217. Jay Heinrichs: The Art of Self-Persuasion

Speaker A: Inspiration, success stories, expert advice, strategies, new ideas and amazing conversations. Everything you need to become a great speaker. This is Oscar Santolaia and welcome to Time to Shine. Hello and thank you for joining a new episode of Time to Shine. I'm sure you have uh, heard and read a lot about Aristotle, but I can assure you that today's guest will tell you something very new and interesting. Our guest today has come in for second time in this show after around eight years. Let me introduce you again, Jay Heinrichs. He is a leading master of rhetoric, the Art of Persuasion. He's the New York Times best selling author of thank you for arguing what Aristotle, Lincoln and Homer Simpson can teach us about the art of persuasion. His latest book, Aristotle Guide to Self Persuasion digs into how we can use the same persuasive art to change ourselves. Having worked with clients ranging from Southwest Airlines to universities to NASA, Jay, uh, also advises marketers and advertising agencies. Bloomberg Businessweek says Jay brings the art of persuasion to the world's masters of manipulation. Jay writes, ah, a popular substack newsletter called Aristotle's Guide to Soul Bending. He says his mission in life is to teach people how to improve relationships, disagree without anger and get in better touch with our souls. Hello Jay.

Speaker B: Oscar, it's a pleasure to be with you again.

Speaker A: Very welcome and yeah, pleasure meeting you again. Having a new, uh, conversation related to your new interesting book that you released this year, 2025. So let's get started with that. What was your motivation to write in this book after you wrote how many before that? But yeah, tell us about this one.

Speaker B: Well, I have to be honest with you Oscar. My wife told me to write this book. She's really smart, I do everything she says. Um, but I actually was in a really terrible mood and this was years ago. Um, it took me a long time to figure out how to write this book because I had conducted this year long experiment in using the tools of persuasion on myself, which is what my wife suggested. I was, you know, getting old in every way, physically, mentally, emotionally, feeling sorry for myself for no particular reason. And she thought, well, what if you, you know, all these tools you to persuade markets and individuals and teach people how to argue without killing each other. Uh, what if you apply that to yourself? And I said, well, you know, you actually kind of can't because rhetoric, persuasion works best if people actually don't know that they're being manipulated. Well, it turns out my wife was right in some respects. Some of the tools. So I experimented on myself for a year to do some ridiculous Stupid, pointless and very hard athletic feed, and I'm no athlete. Uh, and to see what tools would work and what don't. And the thing is, some of the tools work beautifully. In fact, most of them did. You can persuade yourself with these very tools using the dark art of rhetoric.

Speaker A: Mhm. So the idea came didn't come from you, come came from your wife. And yeah, sounds like it took time to, to shape up. But yeah, you got the final result. You're going to tell us today. And it sounds very interesting the way you are. You're already introducing that. So what is, what is self persuasion? How would you define that?

Speaker B: Well, that's a great question. So in any kind of persuasion, thinking in terms of rhetoric, which is the original art of persuasion, you need an audience. So, um, self persuasion uses yourself as both the speaker and the audience at the same time. So it's a dialogue. Well, the question then is, who are you in all this? Like, who's the speaker and who's the audience? And so that's where it got really tricky. And Aristotle himself gave me the answer.

Speaker A: Mhm. All right.

Speaker B: I just was, um, doing a layup for you for a segue there, Oscar. So the question is like, how did Aristotle solve that M. And he did in this really weird book called on the Soul. And that's where I found the answer. So in order to persuade yourself, you have to detect just what your soul is in Aristotelian terms. And it's very different from what we consider the soul to be in most major religions today. But then you have to then conduct a kind of dialogue with that soul. And that was the answer to self persuasion for me.

Speaker A: And what is that definition of soul by Aristotle?

Speaker B: Well, so first of all, the way we think of the soul really comes more from Leto, who believe that the soul is something that's kind of almost independent of you. It exists without your body and exists beyond your body after you die. And you know, so if you think of almost every major religion that's, you know, your soul goes on to some place afterward, um, or exists somehow. What Aristotle said was, being the biologist he was, he actually thought it might, the soul might be an organ within your body. And years later, the philosopher Descartes said he actually found the soul. Uh, he found the organ that was the soul. He said it was the pituitary gland. Now, I'm no biologist, I don't know if that's true, but so Aristotle thought, okay, it's something the soul is this best version of you. It's what you wish you could see in the mirror. But he also said it's something that really connects with your sense of identity, which a lot of neuroscience science is really into these days. But he also said possibly the soul is something that's either can it. That's possibly connected with something outside you, like the universe, which could represent your society's deepest values. But the. The short of it is here that the soul is like your best, your best self. And it's the self that really wishes you did better from day to day, you know, made better choices and had better habits. And that dialogue with your soul is actually a really good way to figure out how to gain better habits and how to make better choices and live the kind of life that maybe you want to live. But the first step is to find what your unique soul is. And as Aristotle said, every soul is unique.

Speaker A: And I guess you talk about the part of that you talk about also on your book, Right? That's one of the steps to persuade yourself is to know what your soul is.

Speaker B: Yes. And so one really fun way to detect your own soul is to plan a vacation. I mean, I write about this in the book. The reason for that is that a lot of people will plan their vacations around what social media tell them to do. They get a bucket list that's worthy of Instagram and selfies. That's probably not what your soul is telling you. That's what, you know, TikTok is telling you. Um, so, uh, if you find yourself really wanting to book a vacation that's in an off season or in a place that is not prestigious, or one that's not on anyone else's bucket list, I give the example of one way I could I've found my soul was I remembered how I had gone to the Louvre in Paris and, um, I went to see the Mona Lisa. And I understand it's in a new room now. I don't know what that's like, but at the time, it was really disappointing. First of all, Mona Lisa is smaller than everybody's, you know, is shocked to see how small that painting is. And then, plus, there were all these people holding up their phones and jumping up and down so that they get a picture of the Mona Lisa. I mean, you do far better just looking it up online. So I quickly ducked out of there. I was there for maybe 10 seconds, found this appalling, or my soul found it appalling. And then I went into another room where I was alone, and there are all these glass cases, and in them, one of Them was a sword, this, like, beautiful sword with jewels and everything on it. And it said it was Charlemagne's sword, Joyeuse. Now, Charlemagne being, like, one of the greatest leaders of all history. Uh, now, what does that mean in terms of my soul that. That really just rang my chimes. Well, first of all, my soul wanted to be alone. It's an introvert, clearly. The other thing is that it really showed that I was not interested in what everyone wanted to see it. It was something that maybe I had discovered on my own, which is silly. It's in a museum. Other people had seen it. It's not my personal discovery. I didn't dig up Charlemagne's soul outside the Louvre. It was in a case with a label. Nonetheless, I really felt like what I had done was my own personal discovery. Now, that's a lot of things about my soul that really explained a lot about why I am who I am, that, you know, I like being alone a lot. I became a journalist because I like discovering things. Um, and it allowed me to see how I should spend my life from day to day. I mean, literally, just that one thing. And, of course, there are a bunch of other things you can do to discover your own soul. Now, if everybody flocks to the Louvre to look for Charlemagne's soul. Ah, sword. That's not how they find their own soul. They have to find their own thing.

Speaker A: After hearing this interview from you, everyone will go there.

Speaker B: I hope they do. It's awesome.

Speaker A: Okay. Yeah, very interesting, the example of, uh, planning a vacation, as you said, and most people end up, uh, choosing something because the others. The others found that that's the place to go. That's the thing to see.

Speaker B: Yeah. And so one of the things. So Aristotle describes the soul as noble, and I think what he meant by that was literally nobility. So he was speaking to a pretty elite crowd of people who could actually read, for one thing, in ancient Greece and Athens. But at the same time, when he talks about nobility, it has certain characteristics that describes the soul that I think everybody wants, which is someone with the deepest values, who. Right thing, you know, who, uh, is very capable at the same time, and improves the world one way or another. Now, some people may love their own souls that other people don't love so much. I mean, I'm getting a lot of criticism for having written about Elon Musk in my book, and this was before he joined the Trump administration, so my timing was terrible. Um, but I actually. I still believe that Musk is an absolute, absolutely beautifully close touch with his Own extremely weird and not entirely likable soul, because he knows exactly what he wants to do. He's living the life he's intended to lead. And what's more, he honestly believes that he's improving the future of humanity. This whole thing about putting colonies on Mars and, um, implanting computers in people's brains and all that. He genuine believes this is going to make humanity better. Now, I disagree, just for the record. I'm not a Musk fan. But I think what's interesting is that a lot of people think that their soul is something other people should like. And I think that that gets. That leads them astray, trying simply to please other people, you notice. So as I get older, I find it's actually easier for me to get in touch with my soul because, um, it counts less and less whether people like and admire me. I'm just. I'm old enough now that I don't have to care so much. And that's really common in old people. And I think that people who are much younger could tap into that same thing, assuming that they're not going to, you know, anger their employer or, you know, lose followers. There are ways to please people while still pleasing yourself.

Speaker A: Could you tell us now? So, yeah, the first step is to, to knowing your soul. And then could you tell us the next steps to persuade yourself? So what would be the. Yeah, the rest of the process, let's say.

Speaker B: Well, so I've been writing for years about rhetoric, which comes down to certain really important tools. And you know them. I know. Um, so in rhetoric 101, your first class in rhetoric, you're told there are three basic tools or appeals, as they're called, of rhetoric. Logos, pathos, and ethos. And so, if you don't mind, I'll go really fast through this, so I'm not too boring. Logos is the rational side, um, of persuasion. And it's what people think good arguments really are. Aristotle, who, you know, defined logic as we know it today, actually said no. Actually, logos isn't the most persuadable part of persuasion. Instead, it's ethos, which is what people think of you. It's your character as they perceive it. Uh, and then there is pathos, which is emotion. Now, so ethos being the most important. It's also the most important way to get in touch with your soul and actually to persuade it, because your soul is you. That's your character. So how you think of yourself, your capital S self, your soul, you know, um, and how it thinks of you is really important. To self persuasion. So we're now in the tools of ethos. Like, how do you get people to trust you and even like you? Well, there are three tools to that. The Greeks were big on Greece. So first of all, you want people to believe that you're capable, that you know what you're doing. And so this is really hugely important for people who suffer from imposter syndrome. You know, when they get a new job and feel they're not worthy or they're thinking of applying for a job and they stop themselves from doing it because they don't think they're qualified. In our society, I think women suffer more from that than men do. So this is the first characteristic of a trustworthy ethos, is, do you know what you're doing? Can you solve the particular problem at hand? Are you a capable person? The second characteristic is, um, what I call caring, which is Aristotle described as disinterest, which is that you care only for your audience. You're going to do your best by them. Now, when it comes to your soul, you have to convince your soul that you really have its own interest in heart. You're going to do well for your noblest self. And then finally, there's what I call cause. But Aristotle called it arete. It's often defined as virtue, which is whether you hold high values and you live up to them. Now, those three characteristics all come together if you want to persuade yourself not to feel guilty when you screw up, when you violate those high standards. And so for years, I'd been giving workshops to corporations on what to do when they screw up, which corporations, as you know, do all the time. And so what I say is, first of all, be very honest and direct and be first out with the news. We screwed up. Here's what we did, here's what happened. You don't wait for other people to convey that you want to be first. And this is true whether you screwed up in the office or whether you screwed up in a marriage or a relationship. You know, be out with the news and be as honest as possible. And when you're talking to your soul, being honest with the fact that you screwed up is hugely important. The second thing you do though, is then say, um, I feel terrible. I feel bad. Now, this is the pathos part of it, the emotion. Now, you're not feeling bad because the other person feels bad or because your soul feels bad. And the worst way to apologize is, I'm sorry you, uh, feel this way. I mean, that is not an apology. It just makes people Deservedly angry, but. So instead what you say is, I feel terrible because I violated my own high standards. Now, by doing that, you remind people you have high standards. Now, with corporations, that's usually important. Um, one of my clients for many years was Southwest Airlines, as you mentioned. And, um, they occasionally do things that go wrong. Um, there was one instance where if you booked a single seat on an airplane, on a single flight, you, you and the software screwed it up so that you ended up booking the entire flight. So people thought that they were booking, you know, a $200 flight to Houston and ended up with a bill of $15,000. Now, Southwest made good on that pretty quickly, but, you know, how are they going to communicate that message? And so the screw up protocol really works for this. You know, we screwed up. We're going to make good. We feel bad that we violated our usual high standards of, um, giving the best possible customer service. And the third thing you do is to say, here's how we're going to keep it from happening again. That's really important. So now when you do that with your own soul, whenever you screw up, like for example, you decide you're really going to, you're going to lose some weight, you want to do that. And of course, the day after you make this plan, you end up eating, and I'm speaking personally, a, uh, double scoop chocolate ice cream cone. You have to, you've screwed up. You have to engage this protocol. And the other thing you can do is a whole lot of persuasion tricks where you're having this dialogue with your soul. One of the things I, uh, do whenever I screw up on my own diet is to say, well, uh, how many minutes did I spend screwing up? Because in a 24 hour day, it took me maybe 10 minutes to eat that cone. Do the math. That's a very small percentage where I was sinning. The rest of the time I was pure as an angel. Now there's, now you smiled, and that's another important character. And I'll stop in a minute. But there are all these persuasion tools you can use, and one of the ways to do it is to make yourself smile. Like, that was silly. It made me smile, but it put me into what behaviorists call cognitive ease and what Aristotle called receptivity, which actually makes you more persuasive when you're smiling, when you're in a good mood, when you feel actually in control, you are more likely to be manipulated. And if you can get your soul to be in that state by making yourself smile, for example, you're going to not only feel better, but your soul is much more likely to forgive you.

Speaker A: Very, very interesting. So let's talk also now about the, um, you mentioned Elon Musk for instance, but, and also I know that some other, um, interesting characters, let's say having mentioned in your book, such as Dolly Parton. I think you also mentioned Taylor Swift and Iron man. So tell a bit more about. Why did you choose those examples?

Speaker B: I was looking for people who had very public relationships with their souls. And if they're writing song lyrics, that's a lot easier, you know, because songs, um, tend to be soulful. And I actually. Taylor Swift is in the subtitle. I am a Swiftie. I'm a, I'm a total fan. Let me brag about something here, Oscar. I rarely get to name drop, but I'm going to drop Taylor Swift's name, um, because I happen to be the first. I had a career as a magazine editor before I started writing books about rhetoric. And I was the editor of the first magazine ever to put Taylor Swift on the COVID Now I don't think she would know my name, but still I can gain credit for that. Now what's really important about Taylor Swift is that, uh, first of all, she encompasses every aspect of success in our culture, especially in America. I mean, in many ways she's self made. Um, she. Well, I'll give you a great example of Taylor Swift being in touch with her soul. This is a woman who is so motivated that when she was preparing for her multi Billion Dollar Heiress tour, um, her last world tour, she actually sang all I think is 44 songs while running on a treadmill. Like, it's like one of the most difficult workouts ever because she knew that she would need a lot of stamina to go to all these cities and do this three hour, um, extravaganza with the dancing and singing full volume. Now that sparked this whole movement of gym rats and endurance athletes running on treadmills, singing Taylor Swift songs, I mean, is worth it. Go on YouTube and look that up because, uh, I'll tell you, I still watch them just when I'm in a bad mood. Now what I mean by that is, uh, uh, what I did was I found people who were extremely motivated who overcame difficulties as if they were making the difficulties themselves were making them stronger. And so they described. That describes very different souls from soul to soul. Now Dolly Parton is brilliant because she manages to be loved by people of all political persuasions at an extremely divided time. And she does that through what in rhetoric is called decorum, which is this art of fitting in with a particular audience. And she does that with this, what I believe to be a genuinely loving soul. Now reverse this to yourself and think about how you're going to get your own soul to love you. Well, practicing decorum is really important here. And one way to do that is to convince yourself that you love your audience. In other words, you love your own soul. I actually say in my consulting practice, some of the clients I, uh, deal with are people who are trying to win venture capital from firms on a very competitive basis. And I tell them a bunch of, you know, we go through a whole bunch of things and practice stuff. The last thing I tell them is before you walk into the room, tell yourself you're going to love these people. And I'll tell you, I've dealt with a lot of VC people and they can be very impressive, but not always easy to love.

Speaker A: Oh, yeah.

Speaker B: Um, but I. But convince yourself that you're going to love them and then send love beams out of your eyes. I tell them this, and of course, most of them think I've been chewing some interesting gummy. But, um, the ones who actually follow that advice come back saying, oh, man, I can't believe it. I felt the love right back. Like love beams going back and forth. I think we're going to win the business. Now, in ancient Aristotle described a particular characteristic called philos, which is where we get all the philo words like philanthropy, um, which is translated as love. But it actually is more than that. It's a kind of obligation of friendship and relationship. So if you violate your closest relationship, you are angering the gods and they will punish you in ancient Greek. So a lot of Greek tragedies have to do with these violations of philosophy. Um, you know, don't ever murder your parents because it's the ultimate violation that gods will come right at you. So that's violating an obligation of philosophy. Well, why do I mention this? Well, uh, being in a close relationship with your soul, where you convince your soul you'll do anything for it. Then when you fail to show that, it's just you're more and more dedicated because of that screw up to do even more for your soul, it actually helps you stick to habits better. I mean, silly as this sounds, it absolutely worked for me to accomplish, or at least try convince myself that I was capable of doing this particular athletic feat. That was my whole experiment behind the book.

Speaker A: All right, um, if you can tell us, uh, in a practical way, someone who listened to this wants to try that stuff. Self perception right now. What is some easy practical way to do?

Speaker B: Well, one of the things I tried for myself, and I highly recommend it is. We'll have to back up and get all rhetorical on you again, Oscar. Um, one of the most powerful tools of persuasion is tropes. So we know what a metaphor, um, is. If I say the moon is a balloon, you don't believe it's a balloon, but you do start thinking about the moon flow floating rather than just being somehow stuck up there in space. Um, there are other tropes that people don't know so much about, like metonymy and synecdoche are highly manipulative. Politicians and marketers use them all the time. We don't even notice it. So they work great in persuasion. I was wondering some years ago whether hyperbole was a trope. Hyperbole is the, you know, this figure of exaggeration that. I mean, Donald Trump uses it all the time. Mark Twain was a master of using hyperbole for humor. And I wondered, is that a trope? Because it does make you sort of see reality differently, which is what tropes do. So I looked it up, being the word nerd, I am in the Oxford English Dictionary. And I knew that hyper meant above or beyond in Greek. Well, what is boli hyperbole? Well, it's where we get the word ball in English, which, um, it means to throw. And I thought hyperbole means to throw beyond. And I instantly had this picture of myself being like a dog throwing my own ball and then chasing after it frantically. And I thought, I'm going to experiment on myself with a hyperbole that was so cool, I was going to give it a capital H, which is a very hyperbolic thing to do. Um, and so I came up with this idea for, ah, the experiment to be the first person over the age of 50 to run his age up a particular mountain. Here in New Hampshire, where I live now, Olympians from around the world use this mountain to test their fitness because it's the perfect length and elevation and slope and all that stuff. To test their ability to remove lactic acid and to test their oxygenation without a laboratory. Uh, it also requires this combination of power and endurance that's really common to most sports. Well, two physiologists told me they thought was probably impossible for someone over 50 to do it because your body changes, of course, over time. And I thought, perfect, I will throw beyond what I am now. At the same time, I was suffering from this crippling hip problem called snapping hip syndrome. It's so gross. I won't go into details, but it made it so I was having trouble walking and nothing worked. Doctors were sort of giving up on me. Even surgery, they said, would probably never get me to walk properly again, let alone run. So a doctor, my physician, found a specialist, an orthopedist, who, um, was willing to do this experimental treatment from M. New Zealand that involved deliberately causing pain in my hips. And, uh, in the first session, he injected me with more than 150 shots of dextrose sugar water in order to sort of fool my nerves. And. And I won't explain what this was about, but I was willing to tell that doctor anything. I mean, I was. They had to change the sheets on the, you know, table I was lying on repeatedly because I was sweating so much. Well, anyway, so what does this have to do with how. What people should begin with when they're trying to persuade themselves? Well, I decided that I wasn't just going to do the agonizing pt, you know, the physical training to get over this hip problem, but I had to. I had to have something more glorious in mind. I had to have a goal that would make me willing to do hours of personal training. So I thought, I'm not just gonna walk again. I mean, the doctors had said maybe you could. You can walk normally and maybe you'll be able to hike again. And I've. I've always been a passionate hiker, But I said, I'm going to trail run again the way I used to in my youth. Not as a good athlete, but an enthusiastic one. And I'm going to trail run in the mountains, and I'm going to run my age up Mount Mooselock, which means running it in to the top in fewer minutes than I was old in years. So I was going to run on, uh, my birthday when I turned 58, which would give me an extra minute on the mountain. And if I ran it in less than 58 minutes, I would declare that to be my age. So. And also I would be a world record holder.

Speaker A: Wow.

Speaker B: On an athletic feat nobody had ever heard of. And one reason, and I would be the very first person if I achieved this now, one reason I'd be the very first is that nobody in his right mind had tried it before. Like, why would you do that? Plus, it's not like there's going to be a whole lot of video cameras on you. It's the. It's a wilderness. All right? So I, in My book. I decided, uh, this would be a really cool thing. If people are struggling to get their lives in order to get new habits and start thinking about themselves differently. The problem with something like getting healthy or losing weight is that one of two things will happen. One, everything online will tell you lose 30 pounds in one day by eating ice cream. In other words, impossible feat that's guaranteed to fail completely and make you feel like a loser, that nothing works. On the other hand, you have doctors telling you, go for a walk, 10 minutes a day. I know I can't get you to do anything else. It probably won't do much good, but it's better than nothing, which leads to disappointment, too, because you're not going to see results from so little effort. Instead, what I suggest is, and it doesn't have to do just with physical. I suggested things like, um, you don't cook. Well, learn to cook, but then set up a hyperbole, which would be to serve this incredible French meal to total strangers. Or, um, you say you're not musical. Well, learn the guitar and plan to go to Paris and busk on the sidewalks for money. Now, you're almost certainly going to fail, but here's the thing. You're going to fail up. You're probably never going to make money on the streets without getting arrested in Paris. But on the other hand, you may very well play the guitar for friends in a way you couldn't imagine possible. And so there are all kinds of ways to do this. To be hyperbolic, to throw beyond. And by throwing beyond, you're setting yourself up for failing up. In other words, making yourself better and making yourself, you know, enjoy life in ways that you couldn't imagine. Now, if that sounds like self help. Well, it kind of is, but it's self help that came straight from the ancient Greeks,

Speaker A: inspired by Aristotle. Yeah, this is very, very interesting. Um, how do you put it? This hyperbolic, uh, fits to do. Yeah, definitely. I need to read your book, first of all. Now you're putting very, very intrigued about that. So, different way of, uh, seeing rhetoric. Jay, could you now share with us what is your favorite quotation?

Speaker B: My favorite quotation actually is on a stair step at a law school. I paid 500 bucks to put this quotation on a step, thinking that lawyers, you know, some of them may actually pay attention, and it may, you know, influence somebody who will be on the Supreme Court someday. And that is, uh, audi altem parteram, which is Latin. St. Augustine said it, which means hear the other side and the secret of Persuasion and of disagreeing without anger is to listen strategically for what the other person is saying. You're never going to persuade an audience unless you understand them. And the best research you can do is to ask them questions and truly listen to what they're saying, especially when they disagree. So Audi altem parterram. I just love it because putting Latin on a stair step would make maybe one curious law student someday actually look it up.

Speaker A: Exactly. Someone will stand and try to understand it and yeah, you.

Speaker B: And then that's it. They will get on the Supreme Court and change the world.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think, I think you're right. That will happen. Could you. Could you also recommend us? One book has been particularly inspiring you lately.

Speaker B: I'm glad you said lately, because my problem is, you know, I'll say this is the best book of all time. It just happens to be the one I just read. Well, can I name two? Because I tend to read two or three books simultaneously in different ways. Like one on paper, one on audiobook, um, and then usually I have a separate audiobook I use to fall asleep. So two books lately, if I can do that, is Ron Chernow's biography of Mark Twain. I think it just came out last year. And um, he's the guy who wrote the book on Hamilton that inspired the musical.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: Ron Chernow, not Mark Twain. One reason why I love this. Is that True now writes about how Mark Twain used humor to overcome his own anger or even to express it. And Twain used humor as a form of persuasion like no one else and became one of the first great world celebrities as a result. So that was one thing. I mean, reading M. Mark and reading Mark Twain's books, uh, well worth it. They improve my writing every day. The other book, which is more rhetorical, if anything, is, um, the Boys in the Boat by, uh, what's his name? Daniel James Brown, I think is his name. The Boys in the Boat is about the 1938 Olympics in Berlin run by Hitler and this group of sort of ne' er do wells in Washington state, farm boys in the Depression, who won the gold medal in the 1938 Olympics against all the odds. And what makes it rhetorical is how these completely different personalities came together to form one single unit in what must be the most difficult sport of all. This idea of, you know, eight people rowing in a highly tippable boat is so painful. I've just taken up rowing myself and I could tell you it's really hard. Um, and what these people achieved came down from this ability to communicate with one another, um, in the most difficult times and to literally pull together. And I think anybody who wants to run a political party or start a company ought to read that book. I mean, it's better than any of the business books I've ever read.

Speaker A: M. Yeah, both sounds very, very interesting. Thank you for sharing that. Your latest inspirations in reading and listening. Finally, please share with us, uh, one exercise that we can do regularly. A, uh, routine to shine.

Speaker B: All right, so I mentioned love beams out of your eyes. Marcus Tullius Cicero, who, according to himself was the greatest orator in history, um, said the eyes are the windows to the soul.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: So one way to connect with your own soul is to think about how you can love people you don't know very well. And one way to do that, strangely enough, and it does have some tie in with neuroscience and is try to look at in a loving way. Now I do this with high school students and I tell them to send love beams. And I realize that I'm now 70 years old and when I'm doing it over zoom, you know, like giving little love beams out of my eyes might seem a little creepy. So just be careful out there. But it totally works. And you know, I do say whenever to myself whenever I'm going to meet with someone. And Oscar, I did it before this, uh, session. I say, oh, I love this guy. Um, and it absolutely works, especially as you get older and grouchier and if you're burdened with a Y chromosome, you just want to overpower people and win every argument. Loving is the best strategy. And to do that you have to convince yourself of your own love.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's a good one. Yeah, that's a good one. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that and absolutely I enjoyed this conversation with you. Uh, definitely very unique research you have done for writing this book. Also called my attention what else we can learn from Aristotle. So I'll definitely. We'll read the original book and also your book, of course. So please let us know how people can, uh, found your book and all the work you do, please.

Speaker B: Well, it should be in every bookstore you go into and if it doesn't complain loudly while sending love beams out of your eyes. I have a website, jheinrichs.com um, like everybody else and you mentioned my Substack newsletter and I write about all the tools of persuasion in it. Just look me up on Substack. It's probably the easiest way.

Speaker A: Excellent. Again, it was a pleasure talking with you, Jay, and all the best.

Speaker B: Thanks, Oscar.

Speaker A: Thank you for joining us today. If you enjoyed the show, do me a favor, go to Apple Podcasts or your favorite app and leave us a rate and review. This helps me so more people will find the show. And if you work in the tech industry, please Visit my website, roguethetechstage.com until next time.