L.O.G. 153 Sociological Adaptation

Hello and welcome to the video version of The Human Behavior Podcast. I'm Brian Marren, the host and creator of the show. As always, I will be joined by human behavior expert, Mr. Greg Williams, who the show is affectionately named after. On the show, we discuss different topics through the lenses of what we call human behavior pattern recognition analysis. If you'd like to find out more about what that is, please check the links in the episode details and go to our website to learn more. Please don't forget to follow us on social media; the links are also in the episode details. And hit the like and subscribe button to help support our work. Thanks for tuning in, and we hope you enjoy the show. Thank you.

All right, Greg, good morning. We're recording this from my new office at the new house. Even though this is a temporary office at the new house until mine gets set up. So, good morning! I'm excited. And listen, you're going to have to, you know, this is Rogue Manor West where I'm coming live from. So, you're going to have to come up with a name for it. You know, Casa de [whatever], you know, something cool.

It's such a beautiful place, and I'm so proud of it, Brian. Good luck there. I'm going to send you, like, what's a housewarming gift? Like a loaf of bread?

No, well, in my case, a suitcase full of cash would be great.

Yes. Once you get that meth lab up and running, you'll have all the cash you need.

So, all right. So, calling from the new place, recording in the new studio, I guess we'll call it. But this week's topic is brought about by one of our listeners who reached out. For folks who don't know, we have the Patreon site; you can find the links in the episode details. But we have a lot of listeners who follow us on there. We do episode extras; we have a bunch of our webinars and stuff on there. And then, when people have questions, we just answer it and record it and put it on there, so it's sort of an interactive thing.

But once again, this listener – I don't want to say his name – but he's a law enforcement officer in California, reached out again with great comments. So, we said, "This one's so good, we don't want to just put it on the Patreon site. We want to record the actual episode, and this can lead to a greater discussion about some of the topics that we hit up." But specifically, we take it from, obviously, the human behavior perspective. But I'm going to go ahead and read off what he wrote in, and then we'll kind of take it from there, Greg.

So, he said, "Hey, Brian, I was listening to the 'Smell Ya Later' recap on Patreon and was hoping you could clarify something. We all know that lowering the legal ramifications of breaking the law emboldens criminals to go bigger. I may have missed it in other podcasts, but what exactly is the mechanism in our brain that contributes to that? Specifically, if I were to get into a discussion on the stand with a defense attorney or local politician about how the leniency shown to criminals has a negative effect on our society, how would you or Greg articulate the argument from a human behavior aspect?"

So, first of all, amazing question. Love the way you worded it and everything; this is perfect. I do want to start with one part, Greg, where he says, "We all know that lowering the legal ramifications of breaking law emboldens criminals to go bigger." I think I understand what he meant by that, but that's kind of a gray area a little bit, because do we all know that? A lot of people don't know that. I love that. That high punishment, like we say, "Oh, that doesn't deter crime." Well, yes, it does.

You know, for a long time, it's hard to prove a negative. But all you have to do is watch the news now as they reduce some of the leeway or make things more lenient. You see an increase in crime in a number of cities. And there are a lot of factors in all of these, so I'm not trying to be over-simplistic. There are a lot of contributing factors to crime, like even just socioeconomic factors. The unemployment rate has an impact on crime in the United States. So, just bear with everyone, bear with me here for those of you who are listening.

But I do want to mention one thing: this kind of came from, like, you know, we had this huge crime wave all the way, building, building, building, all the way up into the '80s. And then, in the '90s and stuff, we had a lot of people—even President Biden when he was Senator back then—introduced a lot of kind of "get tough on crime" bills. And they had really increased the sentencing amounts for different crimes. And not getting too much into details, but what it also did, the problem with it, was it kind of led to mass incarceration—what people are calling mass incarceration—for a lot of crimes that were maybe drug-related but non-violent. And there were some sentencing guidelines that got kind of lost in translation when it went to the floor and got voted in. There are documentaries and stuff; you could see this where they kind of made some mistakes that led to it, leading to, you know, "crack cocaine is worse than cocaine," and this, and we saw all that, right?

So now, what's happening? People are going, "Okay, this, we screwed this up, you know? How do we fix this?" And what's happening, though, is you have prosecutors and politicians kind of playing with the law a little bit in different cities, and they're showing more leniency. The problem is they're doing it in cases where you shouldn't, right? Each case has to be taken on a case-by-case basis. We mentioned the one last week about the guy who burned his ex-girlfriend's house to the ground. He got charged with, like, I think multiple felonies, which then got lowered to one, which then got lowered again. And I think he did a few months in jail.

Six months.

Six months. And then came out and said that sentence was way too lenient.

(The guy convicted) Exactly!

He said, "What are we doing here? Like, this is insane. I should be in jail for longer. What I did was horrible." So, this is how it plays out in the streets. And it plays out in the streets literally for these different cities. And what's happening is you're seeing, "Well, hey, we're not going to prosecute for this." And then what do criminals then respond with? "Damn, if they're not going to prosecute me for that, what else can I get away with?" So, I think that's kind of the gist of his question, meaning, "Why does that happen? What mechanism in our brain contributes to that? How do we scientifically explain this with a legal background as well?"

Yeah, to show that this is the wrong way to go, I guess that would kind of be my synopsis of this question. And I would take it just a few inches further. I would say that, hopefully, what we can do is talk today and have folks that are in the industry take this in to their town manager, their city manager, their police chief or something, and start a dialogue, Brian. I know people hate that term, but what we have to do is we have to expose this to sunlight; we have to expose this to oxygen and allow it to run its course fast. And members, not just to the city, but other members of the community. I mean, I know, how many people in Chicago are scared right now and selling their property, moving out of the city? And that's not fair. It's unfair to people, the taxpayers, the voters, the contributing members of society. It's unfair, too, right?

I, I, I, when you told me about this email, memo, social media link, I knew exactly who you were talking about because you always asked incredible questions. I immediately thought the scientific answer; you thought the sociological answer, which I think is great because sociology is obviously scientific. But I'm talking about, I'm thinking brain chemistry. But then, you see the news, like you mentioned the news, and I hate the news. But in Detroit, a guy sprays an accelerant on his pregnant girlfriend, lights her on fire, got arrested, and got released on a $1,000 PR (personal recognizance) bond.

Listen, everything, the world is like Jell-O, and there's always room for Jell-O. But when you press in the side of Jell-O and then you release, the Jell-O comes back, but it doesn't come right back; it jiggles a little bit back into shape. We're going to ride that jiggle in if we're not careful with what we're doing. So, to my first answer that hit my brain when you read that to me, is under normal conditions, the brain circuitry, and specifically the ventral tegmental—the dopamine-rich center of the brain—links up with the nucleus accumbens. And the reason that it does it is it's either going to release cortisol (bad), dopamine (good)—okay, Boo Radley and Yay Radley—to regulate our incentives and our motivation. (It's a great joke, dissect it later, right?)

So, the brain activates electrochemical neurotransmitters, Brian, to create a pure memory of the visceral incident so that the repeated behavior will get the same reward over and over again. Does that make sense? So, the brain's chemistry allows different parts of the brain's memory centers, which are located all over the brain, to activate so you can pay particular attention to those features of an experience that can be repeated over and over again. So, that's what he asked, in my term, is he asked, you know, "How will that create new brain circuitry that allows us to say, 'Well, [expletive], go big or go home criminally?'" Yeah.

And I think I see what you're saying, and to clarify, you know, you brought up the dopamine and cortisol, which plays into those memory-emotion links and how memory powerful it can be. And also reward – sort of bad drugs. So, meaning dopamine is, if I had, if we had to boil down why humans set patterns and continue to repeat behaviors, it's dopamine reward. That's what we all get; that's what we're all searching for. And then the opposite side of that, maybe, would be the cortisol effect: "Oh, man, that wasn't good. I had a bad reaction. I got scared, I got frightened." That feeling you get in the pit of your stomach, that's kind of cortisol hitting, which also adrenaline and a whole bunch of other things that allow you in a survival situation. But it's, I would say, one is the good thing – "Ooh, repeat this!" – or "Ooh, that's a bad thing, don't do that!" That's what we play with all the time because that's how humans learn and how memory is stored. So, I just want to clear it because you did bring them both up.

No, no, no, I love what you did. And so, if somebody would ask me the question, "What's the difference between a pattern and a habit?" Because that's again the second part of this question, "Is this going to go away when the lawlessness goes away?" And the answer is not really, because like a tremor, we're going to have aftershocks. So, the difference simply between a pattern and a habit in this situation is the repetition. Patterns form almost immediately because they're less caloric interventions (meaning, requiring less effort or resources) to a problem. But a habit takes time, whether it's a good habit or a bad habit. The longer you repeat that behavior, your brain starts picking up on the idea of saying, "I will get a cortisol-dopamine release if I repeat this behavior," right? And so, it starts forming how you live the rest of your life.

So, where a pattern is, "I drive to work," and the conundrum might be, "Hey, there's construction today," you get what I'm trying to say? A habit wouldn't let you get past that; you'd be at the construction zone, you'd get out of the car, you'd lay down on the ground, "I'm done. What do we do now? I can't do anything else, I'm overwhelmed," right? Where the pattern is like, "Well, [expletive], I wonder where that street goes?" So, and I mean that in this sense, Brian, because when you go talk to your chief of police or your town manager, or your city manager, or your fire department, or your church or something, you've got to say, "Look, this is not a situation where we can play ostrich and put our head in the sand, because we're going to have repercussions."

We're feeling a lot of them now from poor decisions that were made a year, two years, three years ago—not just the ones you spoke of, but even a couple of decisions that happened like, you know, you said it the best, and I'm trying to think of your words, do you remember when the defund/refund police? Police are such a small part, but it's a visible part, because they have to get in front of us on things that we never know that happens. And that's why we talk about doing a ride-along in your jurisdiction. If you don't go to your jurisdiction and do a ride-along, you don't know the kind of crazy goofball antics that are going on in your own backyard. You get what I'm saying, right now? So, that's why when we watch the news or read a story, it's so unbelievable for us to understand that a person would kidnap another human or light them on fire or come in and murder somebody in a furniture. You see what I'm saying, Brian? We're almost punch drunk from the vicious nature of the world today. But it's always vicious, right? It's not, you know what I'm saying? It's dog-eat-dog, and I'm wearing Milk-Bone underwear today, Brian.

Well, and you know, it's always trended towards crime going, well, since it peaked in the late 1980s, early '90s, crime, for example, has gone down since then. Standard of living for everyone has gone up continuously since the dawn of mankind, or womankind, or thing-kind, or they-kind, or whatever you call yourself, I don't care, right? But the idea is, you know, this, because of COVID and a bunch of other factors, it kind of shook things a little bit where we started all of a sudden paying attention to things we didn't know were going on. But that's the key point: just because it's new to you doesn't mean it hasn't been going on this whole time. And whose quote is that? It's Charlie Manson, right? It's Charlie, "If it's it, I haven't seen it." It's...

So, there's one thing I kind of want to start with almost with this question, because he's talking about, he wants to get to the mechanism in our brain that contributes to this. So, I would say big picture about understanding boundaries. So, you always say it, you know, "First, I learn my boundaries, then I test my boundaries, then I push my boundaries." And that's... let's go back to a little kid, you know? I'm a little kid getting yelled at by Mom, and she's going, "Brian!" and I don't respond. "Brian! Brian!" She's yelling now. I'm still not responding, still not listening, right? And then it comes to, "Brian John Marren, get your butt over here right now!" Because I know what's coming after that is going to be repercussions. So, that's me as a child learning and then testing my boundaries, right? And she said, "She said, 'Instead of standard,' didn't she?" Yes. And then I knew, I had known from the previous event, the last time like, when my full name came out, I got caught a whoopin' after that. Well, I want to avoid that, but I'll push all the way up to there.

Well, that's not unlike, you know, criminals, terrorists, and surgeons, you know, anyone outside of that norm is going to push their boundaries. So, in a sense, and this is, people teach you how they want to be treated, and you teach people how you want to be treated, right? So, this is when it comes into this boundary. So, let's, if I put myself in the mind of a criminal, well, first I'm going to learn and, "Okay, oh damn, like I got arrested for that," or "I got locked up for a while for that, man, that sucked. I don't want to do that again." But if we start to lower that stuff, it's, "Well, wait a minute. I'm going to test it a little bit." And, "Okay, you know what? I tested it. I burnt my ex-girlfriend's house down and only did a couple months." Well, what's the next thing in that learn/test, then it's push. Okay? So, if I'm one of those people, if I don't respect, if I'm the type of person that doesn't respect boundaries, well, then I'm going to push that boundary, and it's going to continue to happen if there's nothing pushing back against it, right? Then it's going to continue. Does that kind of make sense? So...

No, yeah, and you just created an all-important standard on one half of the coin, so I'll fill in the other half of the coin. Because for every internal skill, there's an external; for every yin, there's a yang. So, inside of our brain, the amygdala is the center of our motivation and our reward, right? So, risk tolerance is also linked to our prefrontal cortex and our amygdala. What does that mean? That means the stuff that we'll put up with in our environment before we fight back, also seeking out things. Remember, I'm much more likely to take a risk without appreciating the long-term consequences when I get immediate gratification. That's why people have such a hard time quitting smoking, Brian, right? You know, they, "I don't want to think what's going to happen in 25 years, because right now it feels so good."

They have that "one thousand pound life" (likely referring to My 600-lb Life) on there, I'm contested for the next showing. But they have that poor woman that's on there that she's vaping and she's engaging in all this high-risk behavior, right? Why? Because she thinks it's Ragnarok, she thinks it's the apocalypse, the end of the world. She thinks that she's got nothing that's worth living for. So, here we are two years into COVID. There's relaxed standards at grooming and working from home, and a six-foot rule, and wearing a mask. Are rigid standards we never had to deal with. So, up is down, right is wrong, cats sleeping with dogs. And all of a sudden, the amygdala is going to you, "Hey, listen, I'd like to reach out and have some fun, but I can't go to the gosh damn..." (Sorry, that's the alarm that every time I use 'amygdala,' it counts.) I can't go to the...

(You hate them!)

Exactly! I can't go to movies or a restaurant or these places, Brian, that I wanted to—the mall when there were malls, right? So, I have to find something that's going to fill my emotionally charged need for fun, and sometimes that's going to be bad stuff. I would ask you to remember, it's probably almost 18 months ago now, the kids that stole a car and pulled up to the police and were doing the hole shots and pulled up to the window and go, "Hey, we stole the car!" because they thought the cops wouldn't be able to chase them or arrest them. That was a long time ago. Why? Because teenagers and young adults learn differently, right? They learn by coming out and experimenting. They've got to fall through the ice to figure the ice is thin.

But what we're talking about now is we have adults that are thrust into a situation that seemingly never ends. And some of those that are on the cusp of mental illness have been killed under family, family annihilators, killing themselves, doing violent acts. But what about the criminal? What about their not brain-challenged, and they're not set in their ways, set financially for the rest of their life, or whatever you want to call that—the medication kicking in. But you're in this bandwidth where you've done a crime like shoplifting before, and now all of a sudden you go, "I don't even have to worry about shoplifting! I can pull my car into the 7-Eleven lobby, load it up, and drive out the other way because the cops aren't going to chase me, and the prosecutor is not going to keep me in jail." What happens, Brian, is you created a surrealistic, not just unrealistic, but a surrealistic, a gosh damn fantasy world. Do you see what I'm trying to say?

Like Willy Wonka—think about Willy Wonka for a minute. You remember the old, the Willy... (I haven't seen a new Willy.) But you remember the old Willy Wonka where all of a sudden they press the Snozzberry. "It tastes like Snozzberries!" Yeah. And the door opens up, and they go in, it's a chocolate river, and Augustus Gloop is going to jump in, and everything is edible. Everything in that environment. Roald Dahl, when he wrote that, was teaching us how adolescents have to get kicked out of the way and the nest or they're never going to learn, right? That's what he meant by that. But now we've got an environment where an assistant district attorney, a sitting judge, is doing [expletive] that you've never seen before in your life, and you're thinking, "Well, maybe this is okay." But you know what, Brian? What goes up? Speeding, speeding on the roads. And somebody's going to answer that. Speeding on the roads went up because there were less people on the roads. That's part of the answer. But what's the other answer? If there's less people, there's less cops. Let's see what happens next. You see what I'm saying? Yeah.

So, one of the things you're hitting on is very, very COVID-related, right? The second, third-order effects of this. And I've got perfect examples. I had a buddy when I was in the military, and it kind of hurt his foot, but then it felt better, and so he was running, and he felt fine. The problem is when just running normally, right? Felt fine. The problem is when you put gear on and put a rucksack on, all of a sudden his foot would hurt again. So, what had happened was he had a hairline fracture that was small enough to where he ran, he was totally fine, his body could handle that pounding even. But as soon as that weight went on, all of a sudden that fracture started to get a lot worse, right? And that's part of what we're seeing right now. The stress fractures were there, but all of a sudden, we have these different restrictions; we have these different things affecting us mentally far more than people are giving you credit for. We've been saying that since day one, right?

So, what are we saying? Listen, you're exactly right. An increase in just general speeding tickets, an increase in drinking and drug overdoses, and in teenagers, too. All of those numbers are coming out now for the last year and the year before that, and it's a massive increase. Why? Because that's called stress. That's mental stress. Exactly right. That is it. We have that stress fracture there. It's just no one's ever put this much weight on it before. Highly charged political environment, global supply chain issues, a global pandemic. That's all pushing down on us right now. So, if we've got those stress fractures there, how are they going to come out? Well, they're coming out in exactly what we said: you'd see him as all of these increase of domestic violence, increase of all the things I just talked about. Criminal activity is going to increase. And if, at the same time those are increasing, and you're, because of other social factors in the country, you pull back on police presence, you pull back on police funding, what are you doing? You're opening the valve even farther! Exactly, you're opening the valve farther, so it's going to come pouring out. And what happens, the unfortunate thing, is that it's got to hit some catastrophic—something catastrophic has to happen. And then what do we do? We do the pendulum swing in the other direction. So, you're...

And we're headed to something.

Yeah, we are.

And you're on to something, but I want to use your buddy's analogy and I want to say a couple of things, too. Reading every day that the Russians are going to invade Ukraine, that the Chinese are on our border, they're firing missiles over there, that doesn't do anything for us, Brian. That just, whether it's true or not, it doesn't matter. What's happening is this instant barrage of information is creating a catalyst for more stress. We're sleeping less. That is not good. We're eating high, I can't think of the name of the content because of the drugs I'm on right now, folks, but the food is bad for you and you're eating more of it. Okay? So, what I'm going to tell you is all of those things are a function that were exacerbated by COVID; they weren't brought to us by COVID, right? They were exacerbated. Part two.

Your buddy's stress fracture, when it hurt, that's the brain sounding an alarm—the cortical brain structure. They send an amygdalic warning. That's a brain danger warning, "Will Robinson, don't do this behavior!" Brian, you remember when we were in Seattle and that fire alarm went off in the hotel on that stormy night? And you and I were the only ones outside. And even the person, we went to the desk, and we grabbed, folks, they had these little paper bags with an apple, like an egg, you know, for the next morning. Well, we grabbed them, and here it was 2:30 in the morning, and the lady had put them out already for the next day. And we asked her, "Hey, why isn't anybody else in the lobby?" And she goes, "Nobody listens to those effing alarms!" Brian, had your buddy not listened to the effing alarm, he would have exacerbated that stress fracture and been in a cast or had to have surgery at it. But what's happening now is the amygdala isn't being spanked back into its corner. And so that behavior, like, for example, not wearing pants or shutting off your camera when you're on a Zoom, went to masturbating while you're on with your business! What happened?

(Yes!)

The tuba! And he had his tube in the Zoom! He should have pulled it back out. The idea was, though, Brian, you said it: the boundaries. Listen, humans learn by taking risks, taking chances, and that's why your brains are highly adaptive. And what all of a sudden happens is that impulsive nature that's going on right now. Listen, a guy shot a cop and got bonded out. And that's so foreign to how things normally go that we're willing to go back to that fantasy reaction, and fantasy reactions can't last for long.

And because, and because, one of the main ways humans learn is through mimicry. Like, this is how individual cases lead to sociological adaptation, you would call it, right? Meaning, that's such a great word, "sociological adaptation," means that no matter how ridiculous it is, over time it becomes normalized, Brian, and we don't pay as much attention. The alarm doesn't go off. And that goes back to the mimicry that I was talking about, is that, you know, that's how if you see a school shooting happens, you're more likely to see one again pretty frequently, right? Humans mimic each other, even something they see on TV or on the news or hear about online, right? And if I already have those stress fractures there, if I already have things that I'm dealing with, and I see, "Oh, you did it!" This is why, like, you can have, if you have a well-known person in a city or a community and they commit suicide, you're going to have an increase in suicides in that area, right?

Exactly!

It's like, "Well, hey, if Greg can't take it, and he's my hero, well, I've got no chance. I'm checking out." And so, I kind of want to steer it towards, I guess, I'll, if you're willing to, Greg, I can depose you or put you... You were speaking to a defense attorney or local politician about how this leniency has been shown as a negative effect on our society. How would I articulate that? How would I try to, like, in the most linear fashion, for someone who doesn't listen to our podcast or understand this stuff? And that's the other thing, and that's why I pointed out his one comment at the beginning: a lot of people don't know that, that lowering the ramifications for breaking law emboldens criminals. People don't understand that; they have a hard time making that link. So, I guess, where would I start, and how would I do this, right?

(Greg takes his glasses off and scratches his head.) All right, so you asked me for linear, and that's why I'm scratching my head. And this is why, Brian, you know me, you've been with me a long time. Anybody that knows me knows that when I testify on the stand, I'm just like we are on this podcast. I give common sense things, I talk about Hollywood.

But you're also getting direct, specific questions. Exactly, so it's a little bit easier.

Yeah. So, but what I'm saying is that I will tell them how I feel about an issue as an expert based on other influences in my life. So, you asked the question, I was unprepared for the question, so I'm going to give you Ed Gein. So, Ed Gein lived with his mom in a small house somewhere on a farm, I think it was in Wisconsin, back in like the '50s and '60s. And Ed's mom, who was the most controlling force in his life, died. And so, he propped her up in a chair, put an afghan on her, and kept her in the house and talked to her the entire time even as she mummified. Ed also had a penchant for going to the local graveyard, digging up bodies, and he made lamps and tables and chairs out of it. And sometimes sampled by making love to the corpses, or trying to eat them. That ridiculous, horrific thing that's true, every word of it is true, and you can look it up, folks, became the movie Psycho with Bates and the Bates Motel. You know which I'm talking about, the original, original, the Hitchcock. And all the subsequent ones were based on it, too, I guess.

But the idea is that the reason it was so famous, and even now the shower scene and all the things about Norman astound us, and there's been plays and books and stuff written on it, is because Ed Gein was such a novel, unique thing, right, Brian? Now, every novel, unique Ed Gein, makes the news in 50 states every day, all over the country. We hear about beheadings and cannibalism. We see a movie now. There was a movie on the free weekend called Suicide Squad. (Yeah, I haven't seen it, but yeah.) Okay, I watched the first five minutes of Suicide Squad, my PTSD was acting up so bad, Brian, I had to shut it off. It was so graphic in its portrayal, I couldn't watch it, Brian. Between the sound and the light and the visceral damage, I can't even say the words on the air. So, am I going back and saying, "Hey, tits or gore, we've got to cut back on 'Pour Some Sugar on Me' because it's about having sex?" I'm not saying that. I'm not saying that.

What I am saying is we've been punched so many times by now, and they keep throwing this insulting tripe at us that we start believing the [expletive]. And so what's going to happen, Brian, is there's going to be somebody out there that's not as, doesn't have as much temerity as you. They don't have as much resilience as you. And you know what, Brian? That person is going to be sitting down and going, "Man, what's next? I can't take any more of this. I can't take another six months of this. I can't take Omicron. What's next?" That's what we have to avoid because the distant early warning signal is either going to boom, increase the suicide rate, boom, increase the infidelity rate, boom, increase the accident rate, or the drug use. Fentanyl isn't causing the drugs. You get what I'm trying to say? Fentanyl is the newest drug.

Yeah, yeah. And then once we crack the code on fentanyl, there's going to be something else. This raises the point: we don't deal, we deal with the symptoms often times; we don't deal with the actual issue.

Exactly! And so, my thing is you have to say that to that gosh damn jury, to that judge, to those people. So, if left unchecked...

And I want to kind of further define, you did a minute ago, when we talk about sociological adaptation. So, when we talk about adaptation, what we mean by that is similar to sensory adaptation. So, your brain, the more often you're exposed to a stimulus, the less likely you are to notice it, right? And in fact, right? So, I always give the example, you know, take someone who lives out in the country, put them in New York City at a Times Square hotel with the window open at night; they're not sleeping. But guess what? Just like in Blues Brothers, where he picks up Jake from Joliet Prison, drives him back to his place in Chicago or whatever, and is like, "Hey, how..." And the L tracks are right outside the window, and it goes by and rattles everything in the apartment. He's like, "Hey, how often does that happen?" He's like, "So often you won't even notice it," right? So, that's an adaptation, right? That sensory adaptation. If I add in there, you know, change blindness, which is just the same thing with your brain: slow, subtle changes over time, you're less likely to notice, which is why you want to go small. I mean, whether you're trying to lose weight, small, slow, subtle changes over time are easier than trying to "I'm going to drop 30 pounds this month," you know what I mean? But just little things in your environment, you're less likely to notice.

So, if I couple those together from a sociological perspective, if I keep slowly changing this, slowly changing over time, it's going to be until something becomes catastrophic that we notice it. And that's the issue, is that all of these slow changes in one direction over time is like, "Wait a minute, we're getting to the point where it's like, 'Hang on, what the hell is going on here?'" And that's how it works. So, sociologically, we get used to it, right? So, what happens? "Okay, there's these big protests and people in the street." "Okay, we board up, and everything's fine." And then, "Okay, well, then there was kind of a break in there, so let's keep the boards up." And then, "Well, now that the boards and the windows are up, and the extra security is there, why don't we just keep that there?" Okay. And then, and then, you know what happens? And it's like, "Wait a minute, we never went back here. We're continuing down this path." Like, and now it's gunfire in the streets, and, you know, it's like, it's the new standard, and that's why they said, "It's on the national news." And that's, that's a problem.

Is if we're comparing it to where we're at right, so if we're comparing today to where we were just at yesterday, Greg, that doesn't give us a good framework. It doesn't give us a good way to compare where the baseline has moved. If we compare it to five years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago, now we have some historical perspective where we can see, "Hang on, where has this gone? Where do we want it to go?" But the problem is then we take a quick fix. Yes. And then it gets passed along to the next administration or next person that gets elected. Then we do a quick fix. It's like, "No, no, no. Let's steer this ship." You're duct-taping this [expletive] together. It's not a Frankenstein monster, and it's not going to make it. It's not a speedboat; it's a big moving ship. So, let's point it, which means we don't need to do a 180; we don't need to do a quick left or right. We just a few degrees in a different direction in five, 10 years, we're going to be back on path. But it takes time. So, that's my part about the sociological adaptation. So, you asked...

No, no, and it's perfect. And you asked what I would say to the city manager, town manager, police chief. And I would give them the Ed Gein, because they have noticed that in their lifetime. But if you want a more linear, more scientific, less 'Greg' answer: once the exploration and innovation start, which every brain learns through that testing process, consequences are there to keep us in line. Consequences. "I do too much of this, I die," right? "I do too little of this, I die." Okay. So, what we've done essentially is removed consequences. And you're saying, "Well, no, we haven't!" Yes, we have. In large part, we've removed the consequences for your actions when it comes to certain crimes, even violent crimes. And we've read about those, and everybody knows the articles that I'm talking about that are put out by a D.A. saying, "Hey, this is it, get used to it. Even if the kid does a violent crime, if he's doing this with a gun, we're not going to prosecute. Even if the person's a repeat offender, they're found with a gun, we're not going to do that."

Listen, if you're a cop out there, you've had to learn by skinning your knees to deal with this in the environment. Those are consequences, Brian. The rest of us don't have those consequences. We have a little bowel irritability. It's inconvenient. Inconvenience, not a consequence, right? So, what happens is we can easily overcome those speed bumps in our daily routine. Wearing a mask is inconvenient; it's not a consequence. Getting an inoculation and getting a booster shot. We do that for other [expletive] anyway. Do you understand what I'm trying to say? But now, all of a sudden, let's talk consequences. Because our diets have changed over the years slowly and steadily, there are more young kids with diabetes than there ever has been before. Even kids that are in generally good health have diabetes. Why? Because consequences are meant to keep us in line, and we didn't listen to what the alarm that was sounding. That's why I brought up the fire alarm; that's why I brought up your buddy's stress fracture. These are sirens howling at us from a rocky shoreline trying to get us to pull the ship in and crash. And if we don't, if left unchecked, it's going to get worse than it is today.

No, and we know that. And one way to do that is you can map that out linearly, where you could make a graph on, you know, crime rates, or this crime rate, or that crime rate. Stick to one specific, and just do a trend line. You know, that's what people always say. One of the big things a lot of people ask about—we just had a recent phone call last week with a friend out on the East Coast—where it's like, "Well, where's the line? How do I know like, when do I call, when do I get the help?" And I always tell, "Get the yellow pad out," right? And write down over time the behavior you witness or things you've seen. And it's simple: is that increasing in seriousness or increasing in aggressiveness or increasing in consequences? Or is it decreasing, or is it staying the same? Because like, there's some people that are always the Eeyore, "Everything's bad," you know what I mean? Always. And that's fine, that's who they are, that's their personality. But if it's getting worse and now they're making threats, that's different; that's increasing, right?

So, and your analogy of consequences, I think the weight one is great, losing and gaining weight, right? Look, there are consequences for that. But here's the thing, Greg, if I start eating more calories than I'm burning today, and I start doing that, well, the consequences might take me a while to see, right? If it's only a little bit over what I need, if it's only a few junk items now and then, it may take years before I see those consequences. But same thing, get back on track, right? If I'm trying to lose weight or get into shape, I only need to do a little bit every day. But if I do it every day for years, or months, or years, I'm going to have serious, serious returns on that. So, I like the consequences one and using that as an analogy and showing that it kind of takes that over time.

Brian, the idea behind weight loss and weight gain, a starvation diet, is going to have repercussions, consequences. Slow, steady change over time is the way that humans have evolved and will continue to evolve. So, what you're saying, I would argue that the opposite is true. Yes, the 2022 brain, they're experimenting with their surroundings, Brian. They're finding the new operational range for peak performance. So, suicide by cop has always been an issue, yes. But now you have cops getting gunned down for little or no reason. They make a traffic stop, the person guns down the cop. We just had last night, in Houston, there was another New York cop shot over the weekend. And a couple of days ago, a New York cop was killed and one injured. And at that time, that was number five and six shooting since January 1st of a cop. Okay? So, we're trying to outpace previous goals. Why? Because we've taken two and a half years of saying, "Cops are [expletive]!"

Listen, don't get me wrong. What I'm trying to say is if every single day we had messages on the news that said, "McDonald's food is going to kill you! McDonald's food is high in salt, it's high in calories. If you eat McDonald's, it's going to kill you!" Remember that gosh movie that came out with this guy? I don't remember the title. Yeah, Super Size Me. Okay, if we kept that up and McDonald's didn't sue the [expletive] out of everybody, and they turned that into a comedy, then, Brian, people would stop going to McDonald's, and there would be consequences. You see what I'm trying to say? So, what happened is all of a sudden, instead of McDonald's losing money at the gate, what happened is cops... Yeah, you know who said something great? Eric Garner's mom. Because I read everything, Brian. Eric Garner's mom said, "We're not against cops, we're against bad cops." That's brilliant! I'm with you in the corner. But everybody didn't go that way. What happened is the pendulum swung. And the people that, just like a priest and the abuse and stuff, what happened is we lost faith there, just for a minute. Somebody blinked. And when somebody blinks, Brian, that guy in the street, he needed no other push other than that blink to shoot a cop. You see where I'm going? Okay, because once we devalue that profession, those personnel, it's hard to unring that bell. So, it's going to take months for us to get that back, maybe years. And sadly, the police officers are going to be in the squeeze play. They're the ones that are going to be feeling it. Does that make sense to you? No.

No, yeah. And it, it's like you said, it comes down to whether that's personal consequences, societal consequences, whatever those consequences are, it has to be there. And the other problem is, you know, you're trying to make policy or law—I guess more so policy—but you're trying to make policy that's going to widely encompass a broad range of topics versus taking them each individually on the merits of the case, which is what it should be. Are there some people that get wrapped up in something, it's their first time doing something, they're young enough that they should be given a second chance? Absolutely, 100%. But you can't apply the same standard to that individual that you apply for the repeat serial criminal offender who's continuously shown contempt for authority whatsoever. Those are two different people.

Yeah. And this is the problem is when we, you know, we look at it as a group rather than a group of individual people based on the individual merits. There's no better way than what you just brought up is like, "Okay, well, that guy's a bad cop, all cops are bad." It's like, that's the dumbest... There's no logic there. There's literally a lot of happens every day, right? Here's the thing: how many bad doctors are there? You know, in doctors themselves? You know why your medical malpractice insurance is so much? Because there's shitty doctors that are having people up and killing people. So, if you took the time to get rid of them, so other people like me who don't know [expletive] about medicine don't have to learn things the hard way, well, guess what? We'd all be better for it, and you'd have lower rates.

Exactly, right! But go back to the auto industry in Detroit. The auto industry in Detroit, when they have a problem with the car, they issued what? A recall. Any car that would get between this time or that time... Yeah, it's a long time. And so, you can do that with society. You can do a do-over. But what you can't do is you can't let a loud mob in the street dictate. You see what I'm saying? Because what happens is all of a sudden this issue raises to now a camera, and now we're torching a car and everything else. Okay, "We're going to decide upon this!" And you're going, "Wait a minute, that's a democracy!" No, that isn't a democracy; that's a bully pulpit. The idea behind a democracy is I have faith in one person from my district, area/tribe, and we vote him as the mouthpiece for the rest of the game. Okay, we send him to a place where all the other gangs, if you remember the movie The Warriors, come out to play. We sent them all there to that thing. They all sit around and they go, "This is a good law, this is a bad law. This is a good thing, this is a bad thing. We're going to make money here, we're not going to make money there."

You can't decide on your own. That's rule number one: that's not a democracy. The second thing is, if you have leaders that are in, voters are voting out. You can't just burn down your city and say, "This is the starting point! This is what we're going to do!" That's called a revolution, of course. But how did those revolutions end, Brian? There was a lot of violence over a protracted period of time, and we're still trying to get that pendulum to swing in a normal way, right? I mean, have all of the ills and issues from the Civil War and the Revolutionary War and the Treaty of Ghent, for the love of God, have they all been solved? No, they are. It takes time. But you can't decide that you're going to push and mold at this point. And COVID just happened to happen at a significant stress fracture in our nation's development, right? It's all nations, right? Not just us. And look, we're reaping the whirlwind. Once the exploration and innovation of the brain start, consequences are meant to keep us in line. If we pull away the consequences, you reap the whirlwind. And that's what we need to tell folks. Yes.

Yes. And I think what you're getting now, again, it's horrible. I know just recently in Chicago over the weekend, this little eight-year-old girl was killed. Oh my gosh. And it's like horrible, horrible story. I know the neighborhood where she was from, and it was just like, I mean, of just some gang shootouts, she gets... We see this stuff happen, and it's going to take people from that community to put pressure and like, "You, we can't... this cannot go on." And especially in these major cities, but that's where they're hit the hardest because that's where there's going to be more incidents of crime, there's going to be more gangs, there's more activity. So, you, I mean, it takes the community, it takes those people. Vote. Well, people are voting with their feet in Chicago, that's for sure. They're leaving in droves. People talk about people leaving California, which kind of isn't, you know, I don't know how true that is, but like, they're moving out of Chicago, they're all going to the suburbs, and they're all getting the hell out. And why that's going to continue to happen next? Is that the answer? But no, that's, that's the problem is we don't have to accept this standard. We do not have to accept a standard in any of these cities. And it, but it takes that community involvement to create... There's a lot of noise out there, but at the local level, you can affect change much, much easier than some federal, you know, mandate or something, right?

You're exactly right. You can do it at a local level by talking to people and going, "Look, this is the problem. This is what we're going to see, and we're not going to stand for it. Fix it." Tribally, you fix it in your backyard, in your neighborhood first, then you go to your neighbor, and then you go to the next block. I totally agree. Listen, Brian, fear is a motivator. So, take people that are older and move away from where it's cold because they want a warm climate. What also do they want? They want a gated community, that they can play golf and leave their belongings behind because they want to go back to a safer time. They want to go back to Mayberry. Okay? And the idea is that you can't get there from here, because the mass exodus out of a big city like Chicago, been done. L.A., San Francisco, Detroit. Okay, you get what I'm trying to say. Been done. And what happens is something's going to fill that void. It's like before the awakening in Iraq, Brian, taking off the key leaders with (Operation) Iraqi Freedom, with the card deck. (Still got my card deck.) Do you get what I'm saying? And what happened is the next despot steps into that vacuum that's created, and it gets brutal, and it gets worse than it was. But do we want that? And you and I don't want that, and we've been talking logically about that.

The idea is that exploration of the brain is a natural function, and if you allow, like for example, the latest thing with marijuana is decriminalized and legal. Those are two different things, right? Different standards. But the idea is that now they're talking about mushrooms. The people that are really in those trenches that are saying, "This is going to help a veteran so it doesn't blow his brain out," Brian, I'm behind it 100%. The problem is that we get a bunch of people that are along with that, that are because all they want to do is get high and screw everybody else. Of course, they don't understand the consequences. And now, all of a sudden, what do you have in your neighborhood? You have blight, you have graffiti, and now all of a sudden you have these stoned people, you know, doing stupid things. Okay, you can't have it both ways. What you have to do is you have to say, "This is the goal." Okay, "Here's the 10-ring." But if we're on silhouette, that's better than nothing, right? And right now, what we are allowing to happen is we're playing fast and loose. And Brian, what happens when you're fast and loose? Have you ever been to Vegas? And you won a pretty good hit on one hand? You go home right away, don't you?

No, you don't. You're right.

You're ready, you're still in, and you're right back in, and you're doubling down. And then the next thing, we can't afford, America, we cannot afford doubling down on that bet. We have to go back to homeostasis. We have to say, "This is right, this is wrong." And then we have to start building our way back up. It can happen; we've seen it on a large scale already.

And my, my one of my concerns is always not just, is like we said, there's this pendulum swing. And if it gets to critical mass, if it hits a point where there's blowback and everyone, then I don't want it to swing all the way back to the other direction. It was exactly what it's draconian, is that it goes, "Okay, well that didn't work, let's go back to this!" It's like, no, no, there's, there's a middle ground here that I think, you know, we're too into, we get caught up in platitudes. We get caught up in these storylines that don't necessarily highlight an issue very well, right? Anytime you get an anecdote, a story of something that happened, you're supposed to use that to highlight a larger issue. But what's happening is they aren't highlighting a larger issue; they're just, there's nothing behind it. It's just this one story, and yes, it's tragic and it's awful, right? Be believed, right? But you're always going to have tragic, awful stories. It's like, meaning, there's always going to be something that's outside of what the law said or you didn't expect to happen. But there's going to be these things. But you can't necessarily make case law or policy off of that one thing. You have to make it off of what's actually happening. You have to have some sort of data to support your claim. And just look at the, the one, the best thing the FBI does is all of their detailed crime reporting analysis. And they have every possible different type of demographic you can. They collect so much raw information, right? And you can go on there and see. They start releasing the, I guess, the easy stuff to show in January. We've already some of the Uniform Crime Reporting stuff has come out for last year. And then it takes a while, sometimes even a year, to get the analysis from, you know, let's say 2023 will come out the 2021 analysis or something, because it takes that long. But you can already show the trend lines. You can show where things have increased and decreased, and it's, it's there. It's just, look at it, just read it, and go, "Look, this is, this is the line. And if I'm drawing a graph, it's going up." So, what are we doing to counter that rise? What are we doing to get this back to a manageable level? And it is, sometimes it's just focusing and re-prioritizing what your objectives are and where your resources are going. I mean, that's the big thing. I mean, it's like we're getting into an area where once you get policy involved, you get politicians involved, so there's a lot of opinion, not, not necessarily subject matter opinion either, so it's important. It can get a little convoluted.

Let's go back to your Asimov movie and Isaac Asimov's quote that you just did for I, Robot. Brian, that is the question. So, if you watch as much useless, free [expletive] TV as I have to endure when I'm typing, I've got to have noise in the background because I can't hear anymore, and everything in the house scares the [expletive] out of me because I think the SWAT team's coming in. So, I have the TV on, and generally it's commercial, commercial, commercial. I can read, sing any jingle that's out there. So, this morning, on Ancient Aliens, Brian, you know my favorite show. Okay, so this morning on Ancient Aliens, you know, I'm just sitting down after a run. Chelly's in the other room; she's getting ready for work. The guy made this following a juxtaposition, setting these things next to each other. And what he said is, he said, "The planet Mars has always been this and that," and he says, "And it's always been associated with war." Well, it's been associated with war because the Greeks called Mars the god of war, built a temple. So, you can't mix up the order of things.

Second part. Second part is they bring in, what the hell is that guy's name? Von Däniken (Erich von Däniken), Chariots of the Gods. Holy [expletive]! Now, he wrote a couple of books. Erich von Däniken sees two rocks in a field and says, "That's supposed to be Saturn, that's supposed to be Mars, and the distance between those two rocks is exactly the distance between the Pyramids of Giza." It's horseshit! You can't just keep throwing [expletive] together. Wait, one more. So, they came and said, "You know, the Grays." I didn't know the Grays. Well, the Grays are part of the UFO little creatures. There's Grays and there's Blues, and there's big heads, and they've got names for everyone. "Could it be that after the war on Mars, the winners of the losers fled in their spaceships and colonized Earth? And could it be that they're the Grays?" No, it can't! My potato in my cooler in the fridge isn't speaking to me. Where do they get that logic? That's what we're dealing with.

So, that show, I think, is a great example of how human emotion and policy, specifically politicians, get involved in this stuff. Because what I love about that show, the reason why I love it, is they'll go back to some historical event, and they'll get some subject matter expert, Ph.D. at some well-known university, who's been teaching about this event for the 30 years of his or her life and read a book on it, right? And they'll go on there and go, "Well, here," and they'll just explain, "Well, here's what we know happened, and here's why," right? "We can take a look at these readings of these rocks and show this, and we knew this happened then because that coincided with other evidence we found." And they'll lay it out, and it's amazing, it's beautiful, right? So, they'll take 15 minutes or whatever to do that, or 10 minutes. And then they come to the guy with the crazy hair and go, "But what if... aliens?" And so, then they go this ridiculous story. So, the idea is that's, that's, that's humans, right? Here's a subject matter expert that says, "Here's what likely occurred based on here's the evidence." And then someone comes in and goes, "But what if?" And they don't have to prove anything; they just create this stuff. That's exactly what we see with policy, right? What's happening right now? "What if we do... what if it's not that, Greg, what if it's this?" And you're like, "So, do you have any... (If I wouldn't say, 'What that claim, sir?')" No, and they don't need any.

And so, Brian, I'm making fun of a great point that you made. I'm saying that if we stick with the legal, if we stick with the moral, if we stick with the ethical, if we have a long-term vision and go back to the least objectionable... Look, we're spending so much time worrying about if you're a Republican or a Democrat, or Biden falling asleep. But look, it's all been done. I think those parties are starting to die out, honestly. Well, but do they have to? Is that evolution? Because evolution will not stop. So, if you won't allow that to take its place, if you won't allow the water droplet to create the Grand Canyon, or the Black Canyon of the Gunnison... Wow, I'm sorry, I can't even say that. That's drops of water over a million years. Okay, that's going to be what happens with us, and how do we want to be remembered? And we want to be remembered for Erich von Däniken saying that the interstellar fight on Mars populated the Earth? Are we going to go back to the law? Are we going to abandon the people and trust and build our nation back to where it needs to be? And Brian, you can't just do that with platitudes; you actually have to do that with elbow grease. And there's a bunch of people that are tired, and I don't want them coming out shooting, that's all I'm saying. Because that's also the thing: if you push a bully too far, sooner or later there's the opposite end of the world, you don't want to see that either.

That's, that's the thing is, is that then, that's why I said, I don't want this to keep going until it becomes catastrophic. You keep pushing people, you're pushing people, you keep pushing people. If I keep pushing you in the corner, you only have a couple options, right? You're either going to get me (I just put on the ball gag), but you know, most people would fight back at that point. I think you either lay down and take it or you're going to fight, you're going to fight back, and it's going to come out much worse. I mean, you can't do this. And I, I again, I think these things need to be taken at the lowest level possible. And I absolutely agree, and they need to be decided on the merits of the case. I mean, this is absolutely insane when someone who's convicted of a crime comes out and says, "Hey, this was too lenient of a sentencing." I don't know what a better red flag, as people would call it, would be. I don't know what a better indicator would be that there's something, something catastrophically wrong. But that would definitely be it, buddy. Yeah. I think we covered a lot in this episode, and, you know, it was a little bit, we try to keep it linear, but the idea, especially for the listener asked the questions about how to explain this stuff, you know? That's why we tell a story and take it from a different perspective. I have to say, explain to you a concept like losing weight or gaining weight, or consequences to my body from a poor diet, right? I'm not going to see that right away. So, if I use that analogy, it helps it. Now, let's place that in the case of what we're talking about for sentencing this individual. This is how it's going to sociologically have an effect on the rest of us – those small, subtle changes over time. So, what we're seeing right now are these kinds of ways of doing things that haven't been working. It takes a little while for us to see the effects.

And to caveat that, Brian, because if I came in saying, "Your ventral tegmental and your nucleus accumbens have to come together to push the dopamine and cortisol, and the irregular patterns of the brain won't let..." If I started that way, you're going to tune me out anyway. So, that's the real answer that America needs to know. But the idea is that the storytelling answer to project a likely spiral of where this is going to go. You know what I'm saying? That flare that comes off the sparkler, if you don't pay attention, it's going to burn down the whole house. That's what we're trying to say. And that your brain learns, your brain learns over time, and 18 months to two years has been significant time. It's learned to take advantage of a situation. Yeah.

Well, I think, I think that's a pretty good place to sort of wrap the discussion on. I mean, each one of these elements in the discussion, especially when it comes to criminal sentencing, you can really get into details about it. There's, there's really a lot involved, and I think a lot of it's coming to the surface now. I know everyone, I don't ever want to be the one saying, "Oh, you know, everything's on fire, it's burning down." I'm the one who generally says, "Look, we are now in 2022. 2021 and 2022 have become more aware of things in the world than we were before." I mean, people are now just realizing, they're complaining, they're, of course, whoever, who's ever president gets blamed for every problem, right? Yes, because naturally they have control over everything, right? So, like right now, people are saying, "Oh, the grocery store, the shelves are empty. There's this." We're just seeing how the global supply chain works, and when there's stress fractures on it, what that happens. We're just learning about this right now. We didn't know that. We just always had an endless supply of whatever we wanted. Same thing with these different criminal cases and how we're handling this stuff at a local level. Well, guess what? It's starting to take its toll. And people were saying, it took, it took a defund the police movement to show people that, "Holy [expletive], wow, these guys and girls must really be doing something because crime skyrocketed. We don't want to live in the city anymore!" It's like, no kidding. You, you didn't know. You didn't understand what was going on, and that's on you. And guess what? Now you paid for it. Now we have higher taxes. Now we have more inflation. Now it's going to take time to come back to normal for our own ignorance on these different issues. And that's what this is to me. It's, "Oh, you're just learning about this? Welcome to the party. Come on in. Water's warm." It's cold! All right, we've been dealing with this stuff for a long time. He thinks for just now tuning in. Okay, but guess what? These things have, and you know what, long before any of us were born, people were dealing with those issues. So, I mean, I think we're just getting to this awareness portion at scale, honestly.

And I think you're exactly right. Remember, history, when we don't pay attention to it, comes back and pokes us in the eye. And we saw this, and we knew this, and the historians in the world are going, "We could have told you that!" But Brian, we tuned him out. Why? Because TMZ was on! We had to find out what the Hollywood Reporter wanted to tell us. So, now you're right. And Brian, I think this was a good episode because what you said is now information travels so fast, we learn a bit more, and we can't just shake it off either. So, if we don't do something, expect more of the same. Flights aren't going to get safer. You saw just over the last couple of days, two flights returned after an hour and a half into the flight because the people got so violent, and the pilots aren't taking it, and the airlines aren't taking it. That's one facet of this huge diamond that we're forming because of all this pressure.

And, and that's the thing, too, right? Because of how we're wired to think everything is so important, it's happening so much, is when you hear these stories, you have to go, "Well, is this really a trend, or is this just something that's topical right now?" So, the airline thing is perfect because that was my first reaction. "Didn't you see the videos, the people," you know, which we knew would happen because of masks and different mandates and stuff, right? We said, "Okay, is this really a problem, or is it just making the news now?" And then, sure enough, you go look at the numbers, and you're like, "Holy crap, the amount of things that have happened in there has doubled over the last year!" I mean, that is 155 (incidents) so far this year. We're, we're again, setting a blistering pace.

So, I agree with you, but let's seek out those facts, Brian.

Yeah, let's deal on facts. I, I totally agree. You have to look at what, what do the numbers actually say? What are the incidents? How many are there? And it's not hard to find that. The beauty of it is, now it's a day, you can find that stuff out pretty easily. When we talked about the guy driving through the parade, and we told about his lineage and his pedigree, that's what he does all the time. He beats up women, he runs over women. If somebody tries to stop him, he flees. And we said that had nothing to do with the terrorist incident, had nothing to do with what was going around globally. It had to do with the local bad guy, and this is how we responded to everything. And that's why that story's gone away. As many of those people, and I'm so sorry for your loss, and so sorry for that city because it'll come up every year on a thing. But we got hate mail that said, "Oh, you guys are just looking the other way. You're not playing with the fact." This was a no, as a matter of fact, we were a little boring because we told you, "This is it. It isn't the incident to go out and burn down your village over." And we're right again. And we're right on the airlines. And I'm not saying we're always right, Brian, but I'll tell you, "com heads" (perhaps 'common sense') using truth and facts and science, I'll always follow them, Brian. I always. And if you come up and we're wrong, then guess what? I'll change my opinion. Yeah, that's a scientific way. Show us. Honestly, just send me something. We sometimes get people that, that will say, "Hey, well, you're a little off on this part," and we'll correct it. That's fine. You got it.

So, all right. Well, I think that's hopefully answered all of your questions, buddy, who wrote in. That was, yeah. No, but I, I think there's enough there to, to work with. So, thanks, thanks everyone for tuning in. Don't forget to check out the episode details, the Patreon site. Get a hold of us, leftgreg@gmail.com. We'd love to answer any questions or discuss anything through the lens of human behavior pattern recognition and analysis. So, thank you so much, and thanks to our Patreon listeners who do support the show. We appreciate you for doing that. And don't forget, everyone, that training changes behavior.