Left Of Greg 066 Scottie Witt

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All right, we'll just go ahead and get started here. Scottie Witt, thank you so much for coming on again. Everyone, listen, Scottie's been on before. He had actually a really popular episode. And for us, Scottie is calling in and he's on video all the way from down in Australia. So we appreciate you getting up. It's early morning for you, it's about midday for us, and hopping on here and coming on again, man, we really appreciate that. From what I'm hearing, Scottie, your episode would have rated much higher had it not been for Brian and I being on that. Probably, I thought that was what brought the numbers down. I heard, so we appreciate you coming on here, man. So the topic of the day—and if folks don't know, Scottie's got a big stage acting, clowning background, did studied here in the US, runs courses, all kinds of cool background. I'll put that up in the episode details that you read and give a little intro. But if you really want to dive deeper, also check out the episode we did with you earlier. I'll post a link directly to that. I don't remember what number it was, but you can always go back and listen to that one.

So we're going to kind of start off talking about something we've talked about on the podcast before, which is incongruence, right? So incongruence in behavior. And that's one of the things that we always try to look for, you know, when we're finding bad guys or looking for anomalous behavior, right? You look at, do the words coming out of my mouth match up with what my body's doing? Does it fit the situation? Does it fit a number of different patterns? Because if I find incongruence, that, you know, it'll look odd to me or I might be able to pick that up. And I think from your perspective, you know, and I'll let you hear in a couple minutes kind of go over that, but very similar to different types of acting and different skills and how we see a person on stage or on screen, and maybe something doesn't fit, that's our brain kind of picking up on incongruence. But I'd love to start with, Greg, why don't you kind of go over kind of your definition of what you would describe it as and articulate it, and then we'll pass it off to Scottie if that works for you guys.

Yeah, so welcome Scottie, it's great to see you again. Never fight a clown, Marren. Sometimes when we think about incongruence, I wrote myself a couple of notes, which I won't be able to read here anyway. But I think what it is, many times our readers, listeners, have to understand the brain doesn't like being distracted. So anytime that the brain is attending to a skill and another skill comes up, then the brain has to bifurcate and spread load some of the information coming or going to that other, you know, external arousal source. So absolutely, every one of our listeners or our viewers has had the experience where they're talking to somebody that's on the cell phone, but they don't know the other person's on the cell phone, and the other person's not telling them they're on the cell phone. And as you're driving along, you're hearing the person and you're engaging in sort of a non-conversation where that person's kind of answering questions and they're delayed. And then finally you go, "Hey, what the hell is going on?" "Oh, yeah, I'm on the phone." "Yeah, well, guess what? You're doing the conversation with me poorly because 50% of your attention is going to whatever you're doing, you're driving, folding your laundry, on the phone with somebody else."

So when the brain is distracted, what happens is you have a situation where you can't focus completely on the act at hand. And then things like mission focus or predatory looks come in. And now what's happening as your brain is wandering to these explanatory storylines, whether it wants to or not. And then what are you looking at? She wants to go over and tap you on the head and go, "You're not in the groove. What's going on here?" And I think that inattention is what we perceive when we see a person being out of sorts, when they're, you know, they've gone internal, for example. That's another way of thinking of it. So there's a panacea, there's a spectrum of different things, but almost all of them will be read as incongruent signals. Here's what I expect to see against the baseline, and I'm not seeing that. And that person, because that person's a step behind, they're mentally focused so much on external factors that they can't stay in that groove or get into that groove. And that's why it sticks out like a neon glow stick. Because, you know, the same reason that we don't like robots, we take a look at something and when we can't mimic the facial expressions or do the mirror neurons, it feels creepy. Well, it's the same thing when we see a person that's not mimicking the behavior that we think that we should be seeing, it feels disjointed and creepy, and it stands out.

Okay, yeah, no, I think it's a couple of good analogies there. I think we've all had the cell phone one or someone's talking to the phone here and, "Hey, what are you doing?" And they're like, "Oh, sorry, I'm not paying attention." So it does come down to attention. And then the other one I like, I just wrote that down, was mentally a step behind, right? Because they're so focused. So if they give it like a criminal example, maybe I'm so mission-focused on what my target is, then I'm a step behind in the situation that I'm in, right? So you look at like the Tsarnaev brothers on the Boston Marathon bombing, right? They're so focused in on where they have to go and what they have to do and at the finish line where the bomb is going, that people are likely bumping into them and they're not seeing it, right? Because they're so focused. So I like those two things. And I think that Scottie, I would love to get your take on that when it comes to everything that you do with clowning and acting and when we see that and, you know, we as a viewer or someone in the experience goes, "Yeah, that didn't do it for me," or that didn't work, what's believable, why it's believable. Because, you know, people forget, too, and this is why we love having you on here, how much training goes into pulling off any type of acting or let alone, like, you know, doing actual physical comedy or something, right? There's a lot that goes into that because you got to fool someone's brain, right? So I'd love to kind of hear that from your perspective.

It's interesting where my brain, it might be just because Brian and I are going through the homeschooling thing, but it's interesting watching my kid at the moment. You can tell when they're not focused, and it's interesting watching that kid's face and all the stuff that's happening on the face tells you that they're not present. And my instinct is that that's the same when they become an adult. I don't think those at all, those little tiny facial things, they're still there. I think that was just some immediate response to what Greg was talking about is just thinking about, you can tell when your kid's not there. You're just not here. You're not in the room or you're thinking about something else, which is great when they're a kid, but when you're in, you know, when you're an adult working on the floor, you know, trying to do a scene or trying to do a bit of teaching or whatever, it's a different thing. But I feel like the same cues are there, you know, that kid part comes out where you just go, "I can tell you're not in the game."

That's one part of it. And then the other response to it is in terms of just picking up on what you said, Brian, about trying to fool people or, I think what comes into our world as well is that there are so many different styles of acting and there's so many different genres that not only have you got to be in the game, but you've also got to be in the style of the game you're playing. So I imagine, just thinking, I mean, I don't know, I think that I don't know anything about the Boston bomber, but if that person's meant to be a little bit clever, they're going to blend into the environment differently if they're in a subway than if they're in an open walkway so that they're not as visible. So in terms of theater and acting and stuff, not only have you got to trick people and be not incongruent, you've also got to fit into the style of the piece that you're working in. There's no point being in a like an action Marvel movie, but you're doing a film noir style of, you know what I mean? Like, it's another level of not being in the game. That's one part of it.

And then the other extra bit that I started going to in my head is about the difference between being selfless and selfish, right? And what I mean by that is that, you know, there are some selfish actors and there are selfless actors. So generally, a good code of behavior is to be there for others. So once you start seeing people drift into that "I'm here for me" thing, they're not there for you. So that's another thing to look for in terms of whether someone's actually present or not. They're kind of going into themselves. So they're kind of going down and into some of your language, rather than sort of up and out. It's a combination of both, but it's very easy for an actor to get so kind of caught up in their own kind of thing, but and they're just not seeing all the other cues and clues that are going on in the room. Anyway, there's some just immediate responses to kind of get no, I...

You brought up, before you go any further, you brought up a couple of really interesting points because when you talk about, you know, like the homeschooling with your kids and kids aren't present or you can tell, you can read it, the facial features and how they act. It's, you know, why we always tell you, if you're trying to read and understand body language, one, if you can look in the mirror, so yourself, like kids are great because it's, they're slower at it, right? It's more obvious, right? So you talk about facial features immediately, like I get like a pain response from something that is nothing, not a big deal. It's like, "Hey, we're not leaving for another ten minutes." "What?" And you're like, "Okay, that's your, you're seven, so you're having an overly emotional reaction." Now, an adult's going to have the same reaction, but it's going to be a lot more subtle, right? Because, especially when it comes to things like deception or fitting in, like I can't be as demonstrative as a child because that wouldn't fit the baseline, right? That would be strange or abnormal among other adults at, you know, once you reach that age, and I'd say that. So, so when you're reading on kids, it's great because it's good to learn and practice. And then those reactions get more subtle over time.

And the other thing that you said, a great point about the acting part. So, so let's point the criminal versus the actor, right? The criminal is there for what they have to do, they don't care about anyone else in the scene, and they only care about their mission. But like you just said, a good actor has to know what they have to do within this entire scene that's going on, right? So, so meaning it's not just about their lines or their actions, it's setting up everyone else in that scene for success. So they're not just, like you said, not just thinking about themselves, they're thinking about everyone else around them, where that would be a very—for a criminal to have to do that—that's a very high level of organization. And typically they're just more so focused on what their mission is at hand, what they have to accomplish, unless they really have to blend in for a long time over a period of time, right? And they have to take into account everyone else's actions around them. I know that was just initial thoughts, Greg, I know you were probably...

No, no, so there's a difference between acting and undercover, but it's a very fine line. So I'd like to double back to that in a minute. All of us being Aikido-ists and Iki-jutsu-ists, I can tell you that I've been hurt more in doing a drill with a fellow black belt than ever during free sparring. Never been hurt by a white, yellow, or orange belt. I predicted all those things that were going to happen, but you're out there with a black belt and because they've done the skill a thousand times, their mind is wandering. And they're so dangerous. Free sparring, it's fine because it's a game of wits, it's like a chess match before you ever draw the sword. And I think the same thing that our listeners have to understand is true in acting. You miss your mark in martial arts and you might get squashed. You miss your mark in acting and you'll either be unbelievable or you'll miss your mark and you'll throw off the whole game. And there's only so much film and cut, you know, rewind, okay, speed going back. So there's consequences to a bad guy for being found out early, you see. So the consequences of the actions really kind of stick out in my mind. And I think that's a very different aspect that people don't think.

So a bad guy going down and in and going internal and so focused on their mission is going to make simple mistakes. And I remember many times you go to a bank robbery and the person would have written the bank robbery note, you know, "Hey, I have a gun, don't move," on their own deposit slip. And you show up at their house and you arrest them, you know, and they're like, "Well, how did you catch me?" Yeah, okay, got it. Or the people that after a robbery were so successful and happy with the robbery that they pulled their disguise off and threw it off at the scene as they were running out past the cameras. And you go, "Well, how could somebody do this?" Well, it's very simple. It's a function of focus. And you've only been given a channel capacity for it, stress or non-stress situations.

Now, when you're mimicking the motion as being undercover and then you go in there, let's say that you're completely dressed in the norm of whatever everybody else is doing and you fit the baseline, but then out of your mouth, you know, you walk up to the dudes in the car and you go, "You know, you're sitting there looking sly and you walk up and you go, 'Perchance could I purchase some cocaine hydrochloride in general 28-gram fashion?'" You know, right away you're going to stick out like that glowstick again. So the idea is to be real, not realistic, and believable, not incongruent. Does that make sense, Scottie, where I'm going to?

Yeah, that's it. It's the same, it's about giving over to imaginary circumstances, you know, and playing within that world, you know, that's the general rule of thumb. And some actors make that leap better, some stay in their head, some work from their bodies. It's all quite different, and no particular process is better than any other. But the bigger they can make that leap to the imaginary circumstances, then they're giving over to that kind of world. And that's why it's not lying as such, you know, you're taking that imaginative leap.

So can you kind of define that a little bit further, because I like where you're going with this. What do you mean by, like, imaginary circumstances, just to make it generic for the audience if they're not aware of, you know, being an actor?

You're essentially, you'll, you know, you'll read the play or the script, the film script or whatever, and there'll be a set of what we would call circumstances, which are, it's cold, it's snowy. Like there's a whole bunch of given circumstances that before the text even gets going. And so you might be cold, you've had an emotional breakdown in the scene before. So they've got all these given circumstances, so you need to give over to that before you kind of get into the scene. And then on top of that, you obviously don't want to go too far because then a bit like what Greg was talking about, then now you're acting congruent. But you don't want to be acting, you just want to be in those given circumstances.

And what I'm seeing, look at the difference, Brian, and by the way, I'm on a page and note, Scottie, you bastard, every time you're a guest on here, I do a lot of writing. So when he was talking about the imaginary circumstances, Brian, what I wrote down is explanatory storylines. And then I think about it, not only our use of explanatory storylines, but then right back to the martial arts analogy, a kata. So a kata is a sequence of moves that are measured out against imaginary opponents so you can perfect your skill. So that's not unlike what Scottie was selling us. And then Scottie, we use the term explanatory storylines where you think, sort of like John-Boy Doodle-Loop observe, what you do is you think what most likely could happen next and then you determine these spirals that might occur. And in there, there might be a most dangerous course of action, right? So I think that's what you're saying is that you want to give yourself this set of circumstances to create this imaginary environment within which you're going to play, and therefore there's congruent signals, signals that would happen likely in that environment, and the incongruent that the unimaginable, and those are the ones I think that'll stick out.

Yeah, and a good director, the image that I always use is, you just need to be really clear about what the playground is, what are the boundaries? And it's no different playing with a kid. But they just need to set clear boundaries on the style and the imagined world that you're creating. And then creative people will start playing within that playground because I know, well, there's a swing, there's a roundabout, there's a slippery slide, and those are the things we're playing with. There's nothing else in this particular playground. And then when you know, that's my response to that bit, anyway. It's interesting, and I know I flagged this when we were throwing the email stuff backwards and forwards about where improvisation comes into this is, you know, then when things start going wrong on stage, if they're successfully in that imagined world, then they can improvise a little clearer because they've created a really strong bedrock of that imagined world. So usually you can tell when people are going off the rails because they haven't really subscribed to what those imagined circumstances are. And then when things go a little bit haywire, you can see the fear coming in and all their talismans come out. But that's so true. They haven't, they haven't really either they haven't done their homework or they haven't subscribed really clearly to the world. So then when things go haywire, all the incongruent stuff comes out because they come head on up to the unexpected, which is, "shit's going to happen." And if you're not ready for that, you're going to be in trouble.

You know, Brian, can I compare two things to Scottie that are completely off topic but off of his normal...?

Yeah, yeah, I want to see what you take because I got a couple things too.

Yeah, in the U.S. in the last two weeks, Scottie, two police officers were killed in the line of duty deploying stop sticks at vehicles that were fleeing from other crimes. Okay? And what happened is that because they didn't create explanatory storylines for what could spiral out of the situation, their training led them... And again, remember, not only were they in the moment, they had the training, the catecholamine group is kicking, their electrochemical neurotransmitters are amped up, and they're going ham. "Copper, I want to stop this bad guy so he doesn't hurt anybody." Everything that they were doing was noble. And the sticks performed as they were designed. But think about what happened here is the logic, the suspension of belief failed. Because now this copper is in front of a speeding vehicle, just like being in front of a speeding bullet, deploying the stop sticks, and they get run over. And then both public information officers at two different agencies said the same thing, "Who would have thunk that a person fleeing from a crime would have actually driven over an officer?" And my thing is, how would you not have assumed that? Because everything that led up to that was demonstrating that this person is not a rule follower, they're not going to listen to the rules, they're not going to follow the rules. Heck, you've got to use sticks to disable their 85-mile-an-hour vehicle or whatever. And then people are killed. So I think that imagination that you're talking about is so real that sometimes it can give you a tunnel vision. Sometimes it can be like blinders on a horse, and you miss those cues that your environment or another actor perhaps is giving. And that gets back to the denial episode and the normal stuff you talked about, you know.

What the denial process chews up so much of the hard drive and gets in the way of, "We just need to move forward," you know? There's no point saying we dropped a line or the sword's full up. Like, we just need to get on with it. And if you're not trained for when stuff goes wrong, you know, you're not going to be in the now, and you're going to be so hyper-focused on, "This is not happening, this is actually not happening, this is not happening." And already two minutes, you've gone past and left a long time in anybody's language.

I would think improvisation means advanced critical thinking, Scottie. That's what it would mean in my world is that your ability to improv isn't just sticking your finger in a dike to stop a hole. What you're doing is saying, "Now this hole exists in the universe. How do I talk it in? How do I read it into the environment so it's believable to the folks or I have to yell cut and reboot?" And life doesn't give you a lot of opportunities to yell cut and rewind the tape. I think that's where the cyber on, no, no, go ahead, go ahead, go ahead, please.

Where, yeah, I think that's where improvisation, we can deconstruct that, everyone who does that speaks to incongruence and how those two relate to each other either through smooth passage of pathways, or a hiccup in a discombobulation to eventually get there. But anyway, I think there's something in there.

No, you and you guys are, there's a, everything we talk about, so the analogy between acting and training and what we see and observe, good guy behavior, bad guy behavior, good actor behavior, bad actor behavior, right? You brought up a number of things. One, so, so you know, mission focus, right? So I can be so mission-focused on what I do that I, I, I'm actually so into my role, right? That I don't, you know, think of anything around me. I don't look up and out, right? And, and so like, in your sense, an actor could be doing the same thing and mess it up because they're too much focused on what they have to do and not the whole entire taking back and taking the whole scene, which, you know, Greg, like you said, you wrote that, you know, explanatory storyline, you said imaginary circumstances. To me, that's the same thing. That's just the same exact definition, just two different words to articulate it.

And, you know, your denial is obviously huge in any of these situations, right? And, and like we always say, you know, the faster you can just push right past that denial, accept your circumstances and move forward is, is the better you're going to be, right? And that doesn't have to be in a chaotic situation, that could be anything. So I just talked about on the previous pod we just recorded, but, but, you know, I, we obviously we have the whole pandemic going on. Everyone's on lockdown. I got the kid at home, we got this going on. And then all of a sudden, at the end of the day, like, you know, for 30, 5 o'clock, you know, the power just goes out at our place. And so my wife was actually making dinner at the time. And so she was, had the stove on, about to put pieces of salmon she was going to cook up. I already had everything else of vegetables and stuff done in the oven. And like, she's like, "Oh my God, power's going on, what's going on?" She's on her phone looking at the power company, trying to figure out if they have an update or what's going on and this, that, and the other thing. It's like, "Oh my God, you know, it's like catastrophic breakdown." I mean, I'm not, you know, kind of sensationalizing a little bit, but literally, I just walked out onto the patio, took the cover off the grill, fired it up, started cleaning it off. And she's like, "Well, what's, what's going on?" I was like, "I'm just going to grill up those salmon. I'm hungry. We're still eating dinner. I'm not letting this power going on. We may be in a running gun battle here in a moment." But that was the thing. It was just like, you know, it was just her just being normal, natural reaction, frustrated because she's trying to cook a nice dinner during all this was going on. She was finishing up with work, she was doing this. And then also, you know, I just come in and it's like, "Yeah, we just start doing this." And let's go. I'm already busting open the bottle of wine and pouring glasses. And she's like, "What?" I was like, "This is not stopping. Dinner is absolutely happening." But, you know, that goes back to I kind of like it, like we brought up it initially with the incongruence, right? So, you know, what's the difference between a bad guy criminal on the street and a bad actor that you see? Well, it's, and that fine line, nothing really, right? So you have all these same issues that they can, that can come up. It's a crime sometimes when people on stage go on there, don't know what they're supposed to do, right? But that behavior is no different. So like you brought up an example with kids, I would say to anyone listening is like, when you've seen that role or that person doing that, you went, "This isn't, something's not right here," or "It's not fitting," or "I'm not buying this." That's that incongruence, and you pick up. And I think it's just that flash.

As we get old, we get more sophisticated with veiling. Just to use your example before, Brian, you said, you know, the seven-year-old goes, "What are we doing here for, you know, seven more minutes?" And instead, that initial flash of, "I don't like this," or "I'm uncomfortable," "This is not what I expected," that flash will be there. And then I buy out the sophistication of the veil, you know, what will happen. But if you still train yourself to recognize that flash, that's what you need to see. The rest is just someone acting very badly or trying to cover up something or...

Faking it or fixing it.

Yeah, fixing it.

So what we would call that acute. And, Scottie, you know what we do. And so when you see that, and it's just a flash, and it's just momentary, whether you're an HR person, whether you're involved in a relationship, whether you're seeing it from the 7-Eleven clerk, those are key moments in determining and distinguishing normal versus anomaly. So what happens is, as a kid, with our baby amygdala and with our limbic system, we only sense an immediate danger and very dire circumstances. We look to the community, we look to our parents, we look to the people and the other kids we're with to determine a level of comfort or a level of safety or a level of danger, right? And that's your baseline, right? So what happens is that when we see an incongruent signal and read it as just a momentary flash, I'll give you a perfect example. We, we have a, you know, 22-day T3, and then a year that the people have to bird dog with an instructor to learn what they know just to get in front of an audience. And people go, "Why?" Well, it's the instructor that's always more important than the material. And a good actor can take "It was a dark and stormy night" and make me believe it, right? But you can't go down.

So the idea is that an instructor—math is a universal language, fear, violence, universal languages. So you don't have to work hard to get the audience to understand that. They can connect the dots in their own brain. But you got to be one, believable. Two, you got to be likable. I want to relate to you, hate you. Like, like, like we use a common enemy sometimes where we come in and go, "Oh, those damn administrators are tightening up that budget and we don't get any training." Why? Because we need to get people on board. How is that different from using a de-escalation tactic so you don't have to kill somebody, let's say, in the street encounter, or having the people in the room believe that that pratfall you're about to do is real? I think there's more work and rehearsal in creating something real than there is winging it. And I think that the one that does the rehearsal is always going to trump the one that tries to wing it and hip pocket.

Yeah, totally. And even, even if stuff goes a bit haywire and you have to get back to that imagined circumstances and the narrative thing, because I think that's something we wanted to try and circle back to, about what's the narrative going on. Even when things start to go haywire, like cooking the salmon, the shorter the loop that you create in your head, which is why it'll work so well in your landscape, is what's the objective for the scene? Like, it's going haywire, the first thing I ask is, "What do we actually need to communicate in this scene?" Have we lost, have we lost the ability to do that? No. Then let's just keep working our way towards the objective. So the scene or the moment is not lost. You know, but if a prop breaks that's really reliant on the objective of the scene, then, okay, that determines the next course of action. "Power's gone out, there's a gas in the barbecue. Objective solved." Like, we don't need to freak out at this point because we're still going to cook them and because it's gas, it's not power. You know, barbecue is power. "Okay, we go to DEFCON 2 because it's not the main." Like, which is why, you know, I used to think of multitasking, it's just problem-solving, you know, and you just prioritize and your problem-solve. And that keeps you out of denial and it keeps you out of that fear state because you're just sticking to the plan, which is, "What do we want to communicate? What we want to cook dinner." We don't want dinner in a power blackout. We don't want to cook dinner in a blackout. We just want to cook dinner. You know what I mean? Like, we don't need to put the problem in the objective.

No, that's, that's a, that's a good way to, to kind of articulate it, right? That's, it's like you just said, it's problem-solving, and we don't have to get any, you know, you don't have to go into any more detail than that. It's just, there's a problem, solve it. The faster you solve the problem, the better you become at it. And, and that that kind of exponentially increases, right? The more and the more experience, the more training, more file folders you have, the, the easier it is to solve those problems. And, and the more difficult problems you've solved and further than past, it makes it easier to, you know, when those things pop up, just to immediately accept it.

I mean, we were right before kind of everything here in the U.S. went on lockdown, and Greg and I were still traveling. And we were in Virginia. And, like, we're like, "Dude, like, we're still here for a couple days. We don't know what's going to happen. There's a lot, I'm sure, are they going to, you know, are they going to shut down airlines, you know, what's, what's, what's going to go on here?" Because we're all the way in Virginia, which means we would make it all the way back out, Greg to Colorado, me all the way to the West Coast. So it would have been a, you know, kind of a pain in the ass or something like that had happened. But, you know, people were coming up to us like, "Hey, you guys good? Like, what are you going to do?" And we're like, "Yeah, we're fine. Like, like, what if they shut down this?" Like, "Well, it's an, it's National Car Rental. So, so I'm going to find out just how national it is."

Exactly.

But it's like, "All right, well, I'm going to drop Greg off in Colorado, I'm going to continue on to the West Coast, I'm going to get here, I'm going to torch the car and call it stolen, and we're good." Like, what, you want to run quite, maybe we're like, "My T's might hit a few, few armed robberies on the way back," just because, you know, "Why not?" You know, it just, but we were like, it was one of those, "It's not a problem. So I'm not going to make it one. We have contingency plans."

And to circle back to the incongruent thing, depending on the people that you're watching or viewing, their level of, well, their inability to deal with denial and fear means that the incongruence will either escalate or amp up because they're just not used to being in that scenario. And so those cues that you might be looking for in terms of incongruence will just start to escalate and manifest themselves in many different shapes or forms. I would say, if you want to use this as a metaphor for survival in an urban or rural setting, but more densely populated, if you think of life, if you're a listener, one of the people that tunes into the podcast, I want you to think of the next few days in your life, and then specifically when we come out of this funk with the pandemic, think of it as a script. So for example, I have to go shopping on Saturday morning at 6:00 o'clock. Now it's moved to 7:00 because they have old people time for shopping, right? So from 7:00 o'clock to 8:00 o'clock, I have to be at City Market. So mentally, I want to envision a script for City Market: pulling into the parking lot, where do I park? Well, remember, Greg, circle the parking lot first to get the atmospherics and make sure that you back into a parking spot so you combat park. Then the next thing is, make sure that when you're driving around, you look, listen, smell, feel, taste the environment to make sure you're not getting set up. And when you go in, look, why isn't that person carrying a basket to put their items in? Why aren't they pushing a cart? Why is this person more focused, for example, on the cashier than they are on something else? So if I categorize things of what I should expect in that script, because I know the script at City Market, then what I've done is I've created an environment, and I've created that imaginary a storyline in my brain that I should see. And then there will be congruent signals. Now, all of a sudden, I see two people working in congruence to try to, you know, remove something that shouldn't be removed or something that's going to draw my attention because it's not scripted. So however you fit it into the analogy, it comes down to that baseline plus the anomaly that determines the decision. Now, a very well-versed criminal or copper, a very well-versed emergency services person or actor, is going to roll with the changes, they're going to be right there with it, and you're not even going to see it. And then, you know, later in the liner notes, they're going to say, "Oh, by the way, Jim was lit on fire during this stunt," right? Or, "This guy died during the motorcycle stunt," but we'll never hear about that until much later. So those that can keep it together had the ability, I think, to conduct advanced critical thinking and problem-solve and sense make in the moment so they can keep it moving forward.

Yeah, it's interesting, in both realities, like in the example you're using, you're generating a narrative for yourself. And it's our duty as a performer if something goes wrong to not draw the attention to it for the audience. I'm imagining, you know, if you are there as a first responder and you're trying not to create an alarmist in the public's point of view, so you're going to be kind of trying to roll with it in a really calm way so you don't keep generating fear into other people, rather than going, "There's a guy over there! He's doing this!" You know, and then everybody out. Now, all of a sudden, you've got a whole environment in the public where people are just freaking out. I imagine that kind of mindset is the same as you're trying to reduce fear for everybody in the room and put, in the audience. You don't want the audience to know there's something going wrong. You don't want other cast members to worry and freak out. You don't want crew backstage to be freaking out thinking, "What's going on with this accolade? They've forgotten their line!" You know, you might, you want to create a sense of calm. So you, the way you move into that incongruence through, through highly developed improvisational skills, creates that pathway, all that...

Yeah, I think I've said it. I know the bridge. The ability to... yeah, connected to. I totally get it. Yeah, this is, this is where it comes in. Those, those improvisational skills. That's a tough one. Thank you for you say, "Jeez, that's like, that's what we've got a fourth bourbon."

Scottie, you gotta get regulation. It's 12:30. There's, there's no more bourbon left in the house at this point.

Now I know how people feel when we say human behavior pattern recognition and analysis. They're like, "What?" I was like, "Don't worry, that's the hardest thing you have to learn." But I know you, you get into, you know, improvisational skill and what that means. So, you know, that's no different than what we, you know, that's, that's literally advanced critical thinking, right? That's absolutely being able to read a situation and then project forward where it's going, come up with a number of likely ways to react or continue it, right? And but that goes into training. And this is why I bring this up, it doesn't matter what it is. Like we talked about martial arts, right? So all of us have been trained and studied in Aikido. And you have certain movements that you have to learn and then certain reactions to certain movements. And you get good, you practice them over and over again, you're like, "Okay, I got this." And then as soon as your instructor or Sensei, whoever, throws something different at you, you're like, "What?" You know, you, you haven't learned enough yet to then improvise, right? That takes more training. And someone has to actually do that. So that's no different than, you know, I mean, even, even teaching. Like Greg would be like, "Hey, you're going to, I want you to, you're going to teach this section tomorrow." And, you know, this was back when I was going through a T3 or training. And so, you know, I started over and over again, each slide, knew exactly where I was going to say. And I even practiced where I'm going to stand in the room and how we move around. All right, this is what he's teaching us. This is what I'm going to do. And then I get up there and I start going, "Okay, can you stop real quick?" And I'm like, "Yeah, everything good?" "Oh, yeah, you're doing great. I just want you to finish the rest of the section in a John Madden (American football commentator) voice."

You know, I know, I know, well, you're just like, "There we go, so much Chicago." That's right, that's right. You're somehow a Rams fan, I forgot about that.

Look, look, I'm a Bears fan, and I used to watching a rerun, I'm just beaten down. I can, you know, we, I could, anyway, but he'd go, you know, "Hey, hey, dude, the rest of the Madden." And you're just like, "Okay, that immediately throws you for a loop." And now you have to do one, I don't know, I don't have a good, it's not like I had a good John Madden impression. That that was my thing or something. It could roll right into it, but in to do my best to then go through. And it's like, this hilarity. But then once you almost came off like the Chris Farley, we were dying.

It's like, unless the lesson's about the interface with the problem, not being hyper-focused on Madden. And what happens to you, Brian, sorry.

No, no, and that's what it is. That's the difference between a number, like this was kind of more a military thing, but it's just that, "Hey, that's it, don't, don't be JV, be varsity." And what that means was like, let's say, you know, anyone military, you do a long road march or a ruck or a run or whatever it is, and you'd have some people out there like, "Yeah, it's going to suck, you know, just put your head down and look at the boots in front of you and keep moving forward." And then we would always be like, "Hey, don't ever do that. That's junior varsity, be varsity. Guess what? It's going to get tough. When it gets tough, start looking up and out. Start thinking about what your heart rate is, start thinking about did you hydrated enough that you need to be? You need to be evaluating yourself." So don't just stay in the situation, take one step up above it, you know. So, so live in that moment, but, but realize, hey, you have a job to do because you're training that, that young soldier or marine or whoever, like to when things get tough, do what? Look down at the boots in front of you? Like that's not, that's absolutely horrible training scar. But it's the same thing. So I think that that idea, that concept is no different in what Greg threw at me or what you were just talking about. It's like, "Hey, here's what you have to do. You have to accomplish this mission," right? Whatever that mission is, whatever that thing you have to deliver. But I'm going to throw you, throw you for a loop so you better know it well enough and be able to do it so that no matter what happens in that situation, you can adapt and overcome. And it's just getting to that, I think, no matter what that skill is, you know, that, yeah, I think that's where training comes in.

Yeah, I think that's, this is a bad analogy, but you're better off getting knocked on your ass, you know, getting knocked over or floored or coming a cropper or falling over or falling in the mud so that you recognize the fork in the road that you took to go down that road, which is no different to driving, you get those instinctual feelings, you go, "Pretty sure that's a no through road. There's no sign there, but I just, I just know through town planning and stuff that that's got to be a dead-end road." And it's recognizing when you're in the moment, you know, to use that driving metaphor is going, "You know, I've got two choices here. I can either do the scene this way, I can go this way when things are going badly." Yes. And experience tells me that choice is going to go nowhere. And this one's going to open up a whole bunch of... But only because I've learned through getting knocked down and recognizing that road that I'll know, I'll recognize that that nexus point, that that's the cruncher there, rather than the blinder going past and going, "Oh, the lesson was back there." And not making it an all-body experience of learning, which is why your analogy about "look up and out" is training the body on a visceral level to recognize hydration, nervous system, digestion, you know, all those things rather than just looking at the boots. Because that's not, that's not an embodied learning experience.

You know, platitude and, you know what, it's something that somebody else heard somebody say, then it becomes urban lore, and then the next thing you know, it's written on a dojo wall somewhere. And I'll tell you this, I'd rather bleed on the mat than bleed on the streets any day. And so that real, you know, realistic rehearsal, you know, in the, in the dojo, to me, was everything. And I would, I would try to imbue that on our student instructors and trainers that listen, "A 50% of what you're up there doing, because all you are is an instrument, right? 50% of what you're up there doing, that's reading the audience." Because if your message isn't being received by the audience, it's you that's failing. So you better rewind tape and you better get back into that moment and you better start working that room and make them believe that they're the only person in that auditorium watching you, that you're speaking directly to them and that you're their buddy, you're their guide, you're their uncle, you're their, you know, dad, whatever it has to be to get that message across. Because that delivery is so much more than the message. They're not going to be able to utilize the message if they don't have it in that context, I feel.

Well, so Scottie, you got, sort of, for those just listening and can't see, I would check out the YouTube channel 'cause this will be up right away. But behind you, you've got your buddy, I built a little Bill Shakespeare or Bill Shakesbeard, as some call him, but he's got the mask on and a roll of toilet paper, which I appreciate you adding all that stuff in there. That adds my and your talisman, because some people won't know what that means. You'll have to go back to Fear One, Episode One.

Listener, thank you. One listener. I don't know, Scottie, if you picked that up, but we're 56th in Canada now, amongst the soybean farmers. And also, are from Belarus up there, but it's pretty good. It's a niche market. Nobody...

I did want to, want to actually just get your perspective from, from how things are in Australia right now, because we wrapped up our fear episodes and obviously we're still in the middle of this while we're recording. This is still in the middle of the, you know, COVID kind of pandemic. You know, we see it from, from our perspective here in the US and how it's affecting things. But one, how is it down there by you guys? Do you have his toilet paper replace your currency like it has here in the US?

I, you know, I, I concur with everything you guys are talking about in Fear One. Like, I kept aside 61 orders. I just, I am flabbergasted by the, by the response. You know, the toilet paper, pasta, and now the latest one is hardware stores, the reason why, hope you call them hardware stores. Like, they're anticipating that people are going to get stuck into DIY while they're in lockdown. So now hardware stores, it's just like, really? That makes as much sense as the pasta.

Totally, totally.

But sort of the serious part of it, I guess, is yeah, where I'm in Sydney is basically our version of New York, which is, it's kind of the epicenter, where we're not, I don't live in that suburb, but we're basically in, you know, lockdown, a shape or form. It's not core lockdown, but you, you can get a fine if you don't show reasonable cause of why you're outside. Those fines are, can be up to 11,000, which is probably 20,000 American.

No, I mean, your homework focus is really from the other way. Yeah.

Yeah, Sydney's got the highest cases and, and it's, it's all the young backpackers and, I mean, I'm slightly generalizing, but it's younger people who feel a little bit bulletproof or still just ignoring the, the request of the government to just stay indoors.

Yeah, that, that's kind of happening here in the U.S. That happened with, we actually surprisingly won the younger group of folks, the kids just still going to spring break and doing stuff and go, "Whatever, I don't care." Like, and then actually surprisingly, the kind of like boomer generation a little bit older was the same way with it, where they were almost not take, even though they were in the kind of like that in this specific area of people most likely be affected by it, weren't taking it as seriously and aren't. And so you had this everyone in the middle going like, "Hey, what are you guys doing? Like, oh, this is affected you." But, you know, then you get some at a certain age where like, "Look, man, I don't care, I'm going to live my life like I've been on this long." Why, it's like, "Yeah, but you're going to die from the flu, that's how you want to go out?" Like, right? That like, I get it, you know, that's my old man's like, I had to talk to him. Yeah, we had the family that neighbors over cross street, they've adopted a family as their children and grandchildren because their will, it's called an armed home invasion burglary. They're so disappointed with me and my brother that they've just adopted this family. They've gone on vacations together and stuff like that. And they're kind of like awkward when we're on the, like, "Hey, like, everything's cool, right? Like, like I'm like, oh, yeah, you guys are like, you know, they're now in the will, even though they're, there is no will. I just spoiled that one for them. It's like, there is no will, it's going to be the half a bottle of gin left standing after my old man's gone." But, but anyway, like it, you know, and he goes, "No, we're not doing this, but we've had them over." I'm like, "Well, she's, she's a nurse at a hospital, like, what are you doing?" Like, "Well, yeah, but that's not, you know, everything." I'm like, "No, like you should, that should be someone who's like, 'Hey, sorry, we'll call you when this is over.'" You know, you just, just by pure chance, I mean, that's, that's how these things can happen. So it's kind of a weird dynamic where, yeah, you have the older generation and the younger generation going, "That's not that big of a deal," and then everyone in the middle is going like, "No, I think we should probably worry about this." It's interesting how those things kind of, kind of play out.

But one of the other things I wanted to, want to bring up with you is you've got your email, which I finally, sometimes they come into my inbox and sometimes they come to the, to my junk folder, so I didn't even know when Greg was like, "Hey, you've been reading Scottie, you're wonderful." By the way, I'm going brief in there. So to the point, he sends it to me and I'm like, "He didn't include me on it? Like, what the heck? That's, that's kind of messed up." And then I look at there, yeah, there, which I've had with our, our mass, like our email list sometimes that happens to some people too, so I get it. But, but anyway, it's all about Combat Circus. I'll put a link up to the website, everything in the details, but you, you have these little, like, tidbits. And I love you because you almost use the term just a couple minutes ago, is a recent one you call it, "Failing Forward Tips." And just like you talked about, "Hey, like the last time you're on, I want to come on and share, you know, share my mistakes." You got to go into this failing forward. And you had these little bullet points and someone we actually already talked about. But the one in there that got me at the end, which is so fitting for right now and everyone at home, is that every day is a school day, right?

Okay.

So again, platitudes and people say, "Hey, get up, make your bed every morning." All of those lessons have so much more meaning than we ever give it credit to. But, but that's why, you know, you, you saw me on social media, just posted a pic, like we went out that, that was a day that, you know, the power went out. It's like, "Are we going to take a long walk?" And I took the little one out, we go by the lagoon and I could see like, "All right, you see how the water comes in from the jetty and then it starts to roll over right here. And see how it's different right there? That means the, the, the depth is different in there. And you could probably actually stand there and now see how the current moves along." And like, so it was just a lesson, I was teaching how to not, you know, there was water survival 101, you get what I'm saying? But like, from this other perspective that she hadn't seen before. And we always say like, everything's a teachable moment. But I love right now that wouldn't have happened if, if you wouldn't be doing what you know.

Exactly, exactly.

And so that whole, "Every day is a school day," that's for everyone, right? You know, every moment can be a teachable moment, especially now if you get the kids at home and what you're doing. That's what our, you know, Greg and I were talking about too, in this last one was that, you know, you're teaching your kids whether you are taking an active role of that or you think you're not doing anything at all, you're teaching, right? That mimicry is, is everything. So, so, you know, kind of tell us a little bit about what you do with the, with your, just that the blog posts and the email stuff that you sent out because you worked at your kind of tagline, so to speak, or whatever for Combat Circus, is that humility, humor, and hope, which is a great message. And you have these little tidbits that are great. So what's your, kind of what's your, what's your goal with that or putting that stuff out there, what's your fun?

I, I've always liked three, three is a really interesting number. And it, it's touted a lot. You know, comedy goes in threes. But because I'm curious, I've always been a little bit, okay, but why, why is, what makes three? And what I've, which is why I had the three humility, humor, and hope, and I've got two more now since talking to you guys, kind of digging deeper and now, anyway, I'll get back to that in a second. My, my instinct as to why I think three work schematically, rhythmically, is that something happens, we usually polarize that when we need to correct something, and then the pendulum swings, that's number two, and then we auto-correct and the pendulum comes back to gravity. One, two, three. And I feel like that's just an innate body rhythm thing. We do something, we over-correct, let me fix it up. One, two, three. And that's what I've tried to, that's what I've come to think, which is why one of those three things. But now I've started to think for the humility, humor, and hope thing, is I actually feel like healing and humanity needs to be in there as a result of what we're going through at the moment. And I feel like healing happened before hope, and humanity, I think, happens after humor in terms of the fire. You know, if I was to add two more H's in there.

Yeah, it makes all the sense in the world, you guys. I mean, if anybody has watched any, read anything that you've written, watched any of the skits that you do, listen to any of the podcast, what you just said, they're going, "Okay, I get it." Some of the other people will be scratching their head. But that totally makes sense.

Will you go through them just to sort of, again, my therapist, my therapist would say, "You need to talk about yourself." So with my wife, you're allowed to talk about yourself.

Yeah.

Is that, you know, we need to start from a place of humility, put everything down. We can then use humor to rebuild ourselves, and then there's some kind of hope. And I guess I'm just saying that I think there's room for humanity and healing in there, and to give ourselves time to, to heal or to heal others. And at the end of the day, I think, you know, the kind of work I'm trying to generate and do is just trying to address those five simple things and just using, you know, humor as a, as a conduit or a, or a social massaging thing to kind of take people. You know, you can't make them drink, but you can certainly kind of guide them.

It's a wonderful binding agent. It's like a recipe that needs another ingredient to hold all of them together. And so that becomes a binding agent for a message that that's now a bite-sized chunk that I can, that I can eat fast and that I can spend the rest of my life trying to live on.

Yeah, and that's, that's always my recommendation. You've got it down to three. It's always keep it at three because each one of those, you could, no, no, seriously, because each one of those things, you could, you could deep dive right in the definition.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

And meaning, yeah, you can, because you can go, because, because what do we do? I mean, this is all of us, especially anyone in training or who's studied a lot, you know, you start going, "Oh, man, I got these great ideas. I want to make these concepts." And you're like, "Oh, man, that's really good. Hey, let me add a little bit more here, over here." And what you got to end up doing is you go through that cycle, then you finally get to the end, you go, "No, it's not a Papa."

Not yet. Exactly. You want to make it smaller, smaller, and cocaine hydrochloride. You can be more condensed.

And there's, there's so many out there that you throw on that, that's why I even said earlier when it said, you know, "Hey, you know, make your bed." Okay, well, yeah, that's a literal thing to make your bed in Hebrew. What does that mean? That's a life lesson that you have to clean your room first. If you're going to go out into the world and do anything and tell anyone else how to live their life, what did you do inside of yours? And there's another one that I love, I didn't even have to read, didn't even read the book because, like, what's, I heard the quote is a, is a well-known SEAL out here in San Diego, Jocko, and he has his leadership stuff, it's, it's a very simple, it's, "Discipline equals freedom." When I heard that, I just slapped myself in the forehead. I was like, "That makes so much sense to me." Like, I'm like, people, I go, "Did you read the book?" It's like, "Don't need to. I got it." Which I don't, but, but meaning that's that one tagline you can write a whole book about, right? So, so that's like when we stuff, and we send out a photo or a video and we talk about human behavior stuff, and people like, "Well, you know, what about this on the photo?" And I go, "Look, I can take this one photo and I can teach you and it'll take me 22 days to get through material on this one." Like, "Well, yeah, because I'm going to, I'm going to pull this out and then that's going to lead us down this path that's going to take three days. And then I'm going to come back to here to this next thing that's going to sound a path that's going to circle back." And so, so it's always about trying to get something down to that, that, that, that base, that droplet, you know, that we can always talk about, "How do I put it on a drop on your tongue and you go, 'Oh, I got it.'" And and that's the whole "training changes behavior" again, that that's three words, very simple statement. But we talk about that for an over an hour, you know, every single week at a minimum, you know, on this podcast, right? That's what we're reiterating. It's just in a different way about how training changes behavior. That's what we've just been discussing this entire time we've been on the call, right?

And so a great example of doorways, you know, like the doors. Like, it's just a doorway.

Exactly.

Once a door opens, it's just an amazing amount of stuff.

You know, the, the people that I've seen do what we do wrong, like, like I'm not going to bash that plagiarist that steal and do a book on their own and call it something that it's not. But the one thing that they made a mistake on is they tried to explicate, they tried to profoundly open up doors and say where it came from. Look, do your homework. You don't need me to spend valuable class time, valuable expert model training showing you where all of this came from. Do you get what I'm saying? I don't have to go back to I was 13 and skinned my knee to show you how not to do that. And so the idea is to take this constellation of all of this amazing stuff and distill it down to its core elementals because once you mastered that, we call that the gold standard, you know, the ring, and that one PowerPoint slide that we have that all the chains are linked to, once you understand that, you can build anything. It's like chemistry, it's like physics. Once you understand the core, it's, it's psychology and sociology. Once you understand the core principle, you can learn for the rest of your life just on that one bite, on that one sandwich that that's made up of that core.

So reminds me of a show, there's an improv show that I do. I haven't done it for a while just because of certain circumstances, but I've probably done over ten of them where I just have a guest and I contact the actor and I say, "Look, I'm going to do a show. It's just called 'The Two of Us.' I don't get any stimuli from the audience. I just welcome the audience in. They come in and I say, 'Oh, this is, there's my guest, Brian. He's in town, he's doing his little stick, he's doing his show over there at the so-and-so theater.' And the lights are going to go down. And when the lights come up, we're going to make a one-act play." When I play, it goes for like 50 minutes, maybe. And then the lights will go down and you'll get a show. And of course, when I contact the actors to say this, they're like, "Yeah, but what do we do? We're going to build a play right in front of everyone." "Yeah, I know. I know. We don't know what we're doing. We're just going to build a play." And then I'll get into the actor in a minute. And then usually after the show, the audience are like, "But surely you, you got together and rehearsed that?" They come, they're going through this thing of denial, going, "But it was a whole play! You did a whole play!" And it's just picking out what you're saying. All I say to the actor is, "We know the structure of theater. There's Act One, there's Act Two, there's Act Three. You've got so many things going for you structurally that you don't need to worry about it." That's one. It's just let ideas come out. Act Two is about cherry-picking the ideas from Act One. We need some conflict at the beginning. And then we just slide to Act Three, and it's all done. And then all of a sudden the 50 minutes just goes by like that because if you keep it simple, Act One, Act Two, like they'll, like, "But we can do this and we can prepare this!" And that's like, "No, just just start talking. You know the structure, just stick to the structure and stuff will happen."

And if we're really listening to what's going on, I totally believe that, you know, Brian, we use that term all the time, "What's on your mind?" to break into character and find out what's going on with a perhaps a damaged human. I also use, "What's on your heart?" when I already know it's a damaged human to feel what they're feeling. And Brian's been with me long enough. I never, yes, yes. I never ask a person, "What do you think?" I always, "What do you feel?" And at first it seems queer to people, they don't understand that, then they go, "Oh, I get what's going on." And that's what you're describing, Scottie. If you're in the moment, then you can feel what's naturally next. And you would know what would be incongruent. You would know a path that's going to lead to a dead end. And you're going to be paddle digging your way out of it so you can avoid those, those landmines, those traps. And that's another form of psychological de-escalation. You're pushing forward with this great story and adding all these complexities, but it doesn't have to be part of that origin story. It doesn't have to be part of that molecule that starts it.

And that's not too different than a typical conversation. I mean, you're just having a conversation with someone. That's why a lot of people will just have a conversation. But, but if you put like the microphone and the lights or recording equipment, all of a sudden if that's unnatural to them. I mean, you look at the evolution of just us when we're on here talking from the first time we tried to do it, and just I just said, "Hey, look, we're just going to do it. It's not going to be great. We're just going to get it out there to figure out as we go along." And how it wasn't great. Yeah. But but now the conversation is, is better because, you know, at one, I'm used to hearing the sound of my own voice, which you hate when you first hearing it, right? You're like, "Oh, that's what I sound like," you know, when you're listening back to episodes. And then you once, yeah, once you get past that, you go, "Okay, I get past that, that doesn't matter." And then, you know, there's little things. So the reason why I'm bringing this up is this for everyone listening, that commerce, you know, when you're having that conversation and you're trying to, you know, you're thinking, if you're actively engaged, that you're thinking about their response and your response and what's going on. Exactly. And you know, you get into, you know, theory of the mind, and you know, "I know what you're thinking, and you know that I know what you're thinking," and that goes up however many levels people can get into that. But, but it's, it's, it's, and you started at that and that helps you then you have to then take all of these lessons, learn everything that we're talking about, but apply that then to everything in your life or everything in a menu.

And right. But the most important part, Brian, of just a momentary interruption, it's listening. You again, listen to the audience. You have to listen to the person talk to you. You have to listen to your partner because if you don't do that, then your wrist is opening on shaky ground. And this is why I...

And the reason why I kind of brought that up is there's a hilarious Twitter account that I follow called "Didn't Happen of the Year Awards." And so when people post these like crappy, portable, yes, stories where they're like virtue signaling, telling you, "Oh, my child told me this today in the grocery store. Why isn't the whole world like that? He's six." He's like, and they always reposted like, "Yeah, that didn't happen. You made that up." And and they're hilarious because you can read those stories and go, "This is complete BS. This person is making up this story. This did not actually happen to them." Once you understand, and that's no different just having a conversation. So that's why I always bring it up to like, because people always want to know what the human behavior stuff, "Well, how do I know if someone's lying to me? How can I tell someone's, you know, doing something wrong? How can I do it?" It's like, "Well, you just have to get good at listening and then going, where is this likely headed? Where should it be headed given the script?"

Yeah, exactly.

That's the explanatory storyline. It goes back to your script, right? That you, that you would follow. But but do you ever just follow a script word for word, line for line? No, no, no. Like that's not how a live performance especially works, right? Like I was like, I play guitar, but like, you know, you practice a song. But then if you're performing that, like is it going to be a little different? Yeah. You know, are you going to play different notes if you're doing a guitar solo or something? Yeah. It's, it's, it's no different that that that same pattern emerges. And whether it's a conversation or it's someone trying to, someone trying to pull one over on you, right? So if you're, if you're watching an art film or if you're watching Eyes Wide Shut, if you're watching an art film like that where the director has control over every aspect of the film and sticks to the script and says, "This is the lane you're going to be in, this lane." That's like a painting, that's like pointillism. Everything has to hinge on all of these other things. The problem with is it can be precariously horrible when it comes out because what's happened is you've created this channel and things want to come out, things want to get exciting and move and and scare you, you know, that's, that's why we're still attracted to roller coasters and and skydiving, you know. But but the idea is that the incongruent signals even in that highly scripted environment will stick out because they will be forced and stressed. And any single time that something comes too easily, you know, Brian, what did you do three months ago on a Tuesday? I'm the seventh of whatever. Not a hell do I know. I don't know what I did yesterday, most likely, you know, I got to check with you. So the idea is that those are warning signals that our environment sends us. And it's the same thing that, you know, during this time period right now in a pandemic, there are certain criminals that are doing very well for themselves because they understand how to read that fear. They understand how to read the atmosphere and what they're going to do is knock on your door and say, "Hey, we're here to give the test." You hear what I'm trying to say? And this is different than exploiting somebody with the a sweepstakes win or the driveway paving or whatever other scam that they're going to do. So we have to be constantly mindful and vigilant to out-think those potential adversaries.

And I think it's a delicate time for society. Like, you know, projecting forward worst case scenario, people are going to be cooped up, domestic violence could go through the roof, you know, people cancel the whole stuff. It's a really tough time. And I think more than ever, we really need to be really listening to each other and reaching out to friends just, you know, to check in with people, "How are you doing? Do you need a breather?" Yes, Brian probably needs a breather because Marren keeps telling all our viewers and listeners that he's now a second-grade teacher, but I honestly think that she's teaching him more than he's teaching her almost every day. Isn't that true?

Yeah, she's definitely faster at multiplication than I am. Exactly. Because she's got everything set up, but it's down an old desk. There's stuff like old, you know, pens, pens, little business cards of stuff that I used to have or whatever that's over there. She's like, "What's this?" I was like, "That's a lock-picking set." She's like, "What's a lock-picking set?" I was like, "You can open any other city." And she's just like, "Can you show me?" And I'm like, "Yeah." And then I'm like five minutes later, I go, "Wait a minute, where am I going with this?" And that we talked about that, you talk about entropy in the devolution last week. Monday morning, I'm set, we already went over with her, had the board written up and everything. She was all into it, like, "Yeah, this is so cool. Like, I'm learning from home, you know, you're my teacher." We go through, have a great day. Tuesday, another great day. We're up, we're PTing (physical training) in the morning, she's eating a good breakfast, like we're going, other stuff done. She's nailing multiplication. We're already going to start division, which they weren't even supposed to start yet. I mean, like, we're killing it. Wednesday, okay, Wednesday's a little rough, but I get it. You know, I think it's the week's going on. And Thursday was just a fight all day long, just a fight. Friday was just like, you know what, I'm done. You just sit in your room, build forts all day long. It was free-range time. Now you hate each other, here's the lock-picking kit, see? Let it just absolutely hilarious how that works. It ebbs and flows, and then it's like our Monday had to start over and like, "All right, let's try and get some stuff done. Let's be a little bit more reasonable of what I expect out of the day on my end." You know what I mean? Because, of course, you know, we, I'm going to plan it out. Well, guess what? Every minute of your day is going to be accounted for. Like, here's a break, here's how long it is, this is what we do next is boom, boom, boom. Structure, structure, right?

And again, I gave, I gave my daughter a code, which is, "I'm just learning, Dad." So if I start losing it, that's what she said it like five times. "I'm just learning, Dad." And I'm like, "Yeah, I'm getting, I'm definitely starting to yell now." When I was teaching sociology at Western, the kids made up moral outrage meters, and there were paddles that had red or green on the back. And so generally, while I was, you know, doing whatever I was doing up on my stage as the pulpit, as the teacher, they would hold up the green paddles if they were for something or the red paddles if I was going long. And so I love that because we had entropy at play even in the classroom. It's like, "Yeah, we're there, we're with you, let's go." That's great. Yeah, we wear people out sometimes. Our enthusiasm level, while fun and interesting, can run a little long in the tooth sometimes.

It's interesting, just going back briefly, if we've got time, to the observation about asking people how they feel. So generally if I'm in a scenario where I'm sharing mistakes and, you know, I'll kind of do a bit of a roll call or just check in that where we all are, is I usually kind of label the feeling that I'm feeling in the community. You know, like, "Something feels off, do you guys feel that? Like, can you feel, can you feel?" And then once I start drawing their attention to it, because they're usually a little bit younger, as in twenty-something, then they start really going, "Yeah, yeah, I feel a bit off." Or, you know, and then we just need to label it and get it out so that we're not spending twenty minutes being awkwardly trying to get to the content. Once we get the elephant out of the room, then we just kick him out or her out or they, so we just kind of get on, you know, get on with it. So just interesting talking about how you feel.

I think, how is it different being a martial arts instructor and you're out there and you're showing like a spinning hook or something? And then you're having the student mimic the behavior and you're going around and making minor changes, expert model, then, you know, showing what right looks like and then letting them have a try. And then two or three times into the practice, you'd stop them for a minute and go, "How does that feel?" And they look and they go, "Why, I feel unbalanced." "That's because you are. Now let's go back to that point." You see what I'm saying? So it gives me a baseline from which to grow. So that person understands that if it feels wrong, it likely is. If it feels imbalanced, so it's the same thing when you're in a conversation with somebody trying to determine whether they're giving you deception clues. If they feel like it's forced, if it feels wrong, and you can use that laser flashlight, you can use that to judge how you're doing in the moment in the conversation by looking at your own. And that's when I go down there.

The difference, sorry Greg, and that's the difference between impulse and instinct, and really understanding the difference between those two. You know, your body's, your body is firing impulses all the time, but you're also getting instincts on stuff. So something doesn't feel safe, if you have an instinctual feeling, respond to your impulse, which is probably just get out of there, back away, give yourself the gift of time and distance to precise focus on it. And don't confuse the two.

You know, your brain is uniquely qualified to send out electric and chemical signals to warn you of what they've historically seen in the past that brought a ship up on the rocks. You're exactly right. So why wouldn't we want to use those? So same, you know, neurochemical transmitters in our everyday life, why wouldn't we want to use that in every relationship?

And yeah, there's a sensing, I mean, it's an old martial arts thing, but I use it in an acting combative scenario where, you know, you've got your eyes closed and you're trying to sense whether they're, whether they're reaching towards your left or to your right. I probably haven't explained that for the listeners, but essentially what the, what the drill is doing is the person who is the feeder for the exercise, who's just reaching out towards the person with their eyes closed, they only act when they have an impulse to do it. They're only allowed to act. And then the person who is receiving it, they have to respond with instinct when they feel danger so that they're really separating that learning of what is an impulse and what is an instinct, and and really feeling in their body the difference between when an impulse comes up, this is when you feel an instinctual, this doesn't feel, this doesn't feel safe.

Yep, that's using your EQ (emotional quotient), you know, that you do all day, right? And recognizing when to bring a completely full circle, that's just about recognizing when something's incongruent.

Well, that goes, I mean, I wrote down impulse versus instinct, that's like, that's a good one that I'm going to bang my head off the wall for a while because all of my impulses and instincts have been generally wrong for most...

Always been right about you, Marren. I don't like this guy. Something's wrong with this guy.

It's the rest of rising up in a white padded room. Yeah, exactly. In that room, they allow me this Internet two hours a day when he stands up, that whole set moves with him. He's out on the street now, that's why you hear all that noise in the background.

I paid extra for the Zoom background. This is a digital background behind me.

I just, one of the, I wanted to hit up real quick too because we got an email about a month ago from, from someone, you know, I don't want to mess his name up, but that's Bill Huling.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

So he hit us up about a month ago and said, "Hey, like, just heard the podcast that you did with Scottie," because we did that back in like January, I think. And he, he was like, "Hey, you know, loved it, you know, had this whole other background that he went into because he, he commented on what was it when Greg some, something went in there and you tried to say like, 'Charlie,' you said, 'Charlie Chan,' because Jackie Chan tried to read the..."

But, yeah.

But at least he actually backed you up on that. He's like, "No, no, you know, Jackie Chan is an amazing clown. Like, he's really good at what, you know, like." So I was like, "Yeah, no, don't, don't let the fat guy fool ya." But, but he really saw it. I just want to make sure we at least mentioned him in this episode because he brought up Bill, a great story with Bill.

When I way back when I first met him at that workshop that I used to curate in Canada, I was backstage, we used to do like a show at the end of the workshop and we'd invite the public in from the Bath community and stuff like that. And a famous story about Bill is he was in the middle of a broadsword fight. So it's a big double-handed broadsword. Yeah. You know, it's about two kilograms of steel and he's doing this sword fight slash dance, so it's a highly choreographed piece. And the broadsword flips out of his hands, it flips, it lands on the pommel, which is the brass little thing, bounces back up into his hand and doesn't miss a beat. That's when you know, Dad, drop the mic. That's the drop the mic moment. And you say that, you just before drop the mic. That's what famous, that's absolutely incredible.

I would have literally, I would have finished that and gone, I would just walked out of the room at that. That's what I'm saying. I was, you know, we'll...

A concern, right, Brian?

Yeah, we'll, a concern was on the ranch long before we were friends in the different genre of world espionage and crap that we did. So we're down at the barn on the ranch and so a friend of Williams made a knife out of a leaf spring on a car for some reason, a survival knife. And it was just craftsmanship was amazing, handle was amazing. So William was excited, comes up, I'm doing something else at the barn and he shows it to me and I go, "Yeah, it's amazing, you know, how you can tell the weight." And I turned and threw it just as hard as I could at the barn and it sunk in three or four inches in a perfect spiral. I mean, it just went into the thing. To this day, I've never told Atkinson and teacher Atkinson that it was all shit. It was a complete accident. There's no way, I was just being a dick throwing it away and it's perfectly...

I was with William years later and he was selling, "Hey, this guy's a real thing, you should see him throwing knife big." Same exact happy, "Remember when I, at Penn, you remember a Gunny (Gunnery Sergeant in the US Marine Corps) who worked, it worked with me up at the IIT (likely Institute of Investigative Training) and, you know, we'd started working together for a while and he's like, "Hey, once you come out with me and the guys, we go to this pub, you know, throw some darts and just drink some beers." I'm like, "It's a kind of older than you crew, but whatever, it's pretty chill." I was like, "Yeah, absolutely, let's go." He's like, "So we're sitting there and we're throwing back beers." And these are guys that like bring in their own darts, right? So that's about their own stuff. So they're into it. And he said, "Well," he's like, "Well, we'll play on team against those guys, we'll just do a game of cricket or something." I was like, "Yeah, be great." He's like, "You, have you thrown darts much?" I was like, "No, it's, it's, it's been a while." He's like, "Well, here, why don't you go warm up, take his darts?" And I walk right over there, I go, bullseye, bullseye, bullseye, three in a row. And I just turned, he goes, they're all standing there just wide-eyed just like, I was like, "Like, I thought you said you hadn't played in a while." I go, "Yeah, you know, it's like the 2007 World Championships. I walked away and said, 'I'm never playing again,' but, you know, I guess I'll throw here with you guys." And I went up and ordered another pint. And they were like, "Oh my God." And then I turned to my buddy, "Be like, I have no idea what just happened there, but this is going to get significantly worse."

Oh, yeah, died laughing.

You just can never play darts again. Bill can never use a broadsword ever for the rest of his life or estate. But I tried to own it. And then sure enough, you know, the, you know, I, I had that level, I guess it would be a fall. I don't know, a U-shape or parabolic or whatever you want it is. But, but as the alcohol level goes up, initially, I get better at darts. And then if there's a steep drop-off after that, then I'm just put into the wall. And I just had to turn to him like, "I'm buying a beer, maybe." He's like, "Yeah, you're, you're, you're fun to just go hang out and just drink beer." I was like, "That sounds great."

So I just wanted to walk away.

Oh my God. Well, then, uh, you know, we, we appreciate you coming on. I mean, we got to do it more often, buddy. We're going to like, you know, there again, it's one of those that always kind of just flies right by. And I never know how long we've actually been talking before. And I always just want to get on and go over stuff because we could go, we can go down the rabbit hole with another, oh, that, and your, your video of you, your kids, and you're just throwing them on the ground. Oh, God, we got to put that on the site because anybody else that's ever worked out in the moment and, and you're, you're, you're moving and the kids don't even know how much they're getting out of the drill. Yeah, wonderful. And it's so spontaneous and beautiful.

Yeah, every day she's like, "Okay, can we go do the throwdown thing?"

That's so awesome.

Yeah, I, yeah, happily come back and I'll bring William back.

Yeah, we just need to get a rough for you, Brian, okay?

Depending on that shot and putting it over under the mask, we'll all know who it, depending on how long this, this, this quarantine in this lockdown last, we'll see how, how long the beard and everything gets. My wife hates it already because she's like, "If you're going to have the long hair, then you got to keep the beard and everything else short because otherwise it's just way too much hair." And now it's already starting to grow and I'm like, she's going to just be like, "Scottie, I'm getting the top knot." I want to look like a total douchebag at the end of this. I'm going to get a top knot. Yeah, I just want to look at you to make sure one knows three listeners that don't understand that I am a douchebag. I want them to know.

Oh. Well, then the other thing was, I thought about just doing the quarantine mustache, so I shaved the beard off and just keep growing the mustache. But I don't know. I couldn't look, what I know. We'll see what happens. We'll see how long this goes. Oh, well, Scottie, we appreciate you having, guys. I mean, I love coming on and talking and sharing the stories and and hearing from your perspective is, is cool. You know, I'll give you a little intro at the beginning. But for everyone listening, you know, what, what you do has so much relation. And Scottie, you took the different kind of human behavior domains that Greg came up with, specifically back for Combat Hunter and carried forward for different programs, all the human behavior domains. And you usually broke it down in terms of acting and and being on stage and knowing your environment, reading the audience. And to us again, we were like, that's perfect. It was so cool because we eventually had it a lot like, "Yeah, well, but yes, and this works for anything. Doesn't just have to be about a, this one specific topic where it's, you know, for police or law enforcement or something. This is humans, anything."

Not sure interacting with a human.

But I appreciate you reaching out and doing all that stuff. We, man, this is like the, you know how like, like comedians or actors or whoever have like, let's use comedian, so comedians have like, uh, the other comedians that they love that, that really aren't like, no one really knows that much of or whatever, like, that's how I feel like when you're on here or we're talking to you, or like, "Oh, we like this," where people are like, "Yeah, man, like, bring, what happened another guy you had?" I was like, "No, no, like, we like having this stuff."

Exactly. Guilty pleasure, right?

Yeah, it's, it's cool. It's like the, the inside of where we're, we love having these conversations. So I protect stuff, guys. So I don't know, Greg, you have anything else to add before we end here?

Here's the challenge, Scottie. We have to have William Shakespeare continue to evolve, taking each time that we add that. Yeah. And then Marren picked me up a couple of more yellow pads every time Scottie's on the show, for a loud guy. I've never taken so many notes. Apparently, Greg can't get yellow pads in Gunnison, Colorado. So I'm going to start way up there charging like, exactly. And apparently, mule deer pelts. So that, that really gets your quaint socks.

Yes. One sock. Oh, that's great. And on that note, everyone, yeah, we appreciate it, man. Everyone, don't forget that training changes behavior.