Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast. This is Sam Harris. Just a note to say that if you're

hearing this, you are not currently on our subscriber feed and will only be hearing

the first part of this conversation. In order to access full episodes of the Making Sense

Podcast, you'll need to subscribe at samharis.org. There you'll find our private RSS feed

to add to your favorite pod catcher, along with other subscriber-only content. We don't run ads

on the podcast, and therefore it's made possible entirely through the support of our subscribers.

So if you enjoy what we're doing here, please consider becoming one.

Today I'm speaking with Chris Voss. Chris is an expert in negotiation. He's the founder and

principal of the Black Swan Group, which consults with Fortune 500 companies about negotiation.

He also teaches at the University of Southern California's Marshall School of Business,

and at Georgetown University's School of Business. He's lectured at many leading institutions,

Harvard, MIT, and Northwestern. And perhaps most relevant to our conversation today,

he was a hostage negotiator for the FBI for many years. And we spend most of our time talking about

his experience in the field there, negotiating with terrorists and ordinary hostage takers and

bank robbers. And then he has distilled some of the lessons he's learned from those extreme

conversations for more ordinary ones. And he's written a book on negotiation titled Never Split the

Difference, negotiating as if your life depended on it. And now without further delay, I bring you

Chris Voss. I am here with Chris Voss. Chris, thanks for coming on the podcast.

Sam, my pleasure. Sorry, I made it so hard getting all my text set up.

Not at all. It's amazing we can do this remotely. So let's just jump into your background because you

have more than the usually fascinating background for a podcast guest. Thank you.

How is it that you became a hostage negotiator?

...