet, he would meet my teachers, I remember. And if it was a teacher that was knew what they were doing was a good, he would not be involved. And if the teacher decided to do something wrong, okay, and I would get punished. But if he would, you know, something happened that he thought was, you know, ingest or wrong or screwed up, it was an opportunity for him to sort of have fun and test some of his negotiating skills. But what it taught me was, if I'd go to him, he was always on my side, always had my back, you know, and

it did. It gave you a sense of, you got to question everything and make your own decisions and reach your own view of things and not accept what's just shoveled down to you. Yeah, I wrote down you had a good line in the book that he said some of the most powerful words a person can say is, I don't understand, help me. Yeah, well, you always said like in a negotiation, everybody wants to appear super smart like they know better. And he said the most powerful words in a negotiation are,

I don't know. Can you, you know, because you get people actually working for you. He said in helping you. And he said, you know, sometimes dumb is better than smart. And in articulate is better than articulate for negotiation. And he always used as an example, his first negotiation, he always said was in the Bible when Abraham negotiates with God not to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. And he has a whole thing

about Abraham, but that's a power differential. God Abraham. And Abraham uses his weakness to sort of appeal to God's strength to help him. You know, so you can actually, in some cases, use your weakness or perceived weakness as a strength. Yeah, there's a line from Epic Titus. He says, it's impossible to learn that what you think you already know. Yeah. And I think about that all the time,

which is like where either because you're egotistical and you just go around acting like you're perfect, you miss all the things that you could learn. But then also when you know you don't know something, but you're too insecure to be like, sorry, what was that? Or like, sorry, I didn't understand. Yeah. Or like, you know, like when someone's like, oh, have you ever seen that movie?

And you're like, yeah, yeah, of course. You know, and then, and then you hope you can pick it up. Yeah. And then you're like, I have no idea what this person's talking about. But now I can't admit that, you know, I didn't see the Godfather or whatever it is, right? And now you feel like,

if you're not comfortable being like, I don't understand, I don't get it. Yeah, can you explain that to me? You you you you end up often getting yourself in worst trouble than whatever the embarrassment of like saying I don't Understand is or appearing weak is yeah, well, he would go around and give these lectures all over the country and when I was a kid the repair is right go with them to help him Set up and travel them and I write him, you write on a blackboard, three words, who? Question mark, ha, H-U-H, question mark, why? Question mark. He said, those are the

three most important words in a negotiation, you know. And when you put them together, who, huh? Why? Then you really got, you're really going good, you know. So basically, he said, it takes it all the way back down to zero and they're like, let's start over and explain this. Is that it? Also people try to pull you over with facts and information and their intelligence and their superiority. And it makes them come down to what you're pretending is your level and explain it to you. And one of his things that he really taught me, which I've tried to live by is, if you're

if you're dealing with another person and you're trying to get something, a deal, you actually want to bring them in and come up with the solution together, because if you come up with a solution together, see this is what you don't see in politics anymore. If you create the solution together, then both sides have a stake in making it a success. And if you basically get everything you want out of negotiation and demolish the other side, you humiliated the other side, and they have no reason for the agreement

to be successful. They have a stake in it failing, and it will fail. So a lot of this things is you get involved in these negotiations and they're long and they're drawn out and you don't want, you want to speed to the end. You know, the example is like offering the asking price on a house.

And by doing that, you sort of screw up the whole process and cause the deal to fall apart. For example, if you offer the asking price on a house, which I found out, because you think you're gonna just short circuit everything. Just done. Just John. We'll take it. The first thing that those people think is not,

oh great, we sold our house for the asset price. They think, oh no, we didn't ask for enough money. And they start looking for a way out of the deal so they can put it back on the market and make what they think is a lot more money. And ultimately, they might never get that price again and you might not get your house and you both lost. So you gotta act like they're forcing you to come up,

you know, to get to that price. So by the end, they feel like I've gotten every bit of value out of this house I can, and I've stretched a little further than I wanted, and now they want it to work. And that's like the win-win negotiation. Yeah, you would think that being a good negotiator, I think people assume being a good negotiator is like aggressive, firm, unbending, etc. But really what you're just talking about there is empathy. Like not just what does the other person want, but what does the other person feel and

how do I make them feel like they're getting what they want? Even if actually I'm offering them less money in this, like like they think they want 500 you're actually helping them get What they want to feel by offering them 495 in a way that you're not by offering them 500 They would rather give 5000 right or he would say offer them like 400 or whatever you wind up at 450 Let's say they're happier with 450 than they would be with 500 Which sounds crazy, but it's true And it's there's a reason why people go through these steps and he used to there's an he always went back to literature

And there's a play by Arthur Miller called the price and he used to always paraphrase it. I don't know the exact quote But it was basically to understand The price you have to understand the player, which means that $500,000 might mean something to you, something to something else, what the person might want might not even be money, might be something else. So you got to sort of empathize,

you'd say radical empathy, put yourself in that person's shoes, understand where they're coming from, and then you'll understand the price. And one of the really cool things he did in his life is he helped, he worked with this guy Walt Syring to help set up the behavioral science as unit at the FBI, where they would basically make profiles. He did it like it became famous for serial killers, but his thing was about hostage negotiation, you know, about you understand what's really going on inside the person so you can understand what they need to end this.

You know, and that to understand that and I always thought he was kind of a thwarted novelist and playwright. You're dad. Yeah, because what he liked to do is look at people read their situation and try to understand them. And if you could understand him, he could deal with them. Yeah, I think about the Cuban Missile Crisis, which is probably the most high stakes negotiation in human history. And one of the things that always struck me was Kennedy sort of sitting around this conference table and all these hardliners are like, you got to do this, you got to do this, you're going to look weak, you're going to look weak.

And he has this realization that the same thing is happening to cruise chef. Right. And that they're both stuck. Right. And then obviously, cruise chef is wrong and obviously, cruise chef has made a mistake, but cruise chef is now trapped for having made said mistake. And Kennedy's thing isn't, it's not about winning, it's not about who's stronger. It's really how do I, how do I think about what this guy needs to win?

So he doesn't blow up the world. And even if he could get Krusev to give in without giving anything back, without giving him something to tell his people, then you might solve the problem momentarily, but you'll just have another conflict. It'll just have another conflict later. The most sort of famous example being World of War I, the terms of which were so punitive that they basically caused World War II. You know, you gave the loud one side to save no face, you humiliated them. Basically, you can't really humiliate people and expect a good long-term result that's basically what you'd say I think

so if if your dad was sitting in these negotiations between Russia and Ukraine what do you think he would do well I think he would understand what you just said about kruja which is Putin's got himself Putin made a bunch of mistakes he misread the situation completely and he's already lost. So no matter what happens, he's already lost and he's already greatly weakened. So now you have to give him a way to safe face and be able to claim victory if your goal is to end this. If your goal is to utterly defeat Russia and bring them down, that's something else, but see, that will just cause another problem. You know, so I always thought the moving NATO so far east was a mistake when I was a kid.

I was like a European history major, but now that is the situation now. I mean, that's where we live. So, you know, that's the starting point, But I would think that he would be focused on trying to understand Putin's needs right now. And he might be the devil or whatever, but he's got needs. And he needs a way out and he's stuck, you know. And the fact that he gave this speech today and he didn't make any new demands or anything

shows you that he's sort of stuck and looking for a way out. That's what, I'm not speaking for my father, but that's what I would think. And we got to give him a way out. We got to like leave a door open for him because we don't want a nuclear war, you know? Yeah, there's a thing I forget which Roman strategist was saying this, but basically it's like, not only will I give the enemy a way out, I'll pay the road. Right.

You know, like, because you'd never want, you never want to be faced with someone who's back as against the wall. Right. You think about this, like, let's say you're, even your, let's say you have this, an employee who just is the worst, right? You fire that person, you're humiliating them. How do you get that person to quit, not like by, by burning them out, but how do you get that person to say, like, you know what, I think I'd be better off somewhere else, right?

Like how do you get? How do you get them away to leave? So they feel like it's what they like and they're happy with it. And they don't feel humiliated because not only is it, do they not deserve to be humiliated because almost nobody does, but that humiliation is going to cost you more than it is them. Well, like look at Russia, even if somehow we could totally shut them down and it would just be another one of these in a few years. I mean, you want-

It's the biggest country in the world. What are you going to do? Nine, nine time zones or 11 time zones or whatever it is. So you got to like, and you know, people get emotional. This is my dad's thing. Right now people on TV, they get emotional, they want Russia destroyed, they want Putin gone. I mean, Biden actually said it, I think, or something like it.

And because they're emotional, rightfully so, it's horrible what's happening, it's emotional, but you can't really figure out a solution. Because the first thing you want is people to stop dying. That's number one. So to do that, you have to give Putin a way to be able to turn to his people and say, we got something out of this. Yes. Yes. And realizing that like, if that person, I think what Kennedy also realized in

the missile crisis is that one would only make that move out of weakness, right? So understanding that, oh, yes, the enemy seems very big, yes, the moves they're making are aggressive, et cetera, but actually fundamentally underneath there is weakness. And so that means time is working for you and against them. So if you can, you know, it's like, Well, that's another, yeah, that's interesting.

That's another big thing in my father's, which is time. Yeah. Using time to your advantage, slowing everything down. I mean, he was a basketball coach and his expertise was beating good teams with mediocre teams and he did that by slowing everything down and frustrating the other better team.

So one of the things he always says is, if you wanna be successful, you have to live with ambiguity. Yeah. So you don't know, like if you don't wanna, there's a house, you've made an offer, you're waiting, and then a lot of people will get freaked out and call back and bid against themselves

and make another offer, because they really want the house. When basically if you could just wait, you'll get your deal. But what that's going to cost you is anxiety and ambiguity. If you don't want that, you don't have to have it, but you have to pay for it. It's going to cost you money. So that's what Kennedy and the other thing about Kennedy, because you bring it up, it's like he also had a stand up to the crazy right wingers in his own cabinet who were older than him, who had been, you know, he had been a mid-rank guy in World War II. They had been the generals, the head of the Air Force, and he had a stand up to them.

And that was probably harder than standing up to Khrushchev to be honest. Well, no, and he had gotten bullied by a Khrush cruise chef in Europe. Like he said in his own words that he'd been manhandled like six months ago. And so to be able to separate like, hey, I got my ass kicked in round two, but round three is a fresh fight. And I'm not going to carry over my insecurities or lick my wounds in this new round.

Right. And also, because I've been reading about this same thing coincidentally recently, when he did get his ass kicked by Krushchev in that meeting, when he went away from it, he didn't take it hugely personally, he kind of chuckled at it. I mean, he realized that it wasn't about him as a person. It was about his experience and his role as president in the United States, and it was kind of like with Shagrin, you know, because he brought all these things to the party, which is like his charm, his good looks, his youth, his beautiful wife, you know,

all the things that he thought would, and Khrushchev didn't give a crap about any of those things, you know, so it's sort of like, yeah, it's gonna have to be something else in a different way. It's like when you're even like when you're on the road, driving and there's some super aggressive driver, you get mad, you get cut off.

And then I always tell myself, this person doesn't know me. It isn't about me. They don't hate me. There's no reason for me to get mad. This is just how this person drives. You know, so. I say to myself too, like I could drive like that.

I'm choosing not to because I know it's a really bad idea Right, like like I don't want to die in an accident. That's why I'm not driving that way. Yeah I had a friend in college. You said to me I was I we're in New York and I was running to make it through a Like that was turning yellow and there's traffic and he stopped me and he said why do you want to live like that? And it kind of stayed with me forever. I really don't want to live like that Why do you want to live like that? And it kind of stayed with me forever. I really don't want to live like that. No, I think about the ambiguity thing. I've talked about this before, but I cannot get the bellicic, the Patriot Rams Super Bowl out of my head, where bellicics like basically, I'm comfortable playing the ugliest Super Bowl in history. Like this will be the least interesting ugliest,

the ugliest Super Bowl in history. This will be the least interesting, ugliest, most unfootball-like football game in history. And the Rams were just like, we don't know what to do with this. Like, they weren't having fun, they weren't doing what they do, and it just destroyed them. But Bella checks like, I don't give a shit

with anyone thinks, I don't give a shit that this is the most watched sports game in history. I all I care about is like what I think will work in this circumstance. And if you can sit with that, you have so much power. Well, that's kind of what he did against the Buffalo bills this year too, right? When it was real windy and Buffalo and he just didn't throw the ball. He didn't throw the ball at all. You're not supposed to do that. Like you're just for the same reason you're You're not supposed to do that. Like, you're just for the same reason, you're not supposed to go for it on fourth down. You're not supposed to trade or not sign

really expensive player. Like, you know, he's just like, I don't care what is the math say, or what is my gut say, or what do I wanna do. And if you can own that, it's a real good thing. Well, see, that's my father exactly. So I told you, he said, really a coach. So you got to figure out the situation

and people get prideful about the way they play. And they want to look cool doing it. But if the object is to win the game, then the strategy is going to fit what your personnel is in the situation is. Here's a ridiculous story, which is, I had a softball team in a beer league in college, and we were losing. We'd been really good the year before, and we were losing, and we brought my father in

as a coach mostly because we decided we'd be funny. And because my father looked at then a lot like Walter Mathau and the bad news bears. So we got a majority that said butter maker on the back and everything. And he took it seriously. And he scoured these other teams, which was crazy. It's a beer league softball league. And we're in one of the final games in the playoffs. He got us, made us much better. He got us there.

And we're oh, head by a run. And we need one out to win. Base is loaded. And he calls for an intentional walk. Walking in the winning run. And I went out there and I got a huge fight with him on the mound. I'm like, it's morally wrong to walk in the winning run and it's softball and it's ridiculous. We're not doing it. And because and I fired him. He always talks about this because of my role.

I fired him. He left and we pitched to the kid and he hit a grand slam home run and we would knock that and play off. I tell us during the book that I'm doing now about self-discipline, Arthur Ashes' father, Arthur Ashes Senior, was a driver for this wealthy Jewish businessman in Virginia. And he drives him to a business negotiation one day and he's buying land from this like notorious anti-Semite, like this clan member basically. And the guy is insulting him and belittling him and saying all this stuff and the business man just sort of takes all of it and then walks away, you know, they sign the contract shake hands, and he says, Arthur Ashiener says,

how could you let this man talk to you? Like, what were you thinking? And he goes, I wanted the land. I got the land. Yeah, he doesn't have the land anymore. And both Arthur Ashiener and Juner, this like sort of, they're like, oh, that's what it takes. Right. You know, like you keep your emotions under control. And you don't let your ego get involved. You know, exactly.

Yeah, that's the, that's the detachment. That's being able to sort of separate yourself, see it from the distance, and like you're playing it guilty. Exactly. Yeah, that's the detachment. That's being able to sort of separate yourself, see it from a distance, and like you're playing it like a game. And it's just good. One of the things my father did with his book was before then, because it was published in 1980. It's like a long time ago. People were intimidated by the whole idea of negotiation.

Or they thought that it was disrepertable. It was like haggling, you know, it was something that you didn't do. Like you didn't walk into a seers and try to get a better price on a washing machine. Yeah, doesn't he open the book with negotiating like a refrigerator? That's one of his things. It's like, as people were, they would never do that. They think, okay, you may be a negotiate for a used car or, you know, okay, maybe you negotiate for a used car or, you know, but you don't negotiate for a, at a box store. But his whole thing was, you're negotiating all the time. Even if you don't call it that, even if you don't realize it.

So, when you're dealing with your family, so he started the book with a story about me who hated to go to restaurants, standing up on a table in the middle of a meal and screaming, this is a crummy restaurant, and was dragged out of there and not brought to a restaurant for 10 years, because I had used my knowledge, which was they feared public humiliation to affect the change that I wanted. And yes, I was punished, but I stayed out of restaurants, which I hated, because I hated eating in the dark and waiting for food for 10 years. So, like with the Sears, one of his rules, which always stuck to me like a geometrical formula was,

anything that's the product of a negotiation is itself negotiable. So, when you're looking at a price at a Sears and it looks like it's printed in these big important letters, he would say like that we're put there by the big printer in the sky It's actually itself just a product of a group of people sitting around a room determining a price almost arbitrarily Product of a negotiation you can negotiate Yeah, is that the Steve Jobs thing that realizing basically everything and all the rules were made up by people that are not any smarter than you Right, well, that's the big thing you taught me. And I'd give that probably wrecked my life, which when I would get upset or I'd say,

I can't do this or I'd be insecure, he'd always say, you know, 90, or he'd say 95% of the people in the world are schmucks. You know, just keep that in mind. You're not battling a bunch of geniuses here. Just do your thing and you're going to be better off than most people anyway, because the world is run by morons. But that was all about this idea of like really questioning authority and not being afraid

to sort of put yourself out there. Yeah, and to go back to that Arthur Astory, I think the way you win, the way you get back at the anti-Semite or the racist or the boss that's whatever is by winning the negotiation. It's not by telling them what you think of them or you know, get for tat. It's by getting the thing that you want from them, right? Like, let's say he had said something bad back to the businessman or he punched him in the face or whatever it was, like not only would he not get the land, but that guy would then have confirmation of what he thinks of Jews or black people wherever it is. So it's like, it's sort of realizing that the way to win is to win, not to let the person know what you think of them or vomit.

You know, Kennedy's not like. And let me tell you what I think of you, Chris, Jeff. He's like, I'm going to win this negotiation, and that's victory enough. Right. And also, playing the long game. Yes. You know, like you're not interested in winning the battle. You're interested in winning the war. So that takes patience, which is it might take 10 years for it to be clear that what you've done and what you've done is right, but you wait those 10 years.

You know, so that was another thing that my father is also a big believer in the long joke. You know, he would set things up that would explode in my face 10 years after he set them up. So, you know, it's it's all about patience and using time, you know, seeing, and all the time, it's like just, just wait. If you don't like how it is, just wait, because things are gonna look different and things are gonna change. And another big thing for my father was,

don't become fixated on what the outcome's gonna be. Don't go in setting this goal and saying, I have to have this or I can't have anything. Because as you deal with people, the end, the goal can change. And you can wind up with something better than what you went in looking for. So it's a game theory. He was an early guy, like, arguably, he was the first guy to sort of popularize a phrase, win-win negotiation. And he took it from game theory, which he'd been studying at University of Michigan with a bunch of guys, where they had all these different scenarios when lose, lose, lose,

lose, win, win, win. And the goal is like the win-win, which is the idea that it's not a zero-sum game. Like because a lot of people go at it thinking for me to win, he has to lose. And he would sort of say for me to win in the long term, he has to win. You know, so and that's also like we're talking about running through the yellow light like why or driving in traffic. It's a better way to live anyway. When that that sort of goes ultimately to the Belicec thing or a lot of these coaches Where in the end it's not really fun to be them or in Belicec's case He wins all the power struggles he wins all the games and Tom Brady's like

But I want to play football that's fun You know, and so you you end up you end up winning all the battles and losing the war or you end up not winning as many battles as you can Because people are like it just cost too much. It's just I don't want I don't want this and that that your dad does seem like ultimately had a good life was fun to be around had a good family. How many people are great negotiators cut through dealmakers etc. and then it's like it sucks to be you. Right. I mean that's one good thing which is he really didn't care that much about. sucks to be you. Right. I mean, that's one good thing, which is you really didn't care that much about.

He didn't get caught up with his ego about most things. And as a result, he was usually just laughing and having fun. So, and that's what he kind of taught us. Like one of his big phrases, like, he who laughs laughs. You know, he believed if you laugh, if you laugh, and it was a very funny house to grow up, and there's a lot of comedy. And if you laugh a lot, you know, ultimately good things, well, you'll have believed if you laugh if you laugh and was a very funny house to grow up and there's a lot of comedy and if you laugh a lot you know ultimately good things will you'll have a good life you know so i think that the negotiation for him the way you negotiate just became a

stand-in for the way you live your life and you don't want to be somebody who's a cut through a person who everybody hates because they have to live in that world that you create. Well, I don't ultimately care, but not too much. Right. Exactly. Amazing, man. Well, I loved this book. I loved your actual dad's book and then I think I've read everything you've ever written. So, I love that you keep pumping them out and keeps me inspired and they're always amazing.

Thank you very much. I love your work and I love talking to you. Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show. We appreciate it and I'll see you next episode. I'll see you next episode. Hey, Prime Members! You can listen to the Daily Stoke early and add free on Amazon Music, download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and add free with Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts.