The Strong Towns Podcast
Good arguments fail when they ignore how people feel. Chuck Marohn and Joshua Bandoch talk through using empathy, ethical persuasion, and values-based stories with everyone from public works directors to concerned residents. Their examples reveal why understanding fears and incentives often matters more than another chart or study.
Transcript (Lightly edited for readability)
Hey everybody. This is Chuck Marohn. Welcome back to the Strong Towns Podcast. My guest today is Joshua Bandoch. Josh, did I say your last name right?
Bandoch — well, that's me.
All right. He is a new author. The book is How to Get What You Want: Mastering the Art and Science of Persuasion. I asked Josh to come on the podcast and chat with us about it. Josh, welcome to the Strong Towns Podcast.
Chuck, it's a pleasure to be here, and thank you for all the great work that you're doing.
Thank you, friend. I feel like at Strong Towns, we make a lot of rational arguments about how the world should work. I particularly go back to the early days of Strong Towns — this would be like 2008, 2009. I was an angry young engineer, mad because the world does not make sense. I went through a frustration phase where people were getting it, but then we're getting the same outcomes. Even in cities where people would say, "Oh, we follow Strong Towns and we think this is really great," they do the same dumb things over and over and over again.
Here's the question I want to start us with: why don't good arguments actually change people's minds?
Good arguments alone don't change people's minds because that approach does not align with our cognitive wiring. I hate what I'm about to tell you — this is what all the neuroscience and all the psychology says, and a lot of your listeners are going to click out of this episode real fast, but bear with me for a second.
This is how all eight billion of our brains are wired: we feel first, then reason. Sometimes it's feel, then reason. Sometimes it's feel and we never get to reasoning. We've all been there.
Here's the problem. We think that persuasion — which is what the book is about, and what Strong Towns is trying to do when its advocates try to persuade people — is primarily or purely a logical endeavor. But we're wired to feel first. So people's approach is, "Hey, let me launch my logic at you," and then eventually, if I launch it enough, maybe launch a logic tsunami...
...that's somehow going to make you change your mind, which works against you all the time, right?
In fact, persuasion starts with feelings. I know this is really aversive to math-oriented people, engineers and the like. Why can't it all be so logical? It turns out that people who suffer brain damage and whose ability to emote is impaired — their reasoning is also impaired. They can't reason properly. Emotions actually enhance our reasoning.
So what does this all mean? The logic-first approach to persuasion is illogical. You have to start with feelings. When we start with data, we're missing the first step in everybody's cognitive process.
I want to paint a scene, because it's one I've witnessed over and over again. You have a Strong Towns advocate. They've got all the studies and the data and the charts. They show up to the meeting. They're going to illuminate the crowd because they have special data, special insight that is not part of the dialog. Maybe they even go through their PowerPoint, or they hand out their notes. In their mind, they've made a really compelling argument, but it goes nowhere.
Yeah. What I've long told people is: don't bring data to an emotions fight.
100%. You've got to bring data at some point. But how would you approach that setting — the public meeting where you really care about something deeply — if you want to be heard, if you want people to actually understand what you're saying, with maximum emotional intelligence? Because IQ alone can never win the day. The smartest people in the world, if they don't have emotional intelligence, they don't get what they want — or maybe they get a little bit of it sometimes, but not nearly as much and not nearly as often.
So what does it look like to approach your advocacy with emotional intelligence? Start with feelings. That's simply how we're wired. How do you do that? You have to understand how your audience feels about something. Here's a really stealthy tactic I encourage everybody to try — just today, once they listen to this.
Go for it.
Ask them. Ask them how they feel. This is one of the first places we start to err.
We ask somebody what they think about something. Suppose you're talking to a councilman, a mayor, whoever, about policy, and you say, "Mayor, what do you think about this?"
No, no — ask them, "Mayor, how do you feel about this?" It triggers a totally different track in the brain, and they offer a quick, intuitive, much more honest answer. You have to know how somebody feels about something. You say, "Mayor, how do you feel about trying to have more density, doing these sorts of things that Strong Towns advocates for?" He can say, "Well, I'm just concerned about X." He'll tell you that. Whereas if you say, "Mayor, what do you think about this?" he has to pause: "Well, I just need to look at the data." The feeling answer — boom — you know how he feels.
Then the next step is to generate persuasive feelings. What feelings are persuasive? Everyone's first instinct is negative feelings, right? Take a look around. When I was writing this chapter, I went on Fox News and MSNBC. Of about 200 homepage stories, one was positive. That aligns with our wiring — we're wired with something called negativity bias. We are more attentive to negative information because it helps us survive.
But here's the real answer: positive feelings are persuasive. Who were some of the most persuasive people in America over the last 100 years?
Wow, that's a really good question. I'm 52, so in my lifetime — I feel like Ronald Reagan was very positive in terms of his emotions about the country and his way of expressing things. I actually think Bill Clinton was a great communicator for much the same reason. My kid takes astrophysics and we do these deep dives into it, and I feel like Neil deGrasse Tyson has been kind of the pop-culture physicist — he's that way because he talks about these things in such a personal, optimistic way.
That's a good sampling. I'll add to it — tell me if you disagree. JFK: "Ask not." No one ever says Walter Mondale. Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream." No one ever says Malcolm X. Ronald Reagan saw America as a shining city on a hill. No one ever says Barry Goldwater. Bill Clinton said, "I feel your pain," while George H.W. Bush was looking at his watch. Barack Obama: "Change." His 2004 Democratic National Convention speech is an absolute masterpiece.
So positive things are persuasive. What does that mean for your advocacy? If you're a Strong Towns advocate, you have to be for something. Take probably one of the hot topics for your audience — the NIMBY/YIMBY debate. I think that's actually really divisive. I was talking to somebody who works in this space, an expert at a national think tank, and he now talks about FIMBY: "Families in my backyard." You're actually for something there. NIMBY and YIMBY — it's divisive. So be for families, be for strong towns. You're for something. You're not anti-suburbanization. You're for strong towns.
So these are the first two things: start with feelings, and generate persuasive feelings.
Let me put some nuance on that, because everybody who's been to a public meeting has seen someone show up with too much emotion. You hedged it by saying "high emotional intelligence" or something along those lines, but I want to make sure we distinguish between that and just raw emotion. Raw emotion at a city council meeting is actually one of the least effective approaches. I would rather you had just spreadsheets than raw, unbridled emotion. Can you talk about the difference? I don't want to give license to people to go in and just say "Think of the children!" — because it's so ineffective.
Emotional intelligence is totally different from raw emotions. Raw emotions have their place — elation, or if somebody really offends you, okay, fine. But having that be the basis of your advocacy is not so effective, because most people find it aversive. Usually it's negative emotions you see up there. You don't usually have people being overly positive — that's unusual.
Emotional intelligence, by contrast, is trying to understand the contours of a situation, the people, what they're feeling, the emotions they're dealing with — taking those emotions seriously and navigating them carefully and authentically in an effort to actually accomplish something. So you approach a situation with emotional intelligence at a city council meeting...
...because you want to bring the message that's going to resonate with the people that you need it to resonate with. Maybe there are just two or three people on city council who are the swing vote, so your emotional intelligence focuses on them and their concerns. Instead of dismissing somebody's concerns — not emotionally intelligent — you take them seriously and you address them. How is this different from empathy?
They're related. One of the most controversial things I've said is that I've called for us to have empathy for car drivers, for walkers, for NIMBYs. I've said we should have empathy for NIMBYs. I think people interpret that as sympathy — as trying to compromise — and I'm just saying empathy is about understanding. Sympathy is not empathy. You don't have to sympathize with somebody's concerns to understand them.
I actually did this: I was on a panel a couple of years ago on housing affordability, and I went to Wikipedia and looked up NIMBY and NIMBYism, which brings up 15 or 20 concerns. If you look at those concerns and think, "All of these are categorically stupid" — well, you might be the one who isn't approaching things effectively.
Empathy is taking somebody's concerns seriously, understanding them, and then trying to address them. You can go through any of the so-called NIMBY concerns and say, "Okay, I get it. You're coming from a reasonable place, and there are competing values." Or better yet: "Let me try to show you how what I'm proposing is actually a better way to express your values than this other thing."
What do we do when someone's incentives are broken? You talk about shifting from "me first" to "them first." I want to give you a scenario. Often, what Strong Towns advocates find is that the city engineer or the public works director is a huge obstacle. They have tradition and manuals that tell them what to do, funding streams, and they just don't want to listen. We can provide all the data and all the sources and have a hard time reaching them. I often look at their incentive structure and say it's almost built for them not to listen — their job kind of depends on adhering to the old way of doing things. How do you put them first in that kind of situation?
Do not underestimate the remarkable power of putting them first and approaching them with maximum emotional intelligence. First, consider the alternative — you get frustrated with them, maybe even tell them, "You're taking way too long. This is obvious, come on, we have to do this." Do you think that increases the chances they listen to you?
So what would it mean to approach this difficult inspector or city official with maximum emotional intelligence? Be likable, for one thing. Think of all the times that somebody has said something, and if anybody else had said it, you would have agreed with them — but because this particular person said it, you stepped back.
I'll confess something. I was reading something the other day and I thought, "Wow, I really agree with this." Then when I got to the name, I thought, "Wait a second, I don't agree with this person."
Exactly. That's a very real human thing. We attach meaning to something in part based on who says it. The same words coming out of Chuck's mouth versus somebody else's mouth — if you like Chuck, you're more inclined to agree, and if you dislike Chuck, you're more inclined to disagree.
So what does that mean? Be as likable as possible, because likability greases the wheels of shared action, which is what I think persuasion is. Be nice to people. I call customer service agents all the time, and they get battered all day long. When I call Verizon, I acknowledge that. I say, "Here I am, another customer who wants something from you. I have problems that aren't your fault, but I want you to solve them anyway." I am overly nice to them.
Time after time this has worked — actually twice recently, in the last month. We get to the end of a 15-minute call and they say, "Is there anything else I can do for you?" In the span of three days, I had to call Verizon about minor issues. At the end of both calls, two different people said, "Let me look and see if there are any deals in your account." Within three days, I got my iPhone 13 upgraded to an iPhone 17 at no charge, and my wife's iPhone 15 was also upgraded to a free iPhone 17 — just because I was nice to these people. It works.
So first: be likable and be nice. Second: understand how they're feeling. If they're having a terrible day — say their boss just laid into them — show some empathy and demonstrate understanding of how they're feeling.
Third: identify barriers to them moving forward. We think persuasion is all about getting somebody to do something, but one of the biggest things I've learned is that persuasion is much more about identifying what's stopping somebody and removing that barrier. Ask the people who appear difficult: "What would stop you from approving this permit? What would stop you from voting for this policy?" When you ask it that way — instead of "Why aren't you doing this?" — they give remarkably quick, intuitive, unguarded answers.
Then, authentically, instead of saying, "Well, that's stupid" — let me see if I understand it. When somebody authentically demonstrates understanding of your position, you feel heard. Simply feeling heard is powerful.
Number five: appeal to their values as best you can understand them. Maybe as a bureaucrat, he has certain priorities. See if some of what you want actually aligns with his priorities. He might say, "I've got to do my job, but I'm also under pressure to get more houses built." You say, "Okay, I'm trying to get more density." That's an opening. Until you go through this process and understand what he's dealing with and where your opening is, you don't know how to proceed. But now you do — boom.
Press on that again. We spend a lot of time here at Strong Towns talking about storytelling as a mechanism to break through to a larger audience. You talk about it in terms of one-on-one — how to get what you want. I want to give you an opportunity to talk about the value of storytelling, but I also want to put some guidelines on it. A lot of times when I hear people talk about this, they put it up as a substitute for thinking, and if it's done well, it really isn't. Can you talk about storytelling — what makes a good story, and where do you cross the line where it becomes a bad story or an unhelpful story?
Let me start by telling a story that I think will be applicable to Strong Towns. One of the things I've advocated for is making it easier to build accessory dwelling units in Chicago. That's a pro-community thing, a pro-density thing, pro-low-income people who otherwise can't afford housing.
It turns out there's a great story to tell in Chicago, which as you know is a left-leaning city. I tell a story about a Chicagoan who had the opportunity to grow up in an ADU in her aunt's attic — an ADU that would be illegal to build today — and that afforded her family an affordable place to live. If it weren't for the opportunity to grow up in that ADU in a way her family could afford, it's possible that Michelle Robinson may never have become Michelle Obama.
Wow. Michelle Obama grew up in an ADU? That's amazing.
So start with that. We are story processors before we are logic processors. In both cases, logic is still important — I would still need data to show that ADUs are good policy. You're absolutely right that some people make storytelling a stand-in for analysis. That's a problem, because the logic is important. For all your engineers out there, you don't want to build a bridge that collapses. The bridge needs to be built on a solid foundation. So there's great data to advocate for making it way easier to build ADUs in Chicago and across the country — and you start with a story. You start there, but you don't end there.
We are story processors, so you've got to tell stories. What kinds of stories? I think this is one of the innovations of my book. The most effective stories are morally motivating, emotionally intelligent stories. Think about a bad story: "Bob went to the corner and he stood there. The end." Nobody cares, right? So: morally motivating, emotionally intelligent stories — the stories have to make people feel something.
Hopefully the story about Michelle Robinson made people feel something. It was a 15- to 30-second story. How do you do that? The stories have to appeal to your audience's values. The Michelle Obama story works really well because a Chicago resident is going to identify with that success story automatically. You just say "Michelle Obama" and you have this whole backstory of success — someone with very high approval, locally too. In a 15-second story, you've attached opportunity to success, and the opportunity is anchored on the policy thing that you want to see happen.
That's actually a very brilliant bridge. I had not heard that story. Did you research that one for this podcast?
I researched that for my advocacy, and it happens to be applicable here, because when I go to city council and testify, I need stories that resonate with them. When I've testified in favor of expanding ADUs, I start with that — it's really powerful. It's a true story. Then I go into the data about, for example, how Chicago's ADU policy is still inequitable. It's gotten better, but there's way more progress to make. There are data to support the claim that ADUs increase opportunity, and I'm happy to cite that. Start with a story whenever possible.
Let me ask you this — I'm going off script, because you've nudged my brain in different directions. I have this one story that I tell about Taco John's, and I've told it in a lot of places. It basically compares one block to another block, the same size. One is this old rundown block, and then we rip down the old block and build a Taco John's, which is a drive-through — like a Taco Bell, but I call it Norwegian Mexican food. It's Midwestern taco stuff.
A herring, right?
Some days. They do red and green nachos at Christmas time. The interesting thing is that the Taco John's block is worth substantially less than the old junky block that was there. So the compelling thing is that we tore down this thing to get something worth far less. That story works everywhere — except one place. It doesn't work here. I've told it in my hometown, where the literal thing is, and it doesn't work. People are offended by it. They can't see it. They have a million reasons why my analysis is wrong. I can go 30 miles up the road and tell the exact same story, and people are like, "Oh my gosh, that's so compelling. We've done something similar over here." When I tell that story here in Brainerd — yes, here in my hometown where the Taco John's actually is — the reaction I get is anger and defensiveness.
This goes back to putting them first. In every single interaction, personal and professional, throughout every single day, we're faced with a foundational decision. It's a choice: do you want to be right, or do you want to make a difference? Being right is super easy. You would just keep telling that same story, knowing you'd upset people — but whatever, you're right. Op-ed, podcast, blog, X, whatever it is. Making a difference — that's hard. That starts with putting them first.
If you know that in this particular place your story is, 99 times out of 100, a home run — but in this one case it's like kryptonite — put it in a box and don't bring it. That is actually extremely respectful of your audience. Would you force-feed a vegetarian veal?
No, exactly.
Would you force somebody who keeps kosher to eat bacon? It's deeply offensive. So why would you force-feed stories, logic, or values to people when you know it's going to offend them?
We're stuck in our own minds. We see things from our perspective and tend to think we're generally always right. There's only one person who thinks exactly like you. I don't even agree with everything I did yesterday. If I can't agree with myself all the time, how can I possibly agree with you or anybody else all the time?
Let me ask you about a tension I see a lot. I'll say this as someone who struggles with a high desire to be right — to the point of sometimes getting caught up in nuance. I watch advocates tell compelling stories that I know are substantively wrong, but actually have policy success doing it. It frustrates me.
There's a concept called Vision Zero — the idea that we should be able to get to zero traffic deaths in a neighborhood, a city, a country. It's a really compelling story, and they have all the collateral to go with it. For the most part, they get people to adopt Vision Zero policies and resolutions, and it doesn't lead to anything substantive. My core critique is that you're not actually accomplishing anything, because rarely is there an actual reduction in harm. But the story is so good.
I often wonder: are we at Strong Towns as a movement anchoring too much on having real, meaningful policy and discounting the story side of this? And then the follow-up: you're not saying to compromise your policy just to get the story right — you're saying do both. The story side seems easy and compelling; the policy side is hard. Doing them together seems like the home run. How do you line those things up?
When somebody who has a different perspective is pushing something you think is undesirable or harmful, and they have really powerful stories — how do you dislodge that? How do you make sure you stay wedded to the data?
Maybe I should have started with this. The reason I hate the "feel first, then reason" stuff is because I'm a trained academic. I did the PhD thing. Isn't it all about peer review? It goes against all my training. It just happens to be illogical. I get the desire to write white papers. I fight that tendency now. So what do you do?
First, you need a counter-narrative, a counter-story to at least compete with their story. You have to offer another story that resonates as much as or more than their story with the audience. That's why putting them first — understanding what they're feeling, what you want them to feel, appealing to their values — all those things matter.
You also have to dislodge their narrative. When I say we feel first then reason — we're story processors, then logic processors — there's still logic there. When you have to criticize somebody, this is going to generate a negative reaction in the person who holds that belief and even in people observing. So you have to approach that with emotional intelligence.
One thing you have to do is call out the negative feelings. Instead of getting up in testimony and saying, "That is so wrong, it's completely stupid, all the data show to the contrary" — instead of saying what we're all kind of thinking — call out how they're going to feel. Say: "Look, I'm sorry, it's going to seem like I'm criticizing some of the most important things you have to say. You're going to think I completely disagree with you, that I'm being really unfair." Just take what you think the most negative reactions are going to be, amplify them, and call out those negative emotions. Then be gentle.
I have a three-year-old. Instead of logically criticizing Thomas the Tank Engine, I have to be gentle. Being gentle is always, always much better. Remember the likability stuff? When you're not gentle, people experience reactance even when they agree with you — they recoil. So be super nice in how you criticize things.
Then offer competing values and gently chip away at what they're saying. "I totally get the concern about disrupting the character of the community. I think, actually, the best way to preserve the character of the community is to keep that community together by offering more housing that's affordable. When housing becomes unaffordable, the community falls apart because people have to leave. So I totally get the concern, and I think the best pro-community thing to do — the best way to have strong towns — is to keep those towns together." You don't have to tell them they're wrong. You just appeal to their own values and become a better champion for those values than they are.
A lot of our dialog today sometimes occurs at a council meeting, but that's really the end of a long chain of cultural dialog. So much of it occurs on social media and online spaces — and those are places almost designed to appeal to our negative emotions and trigger us in a certain way. There's also a feedback loop between social media and AI where you see more stories being told in certain formats, and the algorithms are rewarding some of those. How should we think about interacting with social media as advocates? What are some of the strengths and pitfalls, and how do we break through to people who might not automatically empathize with the changes we want to see in the world?
Social media is increasingly crafted to bring out the worst in us in many ways — negativity bias on super-steroids. TikTok, for example, is there only to keep you on the platform, going video after video. The way to do that is to be super negative, to get people really fired up.
The question: do you want to be right or make a difference? Do you want to follow JFK or Walter Mondale? Martin Luther King or Malcolm X? Ronald Reagan or Barry Goldwater? The former in each of those built a movement — a powerful, positive, long-term movement.
So what do you do on social media? First, fight the impulse of knee-jerk negative reactions. Human beings have memory. Certainly you've run into situations where 10 or 20 years later you still remember something that really upset you. That one little tweet, that one reel — people don't forget that. I have found myself running into people who were friends, but they said something really mean and nasty on social media, and I've had a negative real-life reaction to them based on something they said eight years ago. We have long memories — it's a survival mechanism. Social media makes it really easy to put those things into the world and really hard to delete them. So fight that tendency.
Where's the opportunity in social media? You can reach millions of people, sometimes tens of millions, really quickly. What should you reach them with? Videos, stories — those 15- to 30-second positive, powerful stories. Those are the ones people will remember and that will motivate them not just in the short term to be upset, but in the long term to actually do something. Use it as an opportunity to do the right kind of advocacy and reach more people. That's the biggest opportunity social media presents, and yet there are all the pitfalls you have to avoid.
Every time I log on to Facebook, the top story is a Trump story. It always is. It doesn't matter if it's pro-Trump or anti-Trump. I always mute the person for 30 days. I've been doing that for months, and I've gotten to the point where half the time now I get a Trump story — they're weaning me. I don't know if you have a trick like that, or something you do to reach the people you want to reach.
Here's my dirty secret, which isn't that much of a secret — if you Google me, you're going to think I'm a Luddite. I just don't use social media. I don't have an X account, a Facebook account, or an Instagram account. In fact, I've never had an X or an Instagram account, and I had a Facebook account for like a day when I was in college.
Is that why you look young and spry — you look 20, but you're actually 60 years old?
I am older than I look. I just think you get sucked into that stuff and nothing good ever comes from it. There's a guy — a real thought leader on this — named Cal Newport. I think he's one of the most powerful voices for being really cautious about social media.
I use LinkedIn — that's social media, a little bit professional. If your Facebook is used to connect with friends from high school, great. But if your social media is just a platform to tell everyone how right you are and how stupid everyone who doesn't think like you is — that is never going to get you what you want. It's going to make people find you aversive. The people who already think like you will agree, but anyone who doesn't just thinks you're a jerk. So don't do it, or use it as a force for good.
I feel like that is what we try to do. I will say some platforms respond to that differently. I ran a couple of tests where I and someone with less reach ran essentially the same kind of content — mine was positive and theirs was negative — and X gives the negative version something like 50 times more reach. It is so wired to be negative; it really is hard to exist in those spaces.
A lot of the book is about our cognitive wiring — lots of neuroscience, lots of psychology — and part of it is just flipping your perspective and thinking, "How would I feel if I were on the receiving end of this?" In this case, if that radical negativity were directed at me, I'd feel pretty bad. Maybe I shouldn't do this. Put them first because you don't like being on the receiving end of someone who is all about themselves. Be for something because you don't like it when somebody is only a negative answer. Appeal to somebody else's values because you don't like it when somebody offends yours.
Put yourself in their shoes, then think about what you're trying to accomplish. Sometimes the best way to lose weight is not to have junk food in the house. Sometimes the best way to be happy, centered, and do good advocacy is to not be in spaces that are the opposite. When you do engage in those spaces, curate the right mindset and the right content.
If you want to push for a policy, there are two ways to do it. You can say, "People who oppose this policy are racist" — or you can say, "Look, the best way to promote equity, expand freedom and opportunity, and empower people is X." Be for those things. Have a policy that is going to do that, and you're for it. That's powerful.
Let me ask you a last question. Josh, the book is How to Get What You Want. I read it — it's a positive book, and I think there are so many helpful things in there. But if I haven't read it and I'm just looking at the title: how is this not manipulation? What's the difference between getting what you want and bringing about the positive worldview that you want?
Excellent question. When I was still writing the book, a friend of mine just kept saying, "Isn't this manipulation?" It's a totally fair question.
Take a knife — a super sharp, special instrument in the hands of one of the world's best chefs with all those Michelin stars. He can make you one of the most beautiful meals available to a human being. That same knife could also do you a lot of harm. So how do you use these things? Star Wars: light side, dark side. Do you want to be Yoda or Luke Skywalker, or are you going to be Darth Vader and the Emperor? You pick.
There are missionary and mercenary reasons not to manipulate people. The missionary reason is that it's wrong. Do you like being manipulated? Nobody does. The mercenary reason is that it comes back to bite you. People find out, usually pretty quickly, and they don't want to work with you — and then they tell their people.
So what's the difference between persuasion and manipulation? Persuasion is not about winning, because when I win against you, Chuck — what does that make you?
A loser.
Right. Do you want to work with somebody who makes you feel like a loser? Not a second time. We also think persuasion is about convincing someone to think like us. The trouble is that the Latin root of the word "convince" actually means to vanquish or to conquer, and conquest is barbaric.
So what is persuasion? Persuasion is shared action. It's shared because it's something we voluntarily do with others, and it's action — it's about getting things done. You are voluntarily, time after time, working with other people to get what you want — which in part requires them to get what they want. You're after not just one deal, but deal after deal after deal. You get what you want by putting them first, understanding their needs, tending to them, and finding out where that overlaps with yours. Rinse and repeat. There's way more overlap if you look for it.
The book is How to Get What You Want: Mastering the Art and Science of Persuasion. Joshua Bandoch. Josh, if people want to follow you, get ahold of you — you're the Luddite, not on Facebook or Instagram — what's the best place people can get your book and get ahold of you?
The book is available on Amazon, BarnesandNoble.com, anywhere books are sold. You can learn more about me at joshuabandoch.com. You can find me on LinkedIn. If your listeners want a snippet of the book, if this 45 minutes or so whetted their appetite and they want a little bit more, check out my TEDx talk — it dives more deeply into the psychology of persuasion. That's some of the most fun stuff, but it's a little bit hard to digest, so it would be a good start.
We'll put the TEDx talk in the show notes, so if you're listening somewhere, you should be able to click on that and get the TEDx talk. Josh, thanks for coming on. So nice to talk to you. Congratulations on the book. I'm excited to see how it goes, and I'm excited to see what comes next for you.
Thank you. A real pleasure to be here, and thank you for all the awesome work you're doing at Strong Towns.
Thanks, and thanks everybody for listening. Keep doing what you can to build a strong town. Take care.
This episode was produced by Strong Towns, a nonprofit movement for building financially resilient communities. If what you heard today matters to you, deepen your connection by becoming a Strong Towns member at strongtowns.org/membership.