Left Of Greg 085 The Gray Man Project with Brady Pesola

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 like the video, like it, subscribe to the channel. There's going to be more content on 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 and subscribe, follow us on Facebook at HBPRNA. 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.

We got something going. It'll be a little tight, but we got something going. I'm sorry, Brian.

No, that's good, man.

All right, all right, so we'll go ahead and get started at today's episode. Just for those of you who are just listening and not following along live streaming on Facebook, remember, guys, follow me on Facebook, and then we'll pop up on here live everyone, so I can take some Q&A from everyone. But we're recording this on August 6th, and on today's episode, we have a friend of mine, a friend of ours, actually. We've known for a while, Brady Pesola. So, Brady's on here. He's going to be talking about what he's got going on with his Gray Man Project and a whole bunch of other stuff. So, Brady, I want to just first of all, thanks for coming on and joining us. You've got a much cooler background than we have. You're outside in the beautiful area.

Yeah, but he's there illegally, so it's okay. It might be his neighbor's yard.

So, thanks, thanks for coming on, man. We really appreciate it.

I appreciate you guys for having me on. I'm a big fan of what you guys do, and a lot of what I teach has come from you guys teaching. So I appreciate you guys and what you do. It helps, helps us out here.

Yeah, that's that's awesome. So, you know, everyone probably listened to the intro and stuff on you, but you know, you have Marine Corps background, you do executive protection, you've got a whole bunch of other stuff going on. But I kind of wanted to start it off with, tell, kind of let all the listeners know how you know Greg, right? From your first interactions with him. I always, anytime we have a guest on that knows us from the past, I always like to tell them the story. I think so far Andy Reese might have the best one.

Oh, no, Reese is a poser. I don't even remember Reese now that I see him. All right, I'll let I'll let Brady go ahead and tell that story.

I always, you guys know, I run The Gray Man Project here in San Diego, which I live about five miles down from you. But yeah, we teach people a more common sense, pragmatic, practical approach to preparedness. We're not out there on machine guns that are out on scooters shooting machine guns, doing doomsday prepper stuff. We're actually teaching practical survival, practical preparation, practical mental approach to a more cerebral, intellectual approach to preparedness. And through that, the Gray Man idea. And it's funny, a lot of people call it the Gray Man philosophy, and if you break down what a philosophy is, it's not actually philosophy. It's more of a method than anything else because there are different types of strategies and approaches towards preparedness. And Gray Man is a method of preparedness to allow you the ability to move freely through each environment, to go through, adapt, and survive as you need to.

Yeah, no, that's that's a that's a great, great definition there, and that's kind of what, so kind of what drew me to what you were doing, too, because, you know, there's a lot of stuff out there, so, you know, people in this area are talking about being a Gray Man and not sticking out in this other thing. And some of it is good common sense stuff. Some of it's really weird, and I don't know why you'd want to do that, but, you know, whatever, hate to each their own. And you again, like you said, you bring this, hey, this is a very practical method of looking at things, and not just, you know, I, you call it a methodology or method, which is great, and I also think it's kind of like a mindset of how to approach things, you know, how to not stick out in your surroundings. So I know you're always sharing our stuff, which I appreciate it. Because Greg, he also asks that he also has to take us back to 2008.

Yeah, yeah, a cheap hotel in California. Yeah, California. Both of us had a little too much to drink. Brady, come on, right? So this is where the whole Gray Man thing started.

Yeah, so so back in 2000, I did four years in the Marine Corps from 2002 to 2006 as a radio operator with a controlled artillery unit in Hawaii. And during those four years, the height of the war, we sat with thumbs up our asses waiting to go play. But unfortunately, 11th Marines got to go do their part in artillery, and the rest of us artillery community, we're sitting there going, "We just want to go play and blow stuff up." So anyway, we never deployed. I got out in 2006, a little disgruntled because of it, and then I got recalled back to active service, and I'm like, "All right, cool, we get to play a little bit." So I went to MOBCOM (Mobilization Command) over in Kansas City, and a bunch of us are sitting in a room. It's all infantry and radio operators. I haven't seen guys since like comm school. I'm like, "All right, cool." And they said, "You're all going to be base MPs or garrison bullets." And we're like, "Are you, are you kidding me right now?"

And you were used to that because you were fapped out, right?

Well, no, I'm kidding. I love, yeah, I was a radio operator recalled to be a base MP, and I'm like, "That's not very cool, man."

Exactly.

I don't, I don't want to do that at all. And so I went, got back from MOBCOM, went to my PSR (Personnel Support Detachment), and was like, "Look, dude, I don't want to do that shit. I want to go deploy and do my thing as a radio operator." And they're like, they come back a couple days later, "Sorry, bud, per MOBCOM, apparently guys getting recalled, you're getting popped, smoked, or belligerent as hell out." And so they're like, "No, we're putting you back and filling garrison bullets and stuff like that." So anyway, fast forward, I'm in ATS (Advanced Training School). We're getting prepped up to take orders to go base MPs over at Pendleton. And they said, "Hey, we got this great course coming along the way. I want to see if you want to jump in." And I said, "What is it?" They said, "Well, it's right up your alley. It's human tracking and behavioral analysis." I'm like, "What's it called?" "It's Combat Hunter." I'm like, "That sounds like a lot of fun." So I joined it. And then it was three of us MPs. All of us were the, I'm adept, we're all recalls. So we weren't actual MPs. We were all different MOSs (Military Occupational Specialties). Two of them were infantry, and one was, I was a radio operator. So, we weren't even MPs yet. We hadn't taken orders. We were just still field Marines that had just put in this position.

So we get in this class, and I have a background growing up on a farm. I actually grew up tracking animals, hunting, and trapping and things like that on the farm I grew up on. So I was like, "All right, cool. Tracking humans is a little bit easier." And then they started teaching the human behavior part. So that's when I saw Greg, and by far, Greg is probably the funniest, best instructor that I've ever had in the Marine Corps. And I think the Marines need to really concentrate on bringing in outside civilian sources to teach classes because as you know, Marines tend to "Marine stuff up" and it just complicates things. So Greg, probably the best instructor, and one day he came into class, and he was mad at me because the MP stopped him. And he was bitching about MPs, and we're in the backseat, laughing our asses out because we weren't quite MPs yet. We were about to take orders as MPs, and we're like, we're back there not laughing. We're like, "Yeah, they suck, dude."

What, what I remember, what I remember from 2008, and I got a big cabeza. First of all, you said "probably the best instructor." You got to clean that up a little, okay? There we go. Now we got it, Marin. No, I'm so I'm so humbled by your words. But change that. And then the other, the other thing that you were saying, you didn't add "cutest instructor," which is cool. We'll talk about that later, too. But if you remember the building that we were teaching in, they had rows of folding chairs and only one latrine. And it was that cinder block long building. So we had to keep walking up and down that center. And so I was there, Marin, with, I'll just use call signs, I was there with Teacher and Cutter. And so Cutter caught on to these guys early, and Cutter goes back there and he comes up and he goes, "Hey, you better watch it, those guys back there are MPs." So he thought it was hilarious, thinking that you guys would like mob me in the hall and beat me up. And you guys were actually agreeing with me because you remember there was those such different standards back there for getting on post, and it, oh, it's just, it was a nightmare. It was a great course. You guys were great students. I was much thinner then. Other than that, Marin, I don't remember much. They didn't buy me a drink or a lunch. I remember that.

Yeah, we absolutely loved it. And it was funny being around with the 1/4 because 1/4 (1st Battalion, 4th Marines) thought we were all MPs. It's like, "Look, man, I'm sorry, can I, am I allowed to cuss? No, no, no, I've been trying to hold it back. You're just not allowed to say 1/4." "Yeah, yeah, the only thing you can't say." I was like, "Look, man, we're not that kind of poke, all right? So calm down a little bit." Because I had spent most my time in the field and artillery as a radio operator. And it's funny as they said, "There 1/4 is having calm issues." And I walked up, and I said, "You guys want the MP to handle your radio for you?" Because we were in the field. Oh my God. Like, "What?" And I was like, "Look, I'm almost 621 (MOS 0621: Field Radio Operator). I'm a radio operator." Yeah, they're like, "Oh, okay, well, you're on radio watch, Mikey."

So, Marin, you remember those, you remember those classes in the early days, everybody was voluntold. So nobody had any idea what they were getting into. Everybody showed up and they were all uncomfortable because they had to bring bag and baggage. You guys had TA-50 (organizational clothing and individual equipment), weapons, everything. So they had gear guards everywhere they went. The building was always too small, and that ended up having some people sitting on like MRE (Meals Ready-to-Eat) cases and stuff. There was only ever one latrine, and it was always a male latrine. And then there was the little PX (Post Exchange). I don't know what the Marines call them, if that's the right term or something. But there was a little PX, and it was like three or four barracks down. And everybody took lunch at the same time. So these guys would come back and they're all pissed, and nobody had food, nobody had water. Or it was like the gym was the back wall of where we were teaching. So you heard the Marines in there with some music, pumping iron, and running and screaming. But you've you've got to admit, because you know that we're a cheap date, Brady, you got to admit, I'll let you tell me, were you able to utilize any of the information out of that course like immediately? Because that was our goal. Our goal was that you were going to walk out the back door and immediately start going, "Bing, bing, bing, I've got it!"

I'm absolutely glad you asked that because I couldn't wait to tell you all the shit I've done since then.

Oh my God. Even a broken clock, Brady. Even—oh my God.

So anyway, yeah, so we got that class. I get the first part is they as a sergeant, they're like, "Hey, we don't put you in patrol, but you got to go on the gates first. Learn LEO (Law Enforcement Officer) procedure and stuff like that." Let me be honest and clear. I am a shit MP. I was a shit LEO.

"Great Marine." My fit reps are like, "You're a damn great Marine. You're a damn L.E.O."

Yeah, and the reason why is because I just didn't like the job, but I understood MPs, like from an objective standpoint, why MPs get a bad rep. And I'll explain that later on, just from an objective, yeah, as an anthropologist, as a Marine anthropologist, just looking in on these guys. But oftentimes, we had the gate, looking at things, and observing, and I was trying to teach the lance corporals and PFCS (Private First Class) that were MPs fresh out of school, like, "Here's a different way to look at things. Here's an objective way of looking at things. When someone's coming through a gate, it's a Gunny (Gunnery Sergeant). He may not have his ID, but trust me, he's not there to blow the damn place up. Let the guy through so he can go on about his business." So, and observe people, like being drunk on drugs, behavior cues, and stuff like that. Difference between a guy having a bad day and a guy that has intent to mess up the base, you know, and things like that. So we use that.

But about a year later, exactly about a year from the Combat Hunter's course, I'm on control finally. I'd been taken off patrolling the first day because I backed into some broken tail light, and I put me back on the gate. Yeah, anyway. So I'm finally back on patrol again, and they gave me a call and said, "Hey, we need you. We need to go to 20, the ammo dump area." Or it wasn't ammo dump. It was by Horno (Camp Horno, Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton), I think, and Camp Horno. And my wife, and they said, "Well, the snipers are out there playing around, and they saw a bunch of people downrange that they didn't want to shoot." And it's been known that coyotes will come on base and drop off immigrants, trying to get around the five (Interstate 5), the checkpoint there. Absolutely. Dropped off a bunch of immigrants on base. And so they're out there, and they'd already had started. And they called me because, "Hey, you're the Combat Hunters course, right?" Like, "Yeah." "So you know how to track?" I'm like, "Well, not an expert, but yeah, I can, I can, I can fake my way through it, sure."

So, we get up there, and they brought in the new, the new watch commander and a couple guys, and I literally set them up like a combat tracking team. We set them up. I was the tracker. They were flanked on our side. And we actually spent, we tracked them about five or six miles before it finally found them. It was all grass, shine, and stuff like that. It was, it was easy. We popped up, and there were like seven immigrants, and one spoke an indigenous Yucatec language. She didn't speak Spanish, and she had a baby attached to it. It was, it was really heartbreaking. I mean, they had gone so far, you know, aside from politics and stuff like that, like I just, I felt honestly like, "Wow, okay, this is a rough day for them." So the lieutenant next to me, he spoke a little bit of Spanish. And so he's talking to, we get there, and then before Border Patrol got there, because it's on base, and Border Patrol isn't going to try and do L.E. on base. They're just going to come there, pick them up, and take them out. And we started asking, interrogating them—not interrogating, but asking them, "Who dropped you off? What did the vehicle look like?" They said, "Oh, it was a big box truck. It had a left lean," and this, that, so and so forth.

So we patrolled that area for the next week, profiling—combat profiling, being clear about that one—because people get upset when you say "profile." I actually want to talk about that later. You guys brought up, and I try to talk to other people, the difference between, like, racial profiling and actual profiling, which people give a bad rap to. But so we're profiling every truck, and then one day, there's a truck going down, a real slow, going down the highway, and it's got a real tight left lean in the box truck. We've seen trucks all week long, and that was the one. So we're like, "All right, what can we do? What kind of probable cause can we find to pull this guy over and actually get in his business?" And we're following the phone, following the phone, and he blew a red, I know it was a blown stop sign. I'm like, "Boom, probable cause!" Smoked him. Pulled him right over. And I walk up to his truck, and I go, "Hey, bud." He goes, "Okay." And I go, he goes, "Before," and he goes, "Here you go, man." I'm like, "Oh, you speak English? Amazing." As a contractor on base, to get those contractor IDs, you have to speak English. You have to know actual English tests and stuff like that. So I knew right off the bat he was playing dumb with me, which I didn't appreciate. So now it's going to be a bad day.

And I go, "What's going on, man?" He goes, "Uh, you know, trying to tell me in this." And I was like, "Oh, I pulled you over because you didn't stop at the stop sign. I noticed that you guys have a really hard lean, and on base, you know, you have to have a certain standard of operable equipment to be a contractor on base. I know that. So let's go ahead and inspect your vehicle." And he goes, "Oh, do you want to see the back? I can open the back for you." I'm like, "I didn't ask about that, but now that you're talking about it, sure, I'd love to." It's kind of like when you ask a kid if his room's clean. He's very eager to show it to you because his room is actually clean because he's got nothing to hide. And so they opened it up. It was a bunch of Gatorade bottles thrown everywhere back there. He's like, "Oh, I just got done with the delivery." Well, usually Gatorade bottles are a little bit more organized, no matter if it was done with a delivery. You still have the product stacked nicely. It's just everywhere back there. We ended up turning the information over CID (Criminal Investigation Division), and what happened was that. But that was actually we used Combat Hunter's course and the profiling and the tracking all in one.

Marin, you know what he didn't tell you, what Pesola didn't tell you, is it was complicated that day tracking because, you know, right down from Horno, you got MarSac (Marine Security Augmentation Company) and Von Herbulos. Guys wouldn't stop shooting. They still wanted to get their BZO (Battle Sight Zero) done and everything. So they were having to duck and weave like users out on the range. Yeah, damn Marines.

But it was a lot of fun. I was glad I got to put it to use. And then after that, you know, going to college, went through the police academy and stuff like that. Actually created a survival school. Within that survival school, we're teaching all different modalities and stuff like that. And we were teaching human tracking, land navigation, and then people wanted to learn, you know, how to go out and talk to people, how to profile people, and how to look at them, get information. They want to approach them and start a conversation. And so we're actually taking people out and teaching that for, for a while, we didn't do a lot just because I was a firearms instructor. And within even firearms, as a fire instructor at GlockStore, we were, I was taking people and teaching that information, doing home defense courses, and observing their neighborhood. Looking to see who in their neighborhood could be a threat, who's gathering intel on them. Not trying to make them paranoid or anything like that. But like, hey, you know, if you're in a gated community, and you have gardeners, gardeners have access to that property and have access to the community. They know, and they are the weak point in your security. So if a gardener is giving intel to somebody, you might want to break in or something like that. Not to say that, and that's aside from race or anything like that. But it's just, that's the weak point. So we're teaching people that as well. So I've used your behavior course pretty much every other day since the class. And even executive protection now, when I'm with my client walking out in public, I'm observing people's faces. I'm observing, I'm using heuristics, proxemics, biometrics, and atmospherics and things like that to determine whether the person in front of me, or in the crowd where my client is, is a threat to him. And it's not even that someone might want to be a threat. It's if, you know, he bumps into somebody, or if he's walking through a crowd and someone just gets a wild hair up their ass or something like that. I'm obviously always observing the crowd. I'm always observing the atmospherics and determining whether, because executive protection, you know, they say the moment we put our hand on a weapon or we go hands-on, we've already failed our job. We're supposed to anticipate and stuff.

Yeah, and that's, I'm glad you said that. Being "left of bang." I hate to use that term because there was a certain book written about it. Didn't really care.

That's all right. Listen, those guys are great. If, if you had a size up that I would liken it to Chitty Karaoke, they don't know, so they have to sing somebody else's song. But I praise them for being Marines, and I thank them for their service, buddy.

Yeah. Oh, yeah, as a fellow Marine, I look at them like blue falcon. I read the book, and it wasn't bad, but to me, it kind of just missed the mark from what I experienced in class.

Yeah, every time I see somebody with one, like I'll go through the airport or something, and it's still a popular book because it's a great title. God, whoever came up with those words, hey. And so whenever I see anybody with them, I'll always sign their book. And then they'll, they'll be stymied for a minute, and then I'll explain to you what's going on. You say, "Hey, do you remember that we did have, we did do a task force once down on the border?" And like all the Border Patrol guys in the task force came in with the book on the last day, and Greg, they did, Greg sat at a table and they did a book signing. It was hilarious. It was their idea.

Yeah, they wanted it. They thought it was hilarious.

They were like, "That's so funny!" And so it was, it was good. But kind of getting into what you talk about, because like, you know, using that skill set. And everyone talks about, and I don't use some of these terms just because I don't know what they mean anymore because they all get used differently. Like, like the Gray Man, the situational awareness, and this. It's like, "All right, man." Like, I always tell people, "Well, it's it's it's kind of grown, but people are interested in it." But a lot of people are out there. It's kind of like when people are interested in like, "Hey, I just got a gun, what do I need to do?" And then every prior military dude has their own shooting company, and they're like, "You got to be running this. You got to do your drills. And then you're doing this." And I'm like, "Dude, what are you teaching them? Like, in what, what situation are they going to be ever where they need to use that?" And it's the same thing with, I get into the situation awareness stuff. I always like tell people like, "Hey, what do I need to do?" I was like, "All right, here's what I want you to do for the next week is do not look at your phone unless you're sitting in the safety of your house. If you can do that for one week straight, for one week straight, come back to me, tell me everything you saw, and then we'll, I'll give you the next thing to do." And then like most of them can't even do it. And then the ones that do are like, "Holy crap, I saw this and this and this and this." It's like, "Yep, there you go." That is what, that's what 99% of the population needs. Now, if you're in some role, you know, your law enforcement, your executive protection, your operations at a big facility, you do security, you manage employees. Like there's different things you can do and learn, I think that, yeah, you're going to want to get some training. And just reading a book or an article isn't always the best, you know. But it can, you know, stimulate kind of a way to look at it or a mindset. So I want to get into you, like with what you do with the Gray Man Project, and kind of why that's important to you. I know you kind of briefly explained it right when we, when we started, but kind of give me some, like, what, what, what's the purpose of this, this, this Gray Man concept, and how I like how you define it, and what, why should that be important to me? What do I need to, like, why should I be thinking about blending in with my surroundings or even thinking about some of the basic preparation stuff that you talk about? So kind of give us a little bit about that.

Basically, like you said before, you know, it's a mindset. And just about everything we do in our life, whether philosophy we practice, ideology, religion, politics, everything that we do is set on a certain type of mindset. Within mental health, being a Marine, being Marine is a mindset. So mindsets allow us the opportunity to get along. These humans are, we are social, inherently social creatures. As much as we try and say, "Man, I'd love to be out in the woods for a month and without anybody around." After a couple weeks, you're like, "Damn, I'm bored, man," you know what I mean? So it's like, we're social creatures, and in order for us to really get along and survive, we have to survive in social settings. It's why I, I preach to people about social awareness. And unfortunately, in this day, we hear things like social justice, and people use social pressure to force people because we as human beings want to be accepted. We don't want to be pushed outside the fringe. We don't want to be excluded from the crowd in the group. And unfortunately, we are dependent as human beings to be part of that as much as we don't want to, as much as we hate to admit that we, we, we don't want to be part of the crowd. Instinctively, we want to be within the tribe, and that goes all the way back to our survival as, as you know, hominids, growing up into anatomically modern humans, to who we are now.

And I'll start off with an analogy on survival and adaptation to a scientific aspect. And I'm a nerd for anthropology. I'm a nerd for human evolution and cultural anthropology, and the two can be combined to allow humans to study each other along with philosophy. And I'll talk about that later. But the one comparison I would make, and we'll get into the Gray Man concept, I'm working my way there, I tend to beat around the bush a little bit. But it goes back to the simultaneous existence of anatomically modern humans and Neanderthals. We existed at the same time. Neanderthals and people would talk about, you know, whether one killed each other off, or how Neanderthals died out and stuff like that. But if we look, we are the only sole surviving hominid species now today. Neanderthals were our closest cousins. In fact, they call them Homo Neanderthalensis now because they actually have a more human type of aspect than what they were thought to be. But back then, they survived based on morphology, and we survived based on cultural aspects. We survived as a culture versus their morphological features. Neanderthals were morphologically adapted for a cold environment in Europe. They had thicker, denser muscles and thicker bones, allowed them to be able to trample the ground, go long distances, and hunt and throw long spears and atlatls and things like that to be able to kill big animals and quite a lot of strength to be able to do that for days on end.

Human beings were like, "Okay, that's cool, guys are doing that. There's an easier way to go about that life." And so they started doing different things, developing different tools, and using better, more intelligent ways of doing things. And they adapted culturally to their environment. So when the Ice Age had started coming through, they had pushed out the animals, started pushing out the, and Neanderthals weren't much more for like eating plants. It was a waste of time, calorically speaking, it's a waste of time to eat plants. Yeah. And they also didn't have the know-how. They were just like, "Kill that big thing with four legs and eat that thing." Versus anatomically modern humans were like, "Okay, there's no food around. We need to figure out what around us we can eat." And they say that we are culturally adapted because of the clothing style. We human beings tend to be a bit more fashionable. Back then, we actually they found bone needles with anatomically modern humans that gives the indication now we had sewn a stitch versus they had kind of put together their own clothing and stuff like that. So when the Ice Age came through, the food started going away, and the Neanderthals started dying out. And as you see in the DNA, like you'll find like in Germans and French people and and Europeans, you'll start to see a small amount of Neanderthal DNA. So you see that they started breeding them out and stuff like that. So you can see where one adaptation failed—morphological adaptation had failed versus cultural adaptation. That's like cultural adaptation. We, humans, we need that cultural adaptation to survive in just about every environment we're in, and that includes tribal survival and social survival. And without social survival, human beings tend to go on the fringes, and they don't last too long, and their mental health declines and degrades.

So with The Gray Man Project, what we're doing is we're teaching people social survival to be able to move into a social environment and look at it, study the people using the techniques that you guys have taught me, and going, "Okay, when I observe a crowd, I need to learn how to walk the walk, talk the talk." And it's one thing to enter, enter into a social environment and say, and be accepted and saying, "Oh, this guy, you know, is the token person. Oh, they, they, they know us, they understand us." It's a different to be trusted. And that's where you want to be is you want to be trusted within that social group to be able to really fit in, blend in, get the resources you need for your survival, whether it's mental survival, physical survival, and then move on as you need to. So basically what you're doing is you're, you're using the skills, the Gray Man skills, to, when they say blending, because blending, they say, "Gray Man, blend in." That's all you hear all the time. There's a lot more to it, but obviously the end result is to blend in. But there's more injected into that, that method than just say "blending in." People, it's, it's the conclusion. How do you get there? And you get there by using the atmospherics, proxemics, biometrics, kinesics, and you learn how that social environment works, and then you adapt to it by walking the walk, talking the talk, even if you don't agree with it.

I teach people executive protection that when you go into an area, especially in LA, it's a very politically centered demographic. And many of us who are in the EP (Executive Protection) community tend to be the opposite because of who we are. We tend to think differently. So when you get in that environment, in order for you to survive your job, because then they find out what your politics really are, they're not going to like you, and they're going to fire you immediately because they're not going to trust you. So when you hear them talking a certain political agenda, you almost have to think like them and agree with them to a certain extent. Even if your personal feelings are different, you have to get along with that for your survival in that job.

So so, first off, that that was an incredible explanation, and this is kind of what drew me to a lot of the stuff of what you're discussing because, you know, for those listening, like you're talking about, all right, the Gray Man principles about blending in the environment, and you went all the way back to Neanderthals, and that's important because you went through, you know, anthropology and cultural anthropology to explain, meaning you're using a scientific reason of where this came from and why it's important. So you just answered those two questions and gave us a history lesson and an anthropology lesson as well. But but meaning that that's what goes into it, meaning you didn't just make this stuff up, right? You didn't just go like, "Oh, you got to do this," and "this means that," and "A equals this," and "this means that." It's like, no, nothing's that simple. Look, this is how things, and what you're talking about is, is basically at a biological standpoint, is adaptation, right? How do I adapt and and and and thrive, not just survive, but thrive in a different environment? And that does take a lot if you haven't, especially if you haven't been exposed to a different environment. So the military is a great one because you people come from all over and you're all forced to do something together, right? Whether you like each other or not. I've been at one of those clubs.

So, yeah, so in the military, though—

Yeah, yeah. You paid to get in there, too, which I did. Yeah, I paid to get out. At least I was the one getting paid when I was younger, but I'm not happy with what I had to do.

No, but but you, the idea is that that's the point. There's a reason behind it. And and we can get into the details as we go along. For example, you brought up like different political stuff. But but that what you talk about of adapting your environment is exactly what we mean. And I remember you posted something on social media saying, "Hey, what does that mean to you, Greg?" And that was my thing. It was just like adaptability. Like the ability for me to go, you know, I took it no different than I had to learn stalking in sniper school, right? So I had to learn how to veg up and wear a ghillie suit and make one and blend into my surroundings so that I can operate freely and do what I needed to do. All right, so if I just take that at a 30,000-foot view, that's all I'm doing with the stuff we teach is how do I understand this environment, blend in, so that I can do whatever it is I need to do? It doesn't have to be something, you know, as serious as a sniper mission, or it could just be going to the store in an intense time or something, right? But but that, that's what I appreciate, that that lengthy explanation because it shows you put a lot of thought into it, and it's scientific.

One thing, you have to go back. First of all, you pissed off Homo Habilis, who's out in the audience right now going, "That bastard! He never brought us up, and this is all about race or whatever." Second of all, Collier is grunting and clicking right now, shaking his computer because he's got more Neanderthal DNA than human. So that's great. Former Marine Scout Sniper, loved the guy. But what you do and what you did, you're still, and take this for exactly what I mean because I love your work and I'm a huge fan. You're still in a garage with ounce gloves swinging. That's wonderful. That means that you're eager and that you want to learn, and you know so much more than your students. So you want to pass that on. What Brian and I sometimes have to do, and certainly Shelley and the people that we work with on our side of the house, is that we've got to slow the ball down a little bit because they're already in the end zone and they, they've just noticed, "Hey, who's got the football? It's way back at the beginning."

So I'll give you a quick example of how to dumb it down for the average human. I've got a neighbor, and this is called storytelling, folks. So I've got a neighbor, and every Thursday this neighbor doesn't get, I think he's part vampire and his kids are albino, but he doesn't get up to like the crack of 7:00 p.m. So at 1900, I see a garage go up. I see him wandering around, and every Thursday this guy's got this headset with his earphones and his face mask, and he brings out this steel chainsaw looking string trimmer, right? So he's got gauntlet gloves, and he's got this this this like a bolero looking jacket with leather shoulders on, and he's got these boots. And honest to God, he does his driveway, is like a mile and a half long, and he's out there cutting sage. You see rabbits flying, all this other crap. Gravel's going, and he does that from seven until like, you know, after dark. And you're sitting there going, "Okay, here we go." So now that you know that, your house sitting for me, and you're not sure what day it is, but it's around 7:00 p.m., and you hear some noise, and you look up the hill, and you see the guy come out, and he's got the helmet on, and he's got the gas cans and everything else. A reasonable person could draw a reasonable conclusion and go, "It must be Thursday." Further, you could delve into it deeper and go, "He's probably going to string trim his driveway." You don't have to be that accurate, okay? You just have to be cognitively close enough to say, "This is probably danger, and it's unfolding fast."

Now we say three or more cues along any of those domains is more than enough because, guess what, the guy might be going to get his string trimmer fixed, and that's just how he dresses. But the idea is the more you observe, the more you know. So you used baselining as a tool in Gray Man, and that's fantastic because your theory is that the closer you are to the baseline, the less anomalous you'll be. So you can hide out in the crowd, and the crowd will accept you. And predators will look the other way. Predators will look for the peripheral vision triggering, do you, you know what I'm saying? The fast, the angle, hey, there we go, or the weak and the sick. And so therefore, you're all science all the time, and that's why as soon as Marin called, and he was like, "Hey, guess, guess who I know?" And I'm like, "Oh, you bastard!" Because there's so many posers out there, and your stuff will stand the test of time because it's science. And and you, you get where I'm going, Brian. I don't know what way to—

No, no, that, and that it's actually brings up a great point that we can start getting into some of the stuff I know that you see and we put out on social media where you're like, "That this kind of went sideways here," or "Wait, people aren't really interested." Yeah, there's a lot of different reasons for that. And and Greg just nailed it. And what you talked about is that baselining or or context, understanding context is step one before we start going down the line of, "Oh, this could mean this," or "This could be that," or "This." It's like, "Wait, wait, context." What is the context for which we're making this observation? And that's what the baseline is, right? If I'm going to make a comparison, right, if I'm going to see something that I think is odd, well, it's it's everything is subjective, and I have to, it's all relative, meaning it's odd compared to something, right? So so things aren't just odd on their own, they're odd compared to a baseline, right? And so so that understanding of the context and the baseline is hugely, hugely, hugely important. And that's the part that I think people need to focus on mastering first because if you just focus on understanding the context better, really just sense making, right, the anomalies will not only be more obvious, right, but but will be understandable, I think. I don't know. Do you kind of get where I'm going with that?

Well, you're absolutely correct, and I try and press upon people to use less emotional reasoning and use more logical reasoning, using illogical steps and try and put it past those biases they already have. Because a lot of people have their own training experience. You know, law enforcement community, people say, "Based on my training experience," and then they draw a conclusion. Well, you have to almost put some of that past where it's, where there's an emotional experience, an emotional bias, and put that aside and go, "Okay, if I'm reading the situation within the context of what I see, what can I logically deduce? What specifically do I see?" Is, you can see like some of those pictures I post up. Someone will post like some, they'll just grab from the sky and go, "Boom, there's what I see." I'm like, "That's not at all what I was getting at, Dad." Like, "All right, let's let's let's break this down a little bit more." You're absolutely correct. It takes a little bit more, I feel, patience teaching this stuff to people because they come in it with this already sense of like authority instead of being humble and expressing some humility. They come at it with this cocky, "I know this already" kind of thing, or "I already have a sense of knowledge because I'm a man," because, you know, you see guys like, "I was in law enforcement 20 years," or "I was a Marine, I did this and that." And they already come with a sense of authority. It's like, "All right, let's let's let's take that back. Let's let's erase the damn whiteboard a little bit and throw some stuff on there for you, for you to to read and take in."

And said, what do they call it? Is it the Dunning-Kruger syndrome where you, you know, you know just enough to sound like an expert, but you really don't know enough that you're wrong? Yeah, that's what—go ahead, Greg.

Yeah, no, no, here's the thing, Brady. What you just framed in, in, in short order, is what happened in our nation over the last few months with law enforcement. Oh my God. The problem never started with law enforcement. The problem never started with racism. There's a whole bunch of complicating factors. We could do a series of shows on that. But what happened is now when the microscope came down, coppers have a mission, and forever, coppers, since Appeal, coppers have had a very specific mission and a set of parameters: a left and right lateral limit, a limit of advance. So when a copper shows up at the scene, the shit's already hit the fan. And so when they come up, what are they? They're declarative knowledge gurus, and they're going, "You stand over there. The next time I come back to this, everybody on the other side of this line, they have to be in certain environments." Now you have that, and that creates a confirmation bias that you're the guy, that you're the "shell answer man." Male, female, doesn't matter. Color doesn't matter because people are ready to jump on that stuff. I heard you talk for 15 minutes on a diatribe about the history of the social anthropology and cultural anthropology, and you never once said "white, black." Do you get what I'm trying to say? You said a region. You said an area of the planet. But you don't need to go that deep. If you come up and your cup is already full and you're already on transmit, guess what you've just done to the environment. So you avoid that.

And you have to de-escalate that in the training back in the day because training has evolved except for those people that that stagnated because they said, "Hey, we'll just do Combat Hunter in its original form as it was taught," which was fine for that deployment. But it's grown. But we used to have to walk into the room, and here you'd have all these Tier One operators ready to bite you, and they want to chew your head off. And I'd have to walk in and go, "Hey, look, can we cut through the dick measuring and get to some training?" Everybody would bust out laughing, and we would be there, you know what I'm saying? Because the idea is that if they come in with bravado, and I love what you do, I couldn't do it because like when you're posting stuff, first of all, I can't do it, meaning I can't, I have no knowledge of social media whatsoever, or how one would post something. But the second thing is I see all those posers putting up the vid. And the vid, there was one just a few months ago, Brian, remember I, I, I asked you, "Oh, how do we save this?" And I couldn't say that. I still don't understand LinkedIn. But a guy came up with a big flowered bag right in there. Was inner perimeter security. Walked right past him and everything. Pulled out this butcher knife that was this big and stabbed the hell out of the guy and his and his old lady. And I don't remember what they were, but they were like the Korean Ambassador to the Philippines. But it doesn't matter. None of that stuff matters to me. What matters to me is the guy was at bang. Going, "See, listen, bang." Stevie Wonder can see what the hell, who's going to call out at bang? The idea is how far with one bullet, one question, one set of Flexcuffs (restraints), one phone call, how far to the left of that bang could you have stopped that? Could you have mitigated it? Could you have changed that? That's what intrigues me about your stuff because as similar as it is, it's different because your perspective is different. Your perspective is about, "Look, I can survive longer in plain sight if I'm out there wearing a camo backpack and have only one arm tatted up," you get what I'm trying to say? "And I'm left-handed, I'm telegraphing to the world that I'm the guy you kill first." So we just use a different frequency, a different bandwidth because what we're looking for is pre-event indications of danger from the predator. You get what I'm trying to say? And you're taking it from the perspective of the human on the street going to the 7-Eleven. So there's so many similarities because it was born of the same science, and that's humbling, and that's also complementary to to both programs. Huge fan. Love what you're putting on there. I can't stand criticism clearly because my ego is so huge. But any time that I see those shitty vids come up, we're right at bang. Somebody points at him. Honest to God, Helen Keller screaming at the computer, "I know what's going on!" So how do you deal with it? So it's like psychologically, how do you, because Brian's my, I beat Brian up all the time. "Did you see what they posted?" And Brian has to peel me back off the fence.

You know what I love about Brian and I? We'll, I'll post things or he'll post things, and you'll see the comments on there, and we try to go back at it very logically with the person. We'll try and hold back to going, "God, you're a damn idiot!" Okay. You know, actually, I like what you said here, but here's a different perspective, and we'll, we'll talk to them. You know, "I see what you've done here," and it's it's one of those things, it's like, "Okay, pull it back." It's just a lot of patience, especially. I have to deal with a lot of patience with, with especially the veteran community because I deal with veterans constantly who are hyper-emotional, which I just wish they weren't. I would like them to go back to a more logical, lethal mindset. But a lot of veterans now are in this hyper-emotional state, ready to just jump on this, this, this trigger, this, that, so on and so forth. So dealing with veterans, you have to approach it from the mentor mentality of saying, "Okay, let's look at this day differently. Like this way, buddy. You start off the compliment and say, 'Okay, this is great. I like that you're thinking about this. Now let's twist the 180 a little bit and look at a different way from an objective standpoint because when you're using it is a, or the way you're saying this, looking at this, is from an emotional bias point. So let's go objectively here.'" And so with the Gray Man community, I try and use, because within the Gray Man, you have all these different types of people. And Gray Man idea had come from preppers, from the, and their idea, the original idea for the Gray Man was like, "The world has ended."

Yeah, you got all these things, and now you got to blend in with these group to get resources. Yeah, yeah, it's a Mad Max idea.

And other people say, "You know, I've seen this video where a guy was like, 'Unless you were special, super underwater scuba sniper Jedi and special forces, this, that, so on, so forth, unless you've been a combat, you're not a damn Gray Man.'" It's like, "I don't think you understand what Gray Man is. It's a mentality. It's an idea to take this and look at things differently. You're not just looking here. You're using your peripheral. You're looking around that guy robbing that bank, that guy placing that IED, that guy that shot that Marine with a piece of crap SKS and only had one bullet." All of those guys were Tier One operators. Right now, that's a totally the wrong attitude.

It's taught, though, isn't it? Isn't it media and apps and stuff?

Yeah, you know, like you, you've brought up an example of like, you know, "Hey, in the veteran community, I see this," and and you do, but I mean, we see that everywhere, right? It's a very emotional reaction, especially how we interact on social media. It doesn't leave a lot of room for structured conversation. There's, I'm taking out context and text, too.

Well, but that's why we, we're learning this, right? That's assuming an attitude, right?

That's right. That's why, that's but that's why like emojis and memes and all the, that's why those exist because it puts context to what you're saying. Like, you know, I can send you a text and you can read it seven different ways. But now we've got little emojis or GIFs or whatever to express whatever. And I said a lot of "whatever." Yeah, it was in a lot of "whatever," but it gets right to the point. But what, and one of the things, you know, you talk about, "Oh, we come in with our own biases," and that's true. And Greg always likes to say, like, you know, "All humans, we all have a very fragile ego system." But but we all do, right? So so in some ways, I'm really good at at processing information and look at it critically. But then sometimes when someone says something, I get really pissed when I shouldn't. So we all do in some different ways. So so ideas is, you know, using it in in every area of your life. And and with all this stuff, one of the things Greg and I boil it down to, and you probably do this similar way, is especially dealing with what you have to deal with in executive protection because when people forget to or haven't done anything like that, like I've never done, I haven't done a lot of executive type protection because one, it blows. You know, that I mean, just I don't want to deal with, I don't want to babysit someone. Like, I'll go, Brian's homeless. Which I'll go to whatever number of executives. I'll go to whatever country with a team of dudes. That's fine. Like I'll go to the high threat stuff all day long because it's honestly, it's easier. But so but but the idea is, one of the things is we always boil stuff down to is like, "Hey, first of all, what is someone's intent? What are they trying to do here?" Like what it, what that, because that's what's in one, that's what's important. All humans demonstrate intent. You know, we don't just wander around outside on the streets unless we have some, you know, mental health or drug interaction. You just don't wander around, you go somewhere for a reason, right? So everyone in some capacity demonstrates intent, and I need to focus on that. Because, you know, looking at what they're wearing or the color of their skin or what language they're speaking doesn't necessarily tell me anything or their religion, right? That doesn't, you, and you could say some horribly awful things and think that, but that doesn't mean you're ever going to do anything. I mean, right? So so if we, we get out of this and that, that allows us to then go, "Well, what, what information do I really need?" You know, I always love it when, because we always say, you know, like bumper stickers and the type of car you drive and the way you drive, all that stuff. It screams what's important to you, but it doesn't necessarily tell me what you're about to do, right? It tells people—

It doesn't matter when it comes to intent or precedent. It doesn't show me or demonstrate any logical step towards that. Okay? You know, you can be an ass in public, and you have the right to say whatever you want to do. But that doesn't mean that I have to take a defensive posture and start getting the principal to the the getaway vehicle. And that's the big problem is there's so many, it's so easy to access shitty information now. Do you remember before, like if you wanted to read up on, let's say the Central Intelligence Agency under Colby, you had to go to the library and get out a book and go and do some actual reading about that and talk to people and show up. Now everybody's a pundit. Everybody's a journalist, you know? And that speaks directly, Brady, too, when you were talking about profile. Do you have any idea how much crap that I had to get go through when I was saying, "Well, I'm a human behavior profiler." Oh my God, horrible thing. You get what I'm trying to say? They were tearing down my statue. They were terrorists. That's a big statue, and I made that son of a gun.

I've actually sat and talked to people about stereotyping and profiling and said it's, if people use that word as a pejorative and they, they sound like it's a bad thing. I was like, "Look, stereotyping is a tactical shortcut. Profiling is a human survival condition. You're using human experience in the past." Look, if I go walk down the street and I see somebody dressed a certain way—I'm not being pointed here, I'm saying if someone's dressed a certain way and they attack another person, my mind stores that information. What they look like, what they're wearing, how it was worn, colors they wear, color their skin, how their hair's worn. Everything is stored right there because now my brain associates every information about that person with violence. So now I'm walking down the street years later, and all of a sudden the spidey senses tickle and they go, "Uh, something's going on here." Well, I look down the street and see a guy, and all of a sudden I get a tingly feeling. What my brain is telling me is like, "Okay, there are features about this person that associate with that one time you witnessed violence. That is stereotype." And that's taking those information. That's so when we, we automatically profile people. And you know, if I'm walking down the street and I see my my spidey senses tingle and look at that person, I'm going to avoid that situation. I don't give a damn about your feelings about what you think is racist or sexist or bad. I'm moving on. What my brain is telling me in a danger profiling is a survival instinct. Your brain does it automatically. If I see a tiger, I know that that guy has potential to attack and maul me. I'm going to avoid it. It's not because I hate the tiger. It's not because I I don't like the tiger. I'd love to go to the tiger and pet it and cuddle with it. But I know it's got big cuddly paws that want to rip my face open. So I'm going to avoid situations in which I see danger. And so when we talk to people about The Gray Man Project, about being Gray Man self, it's taking and now observing your biases, breaking it down into logical functions so that way you can say, "Okay, well, my spidey senses are tingling. Why is it tingling? How can I look at the situation? Is it, is it logical for me to approach a situation with fear or or not? Can I, can I avoid my emotional bias right here and observe this?" "Okay, I'm going to walk down the street and I see this person. Now I already know I associate that with danger. Is this danger to me now?" I'm going to take all this other science and information and apply that. And that's where people don't understand about profiling. Yes, it's real instinct, but we can also break it down logically and apply it with science.

So so, folks that are listening, folks that are watching, fans of the show, fans of Brady, fans of who the hell ever you are. He's talking about reticular formation, which is electrochemical neurotransmitters in the brain that work with your amygdalic responses to your environmental triggers. The entire back of your head is your visual field. You've got olfactory to smell decay to to trigger the warning that there may be a predator in the area. All of these things could help a police department right now because just because the person called 911 and reported a suspicious person, you don't have to operate on what that person at 911 said. You should operate on the baseline that you create with your observations. Certainly if somebody's on a knee loading an RPG, we're not talking about that crap. Save that for your your blog post. What we're talking about is that copper has to come up and take a look at the situation and he has to say, "Hey, listen, that's the person they reported. Let's watch for a minute and see if there's any pre-event indications of violence, artifact and evidence, and support." I'm, I'm taking Gray Man, and I'm just looking at the obverse. I'm just looking at the opposite side of the same coin that we're talking about, and that would lessen so many instances that are going on. We have file folders. Some of our file folders are corrupt. Doesn't matter to the brain when it comes up. The brain acts on that information. Some of them may be linked to latent racial fear that happens sometime in your life. If that does happen and it triggers an electrochemical response, that's outside of your purview, but you can avoid it. You can prevent against it with training for the real event and with your observation skills. Listen, a person that doesn't make eye contact doesn't necessarily mean he's a terrorist at the airport. He could be a campesino (rural farmer or peasant in Latin America). Do you get what I'm saying?

Exactly, and it's a cultural thing.

So what we say is never rush to put a round peg in a square hole and always develop an architecture for your perceptions and how you convey those perceptions. And that's what sometimes I don't want to just go into police agencies. But I mean, to me, it sticks out like a calligrapher in Portland, right? That that if we don't know how to operate within our environment, then it's going to be abrasive. And the more times it's abrasive, it's either going to make a pearl, which is really rare, you get what I'm saying? Or somebody's going to punch in the mouth, right? Or try to run you down with a car. So what I like about yours is is, and Brian, I really want to touch on that aspect.

Yeah, yeah, there's more, more factors that were related to psychological de-escalation in Brady, Brady's work than in in other works that we've seen recently. Does that make sense?

Yeah, and that's that's kind of what when I get into this. And and, you know, we call a lot of these things psychological de-escalation. That's a that's an internal and an external skill set, right? You know, you have to be able to de-escalate yourself. And like, Brady, you talk about, "Hey, you're, you're letting," everyone has a different way to articulate this, right? So you're like, "Hey, you're letting your emotions get into that." And you're like, "Okay." And then some people like you're like, "All right, well, I'm going to study about stoicism." It's like, okay, that, yeah, that's a that's a good way to understand that slice of the pie, right? Or that's a good way you can you can go down that rabbit hole, or we can go down this area, or we can talk about this Dunning-Kruger effect, or we can talk about ego. It's just we just boil, we always just boil that down to like biology, man. Like, look, it's all about survival, right? So if everything's about survival, not just for ourselves, but the group as a whole, right? Exactly. Brought it up like, "Don't try best to make it to the finish line." We, yeah, we don't, we don't keep going if it if just Brian makes it, we need a whole bunch of other people, right? That's an ugly tribe. That's important.

I, I wouldn't I wouldn't tribe. Yeah, I think they already did that. Wouldn't they call Meerkat Manor? Didn't they do that experiment before? I'm just saying. There he goes. Exactly.

That's a good point. It's it's the fitness of the species as we go along and learn. And I, you know, when we use the terms like the Dunning-Kruger, and we understand the terminology, we can, I, I feel that we can begin to really understand and break down why we are the way we are. And I think the more that we study ourselves as human beings, as individuals, and who we are, social creatures, the more we can begin to really understand what makes us tick and how we can fight some of the negative human aspects of who we are.

How much more alike we are, not how different we are, Brady. You hit on that all the time, and and I see that in your work, and I see that on the vids that you're posting, where you're talking to people because the mindset, like Brian, I don't know if I can bring up that that program that the Marine Corps had. What was that? Not KOKO. What what was the name of the, that might have been it. That were there, the cultural, I think it was KOKO. They may still have it. But but the thing was that that we were getting these before we were going into Iraq. When Iraq was really tactical. Iraqi or something.

Yeah, yeah.

But but it was more than that because we had this thing that we had to put on our sleeve, and it showed all the different tribes and which religion they were, and it was in in hard plastic that you had to put on the what's that one-piece bodysuit that I look like a gosh-darn idiot. And you guys were there.

A onesie?

No, no, but you Marines had it and they said, "We wear this because it's fireproof." And you can imagine how big I look, you know. And so I had this tape that you had a flight suit, and I had one that was taped over here that said the different districts, and then I had the one that they were telling me about the flags, and then the other was telling me about the colors. They had me so bamboozled my first trip to Iraq that that my own survival was second best, right? I, I wasn't even thinking about that. Then I started going, "Hey, wait a minute. I've got a personal security detachment. Not every Marine gets that." So that's kind of sucky because I owe it to those guys to be doing what I was paid to do, which is teaching them how to pay attention. And the idea is sometimes we can flood the net with the useless. None of that crap matters when it comes down to intent. Now if you got the time to deep dive, and you've got the time to cut down an environment and stuff, it's wonderful. Secret Service just did it today with a report that was only two years late after the FBI's talking about that, you know, shooters. Two-thirds of all active shooters, school shooters, mass murder shooters, project pre-event indications that were brought up at some point, and nobody acted on. Well, that's a function of training and leadership. So we can go after this. I'm totally with you that we can go after this. So the logical question is, why do people fight training when it's not about muzzle washing and shooting and ramming doors and blowing stuff up? Why are we sitting here talking to you rather than teaching a course somewhere? What, what's the matter with humans that they don't take that seriously enough, Brady?

That's a good question, and I honestly think people are just lazy. You know, it's like when you read a text message, you get a text message, you, you skim over it, and you miss things. And people really actually skim over that when people make a long Facebook post and stuff like that. I immediately tell them, "I didn't read all into that." You know, if you can't give me the first two lines, we're inherently lazy. We want to know the cool guy stuff, too. No one wants to know the science behind it. No one wants to know the "Boyd Index" or the nerd stuff behind it. They just want to do. When I was a firearms instructor, I'm teaching people muscle memory, but I couldn't, I, I've heard "muscle memory, muscle memory, muscle memory" throughout my Marine Corps career. You know, why am I putting center mass? Why am I putting the gun up here? What's the reason behind it? Why am I doing this? For me, I always wanted to know why. And a lot of people don't want to know why enough. They just want to say, "I'm going to do this. This is what we're going to do, and I'm just going to do it." I want people to know the science behind it. I want people to look at things more intelligently. I wish people would look at things with more intelligence behind it. And people, like I said, are just, I think are too lazy to really do that. And it takes a charismatic instructor, much like yourself, and much like Brian, to really just catch people's attention. And you've got to want to know the knowledge, too. And people oftentimes now, they just want to be told. They don't want to seek out food.

Which is okay. That doesn't, that doesn't exhibit a lack of critical thinking. That just says, "Hey, listen, I recognize you as the SME (Subject Matter Expert), the subject matter expert in this in this arena. Lead me. Help me because I, I need that." When it comes to working out, I, I, Marin and I are in Denver a couple of weeks ago, and we're doing some stuff, and I felt really good because I'm working out. We're hauling ass. We're parking a long way away, you know, doing all the stuff to try to get back down to 500 pounds, you know? And then so we go out to dinner, and I order two orders of veg because I didn't want the french fries, and I ordered the fish. And Marin just lambasted me right in the chin. He goes, "Hey, you got fried fish." So for him, that ruined everything. "You fat bastard!" You know? So I need that in my life. I need Marin to bring me back down to real and say, "How are we doing on that assault bike?" So that's okay, though, because that shows a tribal mentality. That shows you want to be a part of it. What I see coming off of you is you've got this hard edge, and people that don't know you wouldn't understand that you're completely, you have restraint. You demonstrate the restraint. You demonstrate intelligence, but you also come across with empathy. And I know that you criticize emotion, but more of your amygdala messages are sent out to trigger emotions. Why? Because emotions like heat, it's the quickest way to get a human to get somewhere and do something, right? But you emotionally trigger empathy.

Yeah, it is useful, but you can't let it get in the way, and you can't let it overwhelm you like PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder).

So, I just want to say one thing, Brady, if you haven't seen Brady, you haven't seen what he's putting out there, I would definitely say take a minute and do that because I honestly think that the more facets—look, this is one Fabergé egg. It's all about science. And it doesn't matter which little window you're looking through, it's all the same. You come to the same exact conclusions that we have. I would suspect that anybody would except for the posers that still are going, "Who, who was Erasmus? What's calculus? You know, Gerksdots? And who's he?" But I, I really suggest anybody go take a look at Brady's work because it's just different. Like, like you endorse stuff. We don't endorse stuff. You go out there on the range. We don't do that because we're so far left of bang, we live at the experts like you. So so I, I hope folks understand that we stay in that niche, Brian, Marin, that we stay in that laser-focused niche because that's where we operate, you know?

You guys, yeah, you guys have us, this one hell of a niche, and you guys really have one hell of a grasp of it, which is what I really expect and like about you guys. And and I actually admire both you guys, your work and what you do, and I constantly looking at you guys' posts all the time. Yeah, as much as I can. I'm sitting in a vehicle, looking at stuff with the Gray Man. It's not just about the cerebral stuff, too. It's about the tactile physical skills, too. As we, we go out and teach wilderness survival. We go out to the woods and teach people how to be able to to survive outdoors. Urban survival. We, you know, there's, I'm not going to throw names out there, but there's this community that's all about, you know, lock picking and hacking and stuff like that. And then they call it Gray Man stuff. Like, "That's not even handy during your own pack." I've seen that.

But Atlanta goes first.

Yeah, but in everyday application, you know, I carry a lock pick set with me, and I have it with me. But the only time I've ever really picked a lock is when like my boss has asked me to pick his lock for his cabinet, or someone, my old work, I used to do, like a fired employee took the key, so I had to pick the lock on on something like that. That's the reality. Like as everyday human beings, we're not as tactical as we want to be. We're not applying this tactical skills. You know, I'm not, look, as executive protection, right? I fired for years teaching shooting, stuff like that. The moment I put my hand on my gun in executive protection, I've already failed in my job. What am I doing, right? You know? So it's a lot about the mindset. We teach all these different things for that moment where you mess up because the skills that we teach for survival, well, survival skills are when something bad has happened that you can prevent. And what they say is with the right situational awareness, with the right mentality, you should be able to avoid most conflicts. Now, that's not very exciting, everyone. You know, how do you sell that to people when we're, when we're selling a Gray Man Project, we're selling boring ideas and science and stuff like that? But we have to spice it up like, "By the way, now that I showed you how to prevent from happening, now I'm going to show you to go out and absolutely mess up somebody with your pistol and shoot somebody." And which is the technical term, folks. No, that's okay. But teaching people these really cool skills, "Okay, you know, why am I teaching you human tracking?" Well, that's because you missed the pre-indicators. When they escape, now I'm teaching you how to track down and go find them, you know, hand in glove.

Hand in glove, essential skills.

Exactly. Yeah, and it's, and what the market that we're trying to appeal for is like Skylar and Hollywood. Like, "Yeah, you know what, man, I'm like, I didn't really wasn't prepared for like the coronavirus, but, you know, I got my water and I was kind of without that, you know, so I'd go find it." You know, it's teaching these people. It's like, "Look, dude, you should have a filter in your house that you can attach the faucet that way you have fresh quick drinking water, you know, should like a shortage come up." You know, "Okay, even if the power goes out, even if," you get what I'm trying to say? It's simple basic with the preparedness. It's all a preparedness mentality. With the Gray Man, it's just preparedness, fit physical preparedness because Brian sees me every morning, I go and work out with my buddy, and I want people to be more physically prepared for the environments they have to endure. The more physically fit you are, the better off you are, especially in a COVID environment, right? I mean, that that has immediate applications. And that means that your your brain will function longer. That means that you'll you'll survive wounds better. People have to think that way.

Brian, I want to tell one very, very brief story. So, Brady, I know you know where Muscatatuck (Muscatatuck Urban Training Center) is, the Muscatatuck Urban Training Center for all the high-speed stuff in Indiana. And just down, yeah, yeah, huge town, mental institution, all this other stuff that they gave the entire town, the dam, the nuclear facility, everything over. It's all training now, and it's 24/7. So there's armed robberies going on, and car chases and all this other crap. It's like, it's REMO (Realistic Military Operations) environment 101. And and so we were there, and we had a course, and the course was units, I can't even mention all the alphabet agencies and everything else. They're following us around. We're doing nothing but on the glass, never fired a shot. You know, all these scenarios that are lasting 24 hours a day back to back. I'm having to swap out instructors at the same time. In Muscatatuck, they had the plasma charge course. They had the entry, the plasma charge entry course. They had the live tissue sample where they, don't get on me, folks, that's what they do, they shoot a goat and they got to keep the goat alive, you know? And then they had there was some other course that was HELO (Helicopter) insertion, Australian rappel with a, you know, M2HB (M2 Browning heavy machine gun), you know, attached here, right? No, but the funny thing was that when the two-star got together and told everybody, "Hey, listen, these guys are on deck, and they're doing this, this Human Behavior Pattern Recognition Analysis course." No takers. When they said, "Hey, we're doing the plasma charge course," everybody left. But our Tier One guys are still in their hide positions. Everybody wants to ram a car. Everybody wants to boot a door. Everybody wants to throw in the flashbang. Nobody wants to educate.

That that's that's kind of that's a big purpose, too, right? Is what we, we want what's exciting, or give me the three things, what's the five things I need to do. And none of this is a list. It's having a plan and thinking through the situation. But but the the idea of understanding all this that that we're talking about, and I know you kind of hit on this, and a lot of the Gray Man stuff is it's as much as an internal skill set as it is an external skill set, right? And and, you know, thinking your way out of a situation is going to win every time. I mean, that's because then you'll be, you know, you might not have the answer, but you've done enough of these critical thinking exercises that you'll be able to come up with an answer to a problem, right? And, you know, with all that that resp, those are all responses. A lot of like the, you know, the shooting and the ramming doors, you know, ramming cars and booting doors, that's that is a lot of fun. But if I really focus on developing those cognitive skill sets, you know, or what people often refer to is, "Oh, like the soft skills." It's like, no, these are the all skills. Like these skills you use in life and all. But but you use those same skills, yep, when you're booting a door, when you're ramming a car, when you're shooting. Like it's that's what I'm saying, it's like those are the ancillary skills that you need to focus on. But but if the core ones are all about human behavior, not just what someone else is doing, it's it's what you're doing.

I always talk to people about like they want to learn. Everyone's like, "Oh, show me some body language stuff." Like, "All right, man. Like if if I had to compare reading human behavior to you taking a trip somewhere on an airplane, right? So you've got to drive to the airport, then you've got to get on the plane, then you've got to taxi the runway, then you've got to take off, then you've got to fly, then you've got to land, then you need to taxi the runway, and then you get." Right? Like reading body language would be like figuring out which gate to go to after you land, meaning you just, you just flew all the way there. And then like that stuff is, you're getting in the weeds, and that's so minute, and you don't even understand the context of what you're viewing it, or the baseline, right? So, and I know it's fun and people think stuff, but what you do is when you start there, that's when you get people who are like, "Oh, he's looking up and to the right and touching his nose. They're lying." It's like that.

I hate that stuff. Oh yeah.

And and, you know, and it's hard. People watch too much Lie to Me, that that show. It's not just Santo. Is they can't watch that too much of that show. Brady, we were at Liberty University, and the very first practical app Brian and I set up is we had all of these experts in human behavior and and and self-proclaimed body language experts. We had them lined up across a room from each other. What did you say? Just a couple meters, right, Brian? And they both had a chair, and then behind them were the psychological stances. And Brian and I would at random write them on a board, so like anger cues, for example. And so, well, you know, whatever the the emotional intent was, the person had to act it out without saying any words. And then the group that was behind the sign that didn't know what it was had to say it. Because we were in a course talking about human behavior pattern recognition analysis, everything was an anger cue. "Oh, look, that person. They're going to be right now. They're they're being deceptive with me, and look, they're angry." And it's like, do you understand that if everything you know you're all wrong? And once they saw that they were wrong, I'll just shorten it, cut to the chase. Once they saw that you couldn't determine a psychological stance in an austere environment with all the social and psychological and emotional baggage that humans carry, and how they interacted with other humans, and when they're at the 7-Eleven in the parking lot, if you don't have all of that stuff, all you're doing is throwing darts at a gosh darn map. And once they saw that, that was a critical change for them. And that's what I love about survival. See, the great thing about you, in a survival context, there's so many great things about Brady, folks, make sure you look them up. But in survival, if you effing fail, you die, you know what I'm saying? So if you're in wilderness survival and, and I remember a guy named Vandermolen a long time ago went into the wilderness survival and had one of those big machetes on his rock with, you know what I'm saying, where you break away the machete and you had the machete, and the first place that he put that machete was in his right leg. And he got himself just off the left of his knee and just wedged it in there, pulling it out really hard, you know, because he had never done that under stress before, and all he was going to do was cut some wood. And so they had to do a HELO and extract this guy and do, it was one of those Civil Air Patrol survival encampment kind of things like that. And this guy took himself out of the game in the first 15 minutes. And, you know, so so without the appropriate amount of training, I, I told Marin this yesterday, just joking because I was watching one of them shooting shows, and everybody on it was a Bubba ass-bag. They had no idea what they were doing. It should never be authorized to carry a gun or procreate. And I told Marin, it's like, "These guys buy a gun, but but they, it's like buying a guitar. You buy a guitar, but you don't spend any time with it or learn anything about it, and you go, 'Oh my God, I'm a damn musician!' What are you, an idiot?"

And in that, I avoid social media, man, because I just don't get it. I, I, I, I, I wasn't, if I wasn't, you know, running a business or running a nonprofit, I wouldn't be on social media. It did save me a lot of money from having to go to high school reunion because I could see everyone still sucks. Like, "Oh, you guys still suck, all right, cool. So funny."

You know what, though, I honestly think social media has its uses, especially in this type of industry, because you can see how people react online to each other and how they use certain languaging cues, how they, how they use certain behaviors.

Brian, does that, it's called Grinder. I guess I haven't looked that one up. I'm just saying I've heard that around.

But I think there's an advantage to using social media, using Instagram and Twitter for marketing, but for for understanding social behavior online because people act completely different online than they would in person. You know, people have this, this absolutely, this ability.

Yeah, because of distance.

Because you're, when you're saying something, you're saying you're saying something to their profile picture, not their actual face. You're seeing an image of who that person is, but you're not seeing their eyebrows. You're not seeing their response. You're not seeing the wrinkles in their faces when you say something completely devastating and horrible and see the reaction to it, anger. That feels, because you feel safe at your distance. You have no repercussion. Honestly, I think I, I think this society has an unhealthy lack of fear physical violence. I think people need to get popped in the face a whole lot more to understand they can't be jerks the way they used to be. Here in California, people are acting like jerks behind the wheel of their vehicle because they don't, they think they're safe behind their vehicle. They don't realize there are psychopaths on the road, and they will pull you off the road and beat your ass on the side of the road, you know? Like if you go to states like Arizona, everybody's carrying, and I haven't had one road rage incident in Arizona. I haven't seen it, to be honest with you, because they know that person might be armed in another vehicle. And so I think our society has gotten to a point that social media has allowed more courage, false courage, bravado online than they are in person because I've had people that have said, "You know what, I remember you said this thing online." They're like, "Like, yeah, I remember you said this thing online. You said something to me, but I'll give you the benefit of doubt that you're a nice person. You didn't mean that." Like, "Oh, yeah, I'm so sorry." People immediately turn, turn tail and go, "Oh, wow, he remembered that!" And now we're in person. And you see people and it's funny, during the coronavirus, people have become so vicious with each other online. And it's a number of factors: stress, it's not being able to go out, it's your whole lifestyle, your whole life is turned, changed upside down, and people don't handle that stress very well. So online they use that as an outlet to say, "Oh, you know, horrible, horrible things to each other." And I run a hiking group, and people in the hiking groups tend to run a different type of political philosophy, and they're inherently emotional. And so when you do something that they don't agree with, they get online and very angry in a small group. And San Diego is still, San Diego's big, but it's still a small world here, and people, a lot of people know each other. And so I'm like, I had to remind them like, "Guys, you're going to see each other on trail every once in a while. You better calm down because you're going to see someone on the trail that you said something wrong to online, and you're going to be in the middle of the woods." Yeah, and that's not how you intended it.

I, I'm the worst LinkedIn member. I've got 6,000 connections in LinkedIn, and people that follow me, and I don't understand a thing about it. But every once in a while, I have to call Marin, and I always call him, Marin, at stupid times with stupid questions. I don't know why he's still around me. And the one was there was this article, and the article was very, very simple. It started off by a great Marine, a published author, R.P. Newman, that we love, Gunny of Arabia. And it was something simple as like, "Hey, it's the birthday of the Corps," or "this or that," or that very, you know, innocuous statement, very simple. And somebody put, you know, a thumbs up, and then that got somebody else to put a thumbs up. And about the third line down was a guy who's a Marine, a former Marine, and it's even in his title. You've got to worry about people when they put too much in their title, if you know what I'm saying. And right right after his name and his title was, you know, "Former Marine, this, that, and the other." He did everything but listed his tours and his and his ribbons. And then he puts in there, "None of you people understand this because none of you were Marines." And then I was like, "Well, that that turned evil awful quickly." "That escalated quickly." So then something else put in there, "Hey, great, R.P., that was really wonderful in it." And the guy jumped in again and he was like, "Stick to your guns because you don't know anything." Because I'm like, "Oh my God!" And I told Marin, I go, "There are so many angry people out there, I don't want to travel anymore. Can we do all of this virtually?" But what it is is you're exactly right, that a degree of anonymity allows persons to transmit information that we all know is total horseshit and consequences. What's the one thing I'll tell you right now? The first thing that we teach these guys: don't hit send. Keep it inside. Don't hit send. Call me. Text me. Do something, right, Brian?

I mean, well, that that's that's that's what I kind of get into. I mean, you know, we're we're sitting here talking shit, you know, bashing all this stuff, but what's the answer? I mean, the the idea is we're doing, we're we're engaging in all of that behavior right now. So, I mean, it's a little hypocritical, I think, and all humans are in a sense, right? So the idea, which which is my thing, is always, don't, especially when it comes to specifically as social media came up, was, you know, never pass up the opportunity to to keep your mouth shut and unfollow someone. You get to, I think, over the takeaway is this, is that we can create our own world, right? We can create our own environment, what we want that to be, especially on social media, because you get to choose what you see and what you don't see for the most part.

Amazingly, that's called the profile, by the way.

But but the the the thing is, is that, you know, there's a lot of noise, right? There's not a lot of signal. There's a lot of noise. And and with all that noise is is rather than adding to that noise is how do we get, how do we get rid of that? Because we often fall into the loudest person in the room, right? The loudest person gets all that, you know, those people start commenting like that just off the cuff and they don't even know what it was about because they didn't even read the article or they didn't watch the video clip. I love those comments when someone goes, "Well, actually," you're like, you're like, "You clearly didn't read the actual article because," right, "you now you look like an ass." Because I, I don't think, but I don't think this doesn't it like that means it's hypocritical, Brian, I don't know what I'm what I'm saying is that is that what do, like, and this gets into the whole what, what Brady, what you're doing with the with the Gray Man Project is that like, you know, one of the criticisms would be because of the, not not with what you're doing, meaning a lot of the stuff I see when people go down these rabbit holes of stuff is like, "Hey, you've got to do this and you don't have any stickers and don't do this." And I'm like, "If you display absolutely nothing, like you are going to ping on my radar so hard, so odd, right?"

No stimulus is still a stimulus.

Yeah, well, that and that's that's the perfect way of putting it, right? Is like, is like, "Hey, man, like most humans have a very, their own personality." You know, we can all be classified in different areas, but we all have our own unique little quirks and things about us and that make us and and and get people to like us. It's like if you have none of that, like I'm going, "What's the deal with this dude right here?" You get what I'm saying? And I think we have a manifesto to your point of the whole point of what you what you explained in the beginning, which is why I loved it, was that it was it's how do I, you know, survive in this environment? How do I thrive? How do I get what I need? And and, yeah, that sounds selfish, but all humans are inherently selfish. And and it's for the, it's for the greater good as well, right? Meaning how do I get through this situation? What's, which, what's best for me? And I think that's the best way to put it is how you articulate it is that so what, basically what I'm asking is, what's the so what? You know, why do I need to do this? Or why do I need to consider these things? Why do I need to have a plan? Why do I want to be this like kind of somewhat Gray Man to a certain extent? What do I get out of that, Brady?

Well, one thing is that a lot of people within the prepper community and and the tactical community that that practice Gray Man, they think they have to do it all the time. It's it's not a 24/7 thing. It's actually emotionally exhausting trying to camouflage yourself all the time, right? I do it for 16 hours a day. You know, when I'm when I'm with a client, I have to be someone other than myself. And as you guys know, I'm, I'm a talker. I have a personality. I have a crazy ass personality. You know, when I get online, I got, you know, I'm, I'm very overzealous and and sometimes. So when I when I talk, so when I'm with a client, I had to camouflage myself. It all goes along the lines of like your ability to get along in life and be happier. I think a Gray Man philosophy allows you to be happier in life, practicing being, practicing your ability to be social when you get into social areas and stuff like that. For instance, my client took me to Burning Man a couple years ago.

Oh, jeez. I'm not a Burning Man. What did Burning Man sober? Is that the thing?

I, I was working. I was working. I was with a client to protect the client at Burning Man. And I was in a gay area. I'm not a gay dude. I have to look at that and accept that environment that I'm a guest in that environment and then get along with it. I'm not saying I'm I'm doing anything, you know.

I want to hear it. I want to hear what you're doing. It's going to get real good. Oh, yeah, we're real. I'm writing this down.

The client specifically said, "No one should at all know that you're my security. You can say you're security for the company that that I worked for. But no one needs to know that you're security. I don't want anyone knowing you're security because I make everyone come around you." So I had to, I had to dress the part. I had to, I wore my silkies. I, you know, I dressed as they dressed. I acted as they acted. They knew I was straight right off the bat. They all knew I'm a straight man. I, I put that off. But I'm comfortable with my sexuality. That world doesn't bother me. I can see two men doing something in the corner, and it won't affect me because I'm a guest in the environment. This is their their home. This is their environment. And so I don't react to things that they would expect me to react to. I go, "Good on you, guys." And I keep moving on about my business, and I converse, and I just be a normal person. People get weird in certain situations, and you can see it on their face, and they wear the emotions on their sleeve. And I do as well. I get emotional quite often. I beat myself down for it because I, to me, like you point out, Greg, I see emotion as a weakness. But emotion is a strength as well, and I, I fully acknowledge that. I just, I try and study my emotions as much as possible. But in that environment, where you go along, you get along to survive because my client clearly said, "If at all someone goes to him and says he's your security, we're done. We're done for that for that trip. We're going home." So my survival, my paycheck, depend on my ability to really blend in, really act the part. In fact, they wanted to about a month ago in LA, they wanted to participate on the "All Black Lives Matter" march.

You're going to have a hard time pulling that one off, just so you know, I'm just saying.

Well, I, I did. I dressed the part. In fact, I rolled, you know, we're in West Hollywood. I rolled my my pant ankles up. I wore a tank top, and I wore a gay pride—

Oh, that's fine. That just meant the black person.

Oh, yeah, no, no. And and actually, it was it was it was it was whites and and and black. It was there's a mixed race and mixed cultures and things like that just right through. And because of the animosity towards any type of authority, whether it's security, law enforcement, stuff like that, I had to ensure now if they knew I was in my backpack, all my tools for work in my backpack, they would have lost their minds. But not the client. My client knew, and and the and his friends knew who we were as we're walking through the crowd and stuff like that. But I had to blend in. I had to get along to survive and stuff like that. And that's when you asked, "What's the point of the Gray Man?" The point of the Gray Man is to be able to take a method, a modality, a tool in your toolbox and apply it when it's necessary. Just like everyone has their own tools in the toolbox, this is just another tool. And someone who is technically aware or preparedness aware or wants to get in that lifestyle of being more aware of their surroundings, you don't have, you can, you can be a liberal arts major coming out of college with a degree in underwater basket weaving and in female gender studies and still practice Gray Man methods. I'm sorry, I'm trying to get away from using philosophy because philosophy is a love of wisdom, and Gray Man isn't really wisdom. When you're not teaching any wisdom, you, you do have a method. It's not just a theory.

**Greg Williams