Mark: Okay, Michelle. You've read the book. Give me your five-word review of William Ury's Possible. Michelle: Hmm... "Don't just win, change the game." How's that? Mark: I like it. Mine is: "Your biggest enemy is... you." Michelle: Ooh, that's a punchy one. And it gets right to the heart of it, doesn't it? This book isn't what I expected. Mark: Perfect. And that's exactly what we're diving into today with William Ury's book, Possible: How We Survive and Thrive in an Age of Conflict. This isn't just another negotiation manual. Ury is a co-founder of Harvard's Program on Negotiation, the guy behind the global bestseller Getting to Yes. Michelle: Right, he's a legend in the field. And what's fascinating is that this book was apparently sparked by a challenge from author Jim Collins to distill his entire life's work—mediating conflicts from the Cold War to civil wars—into a single sentence. Mark: Exactly. And that sentence became the core of this book, a roadmap for what he calls 'possibilism.' It starts with a place that might surprise people: not with the other person, but with yourself.

Mark: Ury calls his first, and most fundamental, step "The First Victory: Go to the Balcony." The balcony is a metaphor for a place of perspective, a mental perch where you can step away from the heat of the conflict and observe what's happening without getting swept up in it. Michelle: That sounds great in theory. But in the middle of a heated argument, my first instinct is to fight back, not to float up to some imaginary balcony. How is that even realistic for most people? Mark: It's a fair question. And Ury grounds it in one of the most high-stakes stories imaginable: the Cuban Missile Crisis. Picture this: it's October 1962. A Soviet submarine, B-59, is deep in the Atlantic, armed with a nuclear torpedo. It's been cut off from Moscow for days. Suddenly, a US warship starts dropping depth charges nearby—non-lethal warning shots, but the Soviets don't know that. Michelle: Oh my god. They must have thought war had already started. Mark: Precisely. The submarine's captain, Valentin Savitsky, is frantic. He screams, "We're gonna blast them now! We will die, but we will sink them all!" He orders the nuclear torpedo to be armed and fired. The political officer agrees. Firing just needs the consent of the top three officers. Two out of three are ready to start World War Three. Michelle: Wow. So what happened? Mark: The third officer, a man named Vasili Arkhipov, did something extraordinary. He paused. Instead of getting caught in the panic, he went to his own mental balcony. He calmly refused to give his consent. He argued with the captain, pointing out that the hull hadn't been breached, that these might just be signals. He held his ground. That single, intentional pause, that moment on the balcony, convinced the captain to surface and await orders. Michelle: And that decision literally saved the world. Robert McNamara, the US Secretary of Defense at the time, later said that if that torpedo had been fired, nuclear war would have started right there. Mark: Exactly. Arkhipov’s pause is the ultimate example of going to the balcony. Now, Ury brings this down to a practical level for us non-submarine commanders. He talks about the "90-second rule," based on research from brain scientist Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor. When you have an emotional reaction, the biochemicals of that feeling—like anger or fear—course through your body for only about 90 seconds. Michelle: So the initial flash of rage is just a chemical reaction? Mark: It is. And after those 90 seconds, any continuation of that feeling is a choice. You are choosing to stay in that emotional loop. The balcony is simply the practice of giving yourself those 90 seconds. Breathe. Observe the sensation. Don't act. Let the chemical wave pass. That's the moment you reclaim your power from your primal brain. Michelle: Okay, that makes it feel much more achievable. It's not about becoming a Zen master overnight. It's about learning to surf that 90-second wave instead of letting it crash over you. Mark: That's the perfect analogy. You don't stop the wave, you just learn to ride it. And from that calm place, from the balcony, you can then start to think about the next, and perhaps more creative, step: how to engage the other person.

Michelle: Okay, so you've gone to the balcony, you're calm and collected. But the other person is still dug in, convinced they're right. How do you get them to move? Ury's idea of 'building a golden bridge' sounds poetic, but what does it actually mean? Mark: It's a beautiful and powerful concept, and he illustrates it perfectly with an ancient Middle Eastern parable about seventeen camels. The story goes that an old man dies and leaves his 17 camels to his three sons. His will is very specific: the eldest son gets half, the middle son gets a third, and the youngest son gets a ninth. Michelle: Wait, 17 isn't divisible by 2, 3, or 9. That's an impossible problem. You can't have half a camel. Mark: Exactly. The brothers argue endlessly. They're stuck. Their positions are irreconcilable. So, in desperation, they go to a wise old woman for help. She listens to their problem, thinks for a moment, and then says, "I will lend you my camel." Michelle: She adds her camel to the herd? How does that help? Mark: It changes everything. Now they have 18 camels. The wise woman tells the eldest son to take his half. Half of 18 is nine. She tells the middle son to take his third. A third of 18 is six. And she tells the youngest to take his ninth. A ninth of 18 is two. Michelle: Let me do the math... nine plus six plus two... that's seventeen! They've divided the inheritance, and there's one camel left over. Mark: The one that belongs to the wise woman. She takes her camel back, and everyone is satisfied. The conflict is resolved. That, Ury says, is building a golden bridge. The wise woman didn't push the brothers to compromise or give up their shares. She reframed the problem by adding a resource—the 18th camel—that made it easy and attractive for them to walk across to a solution. Michelle: Ah, so the '18th camel' is the creative solution you find when you stop fighting over the 17 you think you have. It's about changing the frame of the problem itself. Mark: Precisely. It’s about listening for the underlying interests, not the stated positions. The brothers' positions were "I want my exact fraction." Their interest was "I want to honor our father's will and get my fair share without destroying the family." The 18th camel served their interests perfectly. Michelle: That's a great parable, but how does this work in a real, high-stakes political negotiation? Mark: A perfect example is the Camp David Accords in 1978. President Carter was trying to mediate between Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. They were completely deadlocked. Begin was adamant about not dismantling any Jewish settlements in the Sinai. Sadat was equally adamant that all settlements must go for peace to be possible. Michelle: So, another impossible division. Mark: Totally. They were ready to walk away. But Carter's team used a technique called the "one-text process." Instead of having the two sides exchange proposals and attack each other's documents, the American mediators drafted a single agreement. They'd show it to the Egyptians, listen to their critiques, and revise it. Then they'd take the new draft to the Israelis, listen to their critiques, and revise it again. Michelle: So they became the "wise woman," and the single, evolving document was the "18th camel." Mark: You got it. They went through 23 drafts. Each time, they were building a bridge, making it a little stronger, a little more attractive. They weren't pushing Begin or Sadat to accept the other's position; they were inviting them to help improve a shared solution. It made it easy for them to say "yes" in the end, because they had co-created the final agreement. They had walked across the golden bridge.

Mark: And that's the perfect lead-in to the final, and perhaps most radical, victory. Because even with a balcony and a bridge, some conflicts are too big for just two parties. Ury argues we need to "Engage the Third Side." Michelle: The Third Side? What's that? The referee? Mark: It's more than a referee. The Third Side is the surrounding community—the friends, the family, the colleagues, the allies, the entire social system around a conflict. Ury argues that this community has immense, often untapped, power to contain and transform destructive conflict. And he has a very modern, dynamic way of thinking about it: swarming. Michelle: Swarming? Like bees? Mark: Exactly like bees. Or, as he puts it, like a "SWAT team for peace." He tells this incredible story from 2017, when tensions between the U.S. and North Korea were at a boiling point. Experts were giving it a 50% chance of war. Ury felt that the traditional diplomatic channels were failing, so he assembled a team of twelve volunteers in a house in Boulder, Colorado. Michelle: A volunteer team to solve the North Korea crisis? That sounds... audacious. Mark: It was humble audacity, as he calls it. The team was incredibly diverse: an international lawyer, mediators, a storyteller, a military veteran. They decided to "swarm" the problem using design thinking. They split into "Team Trump" and "Team Kim." For two weeks, they did nothing but try to get inside the heads of these two leaders. They analyzed speeches, tweets, and even interviewed a reality TV producer who had worked with Trump to understand his psychology. Michelle: They interviewed a reality TV producer to help prevent nuclear war? That's brilliant. They were looking for unconventional points of influence. Mark: That's the essence of swarming. They were mapping the entire system, looking for any leverage point. They weren't just focused on the two leaders; they were focused on the entire ecosystem of influencers around them. They were building what Ury calls ACT: Access, Credibility, and Trust. Michelle: A 'SWAT team for peace'—I love that. It makes community involvement sound so active and strategic, not like a passive group hug. So, the 'Third Side' isn't just about mediators, it's about mobilizing a coalition of influence? Mark: It's exactly that. It’s about recognizing that no conflict happens in a vacuum. In a family dispute, the Third Side might be the cousins and grandparents. In a company, it's the other departments. In a gang war, as the organization Cure Violence Global has shown, it's former gang members who act as "violence interrupters." They swarm a potential shooting, using their credibility to de-escalate and cool things down. The Third Side provides the container for peace. Michelle: So it’s about creating a social immune system that can detect and contain the virus of destructive conflict. Mark: That's a perfect way to put it. The Third Side reminds the two warring parties that they are part of a larger whole, that there is a "we" that has an interest in a constructive outcome.

Michelle: So, the path to 'possible' is this incredible sequence: First, you master your inner world on the balcony. Then, you build a bridge to the other person's world. And finally, you bring in the entire world around you—the Third Side—to hold the space for peace. It's a journey from 'I' to 'You' to 'We'. Mark: Exactly. And Ury's message is that this isn't just for diplomats. He concludes with this incredibly moving story about his daughter, Gabi. She was born with a condition that severely affected her spine and legs. She couldn't run like other kids. But when she tried out for the volleyball team, the coach, instead of making her run laps, told her to do a plank. She held it for twelve minutes. Michelle: Twelve minutes? That's amazing. Mark: It gets better. She decided to try and break the Guinness World Record for planking. On her sixteenth birthday, she held a plank for one hour and twenty minutes, smashing the old record. Michelle: That's just... unbelievable. Mark: And when asked how she did it, she said two things. First, "Everything is impossible until someone has done it." And second, "I see it differently, and that makes all the difference." That, right there, is the possibilist mindset Ury is talking about. It's not about ignoring the obstacles; it's about seeing the possibilities within them. Michelle: It reframes the whole idea of conflict. Ury says the problem isn't conflict itself—we need conflict to grow and evolve. The problem is how we handle it destructively. This path gives us a constructive alternative. Mark: It does. It’s a choice between going to the gutter or going to the balcony. Between burning bridges or building them. Between forcing everyone to take sides or making room for the Third Side. Michelle: It makes you wonder, what's one conflict in our own lives—big or small—where we could start by just going to the balcony for 90 seconds? What might become possible then? Mark: A question to ponder. This is Aibrary, signing off.