A Hostage Negotiator’s Advice for Difficult Conversations & How to Stay Alive Longer

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Today, on something you should know, how watching someone fold towels could be the best few moments of your entire day.

Then, advice for the next negotiation or difficult conversation conversation you have to have.

The goal here is to be able to tell somebody else what they want so accurately that when you're done describing their side of the argument they say yes that's exactly what I'm looking for.

Because when people feel heard and felt and seen their guard decreases.

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Something you should know, fascinating intel, the world's top experts, and practical advice you can use in your life.

Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers.

I think I may have mentioned this years ago on this podcast, but it just came up in conversation, and I think it's worth repeating if you haven't heard about it.

Hi, and welcome to this episode of Something You Should Know.

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And that is something you should know.

Every day, you negotiate with your family members, people at work, strangers, even with yourself.

To navigate in this world requires that you negotiate what you're going to do, what you want other people to do, and to deal with conflicts.

It's all a negotiation.

And there are some strategies anyone can use to be better at it, even if you don't consider yourself a big negotiator.

Here with some insight into this is Ryan Dunlap.

His negotiation expertise comes from being a former police detective, a SWAT hostage negotiator, and crisis intervention officer.

Ryan has facilitated hundreds of high-stakes interviews, interrogations, interrogations, and negotiations.

He's author of a book called How to Untie a Balloon, a negotiator's guide to avoid popping under pressure.

Hi, Ryan.

Welcome to Something You Should Know.

Thanks so much for having me, Mike.

So before we get to dealing with difficult conversations and negotiations, since you're a hostage negotiator, I'm always curious because we see it on TV and that's really, you know, the only place we see it, most of us.

I'm curious, like, what do you have to negotiate?

Because if it, I don't know if this really happens, but on TV, you know, they want a plane and they're going to fly to South America and they want $10 million in cash and you're not going to give them that.

So what is there to negotiate?

Just a good question.

A lot of times what we're doing in negotiation is de-escalating someone and bringing them down to reality.

They found themselves in a situation that they probably didn't expect to be in because of emotions, as we started our conversation with.

And now they're having an unreasonable response to pressure, fear, and stress.

And so they're looking for an escape measure.

And so in those situations, really what we're doing is de-escalating and we are reality testing and

we are helping them recognize

the real possibilities of that conversation.

So it was not uncommon to go into some of these situations and tell people, hey, what's your understanding of how you're going to get out of this?

Because the helicopter is not a realistic thing.

Me bringing a truck and and letting you disappear out of here with $10 million of cash is not a realistic thing.

And so in those situations, you know,

there's some strategy to

navigating these conversations with people.

You don't want to lie, but you also want to avoid telling them no.

And so that kind of gets into a thicker conversation of how to navigate these conversations.

But really what you're doing is you're helping them rationally assess reality.

And the hard thing about negotiation is a lot of times you can't move the conversation forward if people are unreasonable, irrational, or not ready.

And I think that's the big thing that you have to take away from this:

irrational people and unreasonable people can't be negotiated with.

We're not negotiating with them.

We're de-escalating.

Hostage negotiators are 94% successful in these difficult conversations, but not 100%.

And sometimes it doesn't work.

Sometimes words fail.

You know, my last negotiation is a great example of that.

The gentleman I was negotiating with, unfortunately, did not heed warning and was subsequently shot by a sniper.

Now, he lived, which is why I tell the story.

And I remember a conversation at the end of the ordeal when he was being wheeled into an ambulance and he was tearful.

And he says, man, I can't believe they shot me.

And I said, well, I told you they would.

I also think it's important to recognize that hostage negotiations are incredibly rare.

A vast majority of what we dealt with were crisis negotiations, people who had exceeded their ability to cope with present circumstances.

These were mental health crises or momentary crises of

just emotional exhaustion.

Most of these people weren't bad folks.

They were having bad days.

And so bringing them back down to reality is much easier than the one-off that you get with a terrorist or someone whose aim is to just hurt people.

That's a very different style of negotiation for sure.

So I'm curious, when people find out that your world is the world of negotiation and conflict resolution, what do people say to you?

What do people think of that?

What is their response to finding that out?

Aaron Powell, Jr.: I think the general sense that we get from people is that they're a little intimidated by the process of either negotiation or conflict res.

Most people will tell you they don't like it.

In fact, research will tell you 89% of people avoid it.

And so we're really trying to pull people into their courage so that they can navigate difficult negotiations or difficult conflicts well.

Well, my sense is, and my experience is, you know, there's no like one right strategy for negotiating.

There's no, this is how you be a negotiator because negotiations are so varied.

Every conversation is different.

Is it contentious or collaborative, right?

The way I'm going to collaborate or negotiate with someone in a collaborative setting is going to be very different than in a contentious setting.

In one setting, I might be free to express my needs and put those things on the table and say, hey, here's what I'm looking for and listen freely to someone else, say, hey, here's what I need.

And then we talk things out.

And a contentious negotiation, it's a little different.

In those spaces, you might have to use a number of different persuasion or influence strategies to try to either elicit truth from someone, help someone find their voice, because sometimes people know that they need something, but they don't know exactly what it is that they need.

Sometimes we're competing against someone when we feel like we can't get our needs met.

And so it looks very, very different depending on what we're negotiating.

But generally, the sense becomes the same.

There's a process of communication across the table.

Both people have a perspective that needs to be heard.

And at some point, we're going to find some consensus about how we're going to move forward, whether we get all of what we want, some of what we want, or none of what we want.

The goal is to have a conversation where we can understand those needs and see how reasonable it is to have those needs met.

So one of the things that happens when you're negotiating, depending on what it is, of course, but emotions seem to get in the way.

People get upset.

People get angry.

People

think you're being a jerk for wanting what you want or whatever.

And those emotions can derail everything, can't they?

They absolutely can.

That's probably the biggest problem that we have when it comes to navigating difficult conversations and negotiations.

It's wrestling with our own internal feelings because we usually go to the conversation with a good sense of what we know we should do.

We know we should listen well.

We know we should communicate effectively, give other people an opportunity to be heard.

The challenge comes in when we try to do that when we're feeling offended or

unheard, misheard, misconstrued, when we're upset or angry in some way.

Those emotions can come in and completely derail a conversation.

So

the first thing that we really have to understand about negotiation is that we have to be able to regulate our own emotions on the front end so that we can navigate an effective conversation through the back end.

And how maybe an example would help of how you would do that?

In the moment, it's a little bit hard if you haven't practiced it.

And really, that's the challenge here is if you show up to a fight and the first time you want to learn how to throw a punch is in the middle of a fight, you're probably not going to do too well.

Understanding how to regulate emotions is a process that starts well beyond or well before rather the actual conversation takes place.

There are three things that are most important when it comes to regulating emotions.

Self-awareness, which is how well you know yourself, self-confidence, which is how well you trust yourself, and self-control, how well you control yourself.

And so all of those things take practice.

How well do you know who you are so that when you show up to a conversation, you're not searching for yourself?

How well do you trust yourself to adhere to your beliefs and stated values, right?

If I say I'm a good person, will I maintain that good character all the way throughout a contentious conversation?

If I know that I've got these particular principles and these boundaries that I don't want crossed from someone else on the other side of the conversation, am I willing to hold myself to said boundaries as well?

These are all things that tend to happen.

And so what we really have to do is be in tune with who we are, trust ourselves in the process and control ourselves.

That takes a lot of practice.

But if we're in the moment, let's say we haven't done the work, we haven't done the practice, one of the greatest things that we can do in the moment when we recognize, hey, this is a tough conversation.

and i'm not quite sure i've got the right mindset to navigate this in such a way that i'll be proud of myself when the conversation's over giving yourself space and grace to pause and think through it and to ask for those things and say hey I recognize this right now in the moment.

I'm feeling stressed out.

I'm feeling overwhelmed.

Is it possible we could revisit this conversation?

So when we give ourselves space, time, and an opportunity to regroup, we can usually come back into a conversation.

And even if the emotions haven't subsided, we can at least acknowledge them and it makes it easier for us to move through those emotions.

We're talking about navigating life's difficult conversations and negotiations.

And my guest is Ryan Dunlap, author of How to Untie a Balloon, a Negotiator's Guide to Avoid Popping Under Pressure.

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So, Ryan, let's get real specific here and talk about if you you could pick like a specific negotiation or difficult conversation and then how people can best deal with it and what are the kind of problems that people run into.

I think one of the conversations that a lot of people can really connect to here would be a conversation with a significant other or a spouse.

You go into a debate or a conversation, it's not a debate, it might feel like one, but you go into a conversation with a significant other, and maybe it's just simply on the basis of a misunderstanding.

That's the simple way a lot of conflicts happen.

You had an unspoken expectation and your significant other didn't meet that expectation.

And now you've got to have a conversation.

And so someone comes up and says, hey, you didn't do the thing I needed you to do.

And however they said it raises some.

some hair on the back of your neck.

And rather than meeting them where they're at and saying, oh, you know, I apologize.

It wasn't my intention.

Maybe we defend ourselves because that's what happens with pride and ego, right?

And we say, well, yeah, I might not have done that, but you didn't do this.

And it becomes a blame-shifting conversation.

A lot of times what happens is we find ourselves in these really difficult conversations because of misunderstanding or expectations that haven't been met and not clearly articulated.

And so rather than escalating those tensions, we can become really, really good listeners.

When someone calls something out and says, hey, you didn't meet my need this way, or you said something that hurt me in some way.

Instead of protecting ourselves, which is what our natural inclination is, we do is say, hey, tell me more about that.

Help me understand what it was that I did that caused you to feel the way you did.

We validate those feelings first and then we offer perspective.

Hey, that's not what my intentions were.

Do you mind if I take a moment to explain why I did what I did or why I didn't do what I did?

What is it going to take for me to help make this right?

That's a lot of what conversation is.

It's not just talking about what hurt me.

It's being willing to listen to how we might have unintentionally hurt others without taking it personally and giving them an opportunity to express themselves, giving us an opportunity to express ourselves and trying to meet in the middle.

So again, so those needs can be met and both people walk away from the conversation feeling like they've been heard, that they've been valued and that they're appreciated.

Well, that meet in the middle thing, I think that stumps a lot of people.

Like the purpose of

negotiating is to compromise, that that's the goal is I want $100, you only want to pay 50, and we settle at 75 and there's a negotiation.

But that doesn't seem right to me.

Well,

and that's not always

the truth.

There's a great illustration of this where in the negotiation space, when we teach and train on this, it's the problem of the orange.

Both people are negotiating or arguing over an orange.

And the initial problem would be, or a solution would be to cut the orange in half and give one party half and the other party the other half.

And you think that they they would be equally satisfied because at least they got some orange.

The problem is, during the inquiry, you discovered that one person needed the skin of the orange for orange zest, and the other person was hungry and wanted to eat the substance in the middle.

And in that space, you could actually satisfy both of their needs by giving one person 100% of the skin and the other person 100% of what was on the inside that can be consumed.

So, one of the challenges with negotiating is assuming that we know what the other person actually wants or needs.

And so

what we do is we break this down into the difference between someone's position, what they say they need, and their actual interests and needs, what they actually need.

And so through conversation, if we can give ourselves to the process, we might discover that it's not 50-50 always.

It can be 100, 100.

It can be win-win, because we don't always fully articulate what it is that we want because we don't always know.

And so that's where dialogue comes in and makes things very, very helpful.

And I can get the skin and you can get the substance and we can both be satisfied sometimes.

Not always, but sometimes.

Well, when somebody says, well, what is it you really want?

I think people get very protective.

Like, well, I don't want to show all my cards here.

So they don't tell what they really want because they want to hold something back.

There are a lot of reasons why people hold back.

Sometimes there's a lack of psychological safety or in a space like what you just suggested here, there's an adversarial approach.

And so we feel like holding on to some information gives us some benefit that allows us to navigate the conversation better.

Again, every negotiation is different, but I think one of the things that we have to do is recognize that every negotiation doesn't have to be contentious.

And if we approach it with the mindset that sometimes, even though the other person might represent a barrier for you getting what you want, it doesn't necessarily mean that you're working against them.

And there are some ways that we can use conversation and mutual appeals to connect with a person on a human level and still express the things that we fully want without losing an edge in the conversation.

There are a lot of different schools of thought on this and research goes one way or the other.

Some people say never speak first.

Other schools of thought say always speak first.

Some people say don't show all your cards.

Other people say show your cards.

And really what it comes down to, Mike, is what is your primary tactic and technique for navigating negotiation that allows you to to maintain your authenticity to approach the conversation the best way you can?

For me, I'm a diplomat.

I'm not going to be a person who goes into a negotiation and strong arms anybody.

And I'm more likely to put all my cards on the table and have an intellectual conversation about all of the factors, as opposed to someone who comes in and reveals a little bit and uses a communication style known as strategic ambiguity to drip a little bit of information to try to control the tone of the conversation.

But that's because because i'm not good at strategic ambiguity and if i negotiated that way i'd fail miserably every single time so diplomacy works for me it might not work for all people and the real understand the real

strategy here is recognizing that there are different appropriate strategies for different problems and this was something that we experienced as hostage negotiators at any given time i think tv makes it seem like it's just one guy or gal who shows up and tries to save the world that's that's not the case when we would show up at situations and scenes, there were usually 10 of us.

We all had a different style and approach.

And depending on what we were facing, we would deploy the right style and approach for that particular situation.

And the same is true for us in our personal lives.

Well, I think what you said is really important that not every difficult conversation or negotiation has to be contentious, because I think there's a belief that

that it is, because that's why we're negotiating, because we disagree.

We're on opposite sides of the table here and so by definition it's contentious the context that i have for going into this is even in difficult business negotiations that that i've been in or difficult marital negotiations that i've been in with my wife or life and death negotiations i've been in sometimes the most contentious conversation that i think i'm going to go into is really just a really big misunderstanding that is intertwined with strong emotions and feelings.

And what it is, is that we defend ourselves from the illusion of threat or the feeling of threat.

And so we end up gearing ourselves up for this really contentious conversation where we could also spend time, energy, and effort into connection and making sure that we fully understand who's on the other side of the table and what they need.

And what you'll find is that you can take what started as a contentious conversation and make it very collaborative, or it can make, or it can remain competing.

It just depends.

But I'm careful to always assume that negotiations start from a place of an adversarial positioning between two sides, because it simply isn't always the case.

It is sometimes, and when that happens, you do have to approach it with a different strategy.

But more oftentimes than not, we can be two people on opposing teams moving towards the same goal.

So can you maybe with an example

explain how you take a contentious conversation and turn it into a collaborative conversation?

You know, assuming that you are navigating a conversation with someone and you come to the table and you think you want completely different things

um you might start rather than stating your position asking more questions you can never go wrong with asking questions tell me more about what you need what is it you're looking for what is this going to do for you that you can't currently do and by understanding how someone is going to use or deploy or access or benefit from whatever this thing is that we're negotiating what it does is it equips you and arms you with the understanding of how to approach that conversation in a way that benefits you and them, right?

So what we're doing is we're building rapport.

Rapport is the key that opens the door for more.

We're demonstrating that we're listening and we're understanding because we're reframing and regurgitating what that person is saying in our own words.

And the goal here is to be able to tell somebody else what they want.

so accurately that when you're done describing their side of the argument, they say, yes, absolutely.

That's exactly what I'm looking for.

Because when people feel heard and felt and seen, their guard decreases, right?

And now you can approach that conversation and say, man, that's so good.

Thank you so much for sharing.

I appreciate that.

Here are some things that I was looking at.

Here are some things that I need.

Here are some things that are going to work best for me.

Here's where I think we're aligned.

We focus more on where we connect.

rather than where we disconnect.

We focus more on building bridges than building barriers.

And what it does is it gives the other person an opportunity to see another potential outcome other than the principled outcome they came to the conversation with, so that by the end of the conversation, you've made an ally, not an enemy.

So a common negotiation almost everybody, or I don't know, a lot of people have is, you know, to ask for a raise.

And

you go into your boss, and really it's a fairly simple thing on the table that you want more money and they probably don't want to give you a lot more money and you'd want to get as much as you can get.

But there are a lot of other seemingly issues on the table.

It's strictly money.

And how do you, when it, when there aren't a lot of other issues,

how do you discuss it?

Yeah, so what we have to do before we go into a conversation to ask someone for a raise is we have to put ourselves in their shoes.

So the first question I'd ask is, what

What restrictions or restraints does your boss have?

What are the things they can't control?

And what are the lines lines on the field, so to speak, that they cannot move?

Because it's always more than money.

There's always something else happening.

The boss that you're talking to may absolutely want to give you a pay raise, but their hands might be tied from HR.

The other side of this, though, is that if you're going to ask for a raise,

simply going to a business and saying, hey, pay me more money.

Here's how much revenue you have.

Take a bigger chunk and give it to me without connecting that to some benefit for the organization is really a lost cause.

Most Most folks are going to say no.

And the other side of this is people

like to go in with some hostilities and say, well, I've put my name in a hat for another business.

They're going to pay me 20% more.

And if you don't pay me a raise, then I'll take that.

And that sometimes can work until it doesn't, right?

What I think is most important is we go in and understand what the limitations are for the person we're asking.

What are the organization's goals as it pertains to the role that you're in?

Go in with some information about understanding what

the industry norm is for your particular role to know whether or not you're at the bottom 50%, top 50%, top 10%.

So you can actually speak to a number that makes sense.

But I think what's really important here is understanding what's important to your supervisor.

Do you have context for how they see you?

Have you taken the time to ask questions about your performance and what's most important to them, where the value is?

Because if you go into the conversation, understanding how the organization defines value, you will recognize recognize that there could be a gap between what they see as valuable and what you see as valuable.

And the more you can shrink that gap, the more effective you're going to be at saying, I've done these things for the organization that are in alignment with what you see as valuable.

And because of these things and the industry norms and this, that, and the other thing,

here's what I'm asking for.

Well, I suspect it's safe to say that most of us are never too far away from our next difficult conversation or negotiation, whether at work or at home or somewhere out in the world.

And this is really helpful advice.

I've been speaking with Ryan Dunlap.

He's a former police detective and hostage negotiator who's been involved in a lot of high-stakes negotiations.

And he is author of a book called How to Untie a Balloon, a negotiator's guide to avoid popping under pressure.

And you will find a link to his book at Amazon in the show notes.

Thank you, Ryan.

I appreciate you coming on.

That was great.

I appreciate you.

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I imagine as we all get older, we spend at least a a little time thinking about things like, how long will I live?

What will I die from?

What will finally get me?

What can I do to postpone that inevitable end as long as possible and live as well and as healthy as possible?

And certainly there's no shortage of advice for any of that.

But Professor John Tregoning has studied the science of all this, and he is here to talk about the best ways to live long and stay healthy.

John is professor of vaccine immunology at Imperial College London and has published over 60 academic papers.

He's author of a book called Live Forever, A Curious Scientist's Guide to Wellness, Aging, and Death.

Hi, John.

Welcome to Something You Should Know.

Hi, thanks for having me on.

So explain how you came at this, because you're a scientist, but you're also a human being who thinks about the same things about your life as I do about mine.

Like, you know, how long will I live?

Were you just curious about these questions and decided to do some research?

I mean, what got you going on this?

Where I started was I was entering my kind of late 40s.

I was beginning to creak a bit around the edges.

And I started worrying about, you know, how am I going to get sick?

How am I going to die?

And I did start looking across all these systems.

And I think

where it ended up was that actually relative, there's relatively little we can do to change things.

There are obviously some key things and we can talk about those, but this idea that actually quality has a quantity of its own, that if you improve the quality of your life, you can actually increase the quantity too.

And when you say improve the quality of your life, you mean by doing things like what?

There are some very simple things which, and the ones which will come as no surprise to many people, you know, don't smoke, do regular exercise, eat well, reduce the amount you're drinking.

But I think the really key one that I ended up on is that social connectivity and doing things that you love with people that you love will increase the quality and quantity of your life.

But the things that will get us

will get us no matter what.

I mean, something's going to get you at the end, right?

Yeah, absolutely.

Health is a sort of zero-sum situation.

You know, we, we, since we are all going to die, there is always going to be a main cause of death.

That has changed over the last 150 years.

It used to be that many, many more people died of infectious diseases.

And because of vaccination and clean water, that has changed to the majority of people die of heart attacks.

And actually,

through preventative medicine and through surgery, the number of people who, the sort of proportion of people who die of heart attacks is declining.

And the proportion of people who say die of cancer is increasing.

But there's always, because that kind of pie chart always has to stay at 100%, things are going to change as we get better at preventing

different types of disease.

But when you look at the individual pieces of that pie, when you say cancer is increasing, is the piece of the pie increasing or it's only increasing because the heart disease one is decreasing.

It's much more like that.

So heart disease is decreasing and therefore something else has to replace it within the pie.

And that's inevitably going to be the case.

And I think, I guess the longer term challenge is thinking about, well, what is the thing that where we say, you know, if people are going to die, the majority of people are dying of this is an okay within our healthcare system, within our society?

Is that

what was the kind of preferential end that we expect people to have?

And in your view, what is that?

The nicest idea I heard was this idea of health span as opposed to lifespan.

So if you can increase the amount of time that you're healthy and happy, then maybe you're increasing your lifespan is a bit less important.

So if you die and you've been healthy very close to the point of death, then maybe that's an okay way.

And the challenge is

because everything's so interconnected, you know, often people say, oh, having a, you know, a sudden cardiac arrest in your sleep might be the best way.

But there's two bits to that.

First is if you're having a heart attack, it's probably there are other factors in your life where there might be risk as well.

So you can't like guarantee that particular way.

But the other thing is it gives the people who love you less time to say goodbye.

So actually, if you, if I was to drop dead today, that would be an enormous shock for people to, you know, to process.

Whereas if you have six months where you're still able to talk and process it, that maybe

societally, that's a better way.

Well, one of the things that caught my interest when I was looking at your book is the fact that

there are so many things that could get us.

There are so many diseases and there are so many poisons in the world and so many, like, it's amazing that we're here.

It's extraordinary.

The human biology and biology in general is wonderfully complicated.

And

I'm so lucky to be a research scientist and to be pulling apart a string in the enormous kind of jumper of humanity.

But because it's so complex, that means there are lots and lots of ways for it to go wrong.

And you're right.

The kind of extraordinary thing is that most of the time it doesn't go wrong.

We have all these kind of working parts and

somehow they have tolerance in them and they've evolved this tolerance so that we do survive through thick and thin.

There is certainly a push and has been for a couple of decades now of

people trying to be healthy and eating right and exercising.

And then we hear all these little tricks like,

you know only eat between certain hours of the day and what do we know

works

the very simple message is that if you can match calories in to exercise or expenditure out you'll maintain a healthy weight different people need to approach that in different ways so some people may be able to comply

through exercise i personally

the way i manage my weight is by doing more exercise rather than controlling the amount of food I take in.

But other people find that doing intermittent fasting is beneficial.

So they can say, actually, if I don't eat on these two days or I eat less on these two days, it manages my calorie intake for the week.

So that's good for them.

And then other people say, will prefer to not eat breakfast.

So there are different methods, but actually,

the simplest thing is controlling your balancing your in and out on calories.

And then on top of that, it's thinking about the quality of the food intake that you're having.

And so talk about this idea, because we've heard a lot about it lately, of

calorie restriction, that eating,

thin people live longer than fat people.

And I guess we maybe know that,

but there's something more to that, isn't there?

There seems to be in

laboratory models.

So if you look at fruit flies,

if you restrict their calories, they can live longer.

And the reason people use fruit flies is because they don't live very long, so you can fit more experiments into a certain amount of time.

Whether that really translates into humans, but with the kind of much more complicated lives and behaviors that we have, it's not yet clear.

But the calorie restriction, the theory is that you can kind of tip the clock back or at least slow the clock of kind of degenerating or reverse damage to your body.

I think

personally, it's within the broader category of maintaining a healthy weight for your lifestyle.

Well, that certainly makes sense.

I mean, we know that people who are very heavy have a shorter life expectancy than people who are thin.

I mean, that's pretty well accepted, right?

Absolutely.

So the living with excess weight, living with obesity comes with a range of health risks.

There is type 2 diabetes, there is putting stress on the heart, there is damage potentially to the kind of to the joints, and it is all very cumulative.

So

excess weight is definitely a problem and losing that excess weight, however you can approach it undo it, is going to give you certainly an improved health span and probably lifespan as well.

That seems too simple though.

It's just too simple that people want to complicate it somehow.

Yeah, and I think that's the point, right?

So I think it is simple i think sorry i think the ideas are simple i think compliance is hard i think changing the way we behave is difficult so i i i might be sounding preachy but you know i i know that drinking beer isn't good for me and yet i carry on drinking beer so so it's very easy for me to talk about things that i don't do and then and and act as if that's very easy to change it's hard to change ingrained behaviors it's hard to change the things that we kind of enjoy even though we know they're not necessarily doing us any good.

So when you say, I think this confuses people, confuses me.

When you say, I know drinking beer isn't good for me, what does that mean?

It isn't good for you.

Alcohol is a poison.

And the more alcohol you drink, the more damage you do to your body.

The biggest area of damage it does is to your liver, but it can also cause cancers.

It increases not only in your liver, but in your guts and actually in other parts of the body, it causes inflammation and it's a sort of logarithmic scale.

So one drink is somewhat bad, two is more, three is really bad, four is very bad.

And it's the cumulative effects.

If you're doing, if you're drinking four alcoholic drinks a day, every day, you are going to do continuous damage to yourself.

So

we have to

appreciate there is a risk to drinking alcohol.

I'll say the flip side, because I do think there's some

interesting data the other way around.

And that is that there is some evidence that having one drink a day maybe have some protective effect overall cause mortality.

And I think that may be more to do with the social aspects between the interrelation rather than the alcohol itself.

But it doesn't affect everybody the same.

And I think that's baffling to some extent, because there are some people who drink a lot and end up living a long time and dying of something completely unrelated.

And then there are other people who drink a lot and die from the drinking or drinking related problems.

And when you say drinking a lot, you know, if you're into the sort of bottle of whiskey a day territory, you will almost certainly die in your 50s.

There are certain thresholds beyond which everyone is at very high risk.

But coming back to the question of like, why can, why do we all know somebody or have heard of somebody who smoked and drank until they were 95 and seemed to be very well is that you have to think about humanity as a very heterogeneous population.

We're very, very different and diverse.

And that means that different people will behave differently with different stimulations or different kind of toxins or different poisons.

And I think...

medicine as a discipline, we tend to think about statistical likelihoods and population.

So you could look in a room of 100 people and you could say 70 of these people would be more likely to die if they do this, but that means 30 of the people who won't be.

So

we can

like reduce it down and say, this is the risk of this.

What you don't know as an individual is whether you're in the 70% of people who will die if you drink heavily or the 30% who won't die.

And you'll only find that out by testing it.

And unfortunately, testing it may well lead to you dying.

what about the difference between men and women in in all of this discussion is is there much of a difference is there any protective benefits of being one or the other in any of these things

yes there is so women are much more likely to have autoimmune conditions so autoimmunity is where your body's immune system turns on itself and starts attacking bits of your body.

So things like lupus or MS or type 1 and diabetes, these are all autoimmune conditions and they tend to be a bit more prevalent in women.

Whereas men are more likely, it depends a bit on the age of the men.

Young men are more likely to die of violent death or accidental death.

Older men are more likely to die of heart attacks and maybe drinking and smoking related injuries.

So

there are some things driven by biology and some things driven by society, which will affect the causes of death in men and women.

When you look at the way people die or when they get sick,

how much of it

seems to be related to family history?

Because

we hear it's related.

We hear there's if you have, if your father had a heart attack, you are more likely to have a heart attack.

But how much more?

We are a product of our genes and our environment.

The nice phrase is that the genes load the gun, the environment pulls the trigger.

And so if you say you look at me and my father or somebody and their father, if the father's died of a heart attack, some of it may be that it's environmental.

That if you live in a family who has a tradition of eating

too much or,

you know, exposure to risk factors may be similar across families.

But there is a genetic element to a lot of our health.

And some conditions are very, very obviously genetically driven.

So there's a disease called cystic fibrosis where the lungs are unable to pump the mucus out.

They get very much damaged.

And that's a single gene.

And if you have that, you're going to get that condition.

Whereas there are other things which are like increased the risk.

So the breast cancer, there's a gene associated with breast cancer called BRCA1, BRCA2.

If you have those, you are more likely to get breast cancer.

And so there's a sliding scale of things that will definitely cause disease, things that will increase your risk.

And then things that if you don't expose yourself to those kind of environmental damage agents, you won't get those diseases.

So as people get older, we often see that they deteriorate so that

even though they're living longer, life in old age can be very difficult.

Are we making any progress on that?

You know, it's like that old saying about how, you know, you'd like to have more years, but you'd like to have them in your 20s and 30s and 40s rather than in your 90s and 100s.

I think you can delay the onset of that frailty.

And that's where the doing exercise and mixing in, you know, cardio and strengthening and stretching exercises.

It's where reducing your exposure to risk factors, all of which will reduce frailty.

But frailty is inevitable and it's kind of inbuilt into our systems.

The basically the bits of our body that replaces our skin, they're called stem cells, that that they stop producing as many cells.

So your skin becomes more paper thin.

The same happens in our muscles.

The regenerative properties of our bodies decline.

So as they get damaged and over time, they don't get replaced as well.

So I think

that is the inevitable path we're on.

But we can delay the kind of damage aspects of that.

And actually, you know, if we look better into

old age care,

we can improve that.

We can connect people better.

We can make sure that

when they reach that point in their lives, they are well cared for.

Is life expectancy going up at all?

In fact, I had heard it was going down in the West, but where are we with that?

It depends on the country.

There is some fairly bleak data that I've seen about the USA that does say it is coming down.

And that's not about people into their old age.

It's a increase maybe maybe in drug-related and violent death in the kind of 20s and 30s.

So, you know, there are, as societies change, we are going to see patterns changing.

So

I don't,

it's quite uncertain times we're living in, and I don't know where it will go.

But where are we now?

Do you know what the life expectancy for men and women is?

It's about 78.

And probably 78 for men, 80 for women.

It's pretty stable around that number.

From all the research you did into this, is there one piece of advice, one thing that came out of that that you think you really want to emphasize to people?

Just, I think I come back to the social element, I think, in the end.

I think

one of the things that I kind of learned as I was researching the book is to do things that link cognitive, social and physical together and you get much more synergistic benefits.

So going dancing because you're thinking about what you're doing, because you're moving, because you're with people is really good for you.

So look for activities that combine physical and social and cognitive and you'll get much more benefits from doing those.

Well, I like your idea of health span rather than just lifespan, that it's not always just about how long you live, but how well you live into your old age and then the steps you take to get there.

I've been speaking with John Tregoning.

He is a professor of vaccine immunology at Imperial College London and author of the book Live Forever?

A Curious Scientist's Guide to Wellness, Aging and Death.

And there's a link to his book at Amazon in the show notes.

Professor, thank you for this discussion.

Okay, lovely to speak to you.

Writing a business email is different than writing a personal email, especially when it comes to the use of emotions.

And according to to Inc.

magazine, there are a few things we should stop doing.

First of all, expressing fake concern.

Many business emails, especially to strangers, will begin with sentences like, I hope you're well.

The implication is, I've now expressed interest in you, so therefore you're now obligated to read the rest of this message.

However, the recipient knows you don't really care about him or her as a person, so the phrase comes off as fake and manipulative.

It would be better to just get to the point.

Or discussing your own emotions.

Today's social media-centric culture has strengthened the belief that expressing your emotions makes you seem more authentic and more real and therefore more credible.

In business, however, nobody really cares about your emotions unless you're actually friends.

So it's best to drop emotions out of what you write.

Instead of saying, I would be delighted to speak with you personally about this and would love to tell you more, it would be better to say, are you open to a brief telephone call to discuss this?

And that is something you should know.

I would love to read your review of this podcast, and all you have to do is post it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Castbox, wherever you listen.

We read them, we appreciate them, and having a lot of reviews helps us.

So please leave a rating and review when you have a moment.

I'm Mike Carruthers.

Thanks for for listening today to Something You Should Know.

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You might think you know fairy tales, and you might think that they are cute and sweet and boring.

But the real grim fairy tales were not cute at all.

They were very dark and they were often often very grim.

On Grim, Grimmer, Grimmest, we tell a grim fairy tale to a bunch of kids.

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Every episode is rated Grim, Grimmer, or Grimmest, so you, your kids, your whole family family can choose what is the right level of grim for you.

Though, if you're listening with Grandma, she's just gonna go for Grimmest.

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