Left Of Greg 072 Answering Walts Questions

Hey everyone, thanks for tuning in. I'm Brian, I'm the host of The Human Behavior Podcast. You're going to be watching the video version of our audio podcast. Please, guys, if you liked the video, like it, subscribe to the channel. There's going to be more content down there if you're already a subscriber, and a better way for us to get you guys some more stuff. If you have any questions or comments, go ahead, leave them below. Check out our links down below to get a hold of us and to actually find out more places where you can get more information about this. Please like it, subscribe, follow us on Facebook at HBP RNA (Human Behavior Pattern Recognition and Analysis). Remember, all these cases that we discuss and all these discussions that we have are through the lenses of what we call human behavior pattern recognition and analysis. So, please like it, share it, tell your friends about it, and we hope you enjoy the show.

All right, Greg, good morning on this Aloha Friday morning, as you can tell. And again, folks, if you have not watched us on the YouTube version, there's a lot more going on in it, so you could always pick up more if you're not getting enough from the audio: little visual cues, what do they call them? Easter eggs, right? Again, it is Aloha Friday when we're recording this, but you're probably seeing this on a Monday or Tuesday or whenever you get to it.

But today's episode I want to get into is a shout-out to our buddy Walt from down in Texas and The Distinguished Savage Podcast. Walt has had us on there, and I'll put the links up in the episode details to check out that. But Walt brought up a number of great questions, and we get questions a lot from people, so we kind of wanted to go over them. So today, I want to rehash a couple of the questions, a couple points that Walt brought up, because we framed one really well that we didn't get to in the podcast because we didn't kind of hear it that way. But when I saw it in writing, I went, "Oh crap, this is a whole another route we can take." So I want to get to those questions, and we'll kind of go over after that some common other questions that we get from people.

So one right away that I know you get all the time, and I've gotten plenty of times, is "Is my spouse cheating on me?" Which we've talked about before, which I love saying, "Hey, you just met me a couple hours ago, and you're walking up to me asking me if it's wrong or under the bus, or him." I think you already know the answer to that question if you're asking a complete stranger.

But we'll go ahead and jump into this one. We talked about a whole bunch of stuff, and the first one I wanted to start with, because I didn't realize how he asked it until I went back and read the text version of what he sent, was he talked about our episode number 56 that we called "The Cup Runneth Over," where we're talking about rage and rage attack, which a lot of what we see is. But he said, "You know, I was fascinated by you guys in the breakdown of rage attacks on authorities." And what he said is, "Why is it that people want to lash out at authority figures?" And we've talked about that on that episode and on his. But his follow-up question, which I don't think we got to in there, is, "Is it anyone who represents structure?" And I was like, "Hey, that's a great term, right? Anyone that represents structure."

So I'd like you to kind of take a swing at that first because I have a couple things I want to add, but I want to get your opinion. So we talked about rage attacks and visible signs of authority, and that doesn't have to be an actual authority; it can just be a visible sign of something that's close enough. And what does that have to do with also maybe a visible sign of what he called structure, and how would that be different?

Yeah, so again, shout-out to Walt. We love Walt, great, great podcast there, folks. Tune in, you'll enjoy the hell out of them. My thing is, Brian, I guess I would see that question in two ways. The first question, or the first way, the facet that I'm looking at, would be that if you mimic a behavior that I already have a file folder for, then it's going to turn into a domestic, or a rage attack, or violence, merely because you mimicked long-standing fear, hate, death, whatever I've got.

Now, give an example of that: Your uncle beat you like a shoe, and every time that you saw him, he took you out behind the woodshed and he was just the most brutal taskmaster, and you hated going over to his country house, or whatever the hell your situation was. But then all of a sudden you get into a situation where you're both fighting over parking in a parking space, and the guy rolls down his window and says, "Let me tell you something." And for that second, you're transported back to that exact moment in time when your uncle had that same look and that same feel, and it's cognitively close enough. And all of a sudden, man, that triggered that emotion, and you get the dump, you get the chemicals racing through your body, and now you just go off. All that pent-up anger and rage and energy that you've had for all those years comes spilling out. So that's one thing, and again, I'm hitting at 30,000 feet.

Yeah, there's plenty more examples. Go ahead.

So the other part is any sort of architecture that has structure feels like—like a famous case, and I won't say where I went, but somebody coming in and interrupting when you're teaching a class for no other reason other than the person has the authority to do so. It comes in and interrupts right in the middle of something that's going on. Well, you want to lash out because he's lashing out at your structure.

"Hey, I wonder what they're doing over there. How are they behind the velvet rope? Why do they get an angle, and I don't get an angle?" Do you see what I'm trying to say? It's like, waiting—sides of the same coin. You're exactly right, waiting in line at a grocery store, and now we've got the six-foot rule, so you can't do this, but when all this horse crap is over, do me a favor: try your social distancing and stand as the person in front of you is putting out their groceries and doing that. The more you delay, the more people get bent out of shape, and it's like, "Look, I can't climb on the register, I can't work in between this guy's groceries, so just chill."

But we don't do that. That's order, that's structure. "Listen, you have to wait here. The latest thing, go down this aisle, then go down this aisle." And I see people willfully violating it. Why? Because it's order and it's structure, and you feel like you're in control if you go the opposite way. You feel like you're in control. "I can push my cart five feet and put it in the cart thing, but I'm going to leave that son of a here because they charge me enough for my groceries." It's a control thing, Brian.

So whenever somebody mimics that level of control, and our cup is full, we've had a long day. We've been on the treadmill of waiting for the DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles), then I get out and I had to do this, and my bill came in late, and all that other stuff. Brian, that stress has to go somewhere. So that's why we call it venting. And if we don't vent it appropriately—working out, going out to the gardens, you get what I'm trying to say, masturbating, I don't care what it is, whatever, beating your junk like it owes you money—the idea, Brian, is that if you don't, your brain will. Your brain is going to find a way to vent that. And you don't want to be at ground zero when that happens.

No. And that brings up a great point about mental health and resilience and where all this stuff comes from and how to mitigate it. But I think it's like you said, those feelings percolate over time. Nothing just happens in a vacuum out of nowhere. It percolates over time, and we talk about this a lot on here, that we don't know when that's going to come out if it's someone whose cup is full. That's why the name of that episode was "The Cup Runneth Over," because that container, it's an explosion. The mine coming up, are they coming down? We're going to meet it in a crescendo of violence.

Yeah, you're right, Brian.

And so that, I mean, I think why it happens to certain people is just that you made a great point of something that happened to us recently during that course we were teaching where the guy came in and was trying to do whatever, and I was ready to chokeslam and throw him over the balcony we had. But that happens, but it doesn't have to be actual law enforcement, it doesn't have to be an authoritative figure. But what I like about what Walt said is, "Hey, does it have to do with this structure?" It's one who's enforcing a rule that reminds you of something that you had. We're all just basically—basically what you're saying is we're just petulant children because everything we're talking about I deal with every day with—let me throw one at you.

You and I were at a course, and at the end of the course, the person gave us this incredible emblematic thing to say thank you, and it would look great in the corporate office. And we can't carry it on a plane, and you and I were flying to some other place. Was that at the same Sandalwood Cologne? I'm sorry, I'm not going to answer a question without advice of counsel. What's your dad doing?

Yeah, but the idea is that I brought up on the phone—yes, folks, I know how to use some of this stuff on my phone—I brought up where the closest UPS office is to send it out. And it—UPS, FedEx, any of those, I don't care, they're all the same. And it said, "None close to you, but there's a U.S. Post Office." I go, "It's great, you can do it at the Post Office." I remember my small town Post Office on the East Side of Detroit, I remember the one in Gunnison, they're so helpful.

So I go in, and I'm waiting in this line, Brian, because it's back East, right? And I'm already a little tense, and we've got other meetings that are planned, and I'm holding this damn thing. So I go up to the counter, I go, "Yes, ma'am, I'd like to send this to this address, this is stuff, here's my credit card, I'm ready to go." And she goes, "There's a table over there, go ahead and wrap it and put it in that box, and you weigh it, and then you bring it back." She gave me this laundry list of stuff that I had to do with the box. I go, "Well, could you do it?" And she goes, "No, not nothing." Whatever, and in the attitude—I don't remember exactly what she said, Brian. I went from zero to sixty, walked out of the place, and I said, "You know what? I'll let this son of a break in my luggage, I don't care."

The idea was that rigid structure from this person at this time after we had finished the course. And so I can imagine easily how some people would say something to her. Well, you can't say something to her because she's representative of the whole problem there, right? And maybe the person after her, the person before me, pissed her off, or she was having a bad day, so I can't get into it right then. So I absentmindedly, as I went out in the department, a stream of profanities, threw my luggage's entire contents and said, "The hell with it, it's not going."

But what if I hadn't? I don't know where she is, I don't know what happened to her, I don't know what's going on in her world, and maybe her cup is already running over. Now I elevate. Now the guy behind me goes, "Hey, pal, you're talking to a lady," or whatever else, and he gets in it. And I'm like, "Hey, don't lay your hands on me." And the next thing you know, Brian, you got a shooting. People tell me all the time, "I don't see how this escalated so quickly." You remember that? Yeah, that is correct, just go check it out. "Where'd you get a grenade from?" No, he had to try, he killed it over to try. What I'm saying, it's so close.

Well, that's, and that's when you see, those are all the pre-event indicators. You're seeing in person in line. There's so many times where I've seen that and had to take a step back or walk outside. I mean, yes, I've had plainclothes—I brought some of my pre-event indicators with me, didn't I?

I'm not talking about that.

Like, yes, I've been in that same position before. I've had to walk out or do things. I've done that plenty of times.

So, drawing on your history of long service at a fast food industry, "May I take your order, sir?"

They're not hiring right now. No, what I meant was, if you're that person standing in line, you're seeing that altercation occur, and everyone just goes, "Oh, look at this guy," or whatever. No, that's leading to what you just said. That could be leading exactly right into violence.

But I like it too, because you brought up on the Post Office, which obviously is a historical significance. I was pissed they were going to charge me the same amount of money, but I had to do everything, where if I go to UPS, the guy takes everything, goes, "Hey, have a nice day, get out of here."

Yeah, well, so did I. I felt cheated in some way.

But that situation is no different than the person yelling at the gate agent in the airport. Their flight is delayed or something's late because it's their fault. You know what I'm saying? That it's their fault. The authority called them and said, "Hey, back off the throttle a little bit. Don't worry about coming in on time. You got this one guy we want to delay him just to see what he'll do." Right? So, but that's it. It's because that person now becomes like a physical representation of what I'm angry and upset at.

Exactly. So that's the structure, Brian. And I talked about fast food. There was an article that just happened, and I don't know when this is going to air, but it's less than 24 hours old, where people were going to their local McDonald's. And the local McDonald's, you call, you make your order, you do it online, however you want to do it. You go in, you pay, you pick it up, and you go. So some of the people that came into the lobby decided to sit down, and the lobby was clearly marked that it was closed. You're only able to sit in the parking lot, take and go. And they got indignant, and when they got indignant, the weapons came. They started shooting, and there's a couple of people that were shot and people that were running around.

Put yourself in the mind of the shooter. It's, "You're up in my face telling me I can't sit here at McDonald's where a month ago I was, two months ago, and I spend at least one day a week." "You're telling me, what do you do for a living? You minimum wage?" That's how we get, Brian. We don't mean to go there, but remember, we have defense mechanisms that come up because we're tribal. All of us used to live in small groups, and what's going to happen is now somebody is questioning your authority, and we don't like that. We've got very fragile ego systems.

So I tell you what, as bad as that was, and that was a crime, and those people shouldn't have brought a gun to a damn McDonald's and fought anyway, you've got to think that I left the Post Office because I didn't want to be the glowing ember that started the brush fire. The person that was saying, "No, you got to leave." Listen, folks, if you've got an employee, teach them the de-escalation strategy and have that 9-1-1 ready on your phone with your thumb over the other one, because you don't know how much it's going to take. Where is that person in that fuse, in that burn, Brian?

So I say now more than ever—and I hate using that term especially with COVID—but now more than ever, it's an imperative because, guess what? Are we done, people? It's like this, right?

My most common statement now is, "I'm smiling, that was funny." I have to tell people what's going on behind the mask, you know?

Yeah, and that's—

We could do a whole episode on just the breakdown of communication that's going to occur now because everyone's wearing masks and how things are going to escalate quicker, or people are going to miss things. That's huge. And there goes everyone's facial technology security that you went with instead of hiring us. Not going to mention any names.

Something one time when we're on a road, and I laughed all night long because it was exactly this: We used to have a guy when we worked with the company on the West Coast, and the guy was the worst at texts and emails. He could send you a text or an email and piss you off so bad that you would stop the car and call him, and he's like, "Hey, great to hear from you." It was nothing like what he was, but the way he said it. And you sent me a clip from like Key & Peele. It was so funny. Folks, if you get that one, I'll put a link.

It happens all the time, right? We, "What are you trying to say to me?"

Let's call hobby, it's closed.

It's the lack—the lack of context, right? If you have any context for what someone's statement is. But that's why we have emojis and GIFs, and we have to use now. If it's you, I actually use emojis for letters, so I'll send you a sentence with a period and decipher it.

Exactly. It's like doing the hieroglyphics. Brian has turned into, he's got that—

But that's a good thing, though.

But that's a great point. You just use the term hieroglyphics. It started with those simple drawings, and now where have we gone as a species? From writing all this to this, and now we're right back to just a picture of a guy with the spear because we get that. It's primitive, we get that. Your brain completely gets it, understands.

But that gets into communication and how that one's a breakdown. And yes, all you've got to do to light that fuse is add a little bit of structure, a little bit of authority, and that's—that's exactly where I was going with this. Is that structure or authority can be the same thing. If I'm angry, if I'm amped up, I'm not taking in everything like I normally would. I'm already at this survival level of thinking that I have a threat that I need to handle or deal with that's scaring me. And so that's where I'm at in my head, so I'm not taking it in. You might not be, you might be the nicest person in the world, but you've got a plastic badge on because you're making minimum wage as security. Be CEO, you're somewhere like—

No, no, but you, and you to you, symbolizes the cop that beat you up when you were a kid when you weren't doing anything, or he was acting—no, it comes right back. It has nothing to do with what that person is. But that's why we—that's a poor person on the other end of that vitriol. You know what I'm saying? They're going, "Dude, this is the only job I can get. Leave me alone, and I have a flashlight in the key."

No, and that's the thing is that, and that's why we always take it back in those moments. What most people want is their say, not necessarily their way. So, just to go to your McDonald's example that you brought up that went to guns real quick, is that that guy likely just wanted to have his say, and someone didn't let him. Someone didn't let him have his say, and then now you've got this, "Well, I'm going to get my way now." I guarantee you, he had no intent when he went in there to go shoot up a place or pull a gun out or do anything.

Precisely. And you need to understand that that razor's edge—Colonel Kurtz, Apocalypse Now, Conrad's Heart of Darkness—all those different things, do your homework, folks. That razor's edge, Brian, is out there every single day. You slow down, you roll down your window. I'll give you a perfect example of this. It was some dashcam Hunting Channel show on this weekend, and so I had the Hunting Channel on in the back while I'm hunting and pecking for the letters to type, and they were showing this guns and ammo defensive whatever. It wasn't them, so don't sue me, bastards. But what they did is they showed an altercation and traffic, and so the one guy pulled over and got out of the car, and the other guy pulled over right away and got out of the car.

Okay, folks, don't stop! We've got a 5,300-pound weapon that you're driving, and if some idiot is going to come at you with a tire iron, use the car, and use the gas to get out of there. But what happened is they showed—so now you've shot the other driver. How the hell did—the idea is de-escalation strategy by psychologically de-escalating, which I did at the U.S. Mail and once at UPS, even though it was in the next county. That's what you've got to do. And when you're at the airport, you've got to ask the woman, "Hey, is there a bar over there? Okay, well, I'm going to be waiting over there. If you need something, could you just yell over?" "Yeah, that's fine. Can I get you anything?" Do that. You'll change the whole dynamic of your day, Brian, rather than escalating a situation.

Yeah, take it back. Words hurt. So if you're at home with your loved one, words hurt, and you go, "Yeah, and another thing," they shut up with, "And another thing!" All you're going to do is make that dead opening even more fragile, and guess what? First the sand and the dirt wash away, and then here comes all that lava flowing out. We can control our message, we can control our day, but we choose not to because somebody is up in our face and we want to have our say and our way.

Yeah, and getting at was that this can be directed towards anyone, not necessarily the actual person that's the cause of the problem or issue or whatever it is. It's going to be directed in this way, like he brought in authority and someone who symbolizes structure. Same thing, it could be the meter maid, it could be the guy who directs vehicles in a parking lot.

You know, and all are equal with us. No better, or no worse than us. But why did they—they're the person at the end of the line for that minute. Contempt of cop, contempt of court. You know what I'm trying to say? All they've got to do is mimic something where you go, "Yeah, pal, get out of my way. I got this from here, I've parked before." Right? It's that flash to get that spark to get the—remember how they tell you make a nest out of the, and then look at all—exactly. So we go straight to the blow, you're going to explode, and the other person has to give the gift of time and distance and step back and go, "Listen, I know you're upset. Let's start over."

Why can't we do that, Brian? Why is it as a group of humans, can't we do that? Because we're conditioned to fight first. We're conditioned to fornicate and fight and flee, and we only freeze if we think the other person's going to take. And those are the first things that come into our mind. So training will change that, because during a practical application, your instructors, if they're good enough, will take you through all those different emotions and show you those. Don't catch you anywhere, Brian.

You've got to be afraid, because if I'm out—what's that great chicken place that Shelly loves that we don't have? Chick-fil-A? Tell me about that too, about the great breakfast and stuff you said. So I remember, you remember the In-N-Out Burger? How about just the antecedent? Both of those are similar, a West Coast and East Coast, because the person comes out and starts talking to you at your car. You're sending that person out with a clipboard, there's your structure, Brian. Oh, so are you preparing them for that person? It goes, "What did you say? How? What?" You see what I'm trying to say? If we don't have that training, reap the whirlwind. And HR folks, if you're listening, it's as simple as training in the world. Get the folks into a room, have these differences, and watch them spiral out of control, and how you can bring them back in. How you can de-escalate.

And that's obviously the name of the game is staying one step ahead without out-thinking the person and getting the outcome that benefits everyone. De-escalation is always the choice. John Boyd touched on it. We always come back to Boyd because everybody that is planning beautiful mind stuff swirling, or they just keep saying "Observe, Orient, Decide, Act," which is a platitude. It's a platitude. No idea what you're talking about.

So taking me to your pasture, the idea is this—a Friday show, you can tell. My idea is that you've got to stay ahead of what's likely going to occur. So, understanding the likelihood in any situation and what the pitfalls are. Now I have two lenses that are going to be like the—you know, those horses that walk around in Central Park, and they've got the big blinders on. Why? So they can stay focused on their task, and a cat or a girl doesn't distract them and kill everybody in the carriage behind them. So that's what you need in your life. You need to take a look at a situation, go, "I'm about to walk up to this counter," and "That could happen: robbery in progress." Play those games, have those explanatory storylines. So therefore, you're not caught flat-footed, you're not caught off guard when it happens to you.

All right. So a couple of the things he brought, we kind of all put into one, I think, because he was interested in what Walt—I'm talking about Walt asking his questions when we were on the podcast. But he brought up, "Hey, how we talked about on episode 63 on fear, the first one we did, about panic buying and people buying up toilet paper." He also brought up some things about conformists and nonconformists, and people fitting in. He also brought up something about self-soothing and self-healing methodologies that people employ.

I would say all three of those separate items that he just brought up—kind of questions—can be all tied together, right? So I would say, how do we tie things like self-soothing behaviors, things like panic buying and that kind of crowd mentality, and what was the third thing I brought up? Oh, conformists and nonconformists, about group behavior. So can you answer, sort of, rope all three of those elements into one common theme or explanatory storyline, I guess?

Yeah, so Brian knows, most folks don't, that this morning was the first day in Gunnison when the dentist had reopened. And I'm due for cleaning, as was Shelley Williams, CEO of our company. So she made the appointments, she went in at eight, mine was at nine. Folks might not know that of all the things in the world that frighten me, there are two things: my God and my father. My father's dead. If there was a surge, though, I still—there's a rosary on a back, he'll be leading it. But next to my Uncle Paul, those two bastards will be coming at me. But the third thing, the de facto third item, would be dentists since I was a child.

Listen, we used to have to sit in wooden chairs that were bolted down to wooden floors, and they had this big thing that looked like an ear cleaner that they came up with fluoride. And "fluoridated"—shout-out to fluoride, I love him, mother—and they fluoridated you when they had a big metal thing on your face, it looked like something—what's that guy that does Corpse Bride and all that other stuff? It looks like a Tim Burton film. So there was that, all of the stuff that they would put in your mouth made noise, and you didn't have your plugs, and there was no background music. I don't trust jazz music because I don't know where it's going next. No one actually likes jazz music, people just know it to keep sound the whole time. Like I don't know what's going to happen.

But the idea was that all of the stress builds up, Brian, so I'm ready to explode well before I ever get there. Now you have to conform to rules. You've got to sit in a lobby, you've got to read the Highlights magazine, you've got to wait for the next person, you've got to be chipper, "Hi, how are you?" And then right away they say, "Oh, you're the guy that needs gas (nitrous oxide) because you're a wreck when you go to the dentist." All of those things stress me out. So if I know that the situation I'm about to go into is going to be a high-stress situation, it's incumbent upon me to go, "Listen, I'm a big handful. I'm a hot mess, and I'm coming in, and I just need to prepare you folks for it. I'm not very good at this, please help talk me down."

Then when I get there, I dress appropriately for the dentist office, I do all these preparations. You know why? Because it's not fair for me to come in and go off on them every time. What am I going to do, change dentists? There's only two towns close to me. So I have to modify my behavior, right?

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Go ahead. Modify your own behavior? Are you telling me this is—

Is it a laser? Blame everyone else, Brian.

I found a Shake Weight. I can't take you seriously with that background, just so you know. Brian Marren is a dumpster fire, folks, but he's—

I've got to get one of those backgrounds. And I've got a fire, just smoldering.

Oh, yeah. But no, you're exactly right. So look, your conformist, nonconformist thing: folks, follow the rules because if you don't follow the rules, you're the anomaly. Funakoshi in the 1600s said, "If a nail sticks out, pound it down," and I completely agree with him. There's rules for a reason, and you know, your personal opinion when you write, "Dear Editor"—you know what I'm saying? "I just want to write to tell you how"—person, keep that to yourself, nobody's reading it, and all you're doing is piss people off. Modify your own, clean your own house before you're going to come across the street and tell me mine. That's some famous guy wrote that somewhere.

Yeah, that's the thing is that a lot of this is, we do forget, or a lot of people forget that we live in a society. So it's not just about us as much as we think, "Oh, everything's about it." I know you live in a—this is shared, this is communal property, we're all in, so you've got to kind of get it, you get that. So positive other—prove that to the people that are listening and viewing. And the three people that have been with us since the beginning, thank you. Two of them were Brian and I.

I never listen. The idea, Marren, who else seemed good? A pistol. I remember, I'm just coming off the gas, so if I'm on the five, going between San whatever and San whatever, San Juan Capistrano, and wherever the hell I am. In the traffic immediately slows to nothing, nine lanes going and coming, and all of a sudden it's for nothing. The very, very first thing that you say is, "How is this going to affect me?" Thank you. Immediately get pissed. You don't say, "That poor woman, that kid, that dog, somebody died. Oh my God, it's a horrific crash. I hope they're okay," and say a prayer. We don't do that. We think, "How is this going to mess with my weekend, my day, my whatever?"

And we've got to come off the gas once in a while, Brian, because sometimes we're bringing so much hot coals to that savanna that we're going to start that dry grass on fire, and we can't do that. People think, "Well, I have the right to say and do whatever." Yay, the amendments are there for a reason, but you know why we had to go define why out there. A point to it and go, "No, it's my favorite day."

People like, "Have you read the Constitution?" I was like, "Okay, that's a framework. Have you read any case law? Do it, like anything."

The funny thing is, you know that every one of my vehicles, my Constitution is in the drink. I wish I could take the camera right outside because they just, you know, the pocket Constitution. I got it, baby, because I'm ready at a moment's notice because I'll slap you on the forehead with it and go, "Go," because I know every Supreme Court decision to come down because I've educated myself.

Well, that's what it comes down to is knowing every Supreme Court decision, not there is like why use it, we use it to de-escalate. That's a great point. How many times have we had to tell somebody that, "Hey, listen, let's start over. It's on your mind now," you get what I'm trying to say? Then they say their piece, and it's from Mars, Brian. Out there, we just, "Wow, how broken is this little snowfoot in front of me?" It's like dealing with a conspiracy theorist, just let him talk long enough, and you'll hear how little information is there. You'll realize if they get in this Mobius loop of like, "Oh, this is all about you." Just go, "Keep going. No, please tell me more."

Remember Punch and Judy? I mean, what good came out of that? There's no good. Sit in your marriage, and in your relationships and talking with your kid. Do a little bit of homework before you go in there and go, "Hey, what am I going to say to Timmy?" Well, whatever the situation, "Do what I said," because if you do your knee-jerk, Brian, if you do what's on the ticket, it's not good art. I know, it's not going to be, it's not going to.

I know his parents. My dad was half Irish, and he had Indian blood in him on that stage. And we came from a hidden clan. So anybody that's watched that thing in Silence of the Lambs, that was my life every day. "You're a hit, you're a hidden crew." We're more about just the psychological and emotional abuse. Had no idea what those words meant in that order, so he just resorted to hit. "You think, hey, you're a humor boy, huh?"

So one other thing, so that brought up a lot of what Walt brought up, and I just kind of want to hit on that. And he brought up some great stuff. So again, everyone, The Distinguished Savage Podcast, it's got some really cool people on there. He's that guy finding those niche people, or like tradesmen, real true crafts that are really, really good at what they do, whether that's knife making or this certain type of training or whatever, and he reaches out to those people. So it's great, it's a really cool podcast.

One of the things I want to bring up that we always hear, because everyone's so fascinated by it, we've talked about a little bit before, but it's everyone always wants to know about body language. Like, "Hey, that person's crossing their arms, or they're doing this, or they're standing this way or that." And we always have to kind of tell them and walk them back and go, "Well, hang on here. You can't, you're already at a microscopic view level. You're at a zoom of 30 power already, and you haven't even understood it at a 30,000-foot level." Right? So we always have to walk that back a little bit.

So I guess the question, everyone is interested in body language, why should that be the last thing that I'm concerned about, Greg? Or why should I be questioning—

The best, best question that we've had on the show, I think, on these viewer questions. Now, I'll take you back to a time where I had a disagreement with a sniper instructor from the East part of the continental United States, where he couldn't wrap it around his brain that all our observations were going to start a minimum of a click away. And because we were in this area, we actually had a 1200-meter OP (observation post), right? New information. This is ridiculous. He goes, "This is ridiculous. We, you know, we have people standing in the back of a 7-ton holding binoculars and we've got camouflage draped over their head in the hot sun and doing this and that and watching this place that I can't even see." And he was all up in my grill, and it was like, "Listen, the furthest away, even assisted by your optics, if you can't—"

Just like yesterday, you and I had that conversation about shadows at night. Shadows at night. What's the poor man's FLIR (Forward-Looking Infrared) night vision goggles? That's the poor man's night vision goggles: a flashlight. If I don't have a flashlight, I've got to rely on it. Anything that I can get, a spotting scope, binoculars, anything else. If I were that situation, I'm far enough away that I'm going to make a better conclusion. I'm going to draw a much more reasonable conclusion because, guess what? It's going to be a fidelity-filled observation, and the granularity is going to be artifacts and evidence that support my conclusion.

So if I go like this every day and I have to make decisions like that school you went to, where they pull the mask off and you're surrounded by those guys thumping. That's great, folks, that's great to learn how to fight out of it, but if that's where you're starting, you're already at bang-bang. That's the worst place to start. Think now we have to take that into full 360, like the Faberge egg of life that we're juggling all the time. We have to do the full 360, so we do left of bang, we do at bang, we do just after bang, and we do, guess what, right of bang, because it's left of the next bang. We have to do it all. But if you are right on top of that decision every time you make it, Brian, you're not going to make an informed decision, and sooner or later, you're going to make a mistake, and in our business, making a mistake can cause somebody their life.

So the further, the better, right? And therefore, kinesics (body language). Yes, but like for example, eye-tracking. Hey, read interview technique. That's fantastic. But if I'm not watching the guy in the parking lot when he walks into the business, I'm missing cues, Brian. I'm missing a rare opportunity, a glimpse at this person's—

Right. And that's like, if I haven't even identified the whole team he's working with, and I'm already focused on one person, I'm missing 90% of what's acting, or 95% of what's with them. Blinders, right? It's a nice laser focus, and we're going to miss cues. And then it also, you end up jamming the square peg into a round hole. It becomes like a parlor trick, "Oh, every time someone rubs their nose this way, it means this," or "If I cross my arms—" No, sometimes it's comfortable to cross your arms. Exactly. Sometimes it's cold in the room. I'm just rubbing myself.

We're back to the masturbation. My idea to you, Marren, is the people that are listening right now. I always like to street it up. Street definition: Everybody watches Gore porn on TV with the homicide—

You're classifying the crime shows and documentaries as Gore porn?

So just like you're—everyone's doing this right now to Google. But we are fascinated, pollinated by. That's why there's a million documentaries on them. Nobody ever gets away. Nobody ever gets away. Everybody gets caught sooner or later, or debated, but they die in and contra, if, or whatever.

But the idea is that think in the terms of the cold case. Everybody here has watched an episode of Cold Case, whether it was Hollywood or whether it was real or recreated or a documentary. If I go back to the cold case, and I take a look at everything everybody's done before me, and I recreate those experiments that were done before me, what conclusion do you think I'm going to draw? I'm going to be back at the same. I'm going to be sitting there going, "Hey, what's an ageist here?" The idea is you have to look with fresh eyes. You have to open up that investigation and say, "Here's the way I'm going to approach." So I'm going to look at this, and we're the witnesses and that, and come to your own conclusions. Now you can use those other things, that comparison, as comparison, Brian. But we have confirmation bias. We think we're always right. We look only for conclusions that support the information there, I believe. So we tread on very thin ice when we go into that situation. And that's when it's always good to look at a battle buddy and go, "Hey, am I overreacting to this? Am I missing something? What's in this situation?"

Because if we go right to kinesics, I'll give you the thing: Kinesics and biometrics are excellent, and they're the decision point for me when I go into a room. I haven't drawn any conclusion. I've seen all the artifacts and information, and I come up on the explanatory storyline. I go, "If it's this, he's going to be doing this. If it's this, he's going to be doing it." And now, now I sit down at the interviewer, I go, "Hey, how are you doing?" And all of a sudden, I see sleeves going down, hoodie comes up, everything else. I go, "He did it." Why? Because I've done all of my legwork, Brian, working up to that point. And then those cues are consistent or inconsistent, they're congruent or they're incongruent. Then I use that as the icing on the cake.

So that, that's it right there, because that's the simple takeaway, or not simple, I mean, it's complicated, but meaning something that you can use right there: incongruence. And we talk about that all the time, is that rather than sitting here trying to figure out why what it means when someone scratches the back of their head versus the front—because we offer examples like those in a specific context when we talk in that context, and it doesn't mean crap in a grocery store fruit department. So rather than trying to figure out what each one of those little things is, what do you look for in incongruent behavior? If this person means this, or this is what their role is, what else should I see associated with that role?

Exactly. If they're not doing that, I'm seeing incongruence. Or, do the words coming out of that person's mouth match what's manifesting on their body? It's like, remember the fire chief in Southern California years ago when he came on the news and he sat there trying to tell everyone, "Everything's going to be fine," but he's saying, like, "This is happening." Remember, we're looking at it going, "Listen, right there are certain emergency indicators that you fall into, kinesthetic and biometric, that you have to pay attention to."

So you're looking at a crowd of people for the one that just ran from you, and this guy's breaking a sweat, his chest is heaving, and everybody else is ice cold and going, "Hey, this guy just out here." Yeah, okay, get it. But balled fist, and those anger cues—look, if you're at ground zero and those are occurring, you've got to create distance and de-escalate, or you're going to be in a trick bag. But if that's where you start all the time, it's no place to go. You've got to get that gift of time and distance and take in the big picture because the more information you have, the better conclusion you'll draw. And we're not talking about analysis paralysis, Brian.

No.

Great thing, is a good buddy Gary Klein. Shout-out to Gary and all the geniuses like Marty Seligman and those guys. But just keep writing your theories and putting them on a shelf. No practical experience, no stuff on this. If you see that stuff and you don't do something about it on the street, you might get popped in the nose, you might get shot, you might get your car stolen. Time and distance are the key.

All right. Well, so those are kind of some of the common questions, Walt's questions, and common ones that we kind of hear from people who contact us in general, whether that's in passing or a text message or a Facebook Messenger or whatever. A lot of them are similar.

They're growing questions. And we always want to stress that things are in context. So I want to throw to you, Greg, what's something that maybe either that we have or haven't covered that's important that you get from a lot of people that maybe you've thought about for a while? And you know what, hey, maybe we need to get better at addressing this, because I'm getting a lot of questions on it. Not addressing a book, but maybe something. I don't know if you have something on your mind that you go, "You know what, I've heard a lot," or, "If we need to talk about it this way."

And remember, a lot of those questions, Brian—

Yeah, I've got one that bounced around. I've got a few. I've got some like—

Mine, exactly.

A lot of them are like AAR (After Action Review) comments. There's consistent AAR comments, like, "Yeah, but—" But, yeah, people, it's become very consistent. And so, "Hey, where's this training before my last appointment? Why am I just now hearing about this? Whatever."

Okay, so a lot of people will frame a question because we're afraid. Remember, when we're afraid, we increase our level of violence. We also increase our panic and anxiety, and those are never good, those are contra-healthy. And that's why we're talking to people to try to show you how to improve your mental health just as much of your physical health. Both are important. But what bothers folks are things they can't control. So people come up, and they will phrase it, Brian, as like a hallway conversation. "Hey, that was a really great course, but are you saying that I've got to be tuning everything that's going on?"

So I would say to you that my most pervasive comment, the one that I see repeated most often and everything else, is when something happens, and a person will look at me and go, "Well, you couldn't predicted that." Okay, look, I don't have a magic 8-ball, and I'm not John Edward. I don't read dead people like in The Sixth Sense, seeing him all over like that little—what was that little kid's name? He's got a gigantic—Haley Joel Osment. He's got a little baby face now but a big gigantic head, look at him, folks, it's hilarious, he's great, I love him, hate Burton.

But the idea was like, 24 hours ago, the poor female that was—they just opened up the hair and nail salon or whatever, and she was leaving on an island to go back to the parking lot in her car, walked by a flipping pond. Folks, if you've ever been in North Carolina, or South Carolina, Florida, or Alabama, there are ponds everywhere. And then some people fish out, and some are just in the trailer park for show with the lily pads and the frogs to give it a natural feel. And an alligator came out and grabbed her, dragged her in, and she drowned. Alligator was behind her and kept her for later. And so the very first text message I got right after that came out was that article, and said, "Bet you couldn't have profiled that. How do you profile a flipping alligator?"

Well, Steve Irwin—exactly. First of all, there's a perfect example. Yes, answer: how did Steve Irwin die? Yeah, exactly. Sure, died by the sword. Stingray barb in his heart. He was a great guy, he was playing in that environment, and he knew the stakes. That's what I'm saying is he died doing something he loved doing, and he was professional at it.

Yeah, exactly. So what you have to be is you have to either engage a professional or get yourself to the level of a professional because if you don't anticipate it, like nobody in our audience that's listening or watching right now is saying, "I will walk in on an armed robbery in progress one day in my life." Nobody, until they do. And then they're going, "I tell you the most scary thing."

We had a guy, Brian, we were doing the school in Dallas. Folks, we do the schools—Fred knows about, no names, no name. I got it. But we do it from the perspective of the administration, and the community, and everybody around, the stakeholders, right? And so we're doing, and the guy comes up and he goes, "Hey, it's a funny situation," he says, "because my wife and I were at this baseball park," you know where there's like four different diamonds that are there, high school parks where there's like all facing outward. So they were eating, they were having a little barbecue and stuff.

Yeah, they saw this guy walking around, and you said, "Hey, he gave off all those signals you were talking about, and we knew it was ID (identified as suspicious) because we go there every Tuesday night at this time, and you know, the way he parked and the way he walked." A guy was articulating all this stuff. And then, "I knew he was going to come over and rob us, and sure enough he comes over and robs us, and he's going to take the car, and I think he was going to kill us. And then I had to talk him down." And I'm sitting there, and tears are welling in my eyes because I feel so bad for this guy's story. He tells me the entire story, right? And I'm sitting there listening going, "Oh my God, you knew the same things that I do, but when I see it, I bug the hell out."

Yeah, it is. You stuck around.

I'm going, "What's going to happen next? I'm fascinated by this, I've got to stick around and see where this goes." And you know, Brian, if somebody's going to shoot me on a robbery, it's going to be in my ass because I'm going to be running. I'm going to be doing my wicked parkour skills and getting the hell out of there.

So what I'm saying is that you folks say that this weird situation: Look, if you go to a dude ranch or guest ranch, you might fall off a horse and die. If you're going on a Caribbean cruise, it might be overtaken by pirates, or you might be locked in for six months. If you don't anticipate, and you don't have to walk around anxiety-ridden, Brian, you can't be hyper-alert because that's not sustainable. But you certainly can go, "Hey, I'm going to the gas station. Let's see, I got my wallet, I got my—" Do you see what I'm saying? Do like a mental pre-deployment checklist of all the things that are going to be happening. I did it this morning with the gas (nitrous oxide) and the dentist.

Yeah, you kind of hit it right there with that. And because we do get a lot of questions, or people ask for, "Well, then how am I supposed to do this?" Right? Because that was Walt's thing too, and Jesse's like, "Well, look, I haven't been to your training." He's trying to get us down to his agency. But, you know, "I don't—well, so what am I supposed to do?"

And that's our whole thing, is, look, you already know your environment, you already have the answers. So like you just said, "All right, back." I articulated everything that led up to that. So you can go back to different experiences you've had in life and write down on a notepad, like you just said, make that list of everything you saw. And then go, "Oh, these are called pre-event indicators. I need to look for these. Not looking at these time, result." Exactly, that's what I need to understand, that's what I need to realize. And then you just said too, is just a general plan, an understanding of, there's a lot of things going on in the world, and I know we have a lot on our mind, and we're constantly thinking about what we need to do, and our next paycheck, and this and that. But it's not worth your life.

Meaning, how many times—we always said, how many times on the news do you see, hear, or see about a gas station or convenience store getting robbed? Probably happens a hundred times a day in this country if you were to add it all up, I'm guessing, somewhere. Whether it's at least someone grabbing a candy bar or someone robbing it with a gun or knife or weapon, right? That happens a hundred times a day in this country. Yet, when's the last time you pulled up to the pump before you got out of your car, you took a look around, you looked through the glass of the exact well-lit convenience store that's inside there and the cars parked, idling?

Anybody, you need to go out. Anybody in a hurry to get in or out of the place? Anybody wearing a mask other than—so I don't remember, we saw the guys, the mask, same thing down in Dallas when we—all of a sudden the car comes ripping into the gas station and while we're sitting there pumping up, and what did we do? And immediately we went into full effect because we thought, "Why would anyone be wearing those masks?" before COVID. But the idea is that we weren't caught flat-footed. We weren't caught off guard, we weren't surprised by the events. Could that occur? You're going to walk out of your door one day from your office and get hit by a piece of a meteor, you know, Joe Dirt. And it's going to be the worst effect of your life. Well, I can't predict that, but I can certainly say someone's going around, you should smell, feel—

Yeah, yeah.

And educate yourself on those things because if you don't, then, guess what? You're playing catch-up, and that's again, right back to John Boyd's OODA Loop (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act), right, Brian?

I want to ask a question that we got a brief from a guy because we asked him to provide some stuff for training. And folks, this is what we asked for: We said we want 30 or 40 folding chairs, we want 10 or 12 folding tables, all stuff that was easy to get in the time before we got down there. And they didn't see the logic behind it. They didn't see why they had to add the tents, and those little pop-up tents that you have out for a barbecue. We turned that stuff into props because we can't afford to have the bus that you have to search every day that it comes into your business. You know, we put the 40 chairs together and put a table together, and we've got a flipping subway, we've got the DMV, we've got whatever it is that we have to recreate because your brain doesn't care about that. That doesn't have to be the high-value dollar stuff. We don't have to put a lot of sensors and laser crap downrange. What we have to do is we have to make sure that we up-armor your brain for these different pre-event indications because when they start to coalesce and the clusters come together, that's the magic that goes, "Danger, warning Will Robinson, we're in trouble!" And if I get that, then you're going to survive.

Yeah, and you're just talking about recreating training events that are cognitively close enough to the real thing, right? It doesn't have to be picture-perfect. It's funny because I just—I know you just did kind of a post on that stuff and some of our social media, of showing some examples of training and going like, "Look, it doesn't have to be, you don't have to get this specific dialect speaker and hire 30 of them to come in and populate this area."

That's science work. Drills work. Guess what? It becomes a procedure, it becomes a thing you do. When I hear that alarm, I do it. I don't second-guess it. I go out. They don't have to have a flashbang and a smoke generator. You're not going to set the school on fire before the fire drill. Now, if I was going to go to advanced fire management, yes, for the teachers and stuff, I would take them to that. I would, all right, local fire department show so, you know, they do that connect and they light it over. It's like, from the mask. You've got to see that it's certainly—

No, and that's a, that's a great analogy to understand training and what level people need at your organization, right? What do the kids at the school need? Well, they need to know where to go, where to line up, where to leave, how to get out, and the procedure for leaving. Okay. And then the teachers, what's the trigger? What, and make me put that in. The teachers need to know at the operational level, "Hey, how where the—where the accountability works in and where they're going to do this and who they're going to report to and everything." And then the firemen are the ones that have to go to the training where you go put out a fire, right? Because that's their level of what they need. But that doesn't mean—I think that's a great analogy.

I'm the vice principal, so I need to know emergency services 101. "Who took roll? How many people are out here? And where's little Tommy again? That little bastard, is he still in school?" It's not expensive and it's not hard. And if you make it a habit, Brian, just like smoking, it becomes a hard habit to break because your brain says it now, "Hey, why aren't we working out this morning? Hey, how are we going to that—we never eat like that." When you engage that, Brian, I think you're going to be much—you're going to be stronger, faster, and much harder to kill.

All right. Well, I think that's kind of a good spot as we answered a bunch of the questions, and then I know we'll get more. So, folks, if you're listening and you do have specific stuff, take the time, put it on paper, send it to me: [email protected] and we'll cover it. And if it's good enough, like that, we'll post it up, and we'll do stuff, and we'll talk about it, and we'll get the information out there because if you have a question, likely one of the other listeners is thinking the same thing. So, please go ahead and write in and contact us.

I'm going to have a bunch of links up in the episode details to include our webinar series that's going on so you guys could do that on Wednesdays. You can sign up for that, and then if you still sign up for it, even if you can't make the time, because that will allow you to get the email to the link to the recording of the video that'll be up for a couple days. And then we'll move everything over to the website here soon. But make sure you stay in contact with us. Same thing, follow us on social media and everything. All the links are in the episode details of whatever you're listening through this on, or watching us on YouTube. Again, there's like a—I think watching it on YouTube adds another 25% to it, maybe. Or, I don't know, not just the fun things we have going on in the background, but the communication-wise and listening and taking in information visually, you need that. That is going to help out a lot. So I always say check out The Human Behavior Podcast at YouTube channel.

So, Greg, I don't know if there's anything else you want to add in before we kind of wrap for those.

Just briefly, Brian. Brian and I have been lucky enough to be asked on a number of shows, podcasts, radio shows, all that other stuff. Go to the website and check them out. A lot of fun, and please support those folks. Those folks are great people doing great things out there. And Brian says it so eloquently, "Sometimes just hitting a 'like' is the difference for a business."

No, it is. Especially right now, getting on the social media stuff, guys, or listening to podcasts and give it a review, actually hitting the stars, and you don't have to even write anything. Just hitting all that stuff and adding up those little things, everyone doing it over time, actually helps out quite a bit. So it helps out there, grows the audience and everything like that. So we appreciate everyone for tuning in. Thank you so much. Look forward to another good next week's episode, and don't forget that training changes behavior.