Listen to Episode 1 of Slate’s Negotiation Academy:

You can also download the program here, or receive every new episode by subscribing for free to the Negotiation Academy podcast in iTunes or directly with our RSS feed. Episodes are also available in Slate’s Daily Podcast.

Unless you negotiate for a living, the prospect of a face-to-face back-and-forth over your salary, or the price of a home, or the value of an enticing treasure at a yard sale may strike you as little more than a necessary evil. But if that’s how you regard negotiating, chances are your lunch is regularly being eaten by people who do haggle for a living. And even if you relish the thrill of the occasional clash over cash, you could always do better.

That’s where Slate’s Negotiation Academy comes in. Journalists Jill Barshay and Seth Stevenson recently studied the art and science of deal-making alongside budding MBAs at Columbia Business School. And it inspired them to create a series of short podcasts designed to teach you a few simple but invaluable rules for how to come out ahead when you haggle. 

In Episode 1, Jill and Seth discuss a crucial starting question: Who should throw out the first number, you or your opponent? Along the way they get some advice from Duke behavioral economist Dan Ariely, author of the bestselling Predictably Irrational. We promise you’ll feel better armed for your next negotiation after this one segment, or your money back (did we mention it’s free?).

You’ll find all our episodes available in the player below:

Podcast produced by Mark Phillips.