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I'm Alan Older, and this is Clear and Vivid, conversations about connecting and communicating.

So I get an email from them saying, well, if you're going to be writing about brothels, you should be writing about the best brothels, because we're the best brothels.

I was like, I don't write about brothels, but I'm going to take this call, obviously.

If you were to read the book, you see, I went into all these strange subcultures, so I had to bang on a lot of doors to get people to talk to me and explain the secrets of how things work, and I heard know a lot.

And it was actually the time in the brothel I had before that I think really got me to be the point where, like, Dennis said to me, you know, if you don't hear know, you haven't asked for enough.

And I'm like, all right, I still hate hearing know, but I tell myself every time someone says no to me, I asked for enough.

That's Alice and Shrager, whose book and economist walks into a brothel not only has a wonderfully provocative title.

It also offers wonderfully sage advice on topics as varied as how to take risks, and how hearing the word no can actually mean you've done well in a negotiation.

Alice and I'm so glad to be talking to you today because you are some communicator.

Just take the title of your book. I mean, you get our attention immediately with that title.

Thank you. You know, I'm not normally a good title maker, but something, you know, it initially was a chapter subhead, but I actually did come up with it.

Oh, that's great. And that's it happens a lot, doesn't it? You're thinking about one part of your story and a phrase emerges that really captures the whole thing.

Yeah, you know, it didn't even occur to me. It sounds like a joke. I mean, I know that sounds so obvious, but for me, it was, I put myself in all these really strange situations that were so outside my comfort zone.

And it was certainly a brothel that was one of them. And I felt like once I walked in there, it just felt like I was in another universe.

So the book is about assessing risk, right? Yes.

What do you mean by risk, first of all? So I know I'm talking about the same thing you are.

Well, people define risk differently, but the way I think about it and the way it's defined in financial economics is risk is a whole range of things that could happen.

Anytime you make a decision, it's a risk. And good things can happen and bad things can happen. And what risk is, is it's a measurement of all those things. So something you can estimate.

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