L.O.G. 199

Good morning, Greg. How are we doing up there in the mountains of Gunnison, Colorado today? You got another dump of snow overnight.

I was feverishly plowing before our day of Zoom and team calls. The dog doesn't like to plow, Brian. The dog doesn't.

Oh, no. Well, we've had a lot of rain again out here in California. We needed it. I haven't seen this much before since I've been out here, so that's, I guess, a good thing in the long run. The problem is, it's all coming at once.

But today we are going to be talking about misinformation, disinformation, and just information processing in general. Obviously, we're taking it from our perspective, but that's kind of a lot of what we do. I mean, technically, we've been on a line item for different government projects as information scientists, so that's been our title in a sense. So we know a little bit about it.

I want to clearly define some of the terms up front and what this is, because it's nothing new. These are terms that people are constantly throwing around now, and it always makes me roll my eyes. But misinformation and disinformation have to do with information that isn't necessarily factually true. But the idea is, misinformation is just false or inaccurate information, but then disinformation would be the false or inaccurate information that someone's using for a purpose. Right? I mean, there's some sort of intentionality behind it. It's not just "I heard a rumor, and now I'm sharing a rumor." It's "I'm doing this for a purpose." It's intentional.

So that's the difference between misinformation and disinformation. I always think of the "D." I'm horrible remembering when you get two terms that are real close to each other, I'll constantly (interchange them), and you do the same thing.

Of course, because you're in the moment. You're three or four steps ahead.

But I always think of it as if it's not intentional, it's not deliberate. The "D" in disinformation means deliberate to me. That's how I remember that.

That's a smart way.

Yeah, so if we screw that up going forward, just remember that, folks. But the idea is, this has been around forever. This is how humans are, this is how humans communicate. So if you're listening right now, think of it anytime you've embellished a story, or passed along a story from someone that you never checked or didn't know. I'm not talking like sharing a link on social media. I mean, literally telling and sharing your story. "Oh, did you hear about so-and-so?" That's all junk. Ninety percent of what comes out of humans' mouths is junk. It's talk, it's an immediate response, it's this. And historically, this stuff's always been around.

One of my favorite books I love talking about social media about is that guy, Tom Standage. He wrote that one about, I think it was called Writing on the Wall: The First 2,000 Years of Social Media. It even talks about ancient Romans. They'd post something on the reading wall where people would have to go see what it was. "Here's what happened." But what was more popular was, "I want to hear Greg's take on that." So Greg would write his letter or his response, and I would read it at my party with my friends. We'd go back and forth because I want to hear what you have to say. So people didn't back then care what was coming out of the direct, "Hey, here's what happened, here's the law, it's written down." No, no, I want to hear what someone's take is. So none of this stuff is new, and all of us engage in it, either intentionally or unintentionally. Like I said, every time, it's like the telephone game, right? If you remember.

Exactly right.

That's what happens. It's not something to be like, "This isn't new." There's nothing new about any of this stuff and how information works. And if you really dig into information theory, you can get down to the physics of information and understand how a lot of this stuff is so entirely predictable. But it comes along with initial reports of something come out, and then that always changes later. Then people go, "Why did this change?" Well, because the initial report about anything is almost never right, and it's almost never so far off from being what it is. But we, as humans, need that instant gratification.

But the reason also we're talking about is because we sort of had, you summed up a lot of this in an experience, an event, a thing we were at the other week in Pennsylvania. We were talking to some really important folks, and I thought you did a great job of it, because you tied in a couple of things that we know and other people might know about certain historical events, certain stories, whatever it is, and tied it in to show as an example. So I was kind of hoping you would be able to share that in a sense with the listeners, what you said and briefed all of these very important folks out there. They got to hear, and I know it's not going to be the same, but some of it was sort of in the moment, and it was spurred by a conversation we had had at dinner over this. But some of our best conversations are.

It is, and that's what these are on the podcast too. We try to have, you know, it's hard to replicate that there in the moment over dinner. But we try to do that on here.

But, I'll throw it to you, Greg, on that, to sort of share with everyone your take on this.

Exactly. Brian and I were eating at Lamb's Creek Food and Spirits in Mansfield, Pennsylvania. If you're ever in Pennsylvania and you're in Mansfield, it's the place to go. You've got that, and you've got a Perkins. Wonderful shout-out to Carol and her staff there. But for a dinner, I'm telling you, Lamb's Creek was the place.

So, as we're sitting there enjoying a cocktail, talking to some very intelligent people, the 1965 classic "Rescue Me" comes on over the piped-in music. And one of the guys we're sitting at the table with, who is a genius, a Wiley Coyote Super Genius, and a PhD, says, "Ah, the amazing Aretha Franklin." And I did a spit-take, if you remember, Brian, and I was like, "Whoa, wait a minute." I'm a music history student, and I'm a Detroit boy, and it's not Aretha. It's the amazing Fontella Bass. As a matter of fact, we've never covered that song. It was always Fontella Bass. And that led me back...

Are you going to sing a bar real quick to get everyone else?

I won't, but I will sing in a minute, Brian, because you demanded it with my gravelly voice.

That'll be great.

But Fontella Bass, for everybody that remembers her, she was a one-hit wonder of sorts, and that was the song that defined her career. Shout out to St. Louis where we were just a few weeks ago. Shout out to the great Joe Wade, fantastic team at Asymmetric Solutions, our dear friend Joe Busso. Everything St. Louis is epitomized in Fontella Bass.

So the first thing that comes to my drug-addled mind is ethylene. And so I'm thinking of effluents. If we combine glycol, then we have ethylene glycol: colorless, odorless. I use it in my radiator to cool my engine, but I can also use it to murder my significant other. And that's why the radiator coolant manufacturers always tell you to wash down your driveway if you have a stain, so your dog doesn't lick it, right?

So, ethylene glycol, we ran into a lot in Iraq and Afghanistan, Brian, because it's a component in some bombs that people make that are explosive in nature but homemade. So, HME (Homemade Explosives). That's a hard term sometimes to come up with when you're on a roll.

And so, ethylene on its own is pretty significant, and I'll get into that in a moment. So ethylene made me think of Bob Seger. And Bob Seger took me back to my brother's high school graduation, my dear brother Brian, in Grosse Pointe now, but in East Detroit in 1976. Seger sang at his high school graduation. He wasn't quite as big as he is now, or now you could probably get him. But what's the guy you make fun of all the time? "I Drink Alone." Sir? Okay, you could probably hire Thurgood to fill a room.

But Seger sang at my brother's high school graduation. I snuck in, and among other songs that Seger's famous for singing, "Old Time Rock and Roll." He recorded it, just "Give Me Old Time Rock and Roll," 1979. Everybody knows that. They associate it probably with film or song, which is why, Brian, we're going to get back to in a minute, why these things happen, how misinformation, disinformation starts.

The song "Old Time Rock and Roll" was written by the famous George Jackson. George Jackson, born in Mississippi, 1945, wrote 14 hit songs by the time he was 30 years old. I remember George from Muscle Shoals, Alabama, the place that he put on the map for a lot of people that like the type of music I do. And George Jackson, no relationship to anybody, but George Jackson wrote the song "One Bad Apple." And everybody on the call knows, "One Bad Apple don't spoil the whole bunch, girl. Give it one more try before you give up on love. One Bad Apple don't spoil the whole bunch, girl. I don't care what they say, I don't care what you heard." You remember that?

Now, I would really get into that if I didn't want to wake the dog that's sleeping next to me. But we instantly and immediately relate that song with The Jackson 5. Well, there's two things wrong with that file folder, Brian. First of all, The Jackson 5 never covered that song. It was The Osmond Brothers. The Osmond Brothers tried to sound like The Jackson 5 because The Jackson 5 were hot, and they wanted to be memorable, right? So they took George Jackson's song, no relation to The Jackson 5, and guess what they did? They brought it to the charts in 1971.

And here's another hit by George Jackson. The second part of that is ethylene is a gas that forms when fruits start to decay in the bowl on your counter. And ethylene, once it starts, will make all the fruit in that bowl decay. So one bad apple does indeed spoil the whole bunch, girl. It does. And so here we've got a little bit of misinformation that has spread over four decades. Do you get what I'm trying to say?

And everybody to this day still thinks it's Aretha Franklin on "Rescue Me," and everybody that I've ever talked to always goes, "Oh, The Jackson 5," when it's "One Bad Apple." And I'm like, "No, it's not. It couldn't be further from The Jackson 5 if you compare them to The Osmonds." Other than both being brothers and both being singers, everything about those bands is completely different.

So what? So at Columbine, Brian, put the neck wrap on, folks, if you're listening, because we're about to pivot. The Columbine calls that came in had five shooters, Trench Coat Mafia, sniper on the roof. Look, there was a guy that had the wrong day to work on the air conditioning in the cafeteria. So he was up on the roof, and he got pegged as a sniper early on. There were people running from the scene that just happened to be wearing their baseball cap backwards, as (Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold) had when they were seen shooting inside the building. And every time somebody saw him, Brian, what do you think that added up to? That added up to an additional shooter.

Which brings me back to one of our dear friends, who I won't name because he went rogue, that was in an armored vehicle downtown in a place in Iraq. He had a good friend of his shot by a sniper. So every time that he looked up on the rooftops after that with his M2 .50 cal (heavy machine gun), he saw those satellite dishes or the water buckets that are up there, and he would shoot them up thinking they were a sniper.

Brian, one little piece of information through the telephone line turns into misinformation, which then turns into disinformation. And that's the route if it's unintentional. Do you see what I mean? If it's unintentional, you never meant it to be that, but you propagate it. You keep it aloft, and you keep it moving, and the longer it gathers its own, it's like that snowball going downhill, right?

And that's a great understanding of how these things occur, and then what becomes solidified as information. It goes back to, "Now it's a fact that Aretha Franklin did that." And Aretha Franklin, when it came on, her biggest song, "Respect," talking about respect and sticking it to the man. I was like, "Yeah, but Otis Redding wrote that song." He was talking about his girl.

And like you said, the irony in that one I always love is, do you get it? This isn't about men versus women or women versus men. This is human communication. This is how things work, it's how we do. And it doesn't matter which way the wind blows, it can mean that for you. And that's partly because art and music is subjective, and we get to interpret it. But all information and stories are subjective. You talk about the allegory of the cave all the time.

Yeah, to Plato.

And everyone, but everyone uses that, "See, if you're just that scared person staying in the cave, you're never going to do anything in life." And that's when it's like, "Well, hang on, is that what it meant?" It's not what it meant. It was like, "You're looking at the shadow at the back of the cave, you're not seeing what's real." It's about human perception and then the decisions we make from our perception based on that, based on those fundamental underpinnings.

I'll give you one that just happened with our CEO, the wonderful Shelley. It's Women's History Month, everybody, so pay homage to the women in your history. She walked into the kitchen. We were watching a game show before we went to bed. Both were going to have a cocoa or... whatever... cocaine (joking) calm us down before...

Actually, exactly. It makes you dream faster. I know it.

But no, it tastes like... And so what happened is, she walked in, and she just made this offhand side comment, and she said, "Cinnamon blowhole." And so I go, "Okay, well, I clearly didn't hear that right. What are you talking about?" And she goes, "Well, the clue they gave was cinnamon blowhole." And I go, "Shelley, they wouldn't put that on TV. That'd be a great call sign, as a matter of fact. That might be a good chapter in one of our upcoming books."

Right? Yeah.

But I said, "You know, that's not it." So we went back, and we rewound the tape on the game show, and the person was looking at the other person trying to use as few words as possible and said, "Synonym. Global." And what they wanted is "International" was the word they were searching for. Okay? But both Shelley and I are clinically deaf. Yeah. So it became... now, had we not gone back to the source and corrected it, then "cinnamon blowhole" would have been a running gag forever.

Yeah. And it sounds like some awful thing that happens at a frat house on some college campuses that you pay for. So, no.

And that's... There's countless examples of that, of the story that spins out. And now that was all I remember reading the books as a kid. And he had the radio show, Paul Harvey, and, "Now you know the rest of the story." Every one of us loved those.

Yeah, because he'd go back and go, "Oh, wow, I didn't know that. That's how that thing got started." And that's still so prevalent on social media and stuff. You see that where people do a good thread on Twitter like, "Hey, I know we all know this, but you know where that came from?" And it's always so cool. It's like, "Wow, I had no idea those two things were ever related." There's a million of these. But it comes from how humans are with information, and how we attribute value to certain things over others, and what we want. And a lot of it just kind of either confirms our beliefs, that confirmation bias. And we want it to be true, so therefore it is true. And then it goes forward, and then the story gets lost, and goes, "Wow, it doesn't matter anyway."

Yeah, when people use "perception is reality," it's like, "No, reality is perception. Your reality is reality," you know what I'm saying? Which is a perception of how you perceive things. It's like when people use, "the truth, I want the truth." I go, "No, I want the facts." Because you're... I make fun of the reality shows where they're like, "I'm here to speak my truth." And it's like, I hate it, but it's actually the greatest way to describe it, because it's such a subjective thing. You're right. Your experience and events is your control in the narrative, but that doesn't mean that what you're saying is true for the fundamental basis, the underpinning of the rest of the argument.

But why do we do that? We look... I'll tell you, somebody left behind Ahmaud Arbery. Ahmaud Arbery was left behind because what we did is we went around the country. Yeah, people died near the same time that Ahmaud did. And what happened is we forgot that Ahmaud Arbery was the perfect poster child for how racism starts and becomes entrenched in a society. Yeah, and he was murdered for what, Brian? For jogging.

So, but we lost sight. So you said that earlier, you said, "Sometimes we lose sight of the original story." I'll give you one. Two cops were killed so far this week, probably more by the time this is going to reach broadcast. One officer overnight last night shot in a park in Chicago. Two officers responded to the home. Two officers chased the gunman. Gunman spins, turns, and shoots the guy dead, the officer.

Within hours before that, Brian, an officer and his canine partner were killed. They were going through the green light in their community, everything is fine, everything's caught on camera. And a kid ran the red light, purportedly texting. I don't know this part of the story, so I'm not going to add conjecture to it. But what we do know is the kid that was driving the car was going 85 in a 35, hit the officer broadside, dead right there. DRT (Dead Right There) we call that. He and the dog died. The officer, that officer, his name and his commitment to society are going to be lost because what does news media want us to know about? They want us to know about the shooting that followed a high-speed chase that followed a... do you understand what I'm saying? So sometimes sensationalism.

Right.

The fact that it sounded enough like The Jackson 5 is enough for us to open a door and go a direction and forget about the pioneers that were really responsible for this, the story.

Right. And my argument is that's not the media, that's humans.

Yeah, but exactly. So who drives the media? You're right back to the tail wagging the dog. You see what I'm trying to say? So they don't just come up with and go, "Hey, I bet people will love this." They follow an algorithm. Yeah, or they go, "It says we will. These are the five things we're going to try. Holy crap, this one got all the attention. Let's just do that from now, so tomorrow." It's really that simple is you're shaping the history of the foundational elements of a story.

Yeah, that's my thing. And of course you get the predicted response from people of, "Okay, well, we got to teach kids about how to identify misinformation, (identify disinformation)." Like, what are you talking about? One, what would that be? What does that even mean? What would that even look like? How are you qualified to come up with something like this? It's so ridiculous. It's all if you just learn about this is how you, as a human, process information. This is how you, as a human, communicate information. This is called some basic biases about confirmation bias and fundamental attribution error that affect your reasoning and judgment. And guess what? You can't change that. You can become aware of it. You can put in some sort of measures, an analytical process, so you don't fall into that trap, but you are primed to do that. You are 100% primed to fall into that trap every single time, because you care about immediacy and what's going to save me right now. What's going to keep me alive? What's not going to kill me? And if we just understand that process better, you get better at seeing what misinformation or disinformation is.

I saw someone wrote an article about like, "People need to learn how to read." Not that you can't read, like literally read the words on the page, but how to read a piece of information. It was great, because it was like, "All right, hey, this is what you need to do. First, read the title. What does that title say? What does it mean? Who is the author? What are they writing about? And what are they writing for? And who do they work for?" Like, you, it adds this context. And then look at the words that they choose to use. How did they describe the events? How did that make you feel? And it's like, once you start going down that, it's very simple to tell what's a sensational piece and what's a clinical, by-the-book piece. No one ever reads all those investigations after the fact, and we love those. We always say, "Hey, wait for that stuff to come out, because all of the facts of the case are in there that the investigators found." I mean, maybe there's something that they didn't find. Exactly.

Everything that's known is right there. Not the story, whether it benefits the defense or the prosecution. Yeah, right. They have to make sure that it has to be there. And so, look, let's talk about that for a minute. Did Sisyphus spend his life pushing the boulder up the hill only to have it roll back down the hill? Or is that yet another allegory?

Now, I don't want to poke somebody in the eye or talk about faith, but we very recently had a discussion about Samson. And Samson's hair was Samson's strength. Why? Because there's a Jewish group called the Nazir that they didn't drink alcohol, and they grew their hair because they thought that that was a devotion. So, obviously cutting Samson's hair was the ultimate insult, right? Because we're saying, "Your strength from God now is gone. Now what do you do?"

So, Brian, sometimes the story is so powerful that we do it a disservice by not looking into what the facts are. And that's exactly how I feel about reading articles. How many articles do I send you a day?

Yeah, yeah, it doesn't.

Okay, so that's just one an hour. So you're right, at least one an hour that I share with you where there's a specific point where the person went editorial, and that pisses me off. Where they say, "It could have been," or "Perhaps this was related." Anytime that you do that, you take away from the information, and you can't create intelligence without information. And that's misinformation. So then if I pass it on knowingly, then it's disinformation, right? I mean, I'm playing fast and loose with the description only to show people how simple it can be when it starts.

There's the old Native American one Brian and I wrote about a long time ago. Shelley and I were down around a Native American Pueblo, and the person was cooking. They had the bread pan, and they were putting the meatloaf in the bread pan, and they cut the end off of it, and they turned around and they said something to the sky, and they gave it to the dog. And because we didn't speak the Native American language, we didn't know what it was. We asked, and they said, "Well, great-grandmother, the idea is that she blessed the food and she shares with the dog because the dog is from the Earth." And they want a long explanation. So we sat down, and one of the other family members came in, and we were eating that meat later, and she said, "No, that's not true at all. It's because she said, 'Gosh, damn it, I wish I would have had a bigger baking pan. I don't want to cook meat out.'"

But what happened is it became institutional memory. Yeah. And if institutional memory is based on a house of cards, Brian, it's going to fail after a while. That's in essence, that's what I'm trying to bring to the table.

No, and that's a great example of a different historical example. You'll see where people will go back now today and go, "Well, see, this part of the story right here, that was hugely important to those." And if you went back in time, they'd be like, "Oh, no, man. I red was the only clean shirt I had that day." So, it becomes sort of entrenched in these ideas where you take things not for what is the intent and purpose, and what were they truly trying to get across. We like these tiny little elements that we think might be significant, and oftentimes they're not often significant. Right? We give them weight.

I'll give you an example of that, the egg on the wall. No, we... Willie Winky... What's the egg that falls off? All the king's horses? Yeah. You know what you don't see a lot anymore, Brian? Punchbacks. But let's go to Humpty Dumpty. Humpty Dumpty had nothing to do with an egg. Humpty Dumpty was a cannon that was used during the war. And during the battle with the cannon, the cannon broke, and then they weren't able, and they were overwhelmed. And no manner of... look, shanties started somewhere, do you get what I'm trying to say? And it was a form of communication, just like a martial arts Kata (form). What I had to do is I had to take a series of moves and put them together because most of the people that came to my martial arts course couldn't read. Yeah. And you got to remember it. So sorry to memorize it. Yeah. And guess what? Now, all of a sudden, somebody turned it into a song or a rap or a poem, and it's easier to remember.

People ask me all the time, "Well, why can my kid remember every rap lyric?" Two things. One, they like it, okay? So you got to appeal to the person. The second thing is, it appeals to them in an order of clearer thinking and processing something that happened in their own life. Because if they tie it to an emotion or a feeling in their own life, they're apt to remember it. So I will tell you that even that little story that I told about Aretha Franklin going to The Osmonds, somebody in the crowd is going to hear one of those songs three months from now and think of this podcast. That's how it works, Brian.

Well, yeah, and especially when it comes to music because it's true, it's logically, mathematically correct to your brain. It gets it right away. Music is ingrained in all humans.

Right. Yeah.

It's a frequency, and it's a repetitive pattern that's consistent. And even with, because that gets into a lot of different music, especially like, well, you can get into classical or certain jazz music. But even with hit music, anything that becomes a hit, there's a certain amount of predictability to it, with just a little bit of, "I'm not sure what's going to happen." Your brain is okay with a little bit. But if it's too much, "I don't know what's happening here, there's no real rhythm," it's chaos, and your brain does not like you. Like, "What is this racket? This is noise."

And so, instead of Sean's son, okay, so Sean Clemens, our consigliere, I love you. (Sean's son) Christian's a wonderful pilot and a musician, and he's like 15. So you talk about the samurai, right? And you sent the article to Christian to say, "Look, there's only so many chords here in the hit music."

Right. Yeah.

And we see that it's an algorithm. So, and we're also drawn to what's discordant. Why? Because discordant becomes the anomaly. And so our brain is naturally triggered to look at anomalous behavior, even in music, even in speech patterns. So we're drawn to that. Why are we drawn to it? First, for survival, and then because it's a little different. And how many times have you had somebody come up with a Mohawk that was painted orange, and you ask them, "What are you doing?" And they go, "I want to be different." And you see 10,000 people that day that are in the auditorium with the orange Mohawk. I get it. But that's what our brain gloms onto, Brian. And so because we're individuals and we no longer function as members of a team, the tribe, what happens is that our individual views become a reality. Right? It's hard to break that. That confirmation bias is very difficult to break, specifically over time.

No, and that's even why comedy works. It's when a joke lands because it's not, it's something you didn't expect to happen next. It's, you have a setup that's leading you down a path, and then all of a sudden the comic goes, "Nope, it's over here." And you're like, "Oh my gosh, I didn't see that turn right there. That's hilarious." But that's how it works.

And so part of the reason why I wanted to discuss this on here with everyone is because it's such a prevalent thing. And because we don't understand it, someone has to come up with a new term for it and use it. Then it becomes part of the vernacular. Then everyone's, "No, that's misinformation. That's..." It's like, "Look, man, 90% of the stuff you see is talk." It's why I love reading on Twitter a lot of people's comments, because it's talk, it's conversation. It's not a definitive statement. It's not a, "Hey, I looked into this." It's not, they're not teaching you appropriate. Like, we always give the example, when we're teaching, we're very deliberate, and this is what it is. It's clinical. This is how we explain it. Even though we take people on that emotional rollercoaster ride, there's a specific point to everything that we're trying to do. And every slide, and everything.

Exactly. Commented everything over here.

And so, but the idea is that that's not what most things are. Most things are talk, and talk is cheap. Right? That's the whole point. We're bridging a gap here.

But let me shine a light on something. Okay? So in class, when we're teaching, it's all science, all the time. Absolutely. Everything draws back to a specific point that needs to be made so you can learn another thing. Okay? Now, if we take a look at the podcast, the podcast is our form of being able to sit down and just have a cup of coffee and talk about things that bother us. So it's opinion-based testimony for sure. We never bring opinion-based testimony into the classroom. There's two completely different things. Arcadia is what goes on in the classroom. Greg is us talking, right? Why is that? But why do you do that?

Well, because people... because people say, "Well, that you're not being authentic then."

No, no, no, no. But wait a minute. It's exactly the opposite. We're authentic and transparent, and we're deliberate. And what I mean by that is, we're intentional. Yesterday, Brian, we spent over an hour closing the loop on a gosh-damn armored car robbery that occurred two years ago.

Oh yeah.

Yeah. But why? Because we commented on that information. We're not a flash in the pan. And it was just as relevant today as it was when we went down and broke down that video and talked about, and now five people are in jail, and we know the indictment. Why? Because we, in that professional realm, when I'm rendering my opinion, I want to be right every time. I want to give you nothing but fact-based data, right? And then you draw the reasonable conclusion. But on this show, Brian, when we're talking about, "Hey, I, you know, I don't like the Chicago painting on the right wall. I think it's kind of the left wall." It's a completely different thing. So are we still training and educating in the podcast? Yeah, but we're doing it in a fun way where we can argue a point and disagree on something. Why don't we disagree in class? Because 40 years. And so there is no wiggle room. And I, you know, people that know us know exactly what we're talking about. If you and I are sitting down at a bar, the Aretha Franklin conversation, right? That wonderful place in Mansfield, that was, we were sharing ideas, we were brainstorming things, and we were having a good time. That stuff ain't going to end up in class. You see what I mean? It's a different standard.

Well, and I think, yes, it's a completely different standard, and it's us. This is who we are. We're completely transparent about everything. But you can have nuanced views on things. You can, that's okay. You don't have to tow some line or you don't have to come out and say some certain thing, and you can ask questions. And especially when we're on here right now discussing, we're being, there's some, there's trust between us right now. Not just because we've known each other, worked together, but literally, in order to have an open, honest discussion, there has to be that trust there. Meaning, I have to be able to say something that's kind of maybe not correct or makes you uncomfortable. And you have to be able to go, "Well, Brian, I don't know if I agree with that, and here's why." And so, yeah.

Level of vulnerability comes. Absolutely. Transparency.

And that's what being transparent, honest is. And so technologies can't shift between those things. And I always use the law as an example. Like, there are laws in our country that I completely disagree with. I think they're stupid, and I think we need to change them. Yeah, but I don't break them. Like, I don't have that right. Like, I follow them. I'm not going to step over and cross that line because it's illegal. Do I agree with it? No. But I have the ability to write my Congress person. I can petition, and I have the right to redress as a U.S. citizen to say, "I disagree with these. We should change these. We can't do it violently."

Totally agree. Right.

And I can't break. I can't go, "Well, I don't disagree with this, so I'm going to do it anyway." It's like, "Well, okay, but that's a choice you made, and you've now colored outside the lines."

I look at that almost...

But you get what I'm saying, the difference between what a spokesman is saying about a specific topic versus maybe what their opinion is on what should happen or what that is. If we discuss it here and we say, "Hey, this is what science says about it, and this is what I've seen," we're giving you... we're not making stuff up. We're telling you exactly what we've experienced in our life, and we're saying this is the research that we've done. But we're having fun with it. We're in class. Yeah, class is a lot of fun, but class is literally transmitting data that is going to make you smarter, stronger, faster, and harder to kill in a manner that the pedagogy and the andragogy form a hegemony. And that's not what we do here. This isn't a webinar. We're just discussing things that we like to talk about, and we're tying them together in life hacks that anybody could use in any walk of life. So it doesn't have to be military, it doesn't have to be police, it can be first responder, but it can be HR, and it can be you talking to your daughter before she goes to 7-Eleven.

You know, and that's what I like about this format is because we can really leak some things about ourselves or about our families, which aren't things that we make a definitive line in the classroom. Brian, how often do folks, we research and rehearse every course that we give. Right? We are the top of this game and the point on the pyramid of the research and the thinking in this realm, yet every single time before we leave, we make sure that we're researching and rehearsing and making sure that the items are relevant that we're going to talk about on that day. How many people can say that they do that? And we know that they don't, right?

And so when the person pushes information out immediately after an incident or an event, right? Okay, they're trying to be first.

Yes.

You get where I'm going? They're not trying to be the most accurate. They're trying to scoop the rest of the market, and they don't do that.

That's the next thing I kind of wanted to talk about on this topic, is a lot of folks are just trying to get something out there first. And I think because we sort of have that culture with us where, "Oh, I heard this, and this is what's going on here." "Did you?" And everyone shares. Like, I go through a social media thing, and everyone's sharing the same stupid video sometimes. You know, I wish original content got pushed up in the algorithm, but unfortunately it doesn't. And we'll never see that because that doesn't...

People don't know. Right, right, right.

So, but that rush is a big problem. And I always say, you know, we get asked different questions sometimes, and sometimes I'm like, "Okay, here's what I know, and I can comment on this. But I'm not going to answer that other question." Like, "Well, can't you tell?" I was like, "Nope, the facts of the case are not yet. You don't know anything right now. This is pure speculation. You're narrating the TV with the sound off." That's all you're doing at this point.

And so those things, and that's the thing where people can kind of take a look at. Is this credible, or is someone just trying to get out there with this information? Are you just sharing this stuff, and why are you doing this? How does this comment...?

Yeah. What is it you're saying? How does this add value to what's happening? What do we say all the time? If you can videotape it, if you can film it on your phone, you can stop it. You can intercede. Okay? So "Left of Bang" is more than a concept; it's a way of life. And that's why, look, I am miserable in the rest of my life. Absolutely everything I do, I'm a failure. But when it comes to this, I'm great at it, and I have fun with it. Okay? So I stick in my lane. I'm not going to go throw the first pitch out, you get what I'm trying to say, at the local ball game because I'd blow it. Then I'm not going to be able to do that. And I'm not going to comment on (expletive) films unless it's a film about human behavior, because I'm not an expert at that. So I'll stay in my lane. Now, with Brian, I'll talk about that with Shelley or Sean. I'll talk about that. Those are different instances.

So when we take a look at how a person will process the information that you're giving them, we're saying a sound analysis is important. So I see these videos that you're talking about, and only because you and Sean send them, because I have no other social media. I only have LinkedIn. And all of a sudden, I see a guy come on LinkedIn with one of the photos I've seen a hundred times that everybody sends it to me, and it shows a teacher get knocked the (expletive) out. And then it shows like 26 minutes of pablum (meaning bland, uninteresting material) of (expletive) that you don't need to know of response. Okay? Look, if you're not "Left of Bang," then you're making all your decisions on the "X," and there's always a "next thing." So "After Bang" is an important time. Come to a class, we'll talk about it all. Ask these questions. Write it.

So the person goes in and breaks it down. And the breakdown is something like, "Well, you see here the person got knocked out, and so what you have to do is you..." Okay, there you go. Now we saw that. We went to a gas station robbery. Yeah, the people, the guy distracted them, the people surround him. "Well, you see right here, he wasn't paying attention, and he got robbed." You could have seen that down the street. You could have been down the street driving up to the gas station. "Oh, that's a robbery in progress." Or, "Those guys are about to ambush something." You know what we're more about? We're more about those guys were sitting in the basement of their mom's home, and they were all smoking some kine bud (marijuana). And one guy looks at the other guy and goes, "We can't go to Popeye's Fried Chicken this afternoon because we're broke." And the other guy goes, "Hey, I like that Subway sandwich better." And now they're arguing about food. And then one guy goes, "Well, let's go get some." "Well, what are we going to do?" "Well, we're going to carjack something." That's where it starts. So, if we're talking about that, and then we bring it in, and what you should do to be more aware before you even choose the place to go, those are beneficial stuff.

Yeah, showing somebody shoot themselves, get shot, or the latest one, the St. Louis one of the guy fiddling around with the guy. Yeah, he's got a gun, he shot a round already, and then they had some sort of malfunction, and that's why he's filming. So now the guy's standing there on the phone fumbling around trying to fix the malfunction of his weapon system, takes him forever to do it right there in broad daylight, and then just executes the appeared-to-be homeless person right in front of them, just right there. There are hundreds of thousands of those photos right now on the internet, and there's hundreds of thousands that drop every week. And the idea is that if you're going to live your life based on an incident that occurred somewhere else "at Bang" and try to make a reasonable judgment on it, that's ridiculous. All humans are the same all over. All pre-indications are identical. You just have to pick them out. And if intent is present, danger is present, but if danger is present, opportunity is present. Those simple links will make you so much happier.

Right. But what we tend to do is we tend to read two or three articles that day, and what do we do? Our unconscious biases put them together and show a trend, and now it's trending by the end of the day.

Hold on for a minute. That's another thing.

There's so many examples of this. It's like with the whole, remember when the Chinese balloon was shot down over the U.S., and we were tracking it, and people are freaking the (expletive) out. One, wait until you find out what satellites are. Two, wait until you find out everything that China does in terms of collection. And three, you know anything about what the U.S. does? I'll just leave it at that. But if you think what China is doing is impressive or scary, wait until you find out what we're doing. But the idea, it is such a perfect example of how we think, "Oh my gosh, now there's things everywhere. Now we can... How would we let this happen?" Well, meanwhile, our intelligence services watched them launch that balloon when it first left China, meaning they knew they were going to do it. They knew the time, they knew the location or were able to observe it, knew where the path was going, determined because of the weather currents that, "Oh, it got blown off path because they're actually trying to send it down here." And then it went up here, and then did something about it. It's hilarious, and everyone goes, "Why are we letting this happen? Just shoot it." It's like, "Okay, if you shoot down an adversary's balloon, they now know that you're, you know, all of the information that led up to that trajectory." Or you could let them keep thinking that what they're doing...

I like the best of selfie with the pilot. Yeah.

Okay. Of course. Instead of firing that guy and putting him in jail.

Okay, but what happens is that's the most important thing that came out of that. His whole squadron is so jealous of him.

But then we think, "Well, what else is out there? Oh my God, they're everywhere, and they're doing all this stuff to us." It's like, they always have been. You're just fine. Well, the funny thing about this is when everyone tries to be out first with what's going on, and everything's a pattern, and look at that, it's like a lot of times what you're doing is you're just showing your ignorance of the situation, because you're showing that you didn't know any of this (expletive) was going on already. So I love it when people do that because I always love it when people show their ignorance or show who they really are or how little they know, because it helps go, "See, we probably shouldn't listen to this person anymore." But everyone's so...

So let's add this to that. When you read who the author is, you have incumbent upon you the onus of looking that person up, looking at other things that they wrote, and looking what they contributed to. Would you agree with me that there are doctors out there that are absolutely insane? Yes. They bring their ridiculous... what about a soldier? What about a Marine? What about a politician? What about... look, there's people in our walks of life that talk just to be heard, and they write just to be read. And that's all they're about. I mean, look, Jay Leno can't stay off the television. You see what I'm saying? That's a great example.

And so was the guy, what was the guy that ended up selling fish oil? He had the great thing in the morning, Larry King. Okay? So Larry King went through every day, and who he is, and he's at the top of the game to finally hawking fish oil at two in the morning with a guy because he couldn't get away from it. That was him. He needed to be in front of that camera, in that microphone. Right?

So I'll go to Cryptids, and I know everybody loves when I go to UFOs or Bigfoot (or Bigfeet, I guess it would be). And there's that video that keeps coming out of the blob that goes by (referring to the "Tic Tac" UFO video). And there's different names. It's the B, it's this. And it's going so far, and it's over the water, and it's in. And people are chiming in, and the guy's saying, "Well, I was on the USS Nimitz expert," and I came in. First of all, what's the first rule? Shut the (expletive) up. Second rule is if you're going to come out there, if you're not credentialed or don't have credibility, or you're not an eyeball witness. And remember what we say about witnesses. So, Brian, I've seen that video broken down by experts on one side, probably 10 or 11 times on the Cryptid side, and probably 200 times on the science side. And everybody goes, "Look, this object is only going this speed. What's the problem is our parallax in the parallel, okay?" And they mathematically show it, and they'll recreate it with their iPhone. That's insignificant. So, bamboozled and be caught up in something like that. So I'll withhold my opinion until I hear more than one.

Right? And I will never, when people ask us to render a legal opinion, if they say, "My opinion is this." Well, first of all, you've tainted me. Second of all, I'll need both sides. I'll need all arguments. I'll need every video that's available. Then I'll render my opinion. Because if you're not involved in the caper, your gut brain instinct, history, what you ate for breakfast comes in, and it taints the pool. And so are we saying that all things that are out there are lies? No, no. But enjoy the entertainment value. Yeah, don't turn around and start digging in your yard because we're going to war with China. Right? And people do, Brian, people do that stuff.

Well, and that stuff has, because it's, those full of (expletive) stories have started wars before. Even people have made decisions off of bad information or they were done intentionally to draw something. I mean, that's the problem when you sensationalize everything, it makes it harder to determine what you need to act on and what you should just go, "Okay." And so you have to have a healthy dose of skepticism, and take a look at because social media is a great thing, Greg. I know you only have LinkedIn, but just look at who you're following. Just look at every account, and you're going to start to see like, "Oh, wait a minute, pretty much following... there's a pattern here of getting information." And, "Wow, it turns out when something comes out, they all agree on something. So maybe that's feeding into the fact that that's why we posted it."

Where we, you know, I'll follow or be connected with something that has absolutely nothing to do with what I do or who I am. You always do the one when you travel. We love that is go, you travel, but go into the Hudson News at the airport and buy a magazine of some crap that you've never been interested in before, know nothing about. And then, "Oh, wow." But you have to do what? You have to read it cover-to-cover, including the advertisements and the commentary, because only then will you see that viewpoint. And the more you do that...

Look, I follow some hare-brained (expletive), but I understand it's completely entertainment. But then what do we do? We send it to Martin and Sean and Shelley, and we say, "What are your views on this?" And if we have to go outside of that, we have what's called an Advisory Board, and we send it to them before we would ever render a comment on something. Do you get what I'm trying to say? We would have to make sure that it passes muster. But we don't do that on a joke, do we? You see what I mean? We don't do that on a song.

Well, so it's a different standard. And the song thing is a lot like meme culture and people sending stuff. It's like, everyone knows memes are supposed to be funny or highlight a point. It's a great way to transmit a lot of information over just an image with some text on it, but it's not the real thing. It's the joke. It's not the actual thing. It's a commentary on it. And, you know, it's less than parody.

It's a form of social commentary that doesn't have to be funny. And you know, that's the great thing about, "What do you see in this picture?" It's like the dot thing where you pull it away, and, "Do you see the sailboat?" I like that. Sometimes you send me stuff, and I don't understand it, so I have to write you, and I go, "I don't get the joke." And then you have to fill me in on those things that I don't understand about social media.

Yeah, "Here's the three things surrounding that you need to know in order to get that gag." Right?

But I love when you do that, because that opens my eyes to a thing that I, or my heart or my ears, to a thing that I don't know, and I'm not afraid of that. But some people are, Brian. Fear is a motivator, so if you sell with fear, you're wrong. Sex is a motivator, so if you sell with sex, you're wrong. Right? Because what does that do? That changes my electrochemical neurotransmitters in a direction, and that's deliberate and intentional too. So that's right back to your misinformation, disinformation. Am I using the left hand to jab so I can hit you with the right hand hook or cross? I mean, that's what it is. And if you're doing that for nefarious means, then it's evil.

Well, because another one I see where people just make all these wild, hare-brained schemes up in their head, whatever you want to call it, a conspiracy theory or just commentary on something, and they create these big elaborate things, and they're constantly putting stuff out, and it's, this person's clearly clickbait, it's clearly (expletive). They're trying to get you to buy something, or they're making money off of this, and it's very obvious, but people still fall into it. And then what do they do? They'll come back like, "Yeah, but he was right about this thing." It's like, "Okay, so we're going to use the Broken Clock (expletive) methodology." Way to go with that. Like, "I'm going to make predictions on 700 things. Look, I was right on this one. Well, maybe some of the other things I'm saying could be right." No, that's not what it means. It means you're right.

What's the Quatrains of Nostradamus theory, Brian?

Oh, of course. Don't try to make Nostradamus work. Right? Because what they go is they go, "Well, Hisler was Hitler in the land." Oh my Lord.

And you know what? People buy into that. You know why people buy into that? Because people are vulnerable, and people are afraid. And those people are insecure. And we don't like complexity. We don't like, we don't understand randomness. We don't like change. Why is weather such a significant thing? Because weather can still kill us, Brian.

And it comes down to lack of control. I mean, it's part of why religion is so powerful is because I need to have a faith system. I need to have a belief to know that there's order here. Like, there has to be a reason. There has to...

Yeah, you're on there.

There has to be a person behind this. There has to be a reason for everything, and these things must be connected. And you're like, "Nah, it's probably just a bunch of people all trying to get whatever they're trying to get." And then sometimes those needs line up where they'll work together, and sometimes they're bitter enemies on that. And so, but that, you know, we don't like going, we don't like uncertainty. We don't like just thinking of us hurtling through space. You know what I mean? That could be just bashed in with a solar flare or a meteor at any second. That's at any time. And, you know, the number one killer of people is heart disease. You could drop dead from a heart attack anytime and be completely healthy. Those things scare us. So guess what happens? We don't identify that, but we identify the realm of that.

And you and I were talking to a very good friend in Texas, and they were talking about cutting, because, you know, we were talking about cutting is a sign. Why do people cut? Because it's a form of control. They can control how deep and how long and how many cuts. And it's one of the things in their life they can control. So what do you got to give them? You got to give them other things that they can control and wean them off one bad habit to another. That's why some people say, "Hey, 12-step works." And other people go, "Oh, it's just a formula." Yeah, it's a formula. It's a formula to take an off-ramp, to find the blinker on your car so you can slow down, merge, and lead. Now, other people don't need that, but there's a million or a billion people out there that do need that. So understanding control and what's within and what's without of it.

And Brian, I would end with this on my thought. People are lazy, so people want to read the headline. They don't necessarily want to read the article. Yeah. And that's why the article goes through a myriad of other opportunities. Well, just like what happened in Philadelphia last week. "We have a problem in Florida, and the thing in Florida just shows a weakness in the Republican." That's all the preamble before you ever get to the facts of the story. Why? Because they're taking you everywhere that they know that that emotional toll will set its hook deepest. And so, don't just... don't, if you do it for entertainment, it's fine. It's like masturbation. You know what I'm saying? Some people will masturbate. Everybody masturbates, I think we can talk about that. I'm probably doing it two or three times during one of our calls. But the idea is that what you masturbate to is something, if you're doing it for a view of nature, or if you're doing it... But there's some people that do it the wrong way, and they do it with the intent to hurt somebody else or with harmful material. The idea is that as long as you understand to separate the entertainment from the act, then you've got it made. So don't base everything that you're going to do today on the headlines. Go out and take a look outside, you get what I'm saying? Interact with the humans in your tribe. Right?

Yeah. At the end of the day, it will come on. There are so many jokes I could have put in there. Exactly. So far away from... But that gets back to, you know, we get that information. We like movies. Why do we like movies? Our brain loves movies. But that's not how it actually works. And so it kind of tricks us, it fools us, it gives us file folders for things that don't actually exist. You know, it's like the... I was rewatching an episode of that show Breaking Bad. I love that show because, but it's not, obviously this is not how that drug business works. That's not how... I mean, it's so far from it, right? But the guy, I forget the actor's name, who plays the kid, Jesse, who's this punk kid. He's so good because I'm watching it, and I want to punch this kid and shake him and be like, "What is (expletive)? Just shut up. Stop. Oh my God!"

So I'm not into the storyline as, "Oh my God, yes, and they can have the fried chicken place, that's the front for the mathematics." No, it's that character is so good that it's got my brain hooked in. That's great. And so it's so engaging to me. Like, I know it's fantasy, which releases what? Releases endorphins. And so when you see that actor in other things, you're going to be drawn to that. And people wonder, "Why do I see the same six people in the films all the time?" It's because there's an algorithm. And the algorithm says, "Hey, Michael Caine has been in everything." Michael Caine appeared in the Bible, and he's been in everything relevant all the way until, you know, the last Avatar. Michael Caine is going to narrate that, you know. And we can't get away from that. Okay, but that's okay, but you don't live the rest of your life on that. And you didn't call 9-1-1 because you saw a character like that in real life and said, "Hey, I think you should start following this guy around based on this movie I saw."

Right. Yeah, that's funny. It all feeds into it. And that's kind of the big points. I definitely we hit a lot of the points we want to talk about. Yeah. I brought in the allegory of the cave, and someone who's trying to sell something with fear or sex, someone who's trying to get just get information out there first. And you know how we go from, you took the song "Rescue Me." I can't remember how you got from "Rescue Me" to ethylene, but you got the ethylene to Bob Seger, to George Jackson, to "One Bad Apple," to The Jackson 5, which is really The Osmond Brothers, Columbine, to Afghanistan, to what that is. And, you know, it's how we tie things together with a narrative.

Yeah. But it can be, it can be based on, you know, if I'm basing something on bad information, it's eventually going to collapse. Like, you can go on for a while, right? But it's a house of cards. Well, eventually build it up enough that the house of cards... Hendrix, Hendrix, "Excuse me while I kiss this guy." Holy crap, where's this going, Dad? And he goes, "It's writing the lyrics, son. Excuse me while I kiss the sky." That can be a meme. That could be a joke of all time. Yeah. Your points are well taken, because it's okay if it's entertainment-based. It's okay when it's just a coffee around the campfire discussion, but when it comes to ruling your life or making a big decision, don't go there. Don't fall...

Well, I really do wish people were slightly more skeptical about things before they started sharing it with everyone they know. And I love the fake walk-back later. Like, no one ever does like, "Hey, well, every once in a while I see someone who's like, 'Hey, I shared this. Totally sorry, that was BS. I looked into it. I got called. And thank you for calling me about it.'" What are people doing? "Hey, look, I know this didn't quite seem, but..." And then they try to justify all their actions. Like, you didn't learn.

"Knowing what we know now," isn't that our favorite line? "Okay, it escalated quickly there. Exactly. Killed the guy." Yeah. No. Hey, there's another reason why do we remember those things? We remember them because they're earworms, because they follow a pattern. And it's something that's not going to happen in my life, right? So I can glom onto it because it's so exotic, Brian, it's so different that it's fun. But we call those exotic, different things anomalies. Right? And then incongruent signal. That discordant music is what makes us turn and look. When that glass breaks, we turn and look because it's so discordant with the rest of our day. Yeah, that's great.

Yeah. Well, I think that's probably a good place to sort of end on. I mean, I know we do have stuff on our for those of you listening still this far into the podcast, that's good. We should just say thank you. I'll just start random stuff now. But, you know, we've got more on the Patreon side. Yeah. Hit us up at TheHumanBehaviorPodcast@gmail.com. Follow us if you want to go to the Arcadia Cognorati site and sign up just to subscribe to stay in touch. I don't send out a lot of emails, but when I do, it's about training we have coming up, or the stuff we have coming up with our textbook and the follow-on web-based stuff that we're going to have for that. That's all happening this year quickly. So, and we have like kind of an initial print run coming with the textbook that's going to be a sort of discounted before everything gets going. So we're going to have like a pre-order sale coming up, so you want to get on that if you're interested. If not, just keep listening.

And the other big thing I ask of folks, if you do like the podcast, obviously TheHumanBehaviorPodcast@gmail.com. Reach out if you have something specific you want us to talk about or a question. We do a lot more of that on the Patreon side for those folks. But if sometimes I get good feedback, we want to do an entire episode. But also just, you know, sharing with your friends. If you enjoyed it, send it to a friend, say, "Hey, check this episode out." That helps us kind of grow it a little bit more, which helps us get better quality audio, better stuff, more things we can do in the future. And it kind of helps get the message out there. So if you can, share it with your friends. And Greg, I don't know, any final words from you?

Yeah, yeah, if you're going to binge on something, might as well be us. It's not going to gain any weight, you know. It's not going to overdose. And what else? I don't know, that's enough.

You're not going to overdose on The Human Behavior Podcast. You can't.

You can't. You're lucky you may masturbate feverishly, but the latest... it's going to be at least the last three or four episodes where Greg's been working in, "I know what fentanyl is like." I don't know, that's been your cup. Exactly. It all started out of St. Louis and the wonderful people on the ground there. And Brian, that's a good shout-out, wonderful people at Erica. State of Pennsylvania, the City of Mansfield, Mansfield State University, New York. Brian and I spent some time over there the last couple weeks, and thank you, everybody. You treated us.

Yeah, we really did. We really did. So thanks for those. Please, hopefully, we're welcome back, but we'll see after this episode. I don't know. All right. Well, thanks everyone for tuning in, and don't forget that training changes behavior.