The Art of Getting to Yes: How Humans Learned to Make Deals—And How AI Will Change Everything

Five thousand years ago, a Sumerian scribe pressed a reed stylus into wet clay, recording a simple transaction: barley for silver. He didn't know he was inventing negotiation.
This episode traces the complete history of deal-making—from the first contracts in ancient Mesopotamia to the Cuban Missile Crisis, from Hammurabi's Code to modern hostage negotiation. Along the way, we meet the kings, orphans, generals, and professors who developed the techniques we still use today:
• The Sumerian scribes who invented written contracts—and made trust between strangers possible
• Hammurabi, whose stone stele established that negotiation requires enforceable law
• Demosthenes, the stammering orphan who sued his corrupt guardians and invented fiduciary duty
• Hannibal Barca, who recognized a false deadline when he saw one
• The Roman jurist Gaius, whose legal categories still structure contract law
• Roger Fisher and William Ury, whose "Getting to Yes" revolutionized modern negotiation theory
• The FBI hostage negotiators who discovered that listening beats demanding
The principles haven't changed in five millennia. But the tools are about to.
We explore where negotiation is headed: AI systems that can analyze thousands of contracts in seconds, algorithms that detect deception better than humans, and the coming world where your AI negotiates with their AI while you sleep. Will technology make deals fairer—or just faster? Will human judgment remain essential—or become obsolete?
Whether you're negotiating a billion-dollar merger or splitting household chores, the lessons are the same: separate people from positions, focus on interests, generate options, insist on objective criteria—and always, always prepare more than the other side expects.
This is the story of humanity's greatest invention—the ability to solve problems with words instead of fists—and how that invention is evolving in the age of artificial intelligence.