 Why do we do what we do? Why do we do the same things over and over again? Why are we persuaded by certain things but not persuaded by others? Why do we cry in movies? Why do we use logic to try and fight arguments and it never seems to work? These are all the laws of human nature. Why do we do what we do? Well, we're going to figure it out today and I've got probably one of the great modern authors. Mr. Robert Green is joining us today who is known for his books on strategy, power and seduction. He's written international bestsellers including The 48 Laws of Power, The Art of Seduction, The 33 Strategies of War, The 50th Law which he co-wrote with the rapper of 50 Cent and Mastery and he's now writing another book called The Laws of Human Nature. Mr. Robert Green, it's great to have you here, sir. Thank you, James, my pleasure. Why are you so interested in social interactions in the laws of human nature? Why is this a passion of yours? Well, it's really a queer question because really the question should be why isn't everybody interested in it? You know, we're such a tech-centric culture and we're so interested in technology and all that, but really our lives, we're social animals. Our lives depend on how we interact with people, the quality of our interactions. And as a social animal, which we are from chimpanzees on down the line, these are things that can't necessarily be reduced to scientific formulas. It's sort of an art. Some people seem to be really good at it. You probably notice people in your life who have a gift for understanding people, for kind of figuring out their mind and getting excited and using that to persuade them. People who have charisma, et cetera. Some people are gifted. They understand that they have a feel for it, an intuitive feel for it. I've always been fascinated by that. I've dealt with, you know, I worked in Hollywood and many different places. There are always somebody in a group that seems to have this sort of superior social intelligence. It could be a Bill Clinton or somebody else, whoever, wherever you want to see it. They're fascinating. And what is it about them that makes them tick? My last book, Mastery, was basically about you need to master your field. You need to be absolutely brilliant at it. You need to learn to the nth degree, put in those 10,000 hours, et cetera. And that's the key to success in the world. But I had a chapter in there on social intelligence, because none of your creative skill, none of your technical knowledge of coding, et cetera, will amount to anything if you're awful with people, if you don't have political skills. So this is an absolutely the most important skill that you can develop in life. That's why I'm fascinated with it. And I would be shocked if there are people who aren't fascinated by that. Right. And Robert, tell me, when you were growing up as a child, maybe early adulthood, were you a master at this? Did you consider yourself one of the cool kids or were you kind of like very awkward or shy? Like describe your personality, how it's evolved over the years. Well, it's always hard to describe yourself. It's better if other people describe you, you know, because you don't really know. Hard to look at yourself, but I was a bit awkward, maybe a little bit shy. I was a druggy in high school, you know, got into drugs, but really into learning and literature. So sort of an odd mix of things. I kind of went to a high school where they were all surfers by the beach here in Los Angeles, and I didn't fit in. I just didn't like it. I didn't fit in. I didn't know where I was. So I was one of those, you know, practically every adolescent will say that that's what they were like that. They felt alienated. I felt, you know, quite alienated. But on some levels I was good with people. You know, I have, I had friends that I was very close to, etc. But I was kind of a late bloomer. I think college, getting out away and getting into Berkeley where I went to school and getting among people that were more similar to myself, I kind of blossomed in that sense. But I can say that one thing, ever since I was a kid, I never trusted what people said. I wasn't that I was paranoid, but people will talk and talk and talk and say whatever they want, but their actions say something completely different than their words. I noticed that in my parents. I noticed in other people's parents. So I've always been fascinated by what goes on behind the mask that people wear. People wear masks. They don't tell you what they think. They don't say, James, you're looking fat. James, you're not. I don't think you're very bright. James, that was a bad idea. They lie or they tell you something else that they think they want you to hear. I've always been someone that is sensitive to what's really going on behind the mask and trying to figure that out. And that goes back pretty far. This idea, this question, this eternal question of nature versus nurture. Are we born inherently with some kind of social power or the fact that inherently it just comes natural to us, whatever our personality is, or is it very much shaped by nurturing and experiences along the way? And your research for this book, what have you found to be the case, Robert? Well, there's a spectrum. So on one part of the spectrum, there are going to be people who have autism and Asperger's who are missing something genetically in the social realm. And it's been demonstrated many times before. We have capacities, social instincts that are absolutely remarkable that we can see in infants that are just a few days old. They're already responding to the smiles of their mother and communicating and interacting. Some people are missing that and some people are deficient in it. And I, for mastery, I interviewed a woman named Temple Grandin who was autistic. And she overcome her autism through a lot of work, et cetera. She's now a professor. She had to teach herself how to relate to human beings. She says it's almost as if she came from another planet. So there are people who aren't good at the social aspect for various reasons. There are other people who are naturally more gifted at it. People who come from a larger family. People who had a certain kind of a mother or father who was more engaging. Others have parents who were more distant and ambivalent. They have other issues. So you're born with baggage. You're born with baggage genetically and from your family. And it's ridiculous to say that we're all born equal in that sense because we're not. The question is, you can always improve. You can always become more sensitive. I say the key to being proficient in social intelligence is the degree, the level of your empathy. What that means is you have the capacity to think inside another person's skin. You can do that intuitively based on their body language. I have a lot of stuff in the book about body language because we communicate a lot non-verbally. And you can develop the skill as you get older by stopping that internal monologue that we all have. As I'm in a conversation with you or anyone, I'm usually half listening to you and half in my head. If you absorb yourself fully in another person and you follow their body language and you listen to them deeply, you're going to start learning about them on a deeper and deeper level. And that's going to give you kind of what I call social momentum that's going to carry you into other interactions. You can always get better at it. It is a skill. We're born with all of the tools. The tools that we are born with as a social animal are unbelievable. We are the supreme social animal on the planet. This is the fact that I can think about what you might be going through right now in your life as someone from England, I imagine. I don't know. Australia. Australia. I'm sorry. That's really... That's okay. You're from Canada, aren't you, Robert? Yeah. All the same. As an Australian, I usually pick that up. I kind of feel bad. Here in Los Angeles, you know, you have some obviously some weird different experiences. And the fact that I can imagine that and based on things you tell me kind of somewhat get inside what your experience is like is absolutely remarkable. No other animal has it. It's a skill that anyone can develop. Yeah. The good news is you just hit the nail on the head. You can develop it. I mean, I remember when I was growing up in Brisbane, Australia, I went to an all boys high school. And, you know, I wasn't the cool kid, but I wasn't like the kids who got picked on either. I was kind of like in the right in the middle there. Not quite cool enough to be with the cool guys and not sort of loser-ish if you like. That's how, you know, we talk about it, those different demographics in our teens, isn't it? And so I was pretty sure, pretty shy and awkward. It wasn't until I got a job right out of high school and started socializing with adults as a 17 year old did I start to gain some real social confidence. And while my school friends were out working at McDonald's or working in retail and going to university, I was working in the job force. And I all of a sudden was surrounded by women as well. I mean, I grew up in a household with two younger brothers. I went to an all boys school. So I didn't have many interactions with the opposite sex. And then when I was when I was thrust into that work environment, all of a sudden I'm working with women and older people. My confidence just went through the roof of how I dealt with my with my own age group. And from there, you know, that gave me the confidence in my late teens and early 20s to be able to say I'm moving to London, England for four years. And then from there it was I'm moving to Los Angeles and I'm going to make my my fortune and my way in the United States of America. And then it was I'm going to become a television host and host sports center on ESPN. And, you know, people who listen to this show being listening to my show for a couple years would probably consider me to be quite confident and a good public speaker. But I wasn't like that inherently. I mean, I grew up shy and timid and awkward. So the good news for you listening is that whatever state you're in at the moment in your social interactions, you can change it. You can learn this stuff. Yeah, it's a great point. And the main thing that I get from your story and that I've gotten from other stories is that it really depends on the on being as social as possible. So if you're thrust into a situation where you have to interact suddenly with people that aren't like you that are different in your case, a lot of women, you have to start to sink or swim. You know, you have to learn how to get along, etc. And the more you're around people, the better you get at it. And the problem with a lot of people today, I'm not a tech foe by any means. I depend on technology, but people are less social. And what I mean by that, they have fewer actual face to face interactions in which they're really attending to the other person as opposed to 50, 60 years ago. The number of times that you're literally talking to people and having to deal with them, you're going to improve your skill. And if you're afraid of people, you have to get over that somehow. It's the only way you're going to actually develop skill. And if you don't get over it, then according to Matthew Lieberman, who wrote the book Social, at least, you will experience, we would have a higher propensity to experience real emotional pain. Matthew Lieberman said in his book Social, that social pain, in many cases, can be more painful than any type of physical pain that you would experience, such as, say, a broken leg or a broken arm or something. That being ostracized from a group, or not feeling part of a community, or not feeling like you fit in, can have more damage, which can do more damage to you over a lifetime than literally going through periods of, like I said, using the example of a broken arm or maybe cancer or something that hospitalizes you. Have you found that to be the case in your research, Robert? Completely true. I mean, there are many ways to attack that. People who live alone generally don't live as long a life. All the research about people who are in solitary confinement, which is something I look into in my book, prisoners in solitary confinement, those who went to explore Antarctica and were suddenly alone for six months, you can't understand how the mind deteriorates very quickly without social interaction. You literally can go mad and sane without social interaction because you depend on other people looking at you and giving you feedback for knowing that you actually are alive. You don't even feel alive until your mother acknowledges you with her eyes and she tells you that you're smiling or whatever. We are completely dependent on looking at other people's faces, evaluating them, and feeling our own sense of self-worth by how they evaluate us. So if you're alone, if you're isolated, if you're ostracized, it is an extremely painful sensation and it can lead to illness, it can lead to all sorts of mental psychological problems completely. Yeah, I have a program called the 30-day No Alcohol Challenge, Robert, which inspires people to quit alcohol for 30 days. And one of the biggest fears that people have when they first start going into that program of mine is, what will my friends think? How will people think when I tell them I'm not drinking for 30 days? How can I go out and socialize without drinking, without people looking at me? And it's a very, very real fear in people, like the judgment. And I was speaking to Professor David Bus, who's a professor out at University of Texas who wrote probably the best book I've ever read called Evolutionary Psychology, who was saying that... I'm going to have to write this down. What's it called? It's called Evolutionary Psychology. All right, I'll remember that. And it's pretty much like a textbook, one of those university textbooks. And I've interviewed him before and met him in person several times. A wonderful, very knowledgeable man. But he says that he explains people, you know, fearing this being outcast, goes back to when we were cavemen and cavewomen. And that when we lived in tribes of about 120 to 150 people, if we were ostracized from the group, we would literally be eaten by a bear or we'd get killed by a rival tribe or we would die. And so we instinctively have this something in our brain that is like, I cannot be ostracized from the group. If I go against the norm, I might be ostracized and be eaten by a bear. Now, of course, in today's modern world, you don't get eaten by a bear. Guess what? You can just join another tribe. You can go to meetup.com. Or you can go on Facebook and, you know, go and join a new tribe. But it's still in our brains that if we do something that somehow doesn't toe the line of society or the tribe, that we will be ostracized. Right. So you found similar in your research, Robert? Yes, most definitely. And there's an interesting thing going on in sociology these days. Somebody in the 30s or 40s came up with their two kinds of cultures. There's a guilt culture and a shame culture. And guilt cultures are more Western oriented where they enforce codes of behavior by making people feel guilty. You have a conscience. Oh, I'm not going to kill somebody because it's bad, blah, blah, blah. Then there's shame cultures where places more like Japan, where what stops you from doing something is the fact that other people will view you negatively. And you will feel a shame. And shame is extremely painful emotion in these kinds of cultures. And people have said, we're actually moving closer now towards a shame culture in America, which was never the case before with things like social media and Facebook, where it has become so much more tribal and grouped. That kind of, we're almost going back to Paleolithic times where people are kind of conglomerating on social media and feeling intense bonding on it and deeply shaming other people who have different opinions, et cetera, et cetera. So I'm trying to say that primitive part of our psyche is still deeply embedded. It's the whole point of my book that things that were happening in the Bible or Paleolithic times, they're still in us. But in fact, as we become more technologically sophisticated, we're also becoming more socially primitive in certain ways. Yeah, just an interesting point on that. About a year ago, I changed my Facebook news settings to only follow about five or six people. And so my news feed now, the same five or six people come up. It includes a couple of family members. And then I follow a couple of people that I like to follow. I've got Tony Robbins there for inspirational stuff. And I follow Tai Lopez, who's a business coach of mine, and maybe one or two others. And what I found is that I actually feel, I wouldn't say I feel happier, but I don't feel so, I'm not prone to depression as much. Because what I found, Robert, was when I had like 500 friends, news feeds coming through, all the photos are of people on a beach having fun and smiling. And then there's like the newborn baby. And she said, yes, there's the photos of the engagement photos and all this stuff. And I'm like, man, this is making me depressed. And I was like, this is terrible. I don't want to look at this stuff because I kept looking at it going wider. And now I have that. Wow, everyone else is having fun. And I had to wake up to myself and go, what are you talking about, James? Like you're doing everything that you want to do. But then looking into someone else's world and seeing them celebrate their own life, somehow was having this, creating this feeling in my body and in my mind that like somehow I was inadequate. I'm going to have to try that. That's a good idea. I have the same reaction too. One of the laws in human nature is it touches upon that, which is what I call the grass is greener syndrome where it's built into us to always think that what we don't have is better than what we have. Right. So what other people are doing is kind of maybe better than what we're doing. We're having that wonderful Christmas with their family and the food. Oh my God, why didn't I have a family like that? Well, in fact, it's not true because if you lived in that family, you know that the father is an alcoholic, the daughter and they all have problems. But in your mind, it's always what they have that's better than you. And I traced this back to way back in time. And I can even go look in the Bible, one of the earliest moments in history that's ever been recorded is Moses leading the Hebrews out of Egypt and through the whole 40 years of them marching through this desert and sign that they're all whinging and whining. Oh, it was so much better in Egypt what we had back there. We had food at least, et cetera, et cetera. So this grass is greener syndrome is deeply embedded in the human psyche. And you came upon a strategy to get rid of it. I have other strategies. Yours is very good. The other one is to realize that people aren't really necessarily as having such a great time as you think they are and that your situation isn't as bad as you think it is. That beach that they're on getting engaged in six months they're going to be divorced. They're actually fighting and they're not having great sex, but you're not thinking about that. No, no, you're not. So what's the, what are some practical things that we can do here, Robert, to overcome social awkwardness as you're referring to? Obviously in your research for your upcoming book, The Laws of Human Nature, you would have come up with some ways in which, you know, we move out of this social recluse, social awkwardness discomfort into something a little bit more comfortable. You mentioned before you just got to get out there and do it like the more you do it. Are there some other practical tips there that we can? One of the worst things that impediments that you can have to social intelligence is the syndrome of taking everything personally. So that's what's going to prevent you from really listening to people and really absorbing their energy and really learning from them. And so I'm trying to teach you in the book to do the opposite, to take absolutely nothing personally, nothing, nothing anybody says, not even what your mother says about you. And to look at people differently. When somebody criticizes you, they say, Robert, your book sucks. They're not really directing it at me. They have their own issues. They have their envy. They have insecurities. You're not seeing it that way. You're seeing everything personally. When you take everything personally, the brain shuts off. You go into a shell. You stop observing. You stop looking at people and you're, oh, what about me? What about me, et cetera? So it's a bit of an exaggeration because certainly some things are meant personally. But I'm trying to train you to think nothing. The people you're dealing with, they're outside of you. They have their own childhood, their own problems. They come to you with their own issues. And you want to absorb yourself in them. You want to see them. You want to observe their body language, their nonverbals, which are absolutely critical. You want to find out about their childhood and what they were missing and what their pain is and how they were shamed as a child, whatever it is. And you can't do that if you're inside and seeing everything personal. It's a chess game, almost. It's a social game out there. And you want to get outside, the ability to get outside of yourself is one of the main things. There's a famous quote, isn't there? Which is how anyone thinks of you as none of your business. You know, it's really like if someone hates you or someone loves you or someone dislikes you or someone, you know, whatever, it's really nothing to do with you. That person has to take responsibility for their emotions in that situation. Just like if I'm having an argument with a loved one. A lot of people say, you're making me angry. Which is actually not true. It's what they should say is that I'm feeling angry by you or like I'm feeling anger towards you based on what you're saying. There's a big difference, for example, saying you're an asshole versus you're acting like an asshole. So just changing the language there can change the meaning pretty significantly. But the main point, what you seem to be saying, Robert, is just don't take anything personally and always just, you know, I like to think whatever anyone says to me is based on their history, based on their background, based on how they see the world. It's all perception. And at the end of the day, it is nothing to do with you. Right. And you're going to be able to learn about people and get inside their stories and their lives much better if you're not constantly thinking about yourself. Right. I'm sorry, go ahead. I was just going to say, we're talking to Robert Green, who is the best-selling author of the 48 Laws of Power, the 50th Law, Mastery, and now the upcoming book, The Laws of Human Nature. Yeah, so let's do another one. What's another way we can overcome social awkwardness? Well, a chapter that I'm redoing right now has to do with what I call the attitude, the human attitude. And I'm trying to say that we don't really look at the world as it is. We don't really see reality. We have an attitude that's sort of like a filter or a lens. Some people have a depressive attitude. Some people have a hostile attitude. The hostile attitude person sees everything around them as a personal challenge. Everybody around them is aggressive kind of thing, and they interpret the world that way. They're people with a more open, adventurous attitude. I classify as many different kinds. The point of the chapter is it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. The way you approach people is the way that they're going to respond to you, and then you create these kind of back and forth cycles that can either be negative or positive. So if you enter a room, and you think that the other person is handsome, but you never even say it, they are going to respond more positively to you. There's tons of amazing studies done on things like that where a teacher walks into a room and literally expects the children to be doing all A students. It doesn't say anything. The children pick it up, and they respond, and they learn more quickly, etc. So your attitude, how you approach the social game, will largely create the responses that you get. And so if you're resentful, bitter, close, negative, you're going to get that. People are going to feel hostile if you're hostile. If you're open and generous and kind of forgiving and you're tolerant, and I don't really care that you're going to vote for Donald Trump even though it's kind of offensive to me. But I accept you as a human being because that's who you are, blah, blah, blah. They're going to respond in an open, generous way to you. They feel it. We're nonverbal animals. We're not all in our heads just about words. We feel things. So it's absolutely critical that you become aware that people are responding to you not just by what you say, but by your spirit, your attitude, how you approach them. And you can change that by becoming more positive, more open, less judgmental. And you'll get that kind of like response. So that's another aspect of human nature that I'm looking at. Yeah, when I quit drinking in 2010, I was just a social drinker. I wasn't an alcoholic, but I drank socially. And I wasn't really that health-conscious, Robert. I was just like, you know, exercised and thought I ate pretty well. But I drank a little beer and ate some bad food. When I finally quit drinking in 2010, it was initially just, I took a 30-day no-alcohol challenge and I liked how I felt so much. I just kept going. But something very interesting happened. Over the course of those first six months that I stopped drinking, I realised that my friends changed. Not my friends, my existing friends, but my friendship circle or my social circle changed. I started attracting people into my life who didn't drink as much alcohol or where alcohol wasn't like a factor in their life. When I started going to the gym, I started all of a sudden socialising with people who liked to go to the gym. When I started being happier, I started finding that I was socialising with people who were happier. So speaking to your point, your point is your attitude creates the responses you get. How you live your life and what you think are the type of people that you're going to attract into your life. Very much so. It gets a little mystical, but you're explaining it and you felt it and I've had similar experiences. I think some of it can actually be backed by science. I'm not going to bore you with it, but I do think it's a very real phenomenon. Just another point, you were talking about someone walked in and they were attractive or handsome or pretty and you didn't say it, but they would feel that. I'm actually reading this book again. I've read it three times. It's called The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Hite, a New York professor and funnily enough on page 93, I was reading today, he says, overall attractive people are not happier than unattractive ones. Yet surprisingly some improvements in a person's appearance do lead to lasting increases in happiness. People who undergo plastic surgery report on average high levels of satisfaction with the process and they even report increases in the quality of their lives and decreases in psychiatric symptoms such as depression and anxiety in the years after the operation. So anyway, thought I'd just go off topic slightly. In other words, they've done plastic surgery and therefore people are looking at them differently and then they're feeling differently about themselves. But you could do that without the plastic surgery. Sure, of course you could. Absolutely. It's fascinating, isn't it? Yeah, it is. It's very interesting. All right, so let's do another one. What's another way we can overcome social awkwardness? We've talked about not taking anything personally. We're talking about, you know, your attitude creates the responses you get. So for example, if you say life is a gift, you'll act like life is a gift and if you say life is hard, then you'll probably attract people who think life is hard and you'll be always saying, oh man, life is hard. Well, it's not only that you'll attract people that feel that way, but you'll create in them a similar emotional response. So it's been known for instance, a phenomenon where husbands are certain that their wife is cheating on them, but it's all in their head, they're paranoid. Wives get the feeling, well, God, I really do want to cheat on them. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. You can literally make people do the kind of behavior that you actually fear and most dread in life. So that's also, there's both parts of that. Well, another chapter number one is very elemental and it's about the fact that we're not rational animals. We are emotional animals. And I try and go a little bit into the neuroscience of that because I think it's important. And the neuroscience of that is that we obviously have an evolutionary history that goes back millions upon millions upon millions of years and go back three billion years if you want to be technical. And there are different parts of the brain. Now, people have called it the three parts of the brain. There's the reptile part and there's the emotional part with the amygdala and the limbic brain. Then there's the cortex. So we have this old, old part of us that's automatic. That's the lizard part in which we respond, fear or flight. We have no control over it. Then there's the limbic part where the kind of governs emotions. I'm obviously summarizing this quite a bit. But animals evolved emotions 100 million years ago. We don't know exactly when. But they predate the obviously the arrival of humans. So that part of our brain is much older and has nothing really to do, is not connected well with the cortex and the neocortex of the brain. What this means is we can't verbalize our emotions. We're really bad at verbalizing our emotions, particularly men, women, maybe a little bitter at it. But even women aren't that good at it. We don't really understand our emotions. We don't really know why am I angry today? And we've all had that experience that you wake up and you're depressed and nothing really bad happened. Why am I depressed today? Why am I angry? Why am I suddenly feeling so excited and happy? Sometimes there's a reason, but sometimes there's nothing you can point your finger to. We don't really know where our emotions come from. They don't connect to our thoughts. They don't connect to actually words expressing them. And so the point is people are much more governed by their emotions and they don't realize that this is the source of their behavior. They try and give an explanation that's rational. And you have to start looking at people like that and not thinking that you're dealing with these rational philosophers who are going to listen to your argument. If you want to influence people, if you want to understand them on a deep level, you have to understand the emotions at a very primal level that they are feeling. You have to understand their insecurities. You have to understand the things they never got in childhood. So I have a first chapter about learning that and then I have a chapter later on about how you influence people, how you persuade them to do what you want. You can't get through life unless you're able to sort of lower people's resistance in some way because people are always resistant to whatever you want them to do. You have to have that skill. You have to know what it is that they're missing. I call it their self-belief, what they think of themselves. I think of myself as being noble, kind, generous. You have to confirm that self-belief somehow in your argument. It's all dealing with reaching people at their emotional level and that's how you're going to change them. It's a complicated argument and I'm summarizing it, but I'm trying to alter the way that you look at what you're dealing with and stop listening to their words and start paying much more attention to their moods and to sort of the emotional temper that they bring in a conversation or whatever. Yeah, there's a book by Jim Davies called Riveted where he explains why we cry in movies or why music affects us. It's because of our emotions. It's hitting an emotional nerve within us. Having said that, while I agree with you wholeheartedly, we are emotional creatures. We hold a couple of million dollars worth of information products over the phone talking to all kinds of different personality types, people who are very logical, people who are action takers, people who are emotional, and then people who are social. The way that I was able to persuade or influence them to buy the programs that I was selling was understanding and identifying what was the dominant personality type, whether it was a practical or emotional, an action, or a social. So, I had some people some like high level action taker guys who were all full of testosterone. I wasn't talking to them in an emotional point. I was talking to them in an action. Likewise, there was some practical people. What's the difference between that that is emotional? Sure, so I guess what I'm saying is while we're all emotional, the way that you can polish if you like or how you portray or how you present that emotion or how you extract the emotion out of them isn't necessarily going to them with what might be considered an emotional tactic like lovey-dovey. No, no, no, no, no. I agree. That was kind of a slanted perspective on what I'm writing. I didn't get to explain the full chapter. Really, what I'm saying is in that particular chapter, people have a belief about themselves. I am an action person. I am an intellectual. I am this. In your approach to them, you have to confirm that. You have to speak their language. When you do that, they have an emotional response. They relax. They're not already resisting you because you haven't suddenly made them feel insecure about who they are. You're speaking their language. There's a rapport. These are all emotional things that are going on inside of Persuade. The best analogy I've come across is if you speak English and someone else speaks Mandarin, Chinese language, you have to try and talk to them in Mandarin. If you're like, blah, blah, blah, in English, then that person's not going to understand you. Until you can speak the language of the person that you're trying to influence or persuade or even just connect with, you're always going to have that disconnect. Yes. There are three good tips there on how to overcome social awkwardness. Don't take anything personally. Your attitude creates the responses you get. Just know that we're emotional animals and being able to understand the emotions of the person that you're talking to and paying attention to their emotions is going to give you the opportunity to either persuade or connect. Yeah. Just generally, is there one all-encompassing idea that you're learning? One particular fascinating thing that you didn't realize in your research for the laws of human nature, something that just stands out about human nature in general, that you're like, wow, that really is unique or that's really surprising. Well, that's an interesting way of looking at things. I'm sure I have, but nothing comes immediately to mind. I am trying to make one point in the book that is we're all connected. It's almost like a borg in Star Trek. We almost are like the borg. We've almost all are sort of assimilated in some way. And so what we try to do, one of the main things of human nature is we try to create an us-versus-them syndrome. Oh, it's the other guy that's evil. It's the other people that are bad. The Republicans are all bad. The Democrats are bad. They're the ones fucking up the world. It's human nature. We are all the same. So we all have murderous tendencies within us. If it didn't, if it weren't for the fact that we grew up in a pretty decent home and had an education, who knows where we could end up. Human nature is all interconnected. We all have the same qualities, the same potentials, the same possibilities. Yes, some people go off in a really bad direction, etc. But we're all cut from the same fabric that goes back 10 million years or even further. And so one thing that I have a chapter on aggression that's coming up. Haven't written it yet, but I know what it's about. And the idea is that going back millions of years we were already eating our way through the environment. We were already killing too many animals. We were already destroying the ecological system of entire islands. We go to the people that inhabit New Zealand and they kill all of the giant birds and all of the giant things and they devastate the landscape. There's nothing left and there's starvation, Easter Island, etc. These are qualities that are embedded in human nature that go back very far and they're in us today. So I'm trying to get out of the us versus them syndrome, but see all of us in terms of this we all share. I don't know if I'm expressing it too well. I'll be able to express it better in the book. But that's sort of one really kind of revolutionary way I want you to look at people that they're not separate. They're not them. They're not so different. They actually share a much more in common with you than you think. Wise words there. Very interesting words from author Robert Green who is currently penning his latest book, The Laws of Human Nature. Very much looking forward to that. If you haven't already, please do get out there and buy one of Robert's books which are excellent. The 48 Laws of Power, The Art of Seduction, The 33 Strategies of War, The 50th Law and Mastery. Send him a tweet right now on Twitter. You can find him at Robert Green and it has an E on the end. At Robert Green with an E. And send me a tweet as well at James Swann. I can just ask and know what you thought about today's interview. I have to ask you just before we go, Robert. 50 Cent. I actually met real name Curtis Jackson. I met him at the Cannes Film Festival in 2008 or 2009. Very nice man. Very polite he was. What was your... A new co-wrote the book, The 50th Law with 50 Cent. What was that experience like and how did you find 50 Cent in general because I know that there's people who don't really know much about him go, oh, he's that rapper dude. How did you find him? What was that experience like? Well, I spent six months pretty much tied to his side and followed him everywhere so I got to see a lot of different sides of him. Probably didn't see the full picture because whoever really sees that. But I saw a lot of different sides of him. I really like the guy. I can say I love him. He's were friends. So I'm a little biased but I met him because he was a fan of the 48 Laws of Power like a lot of rappers and I came in with no prejudgements. I didn't want necessarily want to write a book with him. I'm not a celebrity person. I actually prefer talking to taxi drivers and bartenders and celebrities that kind of bore the hell out of me. I connected with him because he's a very kind of down-to-earth guy and he has an amazing story to tell from where he came from. So we connected on a human level. Kind of what we're talking about here in social intelligence. It transcended the fact that he came from Southside Queens with shot six times and comes from the complete polar opposite of me, you know, middle-class Jewish kid from Los Angeles. You can't imagine two different worlds but yet we connected on a really interesting level. We both love strategy and games and sports warfare and all that kind of dirty stuff and sex and seduction and all that. So we really connected and I saw a lot of things that people don't know about him. He's incredibly charming. He's a master seducer. I've heard him on the phone. Of course it helps being really good looking at millions of dollars. I probably would have a lot more luck as well. But that said, just hearing him on the phone trying to seduce a woman, wow this guy's got a game. He's pretty good. He's very smooth and he's also now he has flaws. I mean I have flaws but he can get a little moments where he can be, I don't say it's insecurity but where he goes into a place where he's not thinking as rationally as he should be and he has issues but overall he's a really good person and he's a lot warmer and human than you think from, he's not the thug image and in fact I had a book signing for the 50th law here in LA and he met my rather old Jewish mother and my mother loved him and she's not into hip hop and she finds the whole thing scary and she, wow that guy is charming and ever since then she's been following it, his story on the internet and every time he's on television she's calling me and telling me about him. He has that effect on people and it's pretty powerful so I'm a big 50th fan and I always will be. Well thank you for sharing that I actually had a similar experience in the 60 minutes only that I had interviewing him one-on-one in the Cannes Film Festival and likewise I felt like we were worlds apart I grew up in Brisbane, Australia even more than me and him, yeah and he's telling me the story about being shot where he was and you know drugs and murders and all that kind of stuff I'm like what the hell am I doing on the French Riviera at the Cannes Film Festival sitting next to this rapper with these big gold chains but I'll tell you what we really connected to the point where I picked up my mobile phone that I had of the time and I called a friend of mine who lived in London he was a huge 50th fan and stuck him on the phone and he made a little joke and everything which was quite fun and playful which is the exact opposite of the image that you get from the kind of rappers which is more like thug-alike isn't it at any stage some bodyguard's gonna shoot you or beat you up or this Well the thing I say in the 50th law is that this is guy with high social intelligence and it came from early on when he did his mixtape campaign after he got shot he knows his audience he's not like he's ego-ridden he really focuses on the people he's trying to reach so he's having a conversation with you from Australia he's actually trying to get inside your world a little bit which is very surprising for a celebrity so he's a guy with high social intelligence and I picked that up pretty quickly when I met him Well thank you Robert you also are a man of high social intelligence thank you so much for joining us today and sharing your words of wisdom and best of luck with the upcoming book it's super exciting I can't wait to read it we only touched a little bit upon it but have me back in a year and a half or so when it's out and I will go more deeply into it wonderful well thank you for the glimpse into that book right now I appreciate your time and to you the listener and the viewer thank you so much for listening and watching please do share this episode now with someone who you think would benefit from this someone that you think needs to overcome some social awkwardness please do share this with them now maybe put them on to Robert's books and thank you for listening and watching I'll catch you on the next one