Vincent Denault once believed he was learning how to read people’s hidden thoughts through analyzing body language. As a young lawyer in Quebec, he attended behavior analysis and “synergology” trainings that promised the ability to detect lies and determine hidden thoughts from small gestures and movements. But after digging into the research, he realized much of what he’d been taught wasn’t true. In this talk, Vincent describes that journey and we explore how body-language myths spread through trainings, media, and YouTube behavior “experts.” We also discuss his research on how judges use behavior to assess witness credibility, his views on Paul Ekman, and his views on how bad-behavior-information spreaders protect themselves from criticism and responsibility. Along the way, we examine why nonverbal behavior still matters in human interaction—just not in the reliable lie-detection ways many people assume.
Topics discussed include:
His journey out of the people-reading/Synergology world and into science
How judges can use nonverbal behavior to judge witness testimony and determine veracity, and why that’s a problem
How spreaders of behavior bullshit can use calls for caution, and calls for “baselining,” as a way to evade criticism and avoid taking responsibility for their bad info
The role of media and shows, like the show Lie to Me and assorted movies, in spreading bad behavior info
Critical views of Paul Ekman
The oft-repeated but false claim that nonverbal behavior represents most of the meaning in communication, and where that false idea stems from
How does someone who makes wildly grandiose and clearly false claims about mind control, interrogation mastery, and secret military psychology operations gain more than 1.5 million YouTube subscribers—and land appearances on shows like Joe Rogan and Diary of a CEO—without anyone vetting his story? I’m joined by ex-CIA officer and fraud-exposer Kent Clizbe. We take a hard look at Chase Hughes’ Navy record and compare it to his many lies, exaggerations, and ambiguous statements about his experiences and credentials. We dig into the specific stages of Chase’s military career, his claims of Harvard and Duke neuroscience education, his belief that we live in a simulation (and that psychedelics have helped see the code of that simulation), his pick-up artist background, and his grandiose — and just plain absurd — claims about his knowledge and abilities. If you’re interested in how cults of personality and false gurus work—and how even experienced professionals and major platforms can help these people on their rise to popularity—this deep dive into Hughes’ background and the psychology of modern con artistry is one you won’t want to miss.
Kent is also the author of Holistic Contextual Credibility Assessment, in which he explains his view of how to check authenticity and veracity. That book also explains why using nonverbal behaviors for that work is a waste of time.
(Transcripts are generated automatically and contain errors.)
Joe Rogan: Even if they exhibit all the behavior characteristics of someone who’s confident there’s gonna be something off. ’cause we have some way, some ancient way of detecting bullshit.
Chase Hughes: Yeah. We get those gut feelings.
Joe Rogan: Yeah. We know when something’s off. Someone’s a little full of it.
Steven Bartlett of Diary of a CEO: And who exactly have you worked with?
Chase Hughes: Lots of government agencies. Uh, notably I’ve worked with intelligence agencies. I’ve worked with the Psychological Operations Department, US Army, which is the Special Operations Command. I’ve trained a lot of the US Navy leaders nowadays.
Chase Hughes on Joe Rogan: A friend of mine was killed on USS coal during the, the terrorist attack in, in 2001.
I was like reading these intelligence reports afterward that said there’s failures on the ground. We didn’t develop assets in the country. We didn’t. Take the actions that we needed to take to, to get this intelligence. And I was like, man, they need this behavior stuff. So I got more and more obsessed with it and I started training people in the government, uh, probably around the age of 30 or so.
Merlin O’Brecht: Was there kind of a jump to getting deep into like the real deep end of professional behavior psychology in an applied way? As much? I know you can’t talk about the balance of it, but
Chase Hughes: I don’t think, for me it was ever in a hugely professional way.
Kent Clizbe: There’s nothing in his background in the military that has anything to do with mind control, brainwashing behavior.
This guy’s a conman. He makes claims that are total bullshit. He implies that he has background and expertise that he doesn’t have, but people fall for it.
Zach Elwood: Chase Hughes, if you’ve never heard of him, is a serial liar and con man who falsely claims to be an expert on everything from analyzing nonverbal behavior, to influencing and controlling people’s minds, to government psy-ops, to cult deprogramming. Despite his obviously absurd and false claims, he has succeeded in getting many gullible podcast hosts to interview and promote him, and this has included the popular podcasts Joe Rogan and Diary of a CEO, and quite a few others. He currently has more than 1.5 million followers on youtube, and still regularly gets promoted by various podcasts.
As you saw in the intro, he has stated, but more often these days just implies, that his psychology- and behavior- related work has something to do with the military — that during his 20 year Navy career he worked on some impressive operations involving psychology, behavior, interrogations, top-secret intel, and more.
That’s what we’re going to look at in this episode: his military career. I’m going to be talking to Kent Clizbe, an ex-CIA officer who specializes in vetting and counterintelligence, and who is perhaps most known for his role in outing the fraud Wayne Simmons, a guy who appeared on Fox News for 13 years claiming to be a CIA operative and intel expert but who was, like Chase Hughes, a fraud. I recently had an episode of the podcast talking to Kent about his experience working to expose Wayne Simmons, and if you’re interested in frauds and con artists, I think you’d like that episode.
Now, this video won’t be a neat summary of Chase’s many lies and unethical behaviors; if you want to see that summary, search online for ‘chase hughes many lies’ and look for the result located on my page behavior-podcast.com; it’s the first episode I released on Chase Hughes and on that page I’ve included a text summary of that research. When i’ve done some of these follow-up episodes, some people will complain ‘but you didn’t actually show why he’s a liar and a con man’. Look, i can’t continually restate all the evidence in every single episode; that is what the main web page I’ve got on Chase hughes is for; if you want to see the main evidence, go there. It’s a doozy.
So in this talk with Kent, we’ll talk about:
Chase’s Navy service record, which I got by submitting a Freedom of Information Act request
The specific stages of Chase’s Navy career
Chase’s use of ambiguous language when trying to imply his career was more impressive than it was
The brain issues Chase claims he suffers from
Chase’s claims of having neuroscience-related education from Harvard and Duke University
Chase’s belief that we live in a simulation, and that hallucinogenic drugs have allowed him to see behind the simulation
Chase’s early experiences as a pick-up artist
Chase’s pivotal experiences loitering outside of a girls’ Abercrombie and Fitch store at a mall in Hawaii
Here’s a bit more about Kent Clizbe’s career from his website kentclizbe.com (his last name is spelled CLIZBE):
Kent served as a staff CIA case officer in the 1990s, and as a contractor after 9/11. He has worked in various capacities in intelligence positions in Southeast Asia, Africa, Europe and the Middle East. His specialty is Counter-terrorism and Islamic Extremism.
Kent has also worked Counter-intelligence, Counter-proliferation, Counter-narcotics, and other targets. In addition to extensive liaison work with foreign intel services, he has worked in the US Intel Community in inter-agency, inter-governmental intelligence operations since 9/11. He was awarded the Intelligence Community Seal Medallion, the highest civilian intelligence agency decoration for contractors, for his counter-terrorist operations in the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia. His work in the Philippines was described in an article by Mark Bowden in the Atlantic Monthly in March 2007, “Jihadists in Paradise.”
And again, Kent is also known for his work exposing the fraud Wayne Simmons, who appeared for years on Fox News and who fooled millions, but who Kent immediately, upon meeting him, suspected was a fraud. Watch my previous interview with Kent talking about his suspicions of Simmons and how Simmons eventually ended up being outed and arrested.
Okay here’s the deep dive on Chase Hughes’ life story and military career with Kent Clizbe….
Kent Clizbe: So first let me say that this, this isn’t coming from just, uh, some, some guy who, who did it a couple years in the military and got out. I, I do have a background in the military. I’ve worked, I’ve spent five years enlisted in the Air Force.
I worked very closely with the Navy throughout that time. After I got out, I have worked in the DOD, well, that’s not the Department of War, but we used to call it the DOD Department of Defense. I worked in the Department of Defense and with the Department of Defense, including the Defense Intelligence Agency.
Uh, I have worked short or long-term assignments, uh, with the Army at the Special Forces, uh, training, uh, uh, JFK Training Center in Fort Bragg. I’ve done classes for the seals. In Little Creek where Hughes was stationed. I have, uh, spent a couple years working in the, um, defense Intelligence agency’s training program for the, the first tier of, uh, human intelligence officers.
I, I was an instructional designer and a subject matter expert in, in those courses, so I know a lot. I, I’ve been in the DOD, I’ve been in the military. I, I understand the lingo. I understand how to, uh, navigate when somebody makes a claim. I can, I can vet it. Not only that, but I’m also a vetter, I’m a professional vetter.
I, I, uh, look at various aspects of someone who makes claims about their career, their education, their background, and I know how to vet. Those claims and get to the truth. So this isn’t just somebody who came off the street and said, Hey, tell me what you, what you think about Hughes. Anyway, with that said, the data that we have is, it’s very interesting.
Hughes, I, I, I don’t think I’ve ever watched a full, one of the, all the many videos he puts out except this one he put out the Chase Hughes life story, I think was the title of it. And it’s him sitting down and chatting with it looks like a guy, this guy must be his employee. Um, it’s
kind
Zach Elwood: of an acolyte.
Kent Clizbe: Yeah, acolyte. At least it’s a, a follower, a Chase Hughes,
Zach Elwood: yeah.
Kent Clizbe: Uh, cult member in some way or another. In, in the course of this interview, uh, the guy mentions, well, I, I’m just a roofer, but, uh. Yes.
Zach Elwood: Yeah. He has a roofing
Kent Clizbe: business.
Chase Hughes: I’m gonna be doing dirty work. I don’t wanna be doing this backbreaking, sunburn, sweat and kind of stuff.
I mean, you are a roofer, you know the
Merlin O’Brecht: Yeah.
Chase Hughes: You know the, the labor. Yeah.
Kent Clizbe: He is a roofer. And, uh, you know, here he is interviewing Chase Hughes about brainwashing or whatever the heck it is. Hughes is claiming to be. Um, but he’s very, uh, obsequious to Hughes. He’s very, you can tell that he worships him.
Merlin O’Brecht: I’ve seen Chase on so many different podcasts where people are kind of talking about the books that he is written and all of the things that he is done, or his models of influence.
But I’ve never seen anyone talk about Chase’s life story yet.
Kent Clizbe: And in the interview, Hughes gives his entire, pretty much life story. But out of that, you, you can get a sequential. Overview of, of Hughes career from the time he joined the Navy when he was 17, to the time he got out the same time. Uh, Zach, you got, uh, I guess through a foia uh, freedom of information, you got Hughes’s DD two 14.
The DD two 14 is the military. It’s like a transcript. It’s like your, um, a a a university transcript. It, it tells everything that you did in, in the military. It, it’s everything. A transcript of your military experience. It was great. So I’ve got the DD two four. Hughes is DD two 14 and his Hughes My Life story.
So that’s what this, this analysis is based on is those two things. What, what I was looking at in doing this vetting is. This guy has made, and, and I don’t have quotes, uh, exactly of what his claims are, but generally speaking, he, he has made claims that he was, he has some sort of special military intelligence experience training, uh, that, that has given him a background to be the world’s greatest behavioral expert.
Again, whatever his claim is, he is, he’s claimed to be a mind reader. He is claimed to be a brainwasher, multiple claims. Yeah. Many things, but all of that, all of his claims are explicitly or implicitly based on hi his, his having been some kind of special operator, some kind of military intelligence. Uh, high speed load, drag, double, not something.
Zach Elwood: I got a few quotes here that he’s had on his website over the years, you know, because after 20 years of teaching my unique system and those top intelligence agencies in the world, uh, you know, luckily I had top secret CL security clearance in the military, which I used to figure out the answer to this question.
How can we make intelligence gathering more powerful? With over 30,000 hours of infield practice and training, I perfected the skill of per persuasion and influence. That’s just a small snippet, but he, he often says that he or implies that he’s been involved in these various, you know, military related things, training, you know, agencies of organizations, uh, you know, about these amazing things.
Anyway, that we can go on for a while about that,
Kent Clizbe: but, but can carry on. Yeah, that’s a good one because that’s kind of classic Hughes there from what, what I have seen is you notice in those quotes that you just, uh, read, he, he never says I was a. CIA case officer. Right. He never says I was a Delta Force operator.
Zach Elwood: Right. Ambiguous.
Kent Clizbe: Yeah. The only, the only claim that he makes there really is I had a top secret security clearance and that gave me, I think that he probably did ev although it does not, uh, uh, DD two 14 does not cover, I, I don’t remember exactly, but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t. So I’m guessing that in his career, and, and we’ll go over exactly what his, uh, uh, assignments and positions were, that in one of those, he had to get a security clearance.
Zach Elwood: Right. It, it, it, but it seems, it seems quite non, uh, impressive to be able to get one, like he’s dealing with, uh, ship operations and navigations and stuff, but it doesn’t seem that crazy that he would. Have a top secret security clearance, right?
Kent Clizbe: So that, that’s the key is that there’s many jobs in the military that require a security clearance,
Zach Elwood: right?
Kent Clizbe: May, he may have had top secret, he may have just had secret, but getting a security clearance doesn’t give you access to intelligence stuff unless your job is an intelligence related job. So having a security clearance means nothing. Once you have the security clearance. Classified information is totally based on need to know if your job is driving a boat.
You have no need to know anything about human intelligence, trade craft, or about, uh, influence or mind reading. You’re driving a fricking boat. Definitely the plans. About what’s gonna happen with your unit are gonna be classified. There might be a classified, some kind of classified equipment on the, on, on your boat, probably some kind of communications equipment.
So to, to have access to that, uh, classified communications equipment, you need to have a security clearance. So, in other words, you got a, a guy who’s a boat driver and he’s got a security clearance because he turns on this, uh, uh, a radio that encrypts the communications, for example. You gotta have a security clearance to work that, that radio.
So with that, let’s, let’s talk about his jobs. This is according to both he and, and his, his life story video is kind of surprised me because he gave it straight.
Zach Elwood: Yeah.
Kent Clizbe: He, I think he told, he told the truth in this life story. Yeah.
Zach Elwood: He knows that now that he’s got all the attention on, I mean, this is pretty common for con artists, you know, they exaggerate and lie a lot early, but when they get a lot of attention on them, they’d have to start twisting the narrative because they know that the facts are out there.
So then they have to start trying to fit the previous lies into like, the new narrative. ’cause he, he knows it would, you know, for example, he knows that we’ve examined him. He knows that it’s only, it was only a matter of time before, you know, somebody got a service record, et cetera, et cetera. So it’s like he’s gotta try to manage the perceptions and try to, you know, and you can see him doing that with that video.
That’s the whole point of that video, I think is to say like, Hey, everybody’s calling me a liar. Uh, you know, uh, I have to try to manage the perceptions and, and fit my supposed expertise into the realm of what, what really happened. Right.
Kent Clizbe: And we’ll talk about that in a second. Uh, let’s, let’s go over his.
Uh, what, what he actually did. So he, he went in the Navy as a, just a basic semen and semen, uh, in the Navy are, if you think of them, they’re the guys who are deck swabbing. They’re the ones polishing the brass on the, on the railings, cleaning the deck, emptying the, the porta-potties. They’re, they’re a laborer.
They’re a manual laborer with no skills, nothing. He did that for three years, uh, dur. At the end of those three years, he became a, a signalman where they, they use flags to, to communicate between ships. At the end of the, those three years, he got qualified in that, and then they did away with that, and they must have gone to electronic communications.
So his, his first, uh, qualified job flag waver, they did away with. In the Navy, generally speaking, especially for unqualified people like him, and, and generally for mo, almost all sailors, you do a rotation a few years out on a ship, a few years on shore, a few years out on a ship, a few years on shore, two, three, whatever.
Um, so he, his first three years he was on ship, uh, a ship or a couple ships. His shore assignment after those three years was, he was a jail guard.
Chase Hughes: Uh, at, at this time I get stationed at a detainee facility, right as this is happening and on and off. Um, working with the ES for three straight years.
Kent Clizbe: You’re, uh, be sure the jail doors are locked.
Be sure the guys, the prisoners haven’t hanged themselves.
Zach Elwood: One thing he said in there, this kind of, I mean, he, he works in various. Exaggerated claims that relate to the behavior influence. So one thing he said in there that was, and they’re all ambiguous, and, uh, so he says, I developed this one little protocol that a person could use in a detainee situation, and it got adopted by the Department of Defense.
And he acts as if that was like some big thing. But, you know, again, it’s ambiguous. Did did that really happen? Was it just a tiny little vein? You know, who, who knows what it was, but he, he tries to act as if that was like one of the things that led him down the behavior influence thing where, you know, he just, he just tries to exaggerate the importance of these various things in his career and in a very ambiguous way.
Kent Clizbe: Yeah, yeah, exactly. But again, he, he is a, he is a jail guard. So your, your protocol that you developed is probably, hey, uh, if somebody, uh, says they’re gonna hurt themselves. Don’t give him a fork and a knife. Give him a spoon. You know something? Yeah. Could been something like that
Zach Elwood: if he
Kent Clizbe: even developed a protocol.
Prisoners.
Zach Elwood: Yeah. Yeah.
Kent Clizbe: It’s not how to read their minds or, you know, I, I came up with a, a, a protocol to read their minds or, uh, whatever the hell his claims are.
Zach Elwood: He’s, he’s keeping it ambiguous for a reason. Yeah.
Kent Clizbe: Uh, after being a jail guard for three and a half years, he, uh, got an assignment as a quartermaster, uh, on a ship.
Quartermaster’s job is related to navigation. They do various duties, various tasks related to getting the ship from one place to another. First two, or quartermaster might be. In charge of being sure all the maps are in the right, are in the right place in the library or running to get a map when the navigator needs, uh, needs a map.
So, so a ship, the navigator is generally speaking, gonna be an officer that, an officer is someone who has a college degree. Maybe they went to Annapolis, the Naval Academy, maybe they were in ROTC, uh, went to a a civilian university and then did, did naval training afterwards. But they’re gonna be a college educated officer and they’re, and then they go through a navigation school, uh, to become qualified as a navigator.
The quarter masters are like assistants to the nav. The officer navigator, they take care of all of the admin and. Kind of grunt jobs related to getting the ship from one place to another. So his net, his duty after being a jail guard, he was a quartermaster on a ship. He tells a story that the navigator officer was a Coast Guard officer doing a rotation to the Navy.
The, uh, military branches will do that. They’ll send people, send an army officer to do time with the Marines, send a naval officer to do time with the army. In this case, it was a Coast Guard navigator on a rotation with the Navy. According to Hughes, because she was Coast Guard, she didn’t know the Navy systems.
Therefore, he was, he did the job. Is what? That that’s his claim. My guess there is he’s puffing himself up a bit. Yeah. This is one of the points where he’s a little bit exaggerating.
Zach Elwood: I was kind of gonna, I was gonna throw in there too. He also has this thing where he says he was working on these ships and various equipments, pieces of equipment, and he said the Navy had like no standard operating procedures.
I had to create these procedures myself, do it all myself. I’m like, really? All these expensive things. They had no SOPs. You know, I, I, I found that also, you know, he, he, he works in these various things that I think are ambiguous exaggerations that would be hard to fact check. Right. But it makes him sound more important maybe than he was.
Yeah.
Kent Clizbe: Yeah. That, that example is from a couple, a couple assignments after where we’re at now. Oh, yeah. I’m
Zach Elwood: jumping ahead, sorry. Yeah,
Kent Clizbe: yeah, yeah. So he was, uh, on, on a ship for, I, I, not really sure. I don’t remember, but I don’t think he, he lies about it. I don’t, I, I think that his claims. Of that time as quartermaster on a ship are matched by his DD two 14 experience.
Uh, after that he got an assignment as a recruiter, a Navy recruiter, uh, in Texas. I wanna say it was somewhere out right outside of Dallas, uh, but somewhere in Texas. And he did that for I think three or four years.
Chase Hughes: And I transitioned from there to back to Houston, Texas, where I was a Navy recruiter for a little while.
And this is like the type of dude that goes into your high school and like hands out little key chains and t-shirts and stuff like that.
Merlin O’Brecht: So now that’s, this is May, this, this is in your off ship time, I’m guessing, right?
Chase Hughes: It’s after that five year period? Yeah. Yeah. I was in a town called Cleveland, Texas, so I’m going into high schools, talking kids into going to the Navy, and, uh, did well in recruiting.
Kent Clizbe: A recruiter is just a salesman. Their training. They, they have a, a very intensive military recruiters go through an intensive training course. It, it is the, I don’t know what to, what kind of civilian equivalent. It’s, it’s, it’s sales. The training is hardcore sales. Sales and recruiting go through. Kind of phases of what the fashionable sales approach is.
So probably depending on what, when you went through recruiting training, you went through, uh, one or more different sales theories and practical approaches. And a lot of people don’t make it as recruiters. They, they flunk out of the training because just like a lot of people don’t make it as salespeople because, uh, generally speaking, you gotta be a fast talker and you gotta be a bullshitter, right?
And there are horror stories of people, people’s re recruiters lying to them. ’cause recruiters, just like salespeople have quotas and they gotta make that quota. And if you don’t make the quota, then you get beat up.
Zach Elwood: We should, uh, Kent, real quick, let’s throw in that, um, you know, he wrote, uh, chase wrote his, um, pickup artist book it, at least it was published in 2007, which means he probably was in the pickup scene for, you know, a couple years before that, or at least a year.
So I’m thinking, you know, based on my timeline, ’cause I think he entered the Navy at, in 99, 19 99, and then took eight or nine years to get to the recruiter job or whatever it was. I think he, so he was in the pickup artist scene before. He got into recruiting, which I think helps explain, like he was already into that space of like, I’m seducing women at clubs kind of space.
He liked that, you know, influence and, uh, reading people’s stuff from the pickup artist scene. So I think, but I think it dovetails with him being interested in recruiting or, or finding it, finding a map over to it or something
Kent Clizbe: that, that’s great. That’s, that’s a perfect insight, I think. Um, let, let’s get on the record his, um, his experience and then we’ll go back to Yeah, sorry.
Plug in.
Zach Elwood: Yeah, keep
Kent Clizbe: going. No, no, no. I, I just, it’s great. ’cause, ’cause what I’ve done here on my notes is I’ve got these exact same kind of things. I’ve got him, uh, plugged in on the side.
Zach Elwood: Yeah.
Kent Clizbe: Cool. Let’s, yeah. Keep
Zach Elwood: going with
Kent Clizbe: the career. Let’s get on the record.
Zach Elwood: Yeah,
Kent Clizbe: yeah. Get, get the career and then we’ll go back and say, well his, he was, he was doing pickup bullshit when he was
Zach Elwood: Yeah.
Kent Clizbe: Okay. Makes sense.
Zach Elwood: Okay. Keep going.
Kent Clizbe: So, so he, he was a recruiter for three or four years, I think. After that, he got a job, got an assignment at Little Creek, Virginia, uh, in a Surface platoon. So Little Creek is, it’s a, a huge sprawling naval facility in and around Norfolk, Virginia. Uh, Norfolk, Virginia is the, um, is the headquarters of, I wanna say the seventh fleet.
I don’t remember. It’s the whatever fleet services, the Atlantic. Um, all the ships are based out of Norfolk, Virginia, and then they have little auxiliary bases around the Norfolk Naval Base. And one of ’em is, uh, special forces, uh, uh, base and I’m pretty sure it’s Little Creek, the Special forces, the, the, in the Navy, the special forces of the seals, even though they’re in the Navy.
They have all manner of various equipment. Special forces’ job is to be a quick reaction, all purpose sort of instrument to do classified covert kind of operations. And the seals are trained in intelligence collection as well as weapons combat. And then they’ll have various equipment, they’ll have, uh, land vehicles, airborne kind of, they have helicopters and planes and they’ll have all kinds of different boats.
The special forces have all of this equipment. They don’t take care of the equipment. They’re, they’re operating, they’re going out and doing stuff, and they, when they need a boat or they need a a, a a a a tank or they need a helicopter, they, they have groups that are in charge of, they’re taking care of their boats, their helicopters.
They’re, they’re Humvees. What Hughes was doing was taking, he was one in one of these groups that was taking care of probably special forces stuff. He, he never says that. It’s interesting. I, I would think that he would, uh, he, he would try to make a claim about being connected if he was, but, so probably he wasn’t.
I
Zach Elwood: think we can assume if there was something impressive, uh, related to combat psychology influence, he would be very specific about it. So anytime he’s not specific about it, we can read a lot into that. Right.
Kent Clizbe: So, so he was, he was in Little Creek where the, there’s seals around there. Probably he wasn’t working with the seals, but he says he was, he was in charge of a surface platoon.
So by now he is a non-commissioned officer. He makes a big deal about it. You know, they, in the Navy they call non-commissioned officers. Uh, petty officers and he made Chief Petty officer. It’s like the, the ranks, enlisted ranks are E one through E nine, and the, the top, um, the, the top three in the Navy, E seven, E eight, E nine are chief petty officers.
Uh, EE five and E six are petty officers. So when you make E seven, you become a chief and the Navy is very tradition bound and they have different uniforms for, uh, different color, uh, for, for chiefs E seven, E eight, and E nine. Uh, and, and they have different, I, I guess on ships and on shore, they have, uh, chief dining facilities in the military, in the Navy, uh, you become, it’s, it’s special.
In the real world, it ain’t so special. You know, you’re just, you, you’ve been a welder for 15 years and now you’re, you get a lot of jobs because you’re good. You’ve had a lot of experience and you’ve been around. He makes a big deal. Oh, being chief, you know, oh, they have a ceremony and oh, the military has ceremonies.
When you go take a, take a crap and wipe your butt, right, you know, it’s, uh, no big deal.
Chase Hughes: They have 390 something applicants ba and they, all of your record goes up there. The day you j from the day you join the Navy, every time anyone’s ever evaluated you, every time you’ve been counseled, you’ve been written up, uh, you got in trouble.
Everything is there. And their job is to like, bring all this stuff up on the screen, kind of like, let’s rank and stack them. Oh, this guy beats that guy. You have to do this with 400 people until they have like this list of like top 10 have tons. Crazy. So it’s like
Merlin O’Brecht: a. Super selection process. Yeah, I like that.
Chase Hughes: Yeah.
Kent Clizbe: So what the, the chiefs do, generally speaking, is they’re managers think about it like a, not, they’re not officers. They’re, they’re non-commissioned officers, but they’re managers. So now he’s from, from his positions after this are all in, in management. So even though his, uh, he, his unit is doing, taking care of Humvees and radios and underwater UAVs, robots that go underwater, he’s not qualified in any of that stuff.
He’s the one that’s sitting back in the office and when somebody says, Hey, I need a, uh, underwater UAV, he. He checks his, his records and says, oh, okay, well number 79 43 is gonna be available next week. And then he tells an underling, go get number 79 43 and give it to these operators. He, he throws out all of the terms, uh, and the things that he was dealing with, but had, he has no training in these.
He didn’t do any training. Uh, at this time. He did do, I think a one week, uh, they call it expeditionary. There’s a specific name for it. Expeditionary Combat Training, something like that. It’s every single Navy personnel who go, who went into the, uh, the, the, the combat zones back then back in the Global War on Terror.
So you’re talking about Iraq, Afghanistan, the Gulf. Persian Gulf, the Red Sea. If you’re going to any of those places, you’re gonna be in harm’s way. And that’s what this course, it’s a one, I think it’s a one week course, expeditionary Combat training. Everybody who went there, who went to these potential danger zones, did this, this course, this course is not teaching somebody to be a, uh, a, a trained killer, not teaching somebody to read minds.
The course is, if you get shot in the leg, put a tourniquet on it. Here’s what a tourniquet looks like. If the siren goes off, that means there’s missiles coming in. When the siren goes off, get into a bunker. It’s, that’s the level of training this expeditionary combat that, uh, he’s been, that, that he did. So as part of, of this unit that he was in, in Little Creek, I think he did that expeditionary train, uh, combat training.
His next assignment after that in Little Creek was in the Harbor Master Office. The Harbor Master is in charge of, think about it as a parking lot attendant and, and slash uh, logistics guy. When boats are, or ships are coming in, or small boats comes in, the harbor master says, okay, you go to, uh, pier 14.
You know, it’s like making a reservation at a, at a hotel. You got a slot on Pier 14 for six months, you need to go to Pier 73 A, and then they’re in charge of being sure that. Uh, the, the, the harbor is secure, clean, that they have access to water and food. So that was his, his next role there. His next role was, he was in a unit that did coastal river boats.
So he was in, he was assigned to a unit there, again, as, as a petty officer, as a manager. He’s not trained to, to, to be, to combat training. He’s not the one going out in combat. He’s taking care of these boats in some way. He probably, uh, learned to drive the boat, but I, I don’t think I see that on his DD two 14 may, I don’t know, maybe being a quartermaster qualifies you to, uh, to drive a, a small boat like this.
Chase Hughes: Then I went even more into the hardcore combat side of the military. Wouldn’t this thing called CRS four, coastal River Squadron four, working under CRG to Coastal River, Marine Group two. And if you’ve seen the movies at like the Vietnam movies where the dudes on like the boat, little tiny river boat and they’re like all dudes on there.
Yeah. All blackout face paint and like submachine guns and stuff. And like they jump off the boat, do jump warfare and stuff like that, get back on the boat. That’s the unit. So that’s where our unit got its starts. The riverine operations, uh, got started in, uh, Vietnam where they were, they were called brown water, navy, both Big Navy’s, blue water.
It we’re what they prefer us as the brown water, the dirty little rivers and stuff like that. Yeah.
Merlin O’Brecht: When, so at this point you started doing combat training, I’m guessing? Yeah. Or right. Or when you were in, when, what was the first time you started doing the combat training? Is it when you’re in the underwater robot?
Chase Hughes: Yeah. Before going to that, I went to. Ex expeditionary and I think advanced combat school in Gulfport, Mississippi on the way to this new command,
Merlin O’Brecht: if that makes sense.
Kent Clizbe: In that interview, uh, the, the roofing guy asked him, so, uh, was this the first of your many combat deployments, sir?
Merlin O’Brecht: Is this around when your first combat deployment is, or did is, do you have a combat deployment before that?
Chase Hughes: Uh, I wouldn’t call any of my deployments a combat deployment.
Merlin O’Brecht: Okay.
Chase Hughes: Uh, with the stuff that dudes go through, I, I would not say any of mine had been combat deployments.
Kent Clizbe: I, I was just shocked. I couldn’t believe it. Uh, because in, in all of his other stuff, it seems like he’s talking about, I, I know one I saw, yeah.
I was a black beret.
Chase Hughes: When you’re working intelligence operations, you get to this point where you’re like, any day. It might be the last day if we don’t do something drastic, right? In a World Day
Morgan Nelson: today, I sit down with an ex Black Beret, special forces interrogation expert.
Chase Hughes: We go through some serious, crazy training, and it’s the most stressful thing you can imagine.
We should not be seen, we should be forgotten the next day.
Morgan Nelson: This guy spent over 20 years on a secret ship doing very secret things, learning how to interrogate people from all around the world to literally get them to give up. Secrets of intelligence
Chase Hughes: we’re about to teach you is called the Omega Punch strike.
It is possibly lethal and very dangerous.
Kent Clizbe: So here on, on this one, he says, no, none of my deployments were combat deployments. Okay? So in this unit, in this small boat unit, he was deployed to the Gulf, uh, which means probably they was, he was working out of like Bach, rain or uh, Qatar. There’s huge, huge naval base, uh, in Qatar.
So he, he was deployed with, with his boats out there, and, uh, it looks like he, he was a driver of one of these boats. And then he tells the story in this, in the video about going out on a boat into the Gulf and getting out to, pretty far out. And he started to have chest pains. They had to, uh, had to abort the training or whatever it is they were doing.
Came back and he went to see the doctor. And for the next one and a half years, he was seeing doctors. I, I don’t think he mentions what he, what he was doing in those, in that time, what his job was probably, uh, in, in my experience in the military, when somebody is sick like this has some kind of, some kind of medical problem.
You’re in a, they, they, they have various names for it, but it’s a, like a, a casual unit, which means you’re sitting around waiting for your processing to be done. Uh, whatever the processing is, guys are getting kicked out. Guys who are, who failed schools, guys who, uh, what whatever. They have issues that need, uh, processing and the, the bureaucracy in the military, it is not instantaneous.
It takes a long time. So evidently he was in limbo for a year and a half. In the, in the video he talks about, oh, I became close friends with my doctor. Okay, cool. Then he was discharged. He, according to him, he was discharged after a year and a half. He doesn’t mention what the discharge was. He doesn’t mention.
That year and a half, there could, there could be a lot of stuff going on, although he seems to be pretty, uh, pretty honest. Uh, there could be, there’s a lot of stuff that might have been going on in that time. Could be a, he got, he had a medical discharge. I don’t know. Could be a, other than honorable, could be honorable.
Discharge, don’t know. A actually looking as DD two 14, I think I’m, I’m almost positive that it’s a, uh, uh, either they blocked it out or it was honorable. I don’t, I have to check that, but there’s no, he doesn’t say what his discharge was. And that’s the end of his military career. That’s it. Mm-hmm. That’s what he did.
Zach Elwood: Yeah.
Kent Clizbe: Nothing to do with spies. Behavior, intelligence, brainwashing, mind reading.
Zach Elwood: Right. And this and this video of his, I mean, it seems like a way for him to try to get ahead or maybe a little late in the game, but to try to say. Yeah, my career really did have nothing, you know, I admit it. My career really did have nothing to do with psychology and behavior really.
Although he tries to work in little story, ambiguous stories about how it might have, but then he does this, you know, the thing that really stands out, I don’t know if you wanted to talk about this, is the guy tries to ask him like, well, how did you get into these things? And it’s really ambiguous. Like he almost says almost nothing about like, you know, how did you become an, an expert, a supposed expert on these things?
He’s like, yeah, I basically studied in my free time and I talked to a lot of experts and I, I, you know, he, he, he drops these ambiguous stories about like seeing through the matrix when he was talking to some guy in Hawaii about, like, I had empathy for him instead of. Treating Hi. Seeing him as some sort of enemy.
I saw it was like I was seeing through the matrix, and it was like, he, he, he makes these stories that sound very exciting about, like, stuff that just sounds rather mundane that he doesn’t, se doesn’t sound that impressive. You know, it, it was interesting for just how little actual things he talked about in terms of why should anyone view him as some sort of expert in these things.
Right? So that’s kind of an amazing cell phone. I think that, I think it relates to him and his accolades being so in the weeds and narcissistic that they think this sounds impressive to people, but I think most people would be able to be like, well, what exactly have you done? You know, there’s not much there that you, that you talk about.
Kent Clizbe: Actually, I, I don’t think so, Zach. I don’t think most people do, especially the, his followers.
Zach Elwood: Mm-hmm.
Kent Clizbe: Yeah. From what I’ve seen, they don’t, if they don’t have a, a, a background in the military or bureaucracy. This all sounds so high speed, low drag. This all sounds so exciting. And, and as you said, he, he, he doesn’t make any claims that I was a spy for the Defense Intelligence Agency, but there is so much in his, uh, outside of this Chase Hughes life story, video conversation, other places, claims that he’s made.
Marc the Beginning host: Right.
Kent Clizbe: So what I, I got a note here. Uh, his, his roofer lackey, who’s questioning him at the end of this, of, of Hughes’s giving his recitation of his military career. The poor dude, the poor lackey is like, uh, uh, you know, did, did I miss something?
Merlin O’Brecht: Was there kind of a jump? To getting deep into like the real deep end of professional behavior psychology in an applied way as much.
I know you can’t talk about that much of it, but
Chase Hughes: I don’t think, for me it was ever in a hugely professional way. Um, I was developing curriculum for a long time.
Kent Clizbe: The, the, the poor lackey, we expected to have all kinds of. War stories about, yeah. When they dropped me into Afghanistan, behind the lines, I was in charge of the unit that brainwashed, uh, blah, blah, blah.
Yeah. Nothing, he doesn’t make any of those claims. So the lackey’s confused.
Zach Elwood: I like also setting, setting ’em up, uh, you know, lowering the expectations. I know you can’t talk about much of it, you know,
he,
Kent Clizbe: well, well, it’s, it’s not, I, I think that is not necessarily lowering the expectations. It’s giving him the, the lackey is assuming because he was so high speed, low drag.
Mm-hmm. He was so deep undercover. Therefore, he can’t talk about it. That’s, that’s what I hear in that question is he’s assuming that Hughes was so, uh, secret, but so he does give them that out. And Hughes response, well, I was never in that in a hugely professional way. I was developing curriculums for a long time.
He doesn’t say what kind of curriculums. It’s pretty clear the curriculums were like, how to turn on a radio, uh, how to lock the cell door, you know, developing curriculums doesn’t make you an expert in, in brainwashing. And
Zach Elwood: that’s when he mentions
Kent Clizbe: the
Zach Elwood: protocol. Yeah.
Kent Clizbe: Then he says,
Chase Hughes: but the first time that it, like it really meant something is I developed this one little protocol that a person could use in a detainee situation and it got adopted by the Department of Defense.
And it was like, wow. Like it was my first time where I was like, I am, I needed that external validation to feel like this is something that’s worth pursuing. Like I am worth, uh, continuing down this path. So I need to keep doing it. And I was probably 35, I was three years away from retirement at the time.
Kent Clizbe: So when he was three years away from retirement, according to his DD two 14 and his life story, he, uh, was, was doing boats. He was, uh, in the, uh, coastal riverine boats. What’s he doing with the detainee situation? Maybe he’s doing it on his own, but regardless, a protocol in a detainee situation, that’s the ambiguous language.
Zach Elwood: Right.
Kent Clizbe: And what, what I read that is as is not, I came up with the newest way to brainwash detainees. It’s, I’ve, I came up with, uh, put the handcuffs behind their backs instead of in front of their. Their body. Well that’s what a, a protocol in a detainee situation is.
Zach Elwood: Yeah. And then, then, then he, and he speaks really ambiguously right after that.
He kinda like yada yadas over a bunch of stuff.
Chase Hughes: I did a lot of training and stuff like that along the way, like teaching people and walking people, mentoring people through the process. And there were Intel guys and uh, there were is dudes at Intel Specialist guys.
Merlin O’Brecht: Yeah.
Chase Hughes: That was really rewarding ’cause they got that.
And every time I would train one of these guys that went through all these intelligence schools universally, they would say, this is 10 times better than our school. And I thought at the, I think the first few times I heard it, I was like, wow, thank you. But in the back of my mind I was like, they’re lying to make me feel good.
That was exactly what went on my head. They’re lying to me so I feel better about myself. Uh, it took a while for me to kind of have the enough self worth. To say like, wow, these things are really gonna change a lot of people. They’re gonna change a lot of lives.
Zach Elwood: He kind of just yada yadas over, you know, his amazing abilities or knowledge.
And he is like, then I decided I needed to train people on this stuff and my wife encouraged me and I got into it.
Chase Hughes: As I’m retiring, I’m, I’m living with my girlfriend who’s now my wife, she’s actually in the next room and I had a resume typed up and I, I was applying to be a guy working in the shipyard, fitting people’s faces with PPE and safety gear.
Let’s just not say it. Just could
Merlin O’Brecht: the grade chase hug, you know?
Chase Hughes: Yeah.
Merlin O’Brecht: I know you’re just a normal guy at the end of the day too, but a lot of people look up to you and, and, uh, I certainly do and it’s incredible to me the depth of your knowledge that’s built, uh, into my mind. It’s actually a really interesting story, uh, because it just kind of goes to show.
Like, for me anyways, it makes me feel like, dang. Well, if Chase was feeling like he was about to go just fit masks in the Navy shipyard at one point in his life and really thought that he, that it would what he was gonna do, yeah, maybe some roofer from Canada could be more than a roofer from Canada as well, you know,
Zach Elwood: but also, you know, it’s, it’s all ambiguous.
There’s not a lot, hardly any details. Uh, but then it’s also, it also, this also just conflicts with his own records on his website and his website, chase hughes.com, which I covered in my first video. And, and, and the entry for that about it as many lies. He, he started that website in 2012. He was immediately claiming to be an expert in reading people, in influencing people.
He, he claimed even like, I think it was as early as like 2014, to be an internationally recognized, uh, person in the behavior and influence space. He had the, this like fake quote about his. You know, uh, his behavior, uh, table of elements. He had, uh, claims that like his stuff was being used by agencies, that it was being used by media, uh, organizations worldwide and such.
So his, his, uh, claims in this, even in this ambiguous way that he kind of veered into being some sort of expert later in his career, completely conflict with him. Try claiming from an early time period to be an amazing, internationally recognized expert in these things. Right?
Kent Clizbe: Yeah. Yeah. He’s, his, his big problem is he’s here, he is coming clean in this life story, but he’s still got all of his past, uh, past claims on the record.
So, to wrap up that interview, the, the poor roofing lack, he says again, he’s, he’s confused, he says.
Merlin O’Brecht: What about, uh, any of, any other studies or anything else about that I’m missing that we wanna cover about the human behavior stuff at your time in the military?
Chase Hughes: No, I think we’ve kind of, we’ve at least kind of glossed over the biggest pieces.
Merlin O’Brecht: Yeah, for sure. Okay. Yeah,
Kent Clizbe: he, he was expecting this to be a, a big, long explanation of how Hughes had become such an expert, and Hughes says, Nope, we covered it. So now let’s go back to when he was. A, a, a jail guard, I guess he was stationed in Hawaii. He tells a story in this life story that he was studying psychology and body language and reading Jung and uh, I had a, a US government manual, unidentified, he doesn’t say what it is.
I’m guessing he got it off of, uh, off the internet. You know, there’s a lot of like 1950s CIA stuff.
Zach Elwood: He also speaks as if it was amazing that you can’t find the government manual on Amazon, and he’s like, you to this day, you can’t find it on Amazon. The guy’s like, wow. I’m like, that’s like the least amazing thing ever.
It’s like if I, there’s many government manuals you can’t find on Amazon. It’s strange.
Chase Hughes: I was reading these psychology books. I’m reading Carl Jung and profiling books and stuff like that. It was FBI profiling manual that I got a hold of. It was a government manual that you couldn’t even find on Amazon.
To this day, you can’t find on Amazon.
Merlin O’Brecht: Well.
Chase Hughes: I’m reading through all these things and kind of piecing all this stuff together, like a schizophrenic with the yarn, you know, that goes Yeah, I do how to do newspaper. There’s
Merlin O’Brecht: that internet of the guy with
all
Chase Hughes: this. Oh yeah. Pets. Yeah. Yeah. That’s what my brain was like.
Little stuff. Yeah.
Kent Clizbe: Here he, he’s a jail guard and he’s studying psychology body language on his own. EE evidently. ’cause there, there’s no indication he ever went to college. I don’t think he ever mentions any academic studies. Um, he, he, he went to a military high school and I think he pretty much, he had some kind of issue when he was in, in high school and he, he had to join the military, I think.
Zach Elwood: Yeah. He said he was a horrible student. He said he was getting horrible grades, I assume maybe some behavioral issues, maybe. I mean, he comes from a wealthy family. He, people have told me, people have told me he comes from a wealthy family. And then I saw him talk about it in his, um, life story. He says it was a.
It’s very, you know, privileged, uh, upbringing. So it’s an interesting, uh, yeah, something, something was going on with that, uh, military school. And then, yeah, he, uh,
Chase Hughes: it was a, a very country club existence. It was like, let’s go to the golf course, let’s go to tennis lessons, let’s go to the country club, summer camp and swimming pool and all that.
Throughout the summers, going through middle school, like around fourth, fifth grade, I started getting like D’s and everything. Everything was like a D.
Merlin O’Brecht: What do you think was happening there?
Chase Hughes: I think I just lost interest in school. Like, I, it wasn’t fun. Uh, I don’t know. Something changed in my brain.
Kent Clizbe: Rich kids who get in trouble, uh, being sent to military school is a very common.
Kind of, uh, way to grow up. So that’s what happened to him. He was, I guess, a rich kid who got in trouble sent to military school and, but anyway, what, what I’m getting to here is academics. He, he’s never, never made a claim and I’ve never seen any kind of indication that he is ever been to college.
Zach Elwood: I, I don’t know if you wanna mention, he does in his life story video, talk about his, um, signed up for Harvard postgraduate level and, uh, duke University, uh, opening at Duke University, something in medical neuroscience.
He makes these claims that he did some, some sort of classes after his, or, or near the end of his, uh, Navy career. But it’s also very vague. And he used to claim that he had, apparently used to claim that he had like an Harvard degree on his LinkedIn, but then deleted it. Like people mentioned that years ago as like him claiming he had some sort of Harvard degree.
So anyway, just to say he’s, he’s made these claims and I, I kind of feel like the. Probably the truth of the matter is with those is he found some like really minimal, you know, week or couple week long class that you could take from Harvard and Duke to bolster his resume, like the easiest thing you could possibly find that was associated with those schools.
I have a feeling maybe he did that. Maybe he didn’t even do that. I don’t know. But whatever it is, it’s not really clear what he did.
Kent Clizbe: Yeah. So, so there, there are, uh, a lot of, um, uh, Harvard or Duke or any university does conferences, does, uh, professional training, something like that. It may, it may just be a conference, but you, you sign up and, uh, enroll and maybe you pay a, pay a fee and you are now a.
Graduate of Harvard’s history seminar. You know, once you get that, then you can say, well, I’m a Harvard graduate. I don’t see any indication. He has an undergraduate degree and he never claims to I a graduate degree. Ain’t gonna happen. But unless you got an undergraduate degree.
Zach Elwood: Actually I’m just reading this now, Ken, it’s kind of interesting.
I’ll, I noticed how ambiguous this language is. Like he says this
Merlin O’Brecht: And what about neuroscience, like endocrinology? When did you first start getting interested in all that? Because it seems it’s kind of different. Right.
Chase Hughes: I signed up for this Harvard, uh, postgraduate level, so like a master’s level, uh, certification in neuroscience and neuroendocrinology.
And right as I started learning that is when I discovered my brain. These like neuroscience neurological disorder, like at the same time. Really? Yeah. Damns. And so, like at the moment, I, that’s when I started classes. Like I still had, I only had 18, 20 pages in my little notebook drawn out and taking notes and stuff.
Little, couple sketches of neurons and stuff like that in there,
Merlin O’Brecht: right?
Chase Hughes: Uh, but the moment that diagnosis came down, I was more interested in that kind of learning that I’ve ever been in my life. I wanted to lo, I wanted to know more about my condition than any neurologist that I would ever see. And I spent four and a half years studying and studying and studying and ensuring that, like, I, I wanna know more than anybody in the world about what’s going on in my brain.
And that may or may not be true, probably not true. There’s probably lots of people that know a lot, but I wanted to be, feel like I had a hand on the steering wheel of what was gonna happen to my brain. It’s gonna happen. Uh, so like me becoming a good student. I don’t think that’s what that was. I think it was desperation.
The moment I finished with Harvard, there was a course opening up at Duke University.
Zach Elwood: He doesn’t, he never says he finished it. He says, I signed up for it. And then later, yeah, right. And then later he says, the moment I finished with Harvard, there was a course opening up at Duke University. He never says what he got at Harvard.
He never says he even finished it. He says he signed up for it. Yeah. So yeah, there’s a lot of ambiguous stuff there. What’s he say about Duke? He says,
Chase Hughes: there was a course opening up at Duke University at Duke University Medical School, and this was in medical neuroscience. And I was like, I need to take that.
And it was relatively cheap compared to all the other universities out there.
Merlin O’Brecht: Yeah.
Chase Hughes: And this is another postgraduate certification in medical neuroscience and neuroimaging and neuroradiology and. I started that same exact thing, just nonstop every day, five, 10 hours a day. Still you nonstop.
Kent Clizbe: You know, this may have been that one and a half years when he was on medical casual status.
Zach Elwood: He does mention the medical, he mentions his medical issues at the same time, you know, he’s, he talks about his medical issues. Uh, so I mean, reading this, he doesn’t, from what I can see, he doesn’t talk about any actual finishing, finishing anything. He doesn’t talk about what the classes really were, and he, but he does also talk about his own medical issues about like, having all these memory and brain problems and such.
We don’t need to get into all that stuff, but just to say, getting back to when people say a lot of ambiguous things, you should pay attention. You know, getting, getting to what really works in interrogation and interview scenarios. You know, when somebody is speaking very ambiguously about things, that’s a, that’s a red flag that you want, you want to dig into, right.
Kent Clizbe: Yep. So, um, back to him being, when he was at the jail guard, uh, he was studying psychology and body language reading j and a US government manual. Again, as you say, it’s all ambiguous and he’s probably doing these kind of things. He means he was probably on the internet going, huh, that’s interesting. And that’s what he, you know, he spins that as I was studying psychology.
So he went, this, this is a, uh, the anecdote he tells his, the, the poor lackey interviewer.
Chase Hughes: And I, I remember going out to Waikiki Beach and Honolulu and this guy, like everybody else, was like, really afraid of this guy. And for the first time in my lung, uh, something clicked in my head and like, like I went from brain to heart.
Instantly something shifted where I was like, there’s a voice in my head was like, oh my God, he’s scared. He’s just fearful. And I felt empathy, uh, instead of like, I’m calling him a douche bag or which I would’ve done. Right, a hundred percent would’ve done. Um, but I felt this like surge of empathy. Like I can see the matrix.
Like I was, I felt like it was neo,
Merlin O’Brecht: right?
Chase Hughes: I can, no one else could see what IMC, like that’s kind of what Neo is, you know? That’s Yeah.
Merlin O’Brecht: Yeah. He sees behind the code.
Chase Hughes: Yeah. Yeah. So that was the biggest one for me. And then I started moaning the, the really deep, hardcore persuasion level stuff. And the first time I ever used that on a person, um, it worked so well that my far rate was probably at like 180 or 200.
I was like, I’m gonna go to prison. Like, I just felt like I was breaking the rules of reality. Like, like reality shouldn’t work this way. I
Kent Clizbe: felt like I was neo in the matrix. When I heard him say that, I said, you know what, this dude sounds like he was taking drugs. There’s, there’s drugs like, uh, I think it’s called MDMA or MDA, the party drug.
It’s what those Yeah, ec when when they go to raves. Yeah. They take that and it, um, it makes you love everybody. You, it, it’s like an empathy drug. It makes you feel like, oh, that poor guy. Oh, I understand him. That’s what this, it’s like he’s describing a, a, an experience on MDMA or something like that.
That’s what I thought when I heard that.
Zach Elwood: Mm-hmm. Well, it sounded to me like just pure, kind of narcissism, like over, over, over exaggerating the importance of fairly minor thing. It’s like what you mean empathy made you feel like you were neo in the matrix? Like I don’t, he, but he, but he often talks about, I mean, he, even today.
A big part of his spiel these days is talking about how we’re in a simulation and how drugs have helped him. Various hallucinogenics have helped him see the matrix. Yeah.
Kent Clizbe: There you go. See, that’s it. I may, I, I didn’t, I didn’t know that, but Oh, didn’t know that. When
Chase Hughes: he says this, this is going to rip a hole in your brain that you cannot plug.
It’s going to permanently change the way that you see stuff. There’s so many symbols and signs that human beings are experiencing a simulation of reality.
Merlin O’Brecht: Have you seen the DMT experiment with the laser?
Marc the Beginning host: I have seen it on Instagram and I heard you and Danny talking about it. So you’ve done it.
Chase Hughes: Yeah, I saw it on Instagram and flew Danny to my house right away.
Marc the Beginning host: Like, break this down for people because it got shared amongst my group. And it’s like, what the fuck?
Chase Hughes: Exactly. And that’s the only question you’re still gonna have after you see it.
Marc the Beginning host: It doesn’t answer any questions. It just invites a lot more.
Chase Hughes: Yeah. Nothing else. There’s code. Absolutely. There is code.
Marc the Beginning host: So the code’s not like spinning there.
It’s like it’s literally like kind of written out static.
Chase Hughes: It’s static. I can move the laser up and down and see all of the letters, but it’s like three dimensional. So I can get close to the wall, I can look down inside of the laser that way, and I can look up in the laser that way.
Kent Clizbe: When he says this, I hear that’s somebody who has been on psychedelic drugs.
Oh, he is done a lot of, he’s done a lot
Zach Elwood: of drugs. He, he, he encourages
Kent Clizbe: this there. Well, there, it’s right there. Yeah. So that’s the explanation. He, he’s in Hawaii as a jail guard. What a fricking horrible job. I cannot imagine being a jail guard. What a sucky job. But you’re in paradise. So what these, the, uh, Navy guys do is they party all the time.
I mean, I, I, I, I’ve been with many Navy guys when they’re on shore, they drink nonstop. Guys I knew in the Navy weren’t doing drugs, but I’m sure that there were, there. There’s a, a party culture, and that’s what this sounds like, a party culture. This was his introduction to psychedelics. He took. Some kind of drug and it made him feel empathetic and it changed his life.
That’s what Well, you’re, that’s what he’s describing here.
Zach Elwood: Yeah. I mean, we’re speculating here to be clear, but that’s your, that’s your guess.
Kent Clizbe: Yeah. It’s total speculation. But I’m, I’m telling you, I, I, I, this is, this is not just, uh, total blue sky. I, well, we, I’ve been, I’ve been in the drug culture when I was a kid.
I, I know a lot about it and, uh, when you, when, when somebody says this, and then later on they talk about that, how psychedelics have changed their life.
Zach Elwood: Yeah,
Kent Clizbe: there it is right there. Well, we should, he just said it should,
Zach Elwood: it might be a
Kent Clizbe: good everyth shifted a voice in my head.
Zach Elwood: It might, it might be a good time to throw in too that, you know, the pickup artist stuff.
He, he released his, uh, passport book in like 2007, which means he was probably in the pickup artist kind of seen for a couple years or so. And so he, he was traveling around, uh, you know, seducing women and including with his navy friends, like some of the people he mentions in his, in his book, you know, giving him testimonials in his passport, uh, book, you know, you could do the research and find that they were navy people, so the speculation might fit in with that party kind of lifestyle, going to clubs and, and such too.
But I think, you know, it’s interesting too, the pickups part of stuff.
Kent Clizbe: He goes, yeah, it’s just speculation, you know? I mean, it does, he doesn’t say I was taking drugs and this happened.
Zach Elwood: Yeah.
Kent Clizbe: But he, he says something shifted a voice in my head. I felt like I was neo in the matrix. He’s describing a psychedelic experience.
That’s what it feels like to take psychedelics. He goes on to say, now I was into the hardcore persuasion stuff this first time. It worked so well. I thought I’m going to prison. I’m breaking the rules of reality. Wait, wait, what? What? Rules of reality. Only the only way you’d say that is if you’re taking drugs.
And then what does he say? It was addicting. Dude. Drugs are addicting to live in a reality that others don’t live in. How do you get into a reality others don’t live in? You drop acid.
Zach Elwood: Yeah. I mean, you
Kent Clizbe: take MDMA
Zach Elwood: or it was like a narcissistic or it was like a psychotic break. Who knows? You know, but there’s some, it’s also just interesting for like, him
Kent Clizbe: drugs.
I, I would, my, yeah, we
Zach Elwood: don’t,
Kent Clizbe: my educated assessment is, yeah, I, this is a, a, a drug. He, he, he had life changing experiences taking some kind of, or multiple kinds of drugs. And now he goes on to say, well, this isn’t hyperbole, this is legit shit. I now, I tried to use my new skills and I was very successful. I was the king of the detainee facility.
I had all the tricks,
Chase Hughes: but it’s, it’s addicting because you get, you live in a re a layer of reality that other people don’t live in. And that’s not even, I’m not, that’s not hyperbole. That’s. Legit shit like aren’t you’re seeing stuff nobody else is gonna see.
Merlin O’Brecht: Yeah.
Chase Hughes: So that is, it gets so addictive because every time you get better at it and you start seeing this next layer and next layer, you can’t stop chasing layers because every time you’re like, there’s gotta be something even more than this and more.
So that’s been the en entire past 30 years of my life is what’s the next layer? What’s the next level?
Merlin O’Brecht: Like a never ending onion, I think. Ever use that pineapple.
Chase Hughes: Yeah, it’s true. And that’s, uh, I’m probably 29 or so, 28 at this point. 25.
Merlin O’Brecht: When we, when you first got obsessed with bi language, human behavior.
Chase Hughes: 19.
Merlin O’Brecht: Yeah. That was, so that was, so that was still at the very beginning of the journey.
Chase Hughes: Oh yeah.
Merlin O’Brecht: So then, and that was still when you were doing the deckhand work.
Chase Hughes: Yep.
Merlin O’Brecht: And so when you start doing the detaining job, whatever you’re doing there, you’ve already now got a fascination in psychology. You’ve already got some pretty key skills in terms of understanding human beings and human behavior and even understanding influence a little bit.
So you’re probably starting to, I would imagine, look at everything that’s going on as the depend situation from a lens that maybe most people aren’t.
Chase Hughes: Absolutely. And I’m trying to use those things as much as I can. And they were very successful. Extremely successful. And they’re not even the level of NCI one, like our, the primary course of ncis.
Wow. It’s not even that level. And it was like, you are the king of this detaining facility. You’ve got all of these tricks and tactics and stuff, and they were just so basic. Wow.
Kent Clizbe: What, what is the hell are you talking
Zach Elwood: about?
Kent Clizbe: Yeah.
Zach Elwood: It’s, and and again, all this stuff is so ambiguous. He’s like, I saw through the Matrix I was doing amazing things, but he is, it is like, what were you doing?
What was so amazing? It, nothing you’ve described sounds impressive. It just sounds like psychotic or drug induced or something. Yeah. It,
Kent Clizbe: it’s, it’s a dude on drugs. So then, then in, in this, the only experience that he shares in this, uh, in, in the life story is his, his interviewer. Ask him, can, can you share any experience, uh, about, you know, be your behavioral expertise or give mind control?
Zach Elwood: Give us something.
Kent Clizbe: Give us something. He goes, well, um, I’ll tell you one story.
Chase Hughes: So in, uh, Kauai, there’s a mall, like a big outdoor mall. It’s called Ala one Mall. Yeah, it’s huge. It’s, it’s beautiful. It, in this mall, there were two separate Abercrombie and Fitch stores.
Merlin O’Brecht: Okay,
Chase Hughes: there’s a men’s store and a women’s store, right?
Uh, I 20 something years old, young kid go and get a night job at nights and weekends working at the Women’s Abercrombie store. Uh, and that is where I practice a lot of this behavior stuff and behavior profiling and, and influence and persuasion stuff. And that was where I kind of got a lot of like the anxiety that anybody, when they start learning, especially that the influence stuff, they start learning some of these methods and they’re like, well, I won’t say that out loud, but like, right.
I, I need to be in a really, really low stake situation. That’s the place where I got all of that out of my system. Uh, so it was the perfect probing ground for me anyway. And I loved doing that. Even if we’re, you know, like standing shirtless of. Front of the store during the holidays or whatever. Uh, we, I could still, there was someone there.
There’s always someone there and they’re, they’re paid to just stand there. You know, it was, it was the perfect scenario for me to start working on some of this stuff and just kind of piecing some of these pieces together that I’ve been wondering about.
Kent Clizbe: And that’s it. That’s it. He, he, he doesn’t say, he doesn’t say, you know, exactly what he was doing.
He doesn’t say what the results were. It’s just, and, and now I, I didn’t know about, uh, the, the timeline of the pickup bullshit, but obviously that’s what he’s describing here. He was going to pick up girls in this Abercrombie and Fitch Women’s store, and it worked. Whatever it is. He was doing work and he decides that it’s behavior profiling, influence, persuasion, and I guess, I guess you could call it that, you know, the pickup artist is kinda bullshit.
Uh, but that, that’s it. That in his life story, that this is his only be, besides the one, the guy, the big guy on the beach when he had a surge of empathy and it changed his life. And he went to Abercrombie and Fitch women’s store. That’s, and did something.
Zach Elwood: That was an
Kent Clizbe: amazing story. Yeah, that’s, that was a perfect proving ground for him.
So that’s, that’s Chase Hughes, uh, life and how, nothing, there’s nothing in it to the, he has no expertise. Uh, developed externally. He has no job related training. There’s nothing in his background in the military that has anything to do with mind control, brainwashing behavior any more than any other jail guard has, is, is a behavior expert.
Zach Elwood: Yeah. I mean, it’s nice of him to put out the information to help us, you know, support what we already knew, to put out his own information on that. Um, and then, you know, there were, we’re not even getting into the many ridiculous things. He still claims about his abilities to mind read and brainwash people in a few seconds, like he talked about on Joe Rogan.
Chase Hughes: I, I mean, I may the number one guy in the country on the mind control stuff. There are step-by-step programs they have for creating a mentor candidate.
Joe Rogan: Okay. Like, what’s step one? How do you know when you can get a guy to be a mentor and candidate?
Zach Elwood: Stuff that’s clearly. Completely fantasy, and we’re not even getting into him selling vitamin supplements and claiming these vitamin supplements were used by the armed forces and, you know, just bullshit.
Just the amount of, immense amount of bullshit he spread and continues to spread about all sorts of things. So it’s like he can try to manage this thing, you know, try to put out his own version of it and speak in ambiguous ways. But I mean, the only people he is fooling are people that are already kind of, kind of got down the Chase hug fan rabbit hole at this point.
Yeah,
Kent Clizbe: I, I, I gave up a long time ago trying to analyze why people fall for Con Men, because this guy’s a con man.
Zach Elwood: Yeah.
Kent Clizbe: He’s, he’s full of shit. He makes claims that are total bullshit. He implies that he has background and expertise that he doesn’t have, but people fall for it. Yeah. And, and I study cons. I study scams.
I got scammed when I, a couple times when I was young. And you know, I’ve, I’ve been kind, so I know that people get conned for different reasons, but everybody’s different. And I gave up trying to figure out why people fall for the con. All I can do is, is provide a glimpse at reality, uh, of, of the conman.
Here’s what his claims are, here’s the actual background of this guy. Here’s my professional assessment of where his claims come from. And then you gotta use that yourself. If you’re a potential victim, you gotta use this information I’m providing you to make your own decision. Am I gonna give this guy $10,000 to go eat peyote mushrooms and chant in Mexico and change my life?
Or am I gonna. Do something productive of my life. It’s up to you. I don’t know why people fall for this.
Zach Elwood: I mean, the un the unfortunate thing is a lot of the people that get into this are vulnerable people. Like I’ve shared with you some messages that came to me, people thinking that my site was Chase Hughes, very emotionally, psychologically, vulnerable people, several people.
And then I’ve heard people have sent me stories about their family members or, or friends who are emotionally vulnerable and been kind of treating, uh, chase. I mean, chase clearly wants to become some sort of guru, uh, cult leader personality. Now he’s doing all these videos about how we live in a simulation and you can control it and, you know, that just all this kind of stuff you would see from a, you know, a wild cult leader.
So the sad thing is a lot of people that get drawn into this are just emotionally vulnerable and they’re the most at risk for like, spending way too much and having their minds warped and yeah, it’s, it’s sad. Really. Yeah.
Kent Clizbe: And that’s who. Con men are looking for, they’re looking for a weak point. Mm-hmm.
And you just, you throw out enough stuff to enough people and you’ll find the, the weak points there.
Zach Elwood: Yeah.
Kent Clizbe: So good. You’re doing a great job, Zach. I sure hope that, uh, that people will hear this and take heed and avoid this conman.
Zach Elwood: So that was really only scratching the surface of Chase Hughes Origins and his rise to fame.
We didn’t even get into the tale of how he came to work with the Behavior Panel, the show that was the main factor in his rise to online popularity whose members teamed with him, despite his many obvious red flags in a video, the Behavior Panel released talking about their origins, Mark Bowden had admitted to wanting to partner with Chase, despite there being almost nothing about Chase online.
And again, despite Chase climbing for years on his website to be well known and famous for his work.
Mark Bowden: Well, I didn’t know Chase at the time because Chase wasn’t kind of out there at the time. You were still I
Chase Hughes: was active duty
Mark Bowden: You were still active duty at the, at the time. So nobody knew that you were, you were around at at the time.
Um. When the guy who was buying his dinner had had said, you guys should get together. I kind of searched around the internet and I found a video of you and I found a video of you you’d gone to, I think it was Colgate. Was it Colgate?
Chase Hughes: Yeah. Colgate University.
Mark Bowden: Colgate University. And you were coming out of Colgate University and you’d been doing some research there, um, into
Chase Hughes: MK Ultra.
Mark Bowden: Yeah. And, and you were talking about the cubic feet of documents that you, you’d, you’d been through and you were saying some names of some people that I recognize and not everybody would really recognize. Yeah. And you were talking about their documents in Cubic feet. And I instantly went
Chase Hughes: 36.
Mark Bowden: Oh, this guy is, um, is serious.
Like this is a serious person.
Zach Elwood: So Mark can’t find anything about this guy who claims to be a behavior and psychology expert, but what the hell Chase looked like he was doing smart stuff. After all, clearly only true intellectuals are able to talk about the volume of documents. This, I think, says a lot about Mark Bowden and about the Behavior Panel in general.
They are, like Chase, unethical and irresponsible. They clearly don’t care about the truth about body, language and behavior, just as they clearly don’t care about partnering with and promoting a con artist. It also says a lot that when I tried to bring this to the attention of the behavior panel members back in 2024, when I first released my first Chase Hughes episode, I was insulted by Mark Bowden several times on LinkedIn who accused me of just trying to promote myself.
The other members only ignored me as I expected them to in the first place. I think Mark Bowden lashing out at me is perhaps a sign that he has some internal conflict and guilt about his initial decision to partner with Chase Hughes and help him achieve popularity and exploit vulnerable people. Now, apparently the YouTube money train is rolling and it’s just too good to get off.
Sad stuff. In a future video, I might step through that behavior panel origin video and do what they do. See if I can find a few interesting clues and tidbits in their statements and behavior.
I’ll leave you with a clip from an interview that Chase Hughes did in January of 2022 with Theresa Carpenter, who has a military focused podcast and who actually knew Chase a bit during the Navy.
I think it might give some psychological insight into the immense fear that motivates Chase and other grandiose serial liars like him. Or maybe it doesn’t, maybe it’s just another story, another distraction, another lie.
Theresa Carpenter: And then as you were transitioning out of the Navy, you started this path into entrepreneurship.
Can you tell me a little bit about that?
Chase Hughes: I did. I wanted to, I had a moment that, uh, changed my life when I was a young kid in the military and I was like. I had to be 19 years old. And when you’re 19, you’re, you know, you’re in the Navy, a master chief is like the god, God Yes. Of the, of the entire ship.
Marc the Beginning host: Mm-hmm.
Chase Hughes: And like flawless Oh yeah. Doesn’t make mistakes. Uh, mostly because they did, they do set a pretty good example. They do. And so we had a master chief on, uh, on the ship when I was young. He retired and two weeks later, uh, you know, I assumed he’s gonna go, I’m young, right. So I’m thinking he’s gonna go be the CEO of like Southwest Airlines.
Right. Or like, he’s gonna go like, run the country somehow. Right. Because he’s, he’s a master chief and two weeks later I see him organizing CDs in Circuit City.
Joe Rogan: Mm-hmm.
Chase Hughes: Back when we had Circuit City.
Joe Rogan: Right.
Chase Hughes: And he was wearing a Navy veteran like ball cap and. I didn’t go up to him because I was kind of embarrassed for him.
I’m sure he had plenty of money, like tons to do.
Theresa Carpenter: Mm-hmm.
Chase Hughes: Um, but I lost sleep over that. I literally lost sleep and I was terrified most of my career that the Navy would be the best thing that I had ever done. And then once I got out, then my days, you know mm-hmm. Would be over, like my life would. Right.
You know, my biggest achievements were behind me at that point. Right. And that was my biggest fear. So I started like 10 years before I left the Navy, I started building this stuff and I was obsessed with human behavior. So I just started doing as much as I possibly could to manufacture content and do as much I wanted to outwork every psychology researcher in the United States, and I wanted to do more research than anybody and figure things out that hadn’t been figured out before.
The Epstein file release has resulted in many people losing their minds: engaging in moral panic, filtering for worst-case interpretations of so many things; having hysterical overreactions. In this episode, I take a look at some of this hysteria. Using a video from the political influencer Kyle Kulinski, who has 2.5M subscribers on YouTube, as a case study, I examine how ambiguous snippets—like an audio clip of people talking about killing deer and crashing a boat—get instantly interpreted by Kyle and others as some sort of evidence that might point to murder. Why are smart, influential people speaking with absolute certainty about what pixelated photos and ambiguous recordings and emails tell us? Why are people claiming to find evidence of cannibalism in the files? And what does all this say about our toxic political polarization problems, and our tendency to assume the worst when our perceived enemies are involved? If you’re concerned about paranoid, conspiracy-minded thinking, and how that ties into our political divides, this episode will help you understand why emotional reasoning is so rampant, and why it’s important to fight against it, when we see others doing it, and within ourselves — not just for the sake of society, but for our own mental health.
(Transcripts are automatically generated and do contain errors.)
Kyle Kulinksi: No, it really does appear to be a shadow government of pedophile, billionaire elites that run the world. And they’re sadists. Some of them are into torture, some of them are into cannibalism. They are actually part of a clique, a club, a fraternity, and they keep humans like pets and do the most sadistic things imaginable to them.
Zach Elwood: So this will be a video examining some Epstein file hysteria. I think it’s clear that there are many people just losing their minds about the Epstein files and just thinking very badly and emotionally interpreting everything through the worst case filter, most pessimistic filter of what happened. And this includes some pretty popular and, uh, I’d say even some pretty smart people that, uh, you would expect.
More from, and to be clear, I should say here, nothing I am examining here is to deny that terrible things were done by Epstein and others. This is not what this video is about. It’s not any sort of defense of Epstein or his friends. And I don’t pretend to be any sort of expert on what happened with Epstein.
I haven’t even followed the Epstein news that much. That’s not what this video is about. It’s not really about. The Epstein case, it’s about people’s reactions to the case and there’s just clearly many people engaging in hysterical moral panic ways to this case and just plain dumb ways. Uh, and in turn, those people are spreading hysteria and misinformation to others, and it’s actually an ink in many cases, impacting people’s mental health.
Um, making them be overly paranoid and just reaching catastrophizing views of what’s happening, about what is happening in the world. Um, so you can see, you know, some of this stuff ties into some of the extreme things that happened with, um, extreme beliefs with Pizzagate a few years ago. It’s just more happening now with, um, more liberal democrat associated people.
Um, I mean, it was happening then too with an assorted variety of people, but it’s happening more now with, um, liberal associated people just because now Trump, you know, focusing on Epstein is more associated with, um, you know, Trump now. So you have more anti-Trump connotations, which gets more people into the mix.
One reason I’m interested in these topics is because I’ve examined, um, conflict and polarization dynamics in my work, um, my books and with this podcast. Uh, these things tie into our overly pessimistic views of other people. They quote other side and how that relates to how it shifts our thinking based on our emotions and such.
Um, so yeah, I’ll talk more about that in a bit. But one thing I want to focus on here is a video that, the video that made me want to make this episode was this video by, um, Kyle Kalinski, who has a show called Secular Talk, and he had this. YouTube channel or YouTube video that came across my feed. I don’t follow him.
Uh, the name of his YouTube video was Kill Them and Dispose Them. In quotes, we found the worst Epstein viles. The worst is in all caps, as is Kill them and dispose them. So that got my attention. I I wanted to see what that was about. First lemme back up and say, Kyle Kalinski is a pretty. A popular content maker.
He’s known for being, um, you know, progressive activist. His, his YouTube channel has, um, 2.1 million subscribers. The video I just talked about had 566,000 views. He’s been around for a while, since 2008. Pretty influential. You know, that’s why the things I’m gonna say about just how dumb his thinking is and emotional, his thinking is.
It is significant. I mean, this is a good example of, um, of just how bad a lot of these political commentators are these days, and I didn’t know much about Kyle until recently, but you can regularly hear him just speaking about, you know, the quote other side about conservatives as if they’re all the same, as if they’re all motivated by the, the worst possible, um, motivations, you know, which ties into the my polarization related work.
Yeah, he criticized the Never Trump movement. He discouraged people, praising Republicans who criticize Trump stating that establishment Republicans want Trump to do every single thing he’s doing, minus the mean tweets. You know, just, I think that’s a, gets into the polarization dynamics of, uh, worst case thinking about the entire other side and failure to distinguish between different approaches amongst your quote enemies and so on.
Another interesting thing about Kyle. I should mention this. He’s a, he’s the husband of Crystal Ball, who is a political commentator herself. She’s on a pretty popular show called Breaking Points. You might have heard of it. Okay.
Kyle Kulinksi: So the Epstein file scandal keeps getting darker and darker and more and more disturbing.
And the coverup is probably the most pathetic and sad coverup I think I’ve ever seen in my life. It is definitely amateur hour. This is Bush League stuff. Um, now they’re coming out and saying, that’s it. Alright. We released everything that we got. That’s, we got.
Zach Elwood: All right. I’m gonna skip ahead to where he.
And he’s talking about the failure to release the documents, which I actually agree with him. I, I think there’s legitimate views on the, the failure of, uh, to, to release the documents. They’ve only released like 2% of the documents and it’s been very haphazard. I don’t disagree with a lot of that, but let’s get to him talking about this specific clip.
Remember, this is a, I want to video title. We found the worst Epstein files
Kyle Kulinksi: and their language is a global criminal enterprise doing crimes against humanity, which sounds very similar to what I’ve told you. It’s a shadow government of moneyed interests, a cabal of pedophile, greatist, billionaire sadists who really run the world and view you and me as subhuman.
And I’ve never been more convinced in my life that class politics is is a factual truth. It’s an objective truth. That class politics is, is the end all, be all that extreme wealth rots your soul and turns you into a demonic entity based on what these people were doing. Alright? But you gotta,
Zach Elwood: okay.
Demonic entities, uh, people who are amazingly evil, who won’t, don’t think of you as subhuman. Okay? What’s, what’s Kyle gonna look at to back up these pretty incendiary claims?
Kyle Kulinksi: Epstein files a audio file of a woman saying kill them and dispose of the bodies. Huh? So this is on the Justice Department website, and I’m gonna play some of it for you here.
Let’s listen.
Epstein employee: No, you called me after the fact. You didn’t call me when the fucking boat crashed. No one called me. Let’s get that straight. Happened. We tried to, to hold out. I got the message from you. Midnight. Did it happen at midnight? No. Did anybody think to call me and say they’re gonna use the boat?
Come get some dead fucking Derrick. No. No. Right. No, you’re right. And now we’re dealing with this shit. Look at the boat. Look at the man’s boat. This is bullshit. No, that’s a nightmare. You are the head electrician. You like one of the head landscapers. I finally got you a gig as a boat captain, and this is the bullshit I’m dealing with.
This is bullshit. All y’all know better than this shit. This man is livid right now with us.
I mean, I don’t even know what the, I’m so fucking cross right now. Right? This fuck makes no sense. Oh, I
especially after we had good success.
This, this is just completely, completely, this makes absolutely no sense. This is, I pissed off about, told both of these guys. I said, do you want these? Dare you wait for the morning. And then all of a sudden, but that was the plan to kill them, wait till daylight and then we dispose of them properly. And then, and then I get these calls and this, and this bullshit happened.
This is the man’s crew boat bad enough. You don’t have another boat. You don’t have another boat. What are we gonna use a barge? How much money is that gonna cost us to run a staff back and forth on a damn barge? Then
Kyle Kulinksi: think about how what they’re saying here makes no sense. So they keep talking about a boat, a boat, a boat.
Like there was some sort of a boat crash. So you hear that and you go, okay, maybe they’re, maybe they’re talking about a boat crash, right? But then they go, they start talking about a deer. They go. The deer. The deer. Like there’s a problem with the deer. Well, if it’s a boat crash, how the fuck can a boat crash?
Kill a deer. Right? That that makes absolutely no sense. And then they go kill it and dispose of the bodies. Kill ’em, and dispose of the bodies. What? So, you know, I mean steel manning them, it’s like, I guess they’re talking about maybe there was some sort of an accident with a car hitting a deer and the car is damaged and that pissed off Jeffrey Epstein and they’re saying, kill the deer and dispose of the body.
The bodies. I don’t know. I, when you get the repeated references to the boat and then they talk about deer and then they go kill them and dispose of the body. I don’t know, man. I don’t know. I don’t know. But I’m, I’m still, this is, I’m just giving you a little taste here of what’s to come because these files actually get,
Zach Elwood: so, um, yeah.
So this is, this is how Kyle leads, we found the worst Epstein files. This is the way he leads with, I mean. Playing that video, listening to that video, I immediately, it did not sound like any, uh, murderous crime, that being committed. It sounded like a completely banal situation involving dead deer in a boat.
Now, is it a little bit hard to understand without knowing the specifics? Of course it is, and that’s why people are paying attention to it. That’s, you know, it’s, it’s vagueness is why people are paying attention to it. But the interaction, the way they’re talking, the specifics, I immediately just found it almost certainly to be something banal.
Uh, and then after listening it to it a couple times, it sounds like there were some workers who were supposed to kill some deer wait until morning to dispose of the bodies, but they instead took the boat late at night and ended up hurting, uh, damaging the boat. Now Kyle’s acting like that’s some crazy story, but you know, you have to remember this is an island environment, right?
Like, so, um. Jeffrey Epstein’s Island is an island called Little St. James was, which is part of the US Virgin I Virgin Islands. And, uh, you can find very easily that they have a big deer problem there. There’s, they were introduced and they run rampant. They’re only predators are wild dogs, cars, there’s deer everywhere.
And they apparently regularly have to, uh. Kill them and get rid of them because they are such a nuisance. So when you know that the idea that there were these deer that needed to be killed, maybe they were causing trouble, maybe they were injured, who knows what? Easy to imagine how that conversation.
Plays out. You know, maybe some workers were disobeying orders because they wanted to kill the deer and take the meat for themselves. You know, who knows? Uh, we don’t know. But listening to it, even once, it seemed likely to me that it was a completely banal incident. And, uh, you know, does Kyle really believe that this deer related audio is the worst of the Epstein files and worthy of inclusion in such a category?
And where are they making this video about? Is there an element for Kyle. Wanting to lean into sensationalism for clicks and attention to increase his YouTube views. Is that perhaps related to a tendency he has to do this kind of thing for other political topics when it comes to worst case, uh, framings of the quote, other side and such?
I don’t pretend to know the answers to what goes on in Kyle’s mind. I just know this is amazingly stupid stuff. So, uh, let’s look at later in the video. He goes, he starts going through images from the Epstein file release, and, and these are images as you’ll see. Well, if you’re listening on audio and not watching the YouTube video, these are images where they’ve been pixelated and where the faces have been blurred, uh, have been blacked out.
But Kyle says that he could, he’s, he confidently states that he thinks some of these images are of underage girls. So let’s watch Kyle watch these. Look at these images.
Kyle Kulinksi: This is the stuff of nightmares, y’all. This is the stuff of nightmares, okay? But still, now I’m gonna give you a warning. Everything we talked about at this point is disturbing.
This is perhaps even more disturbing because it deals with redacted pictures, but pictures nonetheless. But here are some of the things that people have dug up in the Epstein files within the past week or so, and uh, I’m giving you a warning again, you might not wanna see this one, but let me go ahead and show you.
Okay. Pam Bondy saw this photo, one of many from the Epstein files, yet declared there was no evidence of crimes. She now says the DOJ has released all the files even though we have seen only 50% of the files. And by the way, that’s outdated. Apparently it’s only 2% of the files we’ve seen. She is a, a pedophile protector covering up for these despicable perpetrators.
And this picture, ladies and gentlemen, it is redacted. It is a little bit pixelated, but it very clearly shows what is almost certainly an underage girl sitting on a toilet. Performing some sort of sex act on a guy. Okay? And we also happen to find, again, warning, if you don’t wanna see this, there’s a bunch of disturbing stuff here.
This stuff in the Epstein files. Alright? A lot of it is
Zach Elwood: now for people who are listening to this on audio. Uh, none of the pictures Kyle shows in any way to me. Making me confident that of anybody’s age in these photos. Like I, I would not be able to guess anyone’s age in these photos, and yet Kyle is able to confidently claim that he’s almost certain that it shows underage people, you know, similar to the, the boat audio.
It, it’s just so fundamentally dumb. Like you can easily find women that look quite young who are older. B, he seems to be basing that first thing on the fact that she’s in like a school girl uniform, but that doesn’t mean anything. Uh, people can dress in different clothes and then, you know, these are, these are pixelated images with the faces hidden.
Um. Again, I’ll, I’ll just, I’ll just keep playing this, but it’s just so fundamentally such a good example of the kind of level of thinking that Kyle Kalinsky and so many other people are doing, and not just on Epstein files, but this is the kind of thinking that goes on for politics. These are people influencing political discourse, and this is the, this is the kind of thing that political polarization gives rise to, like more emotional thinking, worst case framings of people we don’t like, et cetera, et cetera.
It’s just at a fundamental level, it’s dumb. And you know, toxic polarization, toxic conflict makes us dumber. It gives more support to people like Kyle Kolinsky, who in turn make other people more angry, more rage filled, et cetera. Let me keep playing this
Kyle Kulinksi: super pixelated, and a lot of it is redacted, but you can get the general gist of what’s going on here.
Some of these things, it looks like they may be, uh, you know, adults, but there’s clear examples here, maybe three or four different examples where the pictures are clearly it’s kids, it’s children.
Zach Elwood: He says clearly, but nothing about any of those images are clear at all.
Kyle Kulinksi: They’re underage and they’re naked and or involved in different sex acts.
So I’m gonna walk you through this here, as you can see, super redacted, but you get the sense some of them are fully redacted. My guess is that’s just flat out CS a and it’s undeniable. Um, but as I keep scrolling here, this one is clearly somebody beed over. Um, this one, you can’t tell the ages of this one, but we’re gonna keep going and you’ll see.
Somebody’s private parts here. Um, very pixelated, but clearly somebody maybe underage, maybe not,
Zach Elwood: maybe underage, maybe not. There’s literally nothing in this photo that you would ever make a guess about age.
Kyle Kulinksi: Showing their breasts. And you know, again, I, it looks like what the DOJ did is they, they hyper pixelated it to try to really obscure it, and then they also redacted on top of it.
I don’t think that in the original files, these pictures were this pixelated. Right. Um, unless what they did is they, you know, these pictures were like around his house and they zoomed in from afar, which I doubt it that we’ve, they’ve done that with other parts of the files. I don’t think they did that here.
I think this is just, it was. Not pixelated and not redacted and they try to pixelate it and redact it. But as I scroll here again, what you’re gonna win is, this is one that I think is for sure underage. This picture right here, thi this one to me looks for sure under,
Zach Elwood: uh, again, there’s nothing about this photo that would make me certain or even confident that this person was underage.
I would say if Kyle is so certain based on these, the slim information of who’s underage and who’s not, I’d say we need to look into his computers. That was just a joke. That’s the kind of thing that Kyle might say about somebody else. I, I am completely kidding. I think he’s just emotionally reasoning here.
Kyle Kulinksi: It just doesn’t give me adult vibes the way that this one is standing there for sure. I think that’s an underage, an underage one. All right. I’m gonna keep going here. This one also looks potentially underage. Um,
Zach Elwood: anyway, I’m gonna stop it there. You get the idea. It’s just a lot of supposition based on not much information, which is kind of Kyle’s mo I think in, in many cases.
And there was actually a couple weeks ago in the New York Times, there was an article about, uh, government publishing dozens of new photos in the Epstein files. Uh, these were unredacted. They showed young women, possibly teenagers, but you know, even in this case, even with the photos shown, it said the people in the photos appeared to be young, although it was unclear whether they were minors.
This is just to emphasize even when the faces are shown and when the images are not pixelated, it can be hard to tell the age of people, right? But somehow Kyle’s very certain about who’s underage from these redacted pixelated, uh, face hidden images, right? And so you can get a sense of how people are reacting, reacting to this stuff in general.
Um, reading the YouTube comments for Kyle’s and other people’s, uh, videos on this kind of stuff, this shit is absolutely appalling. Um. Burn the system down. It doesn’t deserve to exist. The system deserves to collapse. There needs to be a revolution. Now, no one freaks out like that over deer. They’re talking about murder.
We are at the tip of the iceberg on how dark this is. There was even some stuff about, uh, David Ick, I don’t know if you know, well, I can’t find it now, but there was some comment earlier that was re referencing. David Ick, who was the guy. Who known for, uh, promoting the, um, the lizard people, uh, idea that there’s Satanic or evil lizard people rolling us.
Somebody said, uh, I guess maybe the comment was deleted. The comment had re previously said, David Ick warned us about this evil, uh, or this elite satanic sick. Over 30 years ago, he is vindicated. So just to say there’s lots of people losing their minds over this stuff, and Kyle can be seen as a key contributor to ramping up people’s paranoia and fear and just outsized fear completely out of, uh, the realm of what should be the view of these things.
In the, in the YouTube comments, you had a lot of people saying, why isn’t the, why aren’t the mainstream media covering this? They’re all complicit. They’re in on this. Um, and I think it should be obvious that. Mainstream respected news outlets are not covering this stuff because it’s just a lot of supposition.
I mean, there’s so many things people are running with that are based on such little information, and yet you have so many people jumping to paranoid conclusions like that. The media’s in on it, that everybody’s in on it. Everybody’s, you know, covering up the obvious things that Kyle and others are talking about in my own work on, um, polarization.
I have, uh, do my books diffusing American anger and how Contempt destroys democracy. I wrote, I write about how polarization makes us more paranoid and conspiracy minded. We start to see more and more connections between the quote bad guys and, uh, makes us hate each other or hate other people more. Be more fearful of other people that in turn increases our paranoia.
So there’s this feedback mechanism between, uh, paranoia and polarization, self-fulfilling self-perpetuating cycle. And we just see so much of this worst case thinking around us. And as I talk about in my books and on the podcast, sometimes this is sort of the underlying primary engine for how toxic conflict gets worse.
We view and talk about them with more and more discussed and worst case framings. The kind of thing Kyle Kalinski does on his show about conservatives, for example. They in turn see us as more moral and dangerous and threatening, leading them to do the same to us, and so on and so on. And I think there’s even a level of not caring at some level, even though we know that we and others on our.
Side, maybe doing this kind of thing. I mean, we see this with a lot of political stuff too. When you tell somebody, Hey, that thing you just said is not true. You’re spreading very distorted and ultra pessimistic ideas, and you’re just straight up spreading untrue things. There will be some people, and I’ve encountered this myself, some people will just be like, who cares?
They’re bad. They’ve done bad things, so who cares if we exaggerate the bad things they’ve done? Uh, why are you defending them? You must be on their side or something. Uh, but hopefully it’s clear that my motive is just to try to get people to think better and not fall prey to the Kyle Kalinsky of the world and to fight back against hysteria, hysteria and emotional thinking.
And you should wanna do that, uh, not just for the sake of society. Society. You should wanna do that for your own mental health because it’s, it’s not pleasant to constantly be filtering everything through the worst possible framing. Getting back to his video.
Kyle Kulinksi: Two, for example, there’s evidence of deep connections with, uh, Russian intelligence as well.
And so the thing that’s perhaps the most mind boggling to people is that no, it really does appear to be a shadow government of pedophile, billionaire elites that run the world. And they’re sadists. Some of them are into torture, some of them are into cannibalism. Um, they are actually part of a clique, a club, a fraternity.
And they at, while they run the world, they. Keep humans like pets and do the most sadistic things imaginable to them. Okay?
Zach Elwood: They’re cannibals. They keep humans like pets. I, I got curious about the, the cannibal thing. Um, I was reading about, you know, New York Times had a good article about new wave of speculation, AI generated hoaxes bad, just bad information.
If I search for, um. There is including speculation about code words for pedophilia and cannibalism. Uh, some of the things people are examining are just plain false images and documents. Oh, yeah. There, there are various weird typos or, or like, um, badly formatted text in the documents. So there’s one reference to a, what seems like a 9-year-old, but it’s because the one had been somehow replaced maybe in some sort of.
Uh, automatic text recognition scan or something that a 19-year-old had had been, uh, converted to the equal mark sign for the one. So it says equal sign 9-year-old, just to say there’s all these, uh, you know, there’s so much data that people are primed, uh, to see what they wanna see as somebody they quoted said, if you have already decided who the bad guys are or what is really happening, then informational overload makes your life easier because you have so much raw material to work with.
And then the cannibalism thing specifically, Snopes had a good, uh, breakdown of one of the key things where people were thinking that cannibalism had occurred, these references to the word jerky in the, uh, in Epstein’s files and, and emails. Apparently Epstein was just actually a huge meat jerky fan. Um, so Snopes writes about this, where people are jumping into conclusions about this, this word.
They even interviewed a guy who worked for Epstein, who made food, who said that Epstein, uh, was known for just really liking beef jerky from, uh, high, like high end beef jerky. Um, so again, you know, as with the filtering for worst case interpretations, everything, the, the, the deer boat audio again. So again, uh, even though I’ve said multiple times that I’m not defending Epstein and not even, uh, getting into.
You know, my views of the overall thing of what, what was done, I’m just examining, uh, specific forms of bad thinking. And even though I’ve said that multiple times, I, I think, I still think, assuming, you know, anybody, uh, many people listen to this or, or watch this on YouTube or whatever, uh, I still think some people will be like, why are you defending Jeffrey Epstein?
But hopefully it’s clearer that I’m just calling for more nuance, better thinking, uh, even for, you know, your own sake. This ties into how toxic conflict works. Again, it’s polarization gets worse through all these various feedback mechanisms. Uh, the pressures it puts on, on us to, uh, go along with the crowd, right?
So there, there’s pressures against me, for example, examining the nuance here because so many people will put pressure on me and, and criticize me for, you know, wanting to. Uh, think better on these things, that there’s a pressure with polarization on both sides to, for when people try to inject nuance in thinking, uh, to say like, Hey, I think your views on the other side are wrong, distorted.
I think you’re taking too pe pessimistic and too catastrophizing, uh, stance on things about. Them. There’s many people that will push back on that for, for, in various ways. And so the, the people that are wanna draw attention and nuance and want people to see the, the better versions of, you know, their opponents, the, the better, um, aspects of them.
Those people get drowned out. And there’s just various feedback mechanisms at work for why the more polarized and emotional people get more attention, which then in turn drives more. Polarized and emotional people on the other side and so on and so on. So, I don’t know. I think, uh, it’s just important to work against these kinds of emotional forms of thinking wherever we find them.
It’s just good for society. It’s good for you as somebody who cares about truth and, uh, building a better future. So, yeah, hope people enjoyed this.
Many view the fact that they are here, experiencing the world, as something insanely improbable… but what if it were instead entirely inevitable? The philosopher Arnold Zuboff walks us through a mind-bending argument, which he calls universalism (aka open individualism), where the improbability of your existence vanishes. It doesn’t matter which sperm met which egg, or how your ancestors got together, or how anything at all in the past unfolded, because wherever there is first-person experience, there is the same “I.” Zuboff’s new book, Finding Myself: Beyond the False Boundaries of Personal Identity, features a foreword by Thomas Nagel (author of “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?”), who says that many will view the claim as “incredible, even outrageous” — but says it is too well argued to be ignored and an “important contribution.” We discuss why Zuboff sees universalism as resolving many of the core quandaries of consciousness that are puzzled over, and why he’s entirely certain it’s the right view. Other topics include: how universalism ties into views of a multiverse and the anthropic principle; how it ties into ideas of religion and a higher power, and more. If you’ve ever lain awake at night wrestling with the sheer weirdness of being alive at all, you’ll want to listen to this episode.
(transcript is generated automatically and will contain errors)
Arnold Zuboff: So your own conception, there were, on average, 200 million sperm cells competing to get to the egg, if any of the others but the one that did get to the egg, in the usual view, you would never have existed. There’d be no experience. You’d be eternally blank.
Zach: You’ve never have escaped the abyss.
Arnold: But now consider your conception couldn’t have occurred unless your mother and father had been conceived and let’s say one in 200 million for each of them. For those three conceptions to have gone right for you to exist in the usual view, it’s one in eight septillion, right? 24 zeros or something? So that’s pretty bad. But of course your grandparents had to have been conceived first for your parents. Could have been one or 200 million of those multiplied and then we haven’t even got started yet. Whereas, in the universalism, it didn’t matter what sperm cells hit, what eggs, it was going to be you.
Zach Elwood: That was the philosopher Arnold Zuboff, talking about what he calls universalism, which is the view that we’re essentially all the same person – the same first-person “I” experience.
Another way to put this: as Arnold was explaining, in the quote “normal” view of things, people view it as astronomically improbable that we would exist – that our first-person experience would exist at all. But in the view of universalism, it is entirely inevitable that you or I, our first-person experience, would exist, simply because there is only one I, and wherever there is first-person experience, that universal I will be present.
Now, of course, if you’re new to these ideas, this will probably sound quite crazy to you. It definitely did to me at first. But you should know that there are some smart and non-crazy people who believe this, and the more you dig into these ideas, as I did, you’ll find that they make a lot of sense, and help resolve some serious quandaries about consciousness that philosophers have been puzzling over for a long time.
Arnold is the author of the recently published book “Finding Myself: Beyond the False Boundaries of Personal Identity.” The foreword of that book is written by the respected philosopher Thomas Nagel, who you might know of from his often-referenced paper “What is it like to be a bat?” I’ll read a little bit from Nagel’s foreword:
Zuboff proposes and defends with creative philosophical arguments a radically original conception of the mind, according to which the distinction between selves – between me and you, for example – is an illusion. There is only one subject of consciousness; it is the subject of all consciousness, and it is equivalent to the first-person immediacy shared by all conscious experience. The separate bundles of experience in the lives of distinct conscious organisms do not have separate subjects, but share a universal quality of subjective immediacy, which it is easy for each of us to mistake for a unique individual “I” in our own case.
End quote
Nagel goes on to write:
Both the conclusion and the argument will certainly seem incredible, even outrageous, to many readers, but the whole is presented with such care and skill that it should be regarded as an important contribution even by those who are not persuaded. The relation of the mind to the world is so mysterious that it is not philosophically reasonable to dismiss any view, however radical, out of hand.
End quote
This idea that we are all manifestations of the same first-person experience is also known as open individualism, and it’s a concept I explored a few months ago in my talk with Joe Kern, author of The Odds of You Existing.
Now, if you’re like me when I first heard of these ideas, you’ll have a lot of objections that spring to mind. Rest assured that your objections and skepticism is addressed and considered by the people thinking about these ideas. This talk will of course only be a rough introduction to these ideas, and it’s hard to talk off the cuff about these ideas, as they are so contrary to our normal ways of speaking – at least I find it difficult to talk about and keep my ideas clear; our normal language is just tough to navigate, I find.
In this talk with Arnold, we also talk about ideas about a multiverse, we talk about why the laws of our universe seems so precisely configured for complex life, we talk about God, souls, and higher powers, we talk about societal implications of people believing in universalism, I talk about laying awake at night thinking about the sheer strangeness of existence and tough existential questions, which I’ve done a good amount of — and maybe you’ve done that, too. I hope this talk serves to get you interested in the topic, and maybe you’ll read Arnold’s book or other writings on the topic.
Ok, here’s the talk with Arnold Zuboff, author of “Finding Myself: Beyond the False Boundaries of Personal Identity.”
Zach: Hi, Arnold, thanks for joining me.
Arnold: It’s a great pleasure.
Zach: Pleasure is all mine. Maybe we could start with when it comes to open individualism or universalism, as you call it, maybe you could talk about what your focus has been, as obviously, there can be different areas to focus on within this philosophy.
Arnold: Yeah, there are a couple ways I might like to introduce it. One way is to ask a question or make a statement first. There are loads and loads of conscious things in the world. The question is, how do you know which one you are? And first, let’s consider whether you have a checklist of facts about yourself and you’re searching among them, making little checks—oh, yeah, right parents. No, I don’t think you do that. You do something much simpler than that. You just find that you’re the “one” whose experience is first person in character and is immediate in your face.
Zach: Yeah, you’re the one thinking I am here right now.
Arnold: Yeah. It’s here, mine, now, and the pains hurt in a way they don’t if they’re someone else’s. And that’s immediate. I use the word immediacy a lot to indicate all of this. This is the basis of two crucial things being present in the world. Your presence in the world is by way of this first person kind of experience. Without that, there wouldn’t be anything that was you. There’d be no reason to count anything as you if you didn’t have that. So, that’s how you find yourself. Then the objective facts about the thing that you think you are constrained into being, they’re like after thoughts.
Zach: The various contents and details about your life. Yeah, it’s separate from the first person ‘I am here’ perspective. Yeah.
Arnold: That’s right. This immediacy I’m talking about is the general character of it. The details could be changed in so many ways with this same general character applying. And it’s the experience of having that that’s at the heart of what I’m talking about. Another way I have of introducing my particular approach to this is to say that the usual view that all of us believe almost all of the time, the usual view needs to be reversed. Okay? So my view, which I call universalism, is a reversal of the usual view. The usual view says that I am a particular thing with a lot of objective facts attaching to that, some of them being essential to me and some of them are less essential, but I am that one thing. And if something’s going to belong to me and be mine, it has to belong to that thing. For example, a hat. The usual view says if an experience is mine as opposed to someone else’s, it’s because it belongs to this thing that is me. The reversal of the usual view that interests me is to think instead that there’s something about the experience that makes it mine. And what makes an experience mine is this very character of immediacy first-person nature-subjective center of everything. That’s what makes an experience mine. And then whatever might be having the experience or whatever thing might be having experience has to be me. If the experience is mine, carrying presence in the world and self interest within it, then whatever the hell thing is having, it is me. I speak in the book about what the dog is and what the tail is.
Zach: Right. In the traditional view, you’ve got these ideas of entities, these selves or these entities, and these things have various attributes. And one of those attributes is having a first-person perspective. But what you’re saying, you’re flipping it around and saying anything having to do with self or me is just about that first person experience. That’s the primacy. That is the important thing and not the rest of the things, and that experience is the same across all the entities. It’s the same manifestation of an experience.
Arnold: Yeah, that’s what it is for an experience being mine, and that’s what rules here. In the usual view, the body of the dog is a particular thing. And it’s argued that it’s a physical thing or mental thing that’s more important, but it’s being a particular thing in the world that’s me. And then the tail being wagged by that dog is the experience being mine. In my view, the body of the dog is the experience being mine, which is determined solely by this character of immediacy, and then the tail that is being wagged by that dog is whatever thing that happens to be me.
Zach: When it comes to trying to explain this to a lay audience, because I think these concepts are so hard for people to quickly wrap their minds around them, but I’m curious what you think about this. When I’ve tried to explain it to people who are new to the idea, I’ve basically said, “In the traditional view, it’s very unlikely that we exist. We experience ourselves as being incredibly unlikely. Like, what are the chances I’m experiencing this now? What are the chances I am here?” But in your view and the universalism view, it’s viewing yourself and your experience right now as inevitable because no matter what or no matter where that sense of self and that sense of I came into being, it would be having that experience and it would be thinking like, “Wow, it’s incredible that I’m here,” but it’s inevitable that you are here because you are a manifestation of the same I experience. I think it’s that flip between seeing something as very unlikely to seeing something as inevitable that, I think, helps make the connection for the audience.
Arnold: Oh, that’s great. What you’re saying is great. But you’ve really leapt ahead.
Zach: Yeah, I’ve leapt ahead. I think why I did that was to try to—for people that are maybe completely lost—to maybe help them see it from a… We can come back to that. But maybe let me…
Arnold: No, no, no. Let me do it.
Zach: Sure, sure. I like to think in terms of what’s the elevator pitch to somebody completely new to this.
Arnold: Yeah, okay. I mean, the elevator has already arrived and I’m still talking about your experience—uncontroversially—your experience having immediacy. Right? What you’ve correctly indicated here is that if you find yourself in the world as “the one” whose experience is immediate first person, you can quickly come to realize that, in fact, there isn’t just one conscious thing in the world whose experience is immediate and first person in character. In fact, anything worth calling experience would have exactly that character in it, that same general character that picks out which one you are. Now, what universalism does very quickly say is that this means that there are a lot of tails being wagged by that experience that’s mine. All the things that have experience are just tails latching onto that. All of it is equally mine since that’s the thing that makes the experience mine, and there’s nothing else involved in it. All of it is equally mine.
Now what happens, and this is key to understanding the whole business, what happens quite naturally is this, the contents of experience are cut off from each other. Why? Because experience comes about in different brains in these distinct conscious things. So in each, it seems as though the only experience that has the character making it mine is the experience involving that particular content. And because of that, it seems that my experience being mine and the experience of being me is limited to, first of all, that content, and then to the thing whose content it is. But that’s a mistake. I am there in all the experience because that involves something so simple, something universal to experience. But it inevitably seems to me, in each case of me, that this is the only one. Because the content is not integrated.
Zach: I think that’s where most people would lose you because they’re like, “Well, how could it be that we are separate but the same?” And I think your analogy about the book and, you know, like a story can be in multiple books and be the same story, I think that analogy—and maybe you have other analogies to help explain it—but I think that’s where a lot of people would be like, “Well, how can we be separate? What does it even mean to be the same thing if we’re separate?”
Arnold: Well, you know what might be particularly useful as a first step in attacking that is to think of brain bisection.
Zach: Yeah, that’s one of your first stories and that’s maybe how you got started on this whole journey back in the day. Oh no, you got started on switching the brains out, not the brain bisection.
Arnold: Yeah, yeah.
Zach: But go ahead with the brain bisection.
Arnold: Okay, let me wheel in brain bisection here. There was an actual operation done on people suffering from epilepsy that involved cutting the bridge of nerves between the two hemispheres of the brain. It’s called the corpus callosum. It was cut because it would prevent seizures from moving from one hemisphere to the other. At the time it was caught, as I understand it, it was thought the thing only kept the brain from sagging, so no great loss in cutting. But then it was realized later that most of the integration of the activities of the hemispheres was carried through the corpus callosum and communicated through it. So experiments were done with the split brain patients, in which information was carefully isolated in the way it came in so that it would only go to one hemisphere or the other. And what was discovered, I think quite unsurprisingly, though shockingly, was that these people could have non-integrated contents in their experience. In each hemisphere, there’d be content that was not available to the other. Right? So it would be like the situation I described among all these conscious things, a failure of integration across them for contents.
Zach: For people, we might say, “Yeah, these experiments were really wild—the gizonica research—where, basically they blocked something in the middle, so one eye is looking at one thing and one eye is looking at another. And they found that one eye might see something and know it was there, one part of the brain would see something and know it was there and answer correctly, you know, like check a box or something based on what they were seeing, but the other side wouldn’t know it was there and would confabulate reasons why they checked that box. It was just really mind blowing, to most people, mind blowing about you could be experiencing something and know something, but the other half wouldn’t know and would even make up reasons for why that happened, which gets into our our ability to how the brain probably works a lot of time as we’re we’re making up stories for why we do things even if we might not even know why we did things sometimes. It kind of gets into that realm too. But just to say, it was a really fascinating research.
Arnold: It was, and a lot of philosophers have had to look at that. What’s extremely useful, I think, is a certain thought experiment based on this that I like to use. Parfit first suggested something like this. Imagine I had a button I could press that was connected to a device adjacent to my corpus callosum, and that if I press the button an anesthetic would be injected into the corpus callosum, shutting it down temporarily, right? So you could have that same effect of mutually excluding experiential contents in each hemisphere.
And so I tell a specific story like that where there’s a great concert you want to listen to tonight, but there’s some dreary audio studying you have to do. And if you plug the sound of the concert into the right ear, which communicates directly with the right hemisphere of the brain, and the audio dreary studying into the left ear, which directly communicates with left hemisphere, and press the button before these things start, they won’t interfere with each other. There’ll be two extremely different things going on.
Zach: Two streams of consciousness.
Arnold: Yeah. Yeah, enjoying a wonderful concert and doing this dreary studying. Of course, I asked the question of, what kind of evening will you have? This question is one that has troubled a lot of philosophers. Let me tell you what I think is going on here. If, instead, we had anesthetized one of the hemispheres and done the same thing with the remaining hemisphere, there’d be no doubt in our minds that I’d continue on into that experience in the non-anesthetized hemisphere. So I’d have the experience of the concert, or I’d have the experience of the studying. And it would be me. It’s crazy to think that it would stop being me.
Now, in this case where we’ve anesthetized the corpus callosum, we’ve got both of them going on. How could either of them stop being me just because something’s going on over on the other side? That seems crazy. And what emphasizes this further is when the anesthetic wears off and the hemispheres can communicate fine with each other again, I will remember, “Oh, yeah, I was listening to this great concert. Oh dear, yeah, I was struggling through the audio stuff.” I will remember each of those experiences as having been mine. What will make the memories of them having been mine? They’ll be first person. They’ll be immediate in the memory of them. They were both mine. It can’t be the case that remembering both of them and integrating the memories like that is retroactively making them both mine, it’s simply revealing that they were both mine, but neither had the information at the time that the other was going on.
Zach: In the same way that you or I don’t have the information that is available—
Arnold: Exactly. Exactly. So what it is is there’s an illusion created—a powerful illusion in either hemisphere while it’s having its experience—that anything that was experiencing anything else at this time couldn’t be me. I’m walled off metaphysically from it. Different self, different whatever. It’s a very powerful illusion. What I call the principle you discover in thinking about this is the irrelevance of objective simultaneity. I talked before about if just one was anesthetized, you could do it a different way. In fact, this is something that’s actually been done called the water test. You could anesthetize one hemisphere and give it the remaining one—the concert experience—then reverse it so that next there would be the experience of the studying, but at different objective times, they would both be remembered in exactly the same way as when the corpus callosum was anesthetized and they happened at the same time. The objective time of these events is irrelevant to what they represent to you subjectively. They are both yours and can’t help but be yours. And my claim, looking back at what I said earlier, is that the only thing making it mine for this subject is the immediacy of the experience.
Zach: Yeah, one of the powerful things about the universalism idea is that it helps make sense of these various quandaries that philosophers have struggled over. Like you mentioned you had a really good passage in your book talking about how there’s basically this desire or impulse to preserve some sort of idea of self amongst the various other philosophical views. For example, the idea that identity is defined as some continuity of psychological content or experiences, which is more in the par fit view, it doesn’t matter where it is, it matters what it is, basically the content. And then there’s the view that, no, identity matters based on the body it’s or the brain it’s in… This biological continuity. But in both cases, there’s an impulse to preserve some sort of separate identities of some sort. But open individualism or universalism is resolving that by saying, “Well, those are all unnecessary because these different first-person experiences are the same thing.” So it resolves all the quandaries like, “Am I this person? If I get in a teleporter and make a copy of myself, if I split my brain?” Universalism is saying those are resolved because they don’t really matter, and yourself is all the same and your first-person experience is all the same.
Arnold: That’s right. If you’re trying to trace what you are in all these specific ways, not knowing whether you want to follow the psychological pattern or you’re more interested in the thing that’s having the psychological states, the result is a mess. Let me say something about what I think the two positions are—the two very basic positions in the classic debate about personal identity. This is the question in the traditional debate: What makes a future person remain me, so that any pains it has are mine and are going to be mine in the future, so that I don’t sympathize with them, but I am concerned about them in terms of self-interest?
Zach: Yeah, that’s the practical discussion. It’s like, “Am I the same person? Am I that same identity I was when I was younger? Am I the same identity I am when I’m older?” That’s kind of like the practical impulse of the question.
Arnold: Yeah. Or, will those pains hurt for me instead of somebody else? And the two usual answers have been—they’re both attractive—it depends on the identity of a thing. There’s a particular thing I am, and its continuing identity into the future determines whether the pains had by the thing, you know… Well, it makes the pains had by the thing be mine, right? If it’s continuing into the future, that’s where I’m going to be located, wherever that is. And the thing could be an immaterial soul, like for Descartes, or it could be a body, or more particularly, the brain—as for many philosophers since the 20th century.
But the opposing view is one that was started by Locke, and the view is this: that no, it’s not the identity of the thing that’s having the pain or whatever; it’s whether the pain is part of a mental process continuing on. So that process in certain puzzle cases might be continued into a distinct mental substance, or more recently, into a distinct brain. Right? The memories and anticipations that are in your mind would somehow magically or in some science fiction way, continue on in a different thing. And according to that side of the debate, that would be you. The pains would be yours if that mental process was continuing on.
Zach: Right, which is kind of Parfit’s view, at least in reasons and persons. Right?
Arnold: Yes, except that he complicates it. He’s also what I call a naturalist. He thinks we make a mistake in our ordinary way of thinking about this, and he wants to drop that our identity is all or nothing. That’s a crucial part of what he is saying, right? Locke is more purely a philosopher. I mean, he is in the tradition of Locke in that he emphasizes completely the mental side of it. And I’m not sure why. I don’t think he ever argues for it. But he introduces this new sophistication of getting rid of anything from it that doesn’t seem natural, so he ends up with a strange kind of hybrid position. It actually has something perhaps in common with Buddhism. Now, getting back to the traditional, classic debate, the point I was making was that the whole focus of it is on this continuation into the future. Strangely, they never asked themselves what made a particular body or particular mental process mine to begin with.
Zach: Yeah, let me read that paragraph of yours, just for the audience here, because I really like this paragraph. You said, “Note also that in this old debate on personal identity, all that is questioned is which condition preserves me. The debate ignores completely the primary question: which is what made a mental substance or a brain or a psychological process be mine instead of somebody else’s in the first place? Only universalism answers that question.”
Arnold: Yeah, that’s right. And then I point out this particularly bad… When you look at psychological continuity, [chuckles] it’s carrying on from some past state that at the beginning had no psychological continuity.
Zach: It goes through when you’re a baby or a child. It goes through immense changes, right?
Arnold: Yeah. So, how the hell… You know, what are you even talking about continuing? And and my answer is—I think this is a good illustration what you meant by cutting through all this mess—my answer is, “Yeah, any of those baby experience or experiences in the womb had immediacy and were therefore mine, and that it’s continued in a mental process, that’s not important.” Each side of that debate made its most powerful point against the other side when it said, “Hey, you could still have the ‘it’ be mine, without your thing. In the case of psychological continuity as the supposed criterion of personal identity, they’d say, “Can’t you imagine being shifted over into a different thing and continuing thinking of yourself as yourself, the way Locke emphasized?”
Zach: Both sides can attack each other, and universalisms over on this side saying like, “Well, those are both strengthening my argument.” Right?
Arnold: Exactly. Because there was a very powerful argument against psychological continuity, which is, I could be the one having amnesia.
Zach: Yeah, I don’t find that argument. Both, as you say, they both have various weaknesses when you think about these various…
Arnold: Where they’re weak is where they’re trying to restrict the other one. Where they’re strong is where they say, “As long as you’ve got the psychological process continuing—doesn’t matter which thing it’s in—as long as you got the thing there, it doesn’t matter what’s happening with the psychological process.” But you put those together, and it’s universalism.
Zach: I feel like you would say it’s an Occam’s razor approach with all the, you know… Maybe that’s a good pivot to you’re known for the probability arguments, probably most of all, the various awakenings in rooms and those ideas. Maybe you could talk a bit about why you focus so much on that. I think some people have a hard time understanding why you see that as so conclusive. In some of the Reddit threads and discussions you’ve had, I’ve seen people not really understand that the probability argument in context with the first person experience is such a conclusive or very conclusive point. Maybe you could talk a bit about that.
Arnold: Let’s move to that. There’s an analogy to the argument I’m going to use to establish universalism that I call the hotel inference. There’s a hotel with countless rooms. I don’t want to say infinite rooms. I don’t want to get into… [crosstalk]
Zach: Billions? Trillions?
Arnold: No, it’s more. Let’s say countless rooms. We’ve got all the rooms we ever need.
Zach: Now, am I ruining it by saying that analogizes to the idea that we’re one of countless senses of self that could exist? But anyway, I might be getting ahead of that. But that’s the analogy. Yeah.
Arnold: Yeah. Well, maybe it’s not quite as direct as that analogy.
Zach: Oh, yeah. Sorry, keep going with the setup. Yeah, sorry.
Arnold: Okay. So in each of these countless rooms, there is a single induced sleeper—someone who’s made to be sleeping. One of two games is about to be played; what I call the easy game, and what I call the hard game. For each of these sleepers, there is a coin that is going to be tossed a thousand times. Now, in the hard game, each sleeper has been assigned a list of heads, tails, heads, tails. A thousand-long list of random heads and tails. That’s that sleeper’s list. It’s like a security code for that sleeper. And the coin in that room is going to be tossed a thousand times. That sleeper will only be awakened if every single random toss of the fair coin matches what’s in that sleeper’s list. If even one flip goes wrong, he’ll sleep forever. He’ll never be awakened. This is happening for each of these countless sleepers. This is where countless becomes useful. Because there are countless rooms, there will be some that are awakened. And extremely rare, there may even be quite a few. But it’s a hard game because it’s extremely hard for any particular player to be awakened. In the easy game, they’ve got the coins there. There’s no assigned list, no security code, but they do in each room toss a coin a thousand times. But it doesn’t matter, all the sleepers will be awakened in the easy game.
Now here’s the inference that interests me. Imagine you are a player in this and your eyes open, you’re awakened, and you understand these conditions. Can you have some kind of interesting thing to say about whether the hard or the easy game was played? And my answer is definitely yes. If the hard game was played, something incredibly improbable had to happen before you could have been awakened. So, you know, it’s immensely improbable that you awaken by way of the hard game. Whereas if the easy game was played, easy! Fine. So you can know, not only that it was immensely more probable that the easy game was played, but for all practical purposes, you could know that it was played. Now there will be these occasional winners of the hard game. Really rare, right?
Zach: Astronomically rare.
Arnold: Astronomically rare. If they’re rational, they’ll win before the easy game was played and be wrong about that conclusion. Right in the reasoning, there’s nothing else they could rationally think, but they’d be wrong about which game was played. But you don’t have to worry that you’re one of those because it’d be so improbable you’d be awake to be making the mistake.
Zach: People probably get the analogy, but this maps over to the usual view that we are astronomically rare, right? Like you often hear people like Dawkins talked about this in one of his books. Joe Kern, when I had him on, he had some of Dawkin’s views—the traditional view—that it is astronomically rare that all of these things would have happened to lead to me being here. My ancestors had to couple in just the right ways, a sperm and an egg needed to combine in just the right ways… That’s the normal view that, somehow it’s these magical astronomically ridiculous chances that I am here now. But the easy game in your thought experiment is saying, “Well, the fact that I am here now is easily explained if I am always going to be the one here experiencing it now.”
Arnold: There are all kinds of things that had to happen for you to come into existence, on the usual view.
Zach: And it’s not even possible to draw the lines on where those things would be. But the normal view is like everything from the start of the universe to the coupling of the egg and the sperm, maybe even some things after that, had to come together in just the right way.
Arnold: I’m very glad you say that. That’s a great background. But what I do is I focus on the conceptions involved so I can get a mathematical handle on it.
Zach: Right. Even just focusing on the conception is mathematically astronomically ridiculous.
Arnold: It’s so great. And I have a lot of fun with it in the book. In your own conception, there were 200 million sperm cells competing to get to the egg. If any of the others but the one that did got to the egg, on the usual view, you would never have existed. You’d be eternally blank. It’d be a potential brother or sister born instead.
Zach: You would never have escaped the abyss.
Arnold: Never. So that’s pretty bad already. But maybe one in 200 million, maybe I got really lucky. But now consider your conception couldn’t have occurred unless your mother and father had been conceived. And let’s say one in 200 million for each of them, for those three conceptions to have gone right for you to exist on the usual view, it’s one in eight septillion. Is that twenty four zeros or something? So that’s pretty bad. But of course, your grandparents had to have been conceived first, or your parents could have been one in 200 million of those multiplied. And then we haven’t even got started yet. Whereas in universalism, it didn’t matter what sperm cells hit what eggs, it was going to be you because of the immediacy of experience. That’s all that’s involved in it being you.
Zach: I think a lot of people would say… That’s what I would have said a year or two or a few years ago. I think the main argument people would make is like, yeah, from that angle, the fact that I am here is very improbable. But what if that’s just the way the world works, and every being that comes into being has a separate first person experience, and that’s just the way it works. And then once that happens, they will reach faulty conclusions about how unlikely it is? Yeah, what would you say to that?
Arnold: That’s why the hotel inference is so handy here. Because in the hotel inference, we’ve got winners. And those winners are wrong in inferring the easy game was played and everyone was awakened. That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t infer that. Suppose the usual view is right, and I do exist in this miraculous, incredible…
Zach: Like give a soul kind of idea, yeah.
Arnold: Well, souls can be dealt with the same way. Universalism sets itself against any view that says that I am just one particular thing of a sort.
Zach: I shouldn’t have mentioned soul, that’s getting into a whole different thing. I just meant like a different first person.
Arnold: Even people who believe that souls are kind of deposited in the body, they think that the sperm cell lottery goes on. They don’t think all those souls exist as human beings.
Zach: Correct me if I’m wrong but I think you would say it’s one thing to say if the odds are astronomically long, someone’s got to exist or somebody comes into his existence. It’s another thing to find yourself in that first person experience.
Arnold: Exactly.
Zach: I think that’s what gets to me about this when I’ve thought about this. I mean, it is so astronomically ridiculous that I would be here experiencing this. And then you added the fact too, of like, once you get into the idea of, “Well, am I even the same sense of self from moment to moment?” There’s the series kind of questions which have sometimes bugged me late at night. I used to lay awake thinking am I continually sprung into existence and immediately go out of existence every moment? Well, that makes it even more ridiculous because who is this new me that is randomly being created every second too? That’s like an extra level of astronomically ridiculous odds. What are all these “me’s” that are coming into existence? And you start thinking, well, universalism resolves that because it’s saying it’s all the same manifestation of me.
Arnold: Yeah, that’s right. Exactly. Those conditions are even tougher in Buddhism, where there’s only a momentary self and it’s distinct from all the other momentary selves. Boy, is it tightly defined. You know? At least in the usual view, you got a bit of flexibility there in what you are…
Zach: Because there’s this underlying instinctual assumption that we do exist over time, right? But if you cut that away, then you just have all these senses of self springing into existence, whether it’s other people’s selves or it’s our own self. So then it’s like, where are all these senses of self coming from? It kind of boggles the mind that there would just be this abyss of selves and then these various selves are just springing into existence. Universalism does help resolve that.
Arnold: Yeah, absolutely. Let me say one more thing about what universalism is like that’s kind of related to what we’ve been discussing. Universalism is a really minimal claim.
Zach: Right. It’s not some grand spiritual, you know, making claims about we’re all the same spiritual being or anything like that.
Arnold: Yeah. I mean, people might be tempted to turn it into that because they’re used to thinking integration defines who I am. So, maybe Zuboff saying it’s all integrated, you know, some common mind or something. No, nothing like that. My whole point is that integration is irrelevant to whether an experience is mine or not. Here’s the minimal character of it. I can allow the world to be exactly like what any one of many many varieties of usual views would have. Right? With different views of what consciousness is, different views of whether there is integration beyond ahead… I’m not interested in that insofar as I’m talking about universalism. It’s neutral regarding all of that. So, what is it I am saying?
One way of representing it would be this. Let’s say we have a line, and on the left end of the line, you’ve got all kinds of incidental things to whether something is you. Like wearing a blue shirt, most people would agree it’d be a weird view to think that I exist with my self interest—my presence in the world—only so long as I wear a blue shirt. If I change into a red shirt, I’m not here anymore. Now let’s move to the right on this line towards more substantive-seeming things. Like having a body composed of certain atoms, or put in the sperm cell lottery… We could emphasize mental side of it, or emphasize the physical identity of body or the brain… All those things are sort of in a middle area. And that’s where most views of personal identity are. Actually, the Buddhist view is way over on the left here with incidental things, because its slightest change in experience is someone else’s. Now we’ve slid over to more generous views of what can be you.
And what are we sliding over here? It’s the line separating what’s inessential from what’s essential. Way over on the right side of the line is a very abstract, general thing—the immediacy of experience. I am not quibbling about what any of the stuff is on this line. I’m just saying that the line between what’s essential and inessential should be slid all the way over to the right and come to rest under immediacy of experience. All the rest is like a blue shirt. It’s all inessential to whether it’s me, right? And that’s why they all have probability problems and universalism does not. And as you say, Buddhism is way over on the left.
Zach: When I was watching that talk of yours with Professor Brown—I can’t remember his first name—there’s also this view that you’re you’re making some claim about what the self is, or something he seemed to be caught up on. He was basically saying, “Well, I don’t believe in the self in a Buddhist or nihilistic way that everything is an illusion.” But I think people can get caught up in your ideas that they think you’re making some claims that there’s some self. All you’re saying is, it’s this first person experience. And he didn’t seem to be denying that, but it does seem like some people can have an obstacle to even admitting that there is a first person experience. And even if you think the ongoing continual self is an illusion or something—kind of like in a Descartes way—I don’t think you can deny that. Like, something is having an experience here. That’s all you’re saying it is.
Arnold: It’s all I’m saying.
Zach: Do you get a sense that he was kind of balking it, like he was like, “Well, I think it’s an illusion,” and you’re saying, well, you don’t disagree that there is an experience being had, right? Something is happening here. But I think it’s interesting because there can be this very nihilistic pushback to even admitting that there’s an experience being had, right?
Arnold: Yeah, all kinds of views in philosophy, that’s for sure. [laughs]
Zach: And with all these ideas, it’s easy to talk past each other because the language we end up using can be so different and the concepts are so non-intuitive. So it’s understandable that there’s various difficulties in communicating about it.
Arnold: I don’t know, maybe I’ve got across that. I think there’s something special about universalism. I think it’s unlike any other philosophical view I know in that…
Zach: Because you resolve so many quandaries, in your view, and resolve several major quandaries. Right?
Arnold: And there’s nothing brought in that really should be controversial. There’s immediacy that’s there. Maybe eliminative materialism doesn’t have it. I don’t know. But it has to be a pretty strange view not to have that in there somewhere.
Zach: Some listeners of this will have seen or listened to a previous episode where I talked to Joe Kern, who has a book called The Odds of Existing. His focus is on… There’s a lot of overlap, but his focus is on- Oh, there it is!
Arnold: He just sent it to me.
Zach: Oh, me too. Yeah, he sent it to me. So his intuitive focus is to focus on when you get down to the—as you call it—the sperm cell lottery when you actually examine, like, well, what would logically make sense? Like, switching out minute parts of the sperm or the egg, would that really result in a different I? These kinds of questions. And when you really start to examine the logic of it, it’s really hard to have a logical point where something starts being a separate self or stops being the same self. So he’s kind of examining the physical arguments of this astronomically slim view of ‘you’ slash I existing. And if I had to say what I think you and Joe Kern… The similarity I see is that you’re both arguing trying to logically examine these usual boundaries that we think of separating oneself from another.
You’re both attacking these various logical boundaries. He’s attacking this idea that there’s these different physical combinations that would lead to different selves, or even, like we have a different experience our life goes a different way when we’re young and those kinds of things. There’s similar ideas where people might think, oh, these are different people and these are different selves. He’s attacking those foundations. You’re attacking a different foundation of switching out parts of the brain, or whatever. You’re also much more focused on this first-person perspective idea, whereas he’s more talking about these, you know, you could do it from a distance even of like, are these different selves? But I think you’re both attacking these foundations that most people would intuitively think lead to different selves and you’re both saying, “Well, when you really start to look at these things in different ways, there’s not any clear definition of when a new self would have come into being and an old self would have been left behind.
Arnold: But there’s a very important factor here, and I’m not sure how he scores on this. I’m not interested in simply saying there’s just one person. What’s important to me is that it’s you. Right? Because there being just one person could be as bad as the Buddhism thing. It could make things worse than the usual view because at least in the usual view, you got a lot of chances for you to come into existence. But if there’s only one person, why are you that person?
Zach: Yeah, you’re very focused on the ‘me’, the I aspect, the first-person aspect.
Arnold: Exactly, that’s the whole thing that matters here. Not how many there are, but where you are. And your existence is really easy in universalism, because it’s the youness I’m talking about. It’s what makes it you. So I’m not interested so much in breaking down the boundaries between so that it’s all the same person, I’m interested in who the person is.
Zach: I want to move on to the anthropic principle and how universalism is related to that. And I’ll say personally, I myself have long believed that there must be many universes of some sort that all have different physical properties. Whether that’s the quantum many worlds theory, whether that’s infinite worlds in space, whatever it may be, because the basic idea that for me to exist, obviously the universe has to be finely calibrated for me to exist. And what are the chances that we live in the one single universe that would lead to that? In the same way that it’s astronomically improbable that I would be here fundamentally like we talked about from that astronomical chance perspective, it’s also similarly or even more improbable that we would live in the one universe with all these physical properties arranged. And a quick point about this is the fact that we even have gravity, right? If gravity was to pull too much, or if it never pulled at all, the universe would never lead to any sort of combinations of things. So just to say—and you go into this in your book about the nuclear strong forces at atomic level—there’s all these things that are calibrated.
Another example is just the fact there is an abundance of different types of materials. You can imagine a universe where there was just one type of material, in which case, probably nothing would ever be even created at all. So just to say, there’s all these things that are perfectly calibrated to have life exist, which to me, leaving aside creator god type scenarios and if we’re talking pure logic, to me, that is a no brainer that there must be many worlds with many different physical properties, however those are being created. So that’s kind of to me maybe why universalism and open individualism was intuitively attractive, because I’d already embraced this idea of reaching for something to help explain these astronomically slim circumstances. But I’m curious how you tie in the universalism to the anthropic principle there.
Arnold: Yeah, that’s great. I know that without universalism tied together with something like a multiverse, you cannot explain the anthropic principle in the sort of way you’re talking about. Right? It’s essential to explaining the laws of physics. Now, when I was an undergraduate back in the 60s, I read an article on the anthropic principle by a guy named Tennant who had a religious explanation of it. I remember in 1968 it suddenly occurred to me that if matter was actually very protean in character, existing according to different laws—and let’s call them again, countless forms or countless distinct universes…
Zach: Countless hotel rooms with different physical properties in each one.
Arnold: It’s very closely related to the hotel. If that were the case, then it could be probable that there’d be one or more universes that just happened to be at the right levels of forces, the right sizes of particles and so on, so that life could come about and eventually consciousness could come about. And then here’s the thing. There are now many physicists who think this way. And then what they say is this—and try to notice the problem with it—they say, “And of course, we would have to be in one where all those laws were fine tuned for the existence of life and consciousness. We couldn’t be in any universe where that wasn’t the case.” And then some of them leave it there. And I, when I first thought of this, left it there. But my excuse is I was already thinking about personal identity in this very fluid way. It was 1961 when I came up with this thought experiment of exchanging quarters of brains, and I’d be in both things. It was loose enough for me so that I could be in this anthropic universe that happened to come up. But anyone who believes in anything like the usual view is not helped at all by there being all these universes occurring where it finally becomes probable there’s at least one anthropic one. They’re not helped at all.
Zach: You’re saying they’re not helped because it just becomes so much more astronomically improbable or…
Arnold: Well, because nothing would make it your universe. You being in the anthropic one would be the same kind of look as if there were only one kind of physical world. It doesn’t help at all. I tell this story in the book where, when I came to University College London in 1974—you know, I’m an American, raised in Connecticut, and I came here to University College London to teach philosophy in 1974 and they had new people. There were three people joining that year and they each gave talks to the faculty. And there was a guest there from the States, a logician named Robert Stallmaker, who was quite young like me back then, and I gave a talk where I argued that there must be many universes of different sorts and so on to make it finally probable that there was one that had these laws that we could live in.
And he talked to me for a long time after, and he was absolutely right in attacking what I was saying. And he used a wonderful analogy to make his point. Suppose I was playing an extremely difficult game of Russian roulette, where five of the six chambers have bullets in them, and you have to do it a hundred times and spin it around, your survival is pretty unlikely there. But you found you survived. And then you said to yourself, there must have been lots of games of Russian roulette like that being played, because if there were enough, there’d be winners. So that explains my winning. It doesn’t. What would explain it is if I would automatically be whisked to the place where all the chambers were empty.
Zach: That you exist in all the places in all the scenarios.
Arnold: No, let’s put it this way. That I exist where it’s successful. Or I have this analogy I use in the book, there’s an enormous roulette wheel with zillions of spaces along it, and this one ball is going to roll around land somewhere. And there’s only one space where a particular sleeper would be awakened. So I’m sleeping. I’m in induced sleeping like the hotel case. I wake up and it’s explained to me that only this ball falling into that space would have them wake me, otherwise I’d sleep forever. I’m just dumbfounded against, you know, whoever heard of such luck? Okay, then let’s change this to there being lots of roulette wheels on each of them. There’s the one space which represents anthropic physical laws that the ball could land in. But let’s say there’s a distinct sleeper attached to each wheel, right? Because in the usual view of personal identity, even if there was someone just like me, even in this universe but somewhere else, it’d be a mere duplicate. It wouldn’t be me. And certainly in another universe, it wouldn’t be me.
Zach: That’s an interesting… Yeah, I think I’ve been having trouble understanding how you’re tying those two ideas together. But yeah, when you start talking about, say, there was an exact duplicate of yourself in many worlds, why would one be you and one not, right? That’s where you’re getting at.
Arnold: Or rather, what I’m saying is I’ve already established that they would all be equally me.
Zach: Yeah, I guess I’m having trouble tying into anthropic things.
Arnold: I automatically find myself wherever there’s consciousness. It’s the lubricant that you need, along with the many universes, to make this work so that I’m there. I’m not stuck with one Russian roulette game. I can take advantage of any of them where I win. I am actually there.
Zach: You are always there. Yeah.
Arnold: Yeah. Otherwise, the other universes don’t help in explaining the anthropic principle. So in other words, what I’m saying is to have a thorough understanding of physics, you need universalism packaged together with a multiverse. That gives you that your universe will be anthropic. Without universalism, it doesn’t work. It’s just as bad as there being only one physical world. Someone would be in an anthropic universe. So it is like the hotel. It’s just an extension of the argument for universalism.
Zach: A small note here. I’ll be honest and say that I don’t fully understand Arnold’s arguments here. It seems like he’s just adding to the statistical improbability argument. I feel I’m missing why he thinks it is a separate form of argument. But I’ve struggled with grasping a few ideas and points in this area that I later did understand. So I wanted to keep this in here and just note my own confusion. I’d say, if you want to try to understand Arnold’s points, of course you should read his new book, Finding Myself.
Okay, back to the talk.
I wanted to pivot to how certain would you say you are that universalism is the true state of things? If you somehow knew for certain that it wasn’t true, what do you think the most likely explanation would be?
Arnold: It’s the only game in town, as I sometimes say in the book. Yeah, it is.
Zach: So you would say you’re basically near a hundred percent certain?
Arnold: Yeah, I’m a hundred percent certain. I’m a hundred percent certain. I mean, it’s the hotel inference.
Zach: Another question I like to ask people in general is, you know, some people watching this—if they made it this far—would be saying, “Well, it’s simple. God gives us a soul, we each have our own souls, the religious view, right? And to me, I’ll say that I find existence in the universe so mind blowing and strange and unlikely in the first place that it would be hard for me to be that surprised about any of the many ideas there are that explain us being here. Which is to say I guess I’m not strongly atheistic. Like, I wouldn’t be shocked to find out that even though it would mainly push the questions back further, I wouldn’t be shocked to find out there was some sort of higher power or creator. But I’d like to ask you, how strongly atheistic are you? Do you leave open some smidgen of where there could be some sort of higher power?
Arnold: Universalism is entirely neutral in regard to that. It’s got that covered. There’s a section in my book where I look at what I call the Somebody Up There Likes Me version of the usual view, where you had a special favor from God. I’m not in the least in my book on universalism attacking the possibility of there being God. But that he would select you for existence is just as improbable as you being selected purely by the sperm cell lottery, which presumably he fixes if he wants someone… [laughs]
Zach: Yeah, it’s rigged or something.
Arnold: Yeah, he wants you. And furthermore, not even a twin of you.
Zach: He wants your very special sense of self to exist.
Arnold: That’s right. That’s right, because it’s just like all the others. [laughs] So, of course, he singles out you.
Zach: Right. The same questions apply, and I think you would also say, theoretically, universalism could coexist with any religion because I can imagine a Christian take on this where it’s like, “See, we’re all the same. We’re all manifestations of God, or whatever.” You can imagine it combining with other things because it doesn’t directly, you know, interfere with…
Arnold: Well, you will be God. If God’s mind includes consciousness with immediacy, you would be God. If God was wise enough and knowledgeable enough, he’d know he was all these beings he was fooling around with. So actually, that has an interesting effect on the problem of evil. Because the problem of evil is how would he allow all this suffering? Instead, it just becomes a puzzle. Why does he want to subject himself to all this suffering?
Zach: I think you and I are kind of on the same page in thinking that universalism, if more people embrace it, would be a good thing in terms of people seeing themselves and other people and seeing other people in themselves or vice versa, just recognizing that we’re all dealing with the same manifestation of experience. I think it would lead to people being more empathetic and less morally righteous.
Arnold: Yeah, yeah. Not even empathetic, just be self interested not to cause yourself—
Zach: I would say even theoretically, embracing like, “Oh, this could be possible,” even leads to more empathy in a lighter form even if you didn’t go all the way.
Arnold: It also does away with the fear of death as annihilation.
Zach: Yeah, in some sense, it’s comforting too because it’s saying that in some sense, death is an illusion. Because we will always be here experiencing things wherever there is a consciousness. So there can be various nice things about it, although I think some people would say… I think it’s possible, with any philosophy, to implement it in such a way that it becomes a dangerous implementation.
Arnold: Sure. But why would you want to do that? You’d just be hurting yourself.
Zach: Yeah, exactly. Although I think some people might say like, “Oh, imagine some dystopian version of this where the people in power say that death doesn’t matter, so it doesn’t matter if people die that much, etc, etc.” But that, that, to me, is kind of a way from how I think most people would interpret this. But yeah, I’m curious for your thoughts on how you see this as a positive force.
Arnold: Sure. Oh, also, it throws a monkey wrench into retribution.
Zach: You can still want to punish people for practical reasons, but it gets rid of this idea that someone must be punished because they’ve, you know, they must suffer because they’ve done a bad thing.
Arnold: Yeah, the victim and the perpetrator are the same person, so causing more pain to the victim.
Zach: Can you imagine a future society where universalism is kind of like a secular religion and it leads to better things happening?
Arnold: I can imagine it, and I really hope for it. I keep emphasizing the simplicity of it. It really is not a complicated thing at all. It simplifies everything. It’s so easy to bear in mind. It’s got a great thing to go against, which is this illusion that there are distinct selves, distinct eyes, but it’s so powerful in itself as a thought that I think it actually could moderate a lot of bad stuff that comes about on account of the illusion.
Zach: That was a talk with the philosopher Arnold Zuboff, author of the book, Finding Myself: Beyond the False Boundaries of Personal Identity.
What actually works to avoid violent outcomes when someone is armed, emotional, and on the edge? I talk with former FBI chief hostage negotiator Gary Noesner, author of Stalling for Time and 30-year veteran of the FBI, about the psychology of high-stakes crisis situations — including lessons from Waco and other cases from his career. Gary explains the “paradox of power” (why pushing aggressively often backfires), and why most so-called hostage situations are really emotional crises, not bargaining contests. We also discuss the limits of reading body language and behavior, the power of active listening, and the importance of tone of voice and how you phrase things.
Why “stalling for time” is such a core tactic in highly in volatile stand-off situations
The “paradox of power” and why that concept is so important in any high conflict situation
Stories from Gary’s career that illustrate some key points about conflict and negotiation, including the Waco siege
Why the concept of “never giving something without getting something” is faulty and can amplify conflict
The fact that most quote “hostage” situations aren’t really hostage incidents with clear bargaining demands — but are just crisis intervention situations
The importance of listening closely to what someone is saying; including to what may seem like minor statements
Gary’s views on body language and its role in law enforcement work
How Chris Voss’s negotiation ideas in Never Split the Difference relates to Gary’s points
The importance of voice tone in high-stakes, volatile situations; how sometimes how you say something can matter just as much as what you say
TRANSCRIPT
(Transcript is generated automatically and will contain errors.)
Gary Noesner: Moving forward a couple years to the Waco situation, a couple years after that, I would argue, and I think most analysts of the situation would agree that as negotiators we had the right approach. You know, we got 35 people out when I was there, including 21 children. But you know, there was a counterside within the FBI that wanted to apply more pressure; the “paradox of power” that we just spoke about earlier, and basically force them to come out. And of course because I was resistan to that approach, I was replaced halfway through and they went with a harder line. Nobody else came out for the rest of the siege of. I was there for 26 of the 51 days.
…
Gary Noesner: Now getting back to the body language thing, I mean, I think there’s probably some folks that are just incredibly good at it, but I don’t recall an investigation that I worked in my 30 years that it played any significant role in whatsoever. It’s like Freud used to say: sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
I mean, I think you have to be really careful. On the jacket of my book, the day they took the photograph for that, it was very cold, and I just had a shirt on, and I had my arms tucked like this, and my hands were under my armpits. I normally don’t stand that way, but my hands were cold. So later somebody wrote me, oh, that’s a very defensive position you were in. And I said, well, I don’t know. Maybe I was, but I think I was primarily just cold, you know? You just, you have to be careful of drawing too much inference,
That was a couple clips from my talk with Gary Noesner, who had a 30 year career in the FBI as an investigator, instructor, and negotiator. Gary is the author of the great book Stalling for Time: My Life as an FBI hostage negotiator; really recommend that book; it’s got so many exciting stories but also just a lot of wisdom.
If you’ve listened to this podcast before, you probably know I’m interested in human behavior and also in conflict dynamics. I’ve written my own books on political polarization, which you can find at www.american-anger.com. I first got interested in interviewing Gary a couple years ago when I was watching the Netflix documentary Waco: American Apocalypse. Gary talked about a concept he called the “paradox of power”; the idea that, when in conflict, pushing aggressively on the quote “other side” can result in them pushing back harder on you; aggressive approaches can be self-defeating. And that’s such an important point when it comes to any conflict situation; my own writing on polarization is largely about getting people to be willing to examine how their own approaches, or their side’s approaches, can unintentionally amplify contempt and animosity more, if they’re not careful.
And so i’d been wanting to talk to Gary for a while about that, and I also wanted to talk to him for his takes on behavior – reading body language and facial expression. The main reason I started this podcast was to focus on practically useful aspects of reading behavior in various domains and professions. It was an offshoot of my time spent as a professional poker player, and my work on poker tells. And part of the focus of this podcast is to examine some of the very bad and distorted ideas about reading behavior that are spread by many self-described “behavior experts.” Because there are simply a lot of people in the people-reading space who make a lot of money selling bullshit ideas; some of these quote “experts” are rather egregiously deceptive and unethical in their work; people like Chase Hughes and Jack Brown, and quite a few others. Others are more ethical and responsible with their work but still may be selling and promoting information that has little to no practical real-world application. And that’s what I’ve tried to focus on with this podcast; where are the real-world applications of reading and understanding behavior? Let’s try to strip away the nonsense and the confusing ambiguous stuff and focus on what matters and really leads to useful decisions.
Topics Gary and I discuss include:
Why “stalling for time” is such a core tactic in highly ** volatile stand-off situations
The “paradox of power” and why that concept is so important in any high conflict situation
Stories from Gary’s career that illustrate some key points about conflict and negotiation, including the Waco siege
Why the concept of “never giving something without getting something” is faulty and can amplify conflict
The fact that most quote “hostage” situations aren’t really hostage incidents with clear bargaining demands — but are just crisis intervention situations
The importance of listening closely to what someone is saying; including to what may seem like minor statements
Gary’s views on body language and its role in law enforcement work
The importance of voice tone in high-stakes, volatile situations; how sometimes how you say something can matter just as much as what you say
If you like this talk, please consider subscribing to the People Who Read People podcast on youtube or wherever you listen. I’ve got a lot of other episodes on law enforcement, interrogation, and negotiation-related topics; you can find compilations of this at my site behavior-podcast.com.
Also, i’m currently working on a book that will be about reading people, with a focus on examples of logical deductions people have made about what people say or what they do. Do you have personal stories where some small thing someone did or someone said changed your approach in a personal or professional situation? Send any stories along to me and there’s a chance I might put the story in my book; with your permission of course. You can reach me via the contact from at behavior-podcast.com.
A little more about Gary Noesner from his site garynoesner.com, and his last name is spelled NOESNER:
Gary retired from the FBI in 2003 following a 30 year career as an investigator, instructor, and negotiator. A significant focus of his career was directed toward investigating Middle East hijackings in which American citizens were victimized. In addition, he was an FBI hostage negotiator for 23 years of his career, retiring as the Chief of the FBI’s Crisis Negotiation Unit, Critical Incident Response Group, the first person to hold that position. In that capacity he was heavily involved in numerous crisis incidents covering prison riots, right-wing militia standoffs, religious zealot sieges, terrorist embassy takeovers, airplane hijackings, and over 120 overseas kidnapping cases involving American citizens.
Following his retirement from the FBI he became a Senior Vice President with Control Risks, an international risk consultancy, assisting clients in managing overseas kidnap incidents. He continues to Consult independently and speaks at law enforcement conferences and corporate gatherings around the world.
Ok here’s the talk with Gary Noesner:
Zach Elwood: Hi, Gary. Thanks for joining me.
Gary Noesner: You’re welcome. Glad to be here.
Zach Elwood: Yeah, it’s a big honor. Uh, I you’ve done some amazing things in your career. You’ve written an amazing book. Uh, you’ve done some very interesting things. I really enjoyed your your Stalling for Time book. I recommend people read it. It had so many, not just exciting stories, but uh, so many learnings that applied outside of, uh.
Negotiation in, in personal or professional life. So, yeah, just thanks a lot for joining me. Um, so maybe we can start with, um, how did you arrive at the title of your book? Maybe you could talk a little bit about why you decided to, uh, to arrive at Stalling for time as the title.
Gary Noesner: Yeah. When I, um, got my, uh, initial training as a hostage negotiator in the FBI, which is, you know, I wasn’t, uh, original, uh.
Person that started it all, but I was, uh, I guess you’d say the, the next generation. And, um, the first three words on my note guide that I wrote down were stall for times. And, um, you know, the premise being that, uh, and I thought it would make a good title because in essence, um, primarily we deal with high emotion and people.
Um, acting outside of their normal coping skills and posing a risk to themselves or someone else. So what we learned is if we are patient and engaging and empathic, um, it lowers that emotional content and we have better outcomes that normally, um, benefits from the passage of time. You know, it’s, it’s very hard to keep, uh.
Your emotions charged up for an extended period of time. So there is value alone in simply slowing the process down. We’re not intentionally trying to elongate a siege and make it last longer than it should, but on the other hand, we shouldn’t be pushing and, um, uh, forcing individual into becoming more violent in response to what we do.
We have to be patient and take our time. So I thought stalling for time would, would be a good, uh. Sort a general title to describe in a general way what we do.
Zach Elwood: Mm-hmm. Yeah. You describe, uh, one of the things you describe is how, initially, when all the emotions are at their peak, they’re, they’re only able to see really, um, more volatile or, um.
Binary options, but as, as they calm down a little bit, they can start to entertain other options that aren’t as emotional driven. So I thought that was a really good point.
Gary Noesner: Yeah, I mean, we’re, we’re dealing with people who are in, in crisis and when you’re in crisis and you’re more often than not, um, evoking high emotion, uh, it’s difficult to think clearly.
I mean, you know, we use the old. Teeter totter, which is my favorite illustration. I don’t have a slide in front of me, but if you can follow my hands, you know, in the the schoolyard kids game when emotions are high, rational thinking and, and behavior is low, and, and I think that’s, uh, hard to argue against.
It’s an absolute and human condition. So what, through negotiations with the passage of time and a patient. Effort to create a relationship of trust. We lower emotions and look what happens when we do that. The person’s ability to think and behave more rationally increases. It’s a pretty simple concept, but you know, we haven’t always practiced it in law enforcement.
Uh, you know, exchanges with citizens who are, uh, going through a difficult situation
Zach Elwood: that seems like the same, the same concept applies for the law enforcement or whoever’s on the other end of such a negotiation because sometimes. They’ll also be caught up in, you know, we need to do this now for emotional reasons, or we need to solve this immediately for whatever reason.
Yeah. So it applies to everybody. Yeah.
Gary Noesner: Yeah. I, I think police officers, FBI agents, they’re human beings. They, um, they, they, they are trained and they, they have authority and they have a, a badge and a gun and they’re, when they give somebody an instruction or an order, um, uh, and that is not, uh, adhered to.
They don’t like it, you know, it makes ’em angry. And, you know, there are those police officers that aren’t particularly good at containing their emotions and, um, and, uh, engaging in a more thoughtful way. I mean, we’re certainly seeing it in Minneapolis now and other places, you know, when I see so many of these confrontations and it just, it just, uh, you know, it just leaps out of the, of, of the TV coverage that, you know, just a more patient, thoughtful exchange could diffuse.
A great deal of these situations.
Zach Elwood: Mm-hmm. I first got interested in talking to you when I watched the, the recent Netflix documentary about Waco, which I think came out a couple years ago. You were featured in that obviously, and you talked about the, uh, paradox of power, as you called it, and you write about that in your book.
Um, can you talk a little bit about how you see the paradox of power and why it’s so important in negotiation and conflict situations?
Gary Noesner: Yeah. You know, go, going back to what we said earlier, um, when law enforcement traditionally has, um, demanded a certain behavior or an outcome, a surrender compliance, and they don’t get it, it becomes frustrating.
And then we say, okay, well I tried to do this the nice way, now I’m gonna make you do what I want. ’cause I have the authority and the ability to do that. But what that generally, uh, fails to take into account is. It’s the paradox of power, and that is the harder you push, the more likely it is that you get resistance.
So, I mean, it’s a, it’s a powerful thing and it, and it’s, it constantly has to be taught and retaught and reminded to decision makers in law enforcement. You know, this may make you feel better to show this person that you’re strong and tough, and you can harm them if you want. But is that really the most successful pathway, uh, or the best pathway for success?
And, you know, and that’s, that’s a tough sell sometimes because there, there’s, again, there’s a lot of, uh, people in law enforcement that, so I have the power and authority and I’m gonna, I’m gonna exercise it.
Zach Elwood: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. It’s a really powerful concept. I mean, in, in my own work on political polarization, I try to get people to see how, even if they are sure they’re right, you know, on whatever issue, you know, we’re often.
Personally often sure that we’re right, but how you approach the disagreement can actually create more pushback if you don’t handle it right, no matter what the conflict
Gary Noesner: is. Well, and it’s the old simplistic term of, you know, you get, you get more with honey than with vinegar, you know, and, and I think there’s a lot to be said for that.
Now, don’t get me wrong, there is a time and place where police officers just simply, uh, have to use force. But you know what, we have always been. Uh, taught what we say we believe in, in law enforcement and the Constitution requires of us, is that we never use any more force than is absolutely necessary.
So you, you should be able to, uh, function, law enforcement, jail function, saying that if we end up using force and this has a, an unhappy outcome, someone’s hurt or killed, we wanna be able to show that. We had no other choice but to use force. The behavior, the actions of the perpetrator left us with no court.
Anything less than that is, is just, is not gonna cut it. Uh, particularly in, in today’s environment where everybody has a camera, everybody’s a newscaster, you know? So if, if you don’t, um, expend the time and energy. Into first trying everything within your power to diffuse and avoid conflict. Then questions are gonna be raised about, you know, what you did and why was it necessary.
You know, I always like to ask the question in these, in my, my past life when we would be dealing with a tough situation and someone would suggest, well, it’s time for us to go in. And I would ask a question, well, what has changed from before? What? What articulation can we make that we have to go in now and put people in danger?
’cause when people with guns go in against other people with guns, bad things happen. And they don’t always just happen to the bad guys. So we’re putting police officers in harm’s risk. Are we able to articulate that? We have no choice. There’s nothing else we could do. We have to do it now. Failure to do it now is gonna cause someone to be seriously harmed.
You know, and if you ask yourself those kinds of questions, it can be a real break on, you know, automatically thinking, well, we’re gonna go in and we’re gonna get the bad guy. We never stop and think maybe the bad guy’s gonna get us. No matter how well trained we are and, and, and competent we are in executing our AR arrest procedures and our using our tactical teams.
You know, police officers get killed.
Zach Elwood: Mm-hmm.
Gary Noesner: So the question I always ask is, okay, did we have to go in? Was it absolutely necessary? Sometimes it is, but quite often we find it’s not.
Zach Elwood: Mm-hmm. Was that, uh, I was curious if that was, um, an expression that you made up the paradox of power?
Gary Noesner: No, it’s, no, it’s not. I, you know, and I don’t, I can’t tell you who did, I think the first time I really.
Heard it was from Dr. Mike Webster, a Canadian psychologist that they used to work very closely with. I think that’s the first time I heard it and I said, wow. It’s so, it’s so, um, clearly. Mm-hmm. Uh, it speaks to the issue that we see so often in, uh, conflict, uh, with perpetrators.
Zach Elwood: Yeah. Uh, on that, on that, uh, idea of.
Threading the line between, uh, being forceful and, and giving people, um, respect and gaining rapport and such. Uh, you talked about, in the book, you wrote about how, you know, it’s, it’s also very important as you try to gain their trust and respect and, and, um, set them at ease. You, it can also be important to show them that there are real limits involved and you use kind of a funny illustration of this.
Uh, with a story of a hijacker who asked for a cup of coffee, could, do you remember that story? Do you care to share that story?
Gary Noesner: Yeah, it’s an old story. Um, you know, uh, guys hijacking a plane and, uh, JFK many, many years ago, back in the sixties or seventies, and the, you know, some point in time an FBI agents.
On the ground speaking to him up at the cockpit and, you know, amongst his demands for fuel and flying somewhere else with his hostages on the plane, he wants a hot cup of coffee cream and two sugars, you know, and about an hour later, he gets a cold cup of coffee, no cream, no sugar. And at some subsequent point, not far from there, he, he surrenders and they said, well, what made you come out?
And he said, well, I figured if I couldn’t get a decent cup of coffee, the other things weren’t gonna work out. You know, a great story that kind of illustrates the point. You know, when people, particularly in the hostage taking realm, and let me come back to how much of it’s really hostage taking, but in the hostage taking realm, people feel empowered.
I’m holding this person and I’m threatening their lives. I can control and make the police, the authorities, the government, whatever, do whatever I want. And then when time passes and they don’t get the things that they want, it slowly conveys to them that guess what? Scooter, you don’t have as much power over us as you think.
You don’t say jump, and we do it. Um, you’ve gonna have to work for everything you get from us. This is quid pro quo bargaining. You know, you want food in there, fine. You’re gonna have to let some of those hostages go. Now that’s, you know, that that was the, the methodology that New York, uh, PD started in 73 and the FBI quickly borrowed.
But when we moved into the, the nineties, you know, we really made a major switch towards a crisis intervention model because the realities were that that was 90% of what cops were doing. Um, there’s. People negotiating, uh, out in the law enforcement community have been doing it their whole careers, and they’ve never done an actual hostage situation.
But I need to differentiate too, because a man’s inside with his wife and kids, that’s not necessarily a hostage situation, they’re victims.
Zach Elwood: Mm-hmm.
Gary Noesner: But it, it really requires that there be a demand, if I don’t get this from you, I will kill this person or harm this person. Uh, if they’re just saying, uh, you know, this, this woman’s gonna take my kids and leave me, and you guys go away.
You know, I’ll take care of this. That’s not a hostage situation by definition.
Zach Elwood: Right. And you talked in, you write in your book about how, I mean, I think it’s like a large majority of these situations are just emotionally, uh, volatile. 90. Yeah. 90% are just somebody Yeah. Snapping or getting into an escalating situation with domestic violence or whatever it might be.
Yeah. Um,
Gary Noesner: so you know that that was, um. And what we discovered, uh, in, in 1990, my, my, uh, partner at the FBI Academy and I went out to San Francisco area and we, we taught an advanced negotiation course and we, we asked the class, here’s our definition of a hostage situation. And, you know, uh, and how many of you worked those?
And in this advanced class, nobody had worked one. And, and then we sort of had an epiphany saying, you know, we’re kind of teaching the wrong stuff. We’re teaching them quid pro quote bargaining. In situations that are not inherently bargaining situations, they’re crisis intervention. They’re people that are experiencing a sense of loss, loss of relationship, loss of job, loss of finances, loss of self-esteem, you name it.
That’s the powerful trigger to the motivation that they’re exhibiting, which is often go away, leave me alone. Um, and some of these we call homicides to be, they’re. They’re intending to kill someone else and possibly themselves. They just haven’t done it yet. And that, of course, gives us the proverbial salesman’s foot in the door to try to intervene and steer them away from violence.
And we’re, we’re pretty, pretty good at that. Not a hundred percent, but we’re pretty darn good with that.
Zach Elwood: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Maybe that’s a good segue into, uh, you write in the book. The high importance of paying close attention to the language that people use. You know, you, one story you tell in the book was about a case of a, a police officer who had snapped.
He had raped a woman, then went to the bank where his wife worked and shot someone. And you mentioned there that even as hopeless as it superficially seemed and how unlikely a good outcome or nonviolent outcome seemed that even there, even as he seemed to refuse to engage with any anyone, he would occasionally say something like, I just wanna talk to somebody, which was a major clue.
Uh, yeah. You know, which, which on, on the surface, the team. That that talked to you initially about, it acted as if that was some sort of aside and not important, but you saw that it was an important clue as to what he
Gary Noesner: Yeah.
Zach Elwood: Wanted and how he might
Gary Noesner: respond in that incident. And, and we certainly have had many more like that.
The law enforcement approach is you come out and then we’ll talk, and that’s, uh, counter. Intuitive. I mean, what we should be doing is if he wants to talk now, let’s talk now. Because when he is talking to us, he’s, he’s letting us know what his motivation is, uh, what, what’s driving his behavior. He’s not engaged in.
Uh, harming the hostages when he is talking to us. You know, there’s so many good things that, uh, come out of a sustained, uh, you know, conversation with someone, and, you know, not the least of which is as law enforcement officers, instead of coming across as, uh, authoritative and commanding, we’re almost more like therapists, you know, Hey, you know, Hey, I’m Zach.
It sounds like you really had a difficult time today. Can you tell me more about. The argument you had with your wife, it sounds like it’s, uh, really had a big impact on you. Well, they don’t expect that kind of language from a, a law enforcement representative, and a lot of the people we deal with, you know, believe it or not, they don’t feel like anybody listens to ’em or understands them, and there may not be anybody in their life.
We, we used to call this the double whammy, Zach, you know, when, when most of us have a problem at work, we, we go home to our nurturing families and they’re supportive and encouraging and all that. And conversely, when we have problems at home, in our home life, we may have, uh, coworkers that are very supportive and and nurturing.
A lot of people we deal with don’t have either one of those. They don’t, they don’t have a family support structure and they don’t have a steady employment structure, and they have issues and concerns and problems, and they feel nobody understands them. Nobody’s listened to them, nobody’s. Appreciates their point of view.
So if we can do that in a compressed and albeit dangerous, uh, confrontation, we stand a decent chance of demonstrating to them that we’re not there to make their day worse. We want to help ’em. We don’t wanna see ’em get hurt. You know, as I said, we’re generally pretty successful, not a hundred percent.
Zach Elwood: Mm-hmm. Uh, I was recently reading Chris Voss book on negotiation, never split the difference. And I understand that you were a trainer of his at some point. I was curious.
Gary Noesner: Chris worked for me. Uh, I hired him at the crisis negotiation unit. Great guy. Good, good man. Yep.
Zach Elwood: This is, do you, oh, go ahead. Go
Gary Noesner: ahead.
Zach Elwood: I was just curious if there was a good, a good amount of map over between that you saw between what he writes about and what you talk about
Gary Noesner: there.
There are certainly is some, I mean, I think Chris, uh, also talks about, uh, empathy and, and, and creating empathy. And that’s pretty much the standard throughout the business. And, uh, I think he focuses is a bit more on business and. The way you say something in order to elicit the kind of response that you hope to get by how I pose a question or how I respond to something you say, uh, can drive your behavior.
And, and, and that’s good stuff. And, and you know, some of it I agree with, some of it I think is perhaps overstated, but for me, I, I focus on the larger picture of building a relationship. You know, it’s, it’s, my success is not gonna be based on. What I say here, there, or the next time, but how I say it overall, how I come across.
Mm-hmm. You know, I have a firm belief that, uh, people wanna work with people they like and respect, and if you can be a likable, respectful person, you’re, you’re likely to, uh, elicit that, uh, from the other person.
Zach Elwood: Mm-hmm. Uh, one thing I read in Chris’s book, I was curious for your thought on, because I. So he, I’ll basically just read a little snippet from his book.
Uh, he’s, he wrote after the fatally disastrous seizures of Randy Weaver’s Ruby Ridge Farm in Idaho in 1982 and Koresh’s Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas in 1993. There was no denying that most hostage negotiations were anything but rational problem solving situations. I mean, have you ever tried to devise a mutually beneficial win-win solution with a guy who thinks he’s the messiah?
There was clearly a breakdown between the book’s. Brilliant Theory. He was talking about a popular negotiation book, getting to yes and a, a breakdown between that and everyday law enforcement experience. End quote. My understanding though, is that, um, he might be being a little bit too hard on the, the current thinking back then because my understanding is.
You know, for example, like if you had had your way, the Waco negotiation would’ve, an approach would’ve played out a lot different. And that it, you know, you, you had the tactics at that time and other people had the tactics, had time that time to handle such things. Uh, but I’m curious for your take on that.
Gary Noesner: Well, I, I think, uh, I don’t think Chris was criticizing negotiations. I was think, I think he was pointing out that in both those cases, the individuals we’re dealing with were, were. Extremely challenging people to, to deal with. You know, a funny note, I wasn’t at Ruby Ridge. I was out of the country when that happened.
But in reality, uh, uh, a tremendously challenging situation. I mean, there had been a, a Marshall killed, uh, Weaver’s son. Uh, and then, then when the FBI shows up, uh, they end up shooting Weaver and, uh, wounding his friend. I mean, uh, uh, wounding a friend of his and, and killing, uh, his wife, uh, not intentionally, but a shot.
Went through the door and killed her. Now. Despite that, and one could say really incredibly challenging situation to respond to that was negotiated out after eight days. I mean, the FBI was patient and brought in, uh, Bo Gritz to be an intermediary. So I, I would hardly characterize that as a failure of negotiations or not realizing.
And then again, as you mentioned. Moving forward a couple years to the Waco situation, a couple years after that, I, I would argue, and I think most, uh, analysts of the situation would agree that, uh, as negotiators we had the right approach. You know, we got 35 people out when I was there, including 21 children.
But, uh, you know, there was, uh, uh, a counterside within the FBI that wanted to apply more pressure, the paradox of power that we just spoke about earlier, and basically force them to come out. And of course. Because I was a resistant, uh, I was resistant to that approach. I was replaced halfway through and they went with a harder line.
Nobody else came out for the rest of the siege of, I was there for 26 to the 51 days. So I, I would say I’m, I’m not sure what Chris meant by that. I’m, I think he probably would be happy to expand on that, but I, but I think, um. You know, I, I, I don’t think either one of those incidents in any way, shape or form could be characterized as negotiation failure or lack of, uh, ability.
Zach Elwood: Yeah. Reading it again, I think he was actually trying to say like there were these older things, ideas about purely logical, rational, uh, things like in the book getting to Yes. And I think he was mainly trying to criticize that, but it came, he, he, he might have just not worded it optimally, but yeah, I think he was mainly just trying to criticize that.
And not say that, you know, that that was the only approach taken at Waco or
Gary Noesner: Rent here. Here’s another thing. I mean, business negotiation. There, there are some parallels and, um, similarities in business and crisis negotiations, but there’s also a whole world of, of differences, you know? And, and you have to keep that in mind.
So a lot of the books, the majority of the books out there are business oriented.
Zach Elwood: Mm-hmm.
Gary Noesner: And, and what works in that contest. You know, is, is not necessarily the model we would follow in, in a law enforcement crisis situation.
Zach Elwood: Uh, when I was reading parts of your book, um, there, you write in your book about the importance of giving people your trust, like showing, uh, trust in them also.
And that made me think of, um, the, the movie, the House of Games about the con artists. There was a scene where they talk about the importance of, uh, you know, in, in cons. You, you know, co you giving people your confidence first. So they have a scene where he goes into a, uh, a cash, you know, a cash, uh, a check cashing place and basically gets in a conversation with somebody and says, oh, I’m waiting for money, you know, and starts get building rapport and then says, well, if my money gets here first, I’ll give you some and you can pay me back later.
And they, of course. You know, do something similar and say, oh, same, same for you. If my GI money gets here first, I’ll give you some, you can pay me back later. So then, uh, showing that, you know, it really does a lot to give people trust and make them feel trusted. And in your book, um, yeah, if you wanna talk about that Yeah.
Analogy.
Gary Noesner: Well, again, uh, if you mention it’s, it’s the reciprocity is what it is. Yeah. Reciprocity, you know, it’s, it’s the same reason, you know, back in the. Seventies, the moonies would be at the airport and they’d give you a flower and ask for a donation. And because they gave you something, people were more likely to give them a donation based on the, well, you did something for me, now it’s my turn to do something for you.
And that’s exactly, uh, the scenario. You mentioned how a con can exploit that. You know, you grease the skids a little bit by. You know, incentivizing the person to, to, uh, to make a, make themselves a bigger mark for you. You know? But you have to be careful. When I was trained as a negotiator, originally, going back to the seventies, it was all about bargaining.
And the premise was never give something unless you get something in return.
Zach Elwood: Mm-hmm.
Gary Noesner: Now, in a pure quid pro quo bargaining situation, that has a lot of merit. However, and, and where I, I tried to make the shift in the business was. In a crisis intervention, um, a gesture of, uh, positive intent. It does not weaken your bargaining position.
And, and I always tell a story about, you know, a, a guy climbs up a a a TV tower and he’s gonna jump and he wants a cigarette, and the police don’t wanna give him a cigarette because, you know, some executive remembers, well, you never give something unless you get something back. And, you know, and you kinda had to explain to him, you know, I don’t think the man crawled up the tower today just to get a cigarette.
All you have to do is stand out. In front of a seven 11 and ask, and no more than two or three people go by than somebody. Yeah. What,
Zach Elwood: what, what are you really losing by? Yeah. Doing
Gary Noesner: that. Yeah, exactly. And that’s the point. But what, what you. Potentially could gain, you know, we’re somebody that may have had, uh, bad engagement with law enforcement in the past.
Now all of a sudden this police officers saying, yeah, no problem. I’ll get you a cigarette. I mean, it doesn’t weaken us. It doesn’t give anything away. And in fact, I would argue that it helps to build rapport.
Zach Elwood: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. But
Gary Noesner: it’s a hard, it, it has been hard. I don’t know how it stands in the industry now.
I’ve been retired, but for a long time a lot of police negotiators resisted that because they remembered the old. Never give unless you get something back. You know what, the guys doesn’t have anything. He’s barricaded by himself or he is suicidal. What’s he, what’s he gonna give you, you know? Right. In that particular case, I said, okay, he’s up in the tower, what do you want him to do?
Pull an arm off and then throw it down to you. I mean, you know, you know, think about it. So.
Zach Elwood: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. The context is important. Yeah. Um, the, in, in the first story you tell in the book, it involved a. Very volatile situation with a man holding his wife and son hostage. And, uh, and, uh, it had been determined that, you know, an app, an aggressive approach was necessary that he, you know, this wasn’t gonna end well and he should just be killed.
So, uh, one of the parts of that story, uh, was you telling him a lie about giving him a helicopter, allowing him to leave, and you had to try to make him believe that. And one thing you did was to tell him, the helicopter pilot is my friend. You have to promise to not hurt him. And you mentioned that it helped sell your story because it was
Gary Noesner: Yeah.
Zach Elwood: Real realistic that you might be worried. But it also struck me that getting back to the idea of like. Giving trust to someone is, is so important. Like he, he felt like not only was that a realistic de request that helped sell your story, he, he felt like, oh, trust has been put into me, therefore I’m more likely to show trust too.
Yeah, yeah.
Gary Noesner: In that particular case before, before the, the helicopter portion of it, you know, we, I sent up some food. We sent up some clothes he had that he wanted, uh, that were downstairs. He was stuck upstairs with his. Ex, uh, common law wife and child. So I did a number of things to say, Hey, I’m not here to make your day worse and, and try to minimize the seriousness of the situation.
So all those positive things. Now while we ended up, I ended up setting him up for a tactical resolution. It didn’t mean I ever, at any time gave up on the opposite. So it, you run a parallel track. It’s not like, it’s not black and white. Well, we were trying to save him now, and now we’re gonna set him up to die.
I mean, you’re constantly trying to give him opportunities mm-hmm. To do the right thing. Um, and, and that’s how it worked. In that case, it was unfortunate. We don’t like to, to, I certainly am not keen about taking anyone’s life and, and I don’t think most police officers are and but to save a woman and child sometimes, uh.
Real tough and difficult decisions have to be made.
Zach Elwood: Mm-hmm. And I like the fact that you started the book out with that showing that, you know, there there are those, you know, sometimes you got, you have to draw a very firm line and that, you know, that doesn’t take away from the fact that your other points about, you know, building more rapport in, taking less aggressive approaches are, are just as valid depending on the, yeah.
Depending on the context, but
Gary Noesner: Yeah. Yeah.
Zach Elwood: Um, so I wanted to pivot to behavior related topics. One focus of this podcast. Has been examining, uh, behavior related topics, body language, facial expressions, uh, in, in how those apply and can be used in various real world endeavors. And we sometimes hear claims that body language plays a big role in law enforcement and interrogations, such that can come from alleged experts in behavior, who’ve worked in law enforcement.
They can come from fictional movies, TV shows like Lie to Me. It can come from people who are. Just straight up con artists, like some people that I’ve examined on this podcast. Uh, so there, there can be, I think it can be hard to get a sense for people like me who are outside of law enforcement or uh, military or these kinds of context to get a sense of how reading body language actually plays a role in high stakes scenarios, like the kind you’re so experiencing.
So I’m curious for your take. About the realm of, of body language and behavior? Um, maybe how, how big a role you see it playing in your work or in law enforcement in general, and maybe how big of a role it takes in, uh, you know, law enforcement training and such.
Gary Noesner: Yeah. I mean, overall today in the training, I’m not sure how much emphasis they put on it, but I have viewed it, have viewed it, always have viewed it as just one of the tools in the toolbox.
You and I are assessing each other’s facial and body language right here. More so facial than body ’cause we’re just seeing from the chest up. But. We sort of innately do that as human beings. You know, it, it goes back to, you know, the dawn of time where we’re trying to assess is this friend or foe? Does this person present, uh, a risk to me or is this somebody I can trust and, and engage with and cooperate with so that we have some of those abilities when I used to, uh, teach people about over traveling overseas and avoiding kidnaps.
I said, trust your instincts. If you see a situation ahead of you, it just doesn’t look right. It doesn’t feel right. Pay attention to your, your instincts, and that speaks to that issue. Now getting back to the body language thing, I mean, I think there’s probably some folks that are just incredibly good at it, but I don’t recall an investigation that I worked in my 30 years that it played any significant role in.
Whatsoever. It, it just, um, you know, it’s like Freud used to say, uh, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. I mean, I think you have to be really careful. I mean, on the cover of my, the jacket of my book, uh, the day they took the photograph for that, it was very cold, and I just had a shirts shirt on, and I had my arms tuck like this, and my hands were under my armpits.
I normally don’t stand that way, but my hands were cold. So later somebody wrote me, oh, it’s a very defensive position. You were. And I said, well, I don’t know. Maybe I was, but I think I was primarily just cold, you know? Right. And, and that would be my example. You just, you have to be careful of drawing too much inference, you know, um, in the, uh, in the eighties particularly.
Law enforcement negotiators began to really cozy up with the mental health field, mental health professionals, and more and more police negotiation teams would work with a mental health, uh, consultant. And before you know it, we had police officers who were feeling like they were junior psychologists, you know, well, that’s a paranoid schizophrenic, or, this guy’s a manic depressive, he’s this, he’s that.
And you know, and I used to say, be careful because number one. Your diagnosis may not be correct, and number two, if you pigeonhole this person as being a particular uh, diagnosis, now you are gonna be dealing with them as though. He behaves like every other paranoid schizophrenic. And guess what? They don’t, they don’t all behave the same.
They might have some common features that, that help, uh, uh, achieve the diagnosis, but to say everyone can be reliably expected to do this and to do that and respond this way. I mean, I certainly wouldn’t put any money on that. And, and I think that that becomes very dangerous. So I think, you know, obviously people are selling books and they’re talking about, they can predict this, and they can predict that.
Okay. That’s all well and good. I, I just, um, I go with a more basic, you know, through, through my career. I, I feel as though I, I could read people fairly well. Was I wrong sometimes? Absolutely. Um, but generally speaking. You know, you could get a good sense of, in an interrogation or an interview, this person’s lying or just, just they’re holding something back.
You know, I viewed it as more instinctual and experiential than, than, you know, than, than a, a real hard and fast. Okay? He’s ticked off these five things. He, he touched his nose on the left side and, you know, he’d wiggle his ear. And that means this, and that means that, uh, I don’t have that. Do that. And I, I, I kind of doubt that many do if anyone.
Zach Elwood: Yeah. Um, I imagine, uh, well obviously in, in, uh, hostage and standoff negotiation situations, the audio elements is much more important than seeing them, I would imagine, because you’re doing a lot. Talking. I’m curious if, uh, if you have anything much to say about either reading the tones and, and, uh, you know, emotions in people’s voices or else you know, that the separate subject of, you know, obviously it’s good to have a calm speaking voice and do a good presentation and delivery when you’re doing that kind of work, but I’m curious if you have anything to say about the, the audio element of, of that work.
Gary Noesner: Yeah. Obviously. Yeah. In historical negotiations where we’re on the telephone, um. We are denied. Uh, the, the facial, uh, gestures were, uh, denied access to the body language, you know, except in rare situations there’s some face-to-face negotiations. We generally negotiate over a phone because it’s safer. You know, it’s, it’s, it’s a safety issue, but I think there, there’s a side benefit to it, and that is it kind of taught us to learn to listen more carefully.
Uh, to the one thing we had to go, you know, I used to hear things like, uh, you know, somebody was blind, has, uh, better hearing. Right. And, and I think to some extent, uh, whether that’s true or not, I mean, I don’t have personal experience there, but, but I think to some extent, negotiators are, are forced to really focus on what’s being said.
Zach Elwood: Mm-hmm.
Gary Noesner: Be more so than we were if we’re being flooded with a, a wider range of, of, uh. Inputs from that person.
Zach Elwood: Right. It really helps focus your attention on the content, the word, the, the specific words are being said. Yeah. All these things. Yeah. Yeah,
Gary Noesner: I think so. Yeah.
Zach Elwood: Was, uh, was it part of your work or, or a natural part of your work to work on your delivery of, of your tone or, or was that not a big deal in your career?
Gary Noesner: I think I. Uh, obviously, I mean, like anyone else, I’ve, I’ve improved through the years and I’m sure when I retired I was a much better negotiator than, than, than when I started. But I, I think I tended, uh, me personally to, to talk more than I should have, uh, in, in the early days. And then you learn, you know, you, you gotta be a better listener than a talker.
If I’m talking, I’m not learning anything about him. I mean, there’s a time and a place where you have to use some self-disclosure and, and kinda share with that person what you’re thinking, but you kind of have to earn the right for that. You know, I created the behavioral change stairway model that I don’t know if you’re familiar with, but it’s a, it’s widely used across the world for negotiations, and it’s a stairway and it, and it basically says we use active listening, you know, to, um, you know, to to, to create a relationship.
Of, of trust that leads to inner influence and then cooperation. You know, we build some rapport and that can take time going back to our earlier theme, but the process, you don’t just automatically show up and say, Hey, I’m Gary Nester. I’m the chief negotiator of the FBI do what I want. I mean, I have to earn the right to be of influence.
I have to demonstrate. Through repeating in my own words, paraphrasing what the person said, I have to label their emotions, how they feel about what they’re going through. Um, you know, I have to, again, earn the right to be of influence. And you, you see this happening, Zach, because what’ll somebody will say like, you know, Gary, I, I just dunno how to get out of this.
Well, to me that’s when I hear something like that, you know, it shows that I have now. Uh, gotten to a certain level where now this person’s even soliciting my input, you know, and I might respond a little bit, uh, carefully and say something like, well, you know, I, I do know that hurting somebody is, is not gonna make this any better.
I think we can both agree with that. So it’s, it’s just, um, it’s just the process. Negotiations aren’t typically resolved because you come up with a brilliant argument. You, you, you know, in fact, the favorite thing, I, I teach classes. I start off almost every class is through all the years I did this, we typically would ask a perpetrator when they surrendered, what was it that we said that made you come out?
Because we wanna learn and replicate.
Zach Elwood: Good question.
Gary Noesner: But you’d be shocked that the answer was almost always the same and, and it’s really an amazing thing when you think about it. The answer is, I don’t remember what you said, but I like the way you said it. Now you think about that. That is. So powerful.
You know, and I’ve, I’ve seen, you know, various, uh, you know, uh, representations by people that shows that a very significant part of our communication process. You know, you talked about body language before, but a lot of it is, is tone and demeanor.
Zach Elwood: Mm-hmm.
Gary Noesner: You know, how we sound, you know, and, um, you know, and that’s, that’s an important thing.
You know, I, um, I have, um, I have a friend that, uh, you know, his wife used to have these big arguments with, with. With their teenage daughter, you know, and, and, and he said, you know, she says all the right things. Uh, everything she says is makes sense. It’s, it’s absolutely right, but it’s, but she’s not saying it the right way, you know, you know, and you stop to think about it, you know how you present something.
You know, I used to, uh, when I was consulting after the FBI. Teach workplace violence and how we avoid it. And when these companies, these corporations are downsizing, how you go to Zack and say, Zack, I’m sorry. We have to let you go. It could be a world of difference whether Zack is unhappy, but. You know, resigned to the situation versus Zach’s gonna come back in with a gun and, and let you know how unhappy it is, you know?
And part of that is, you know, you, you explain to them what’s happening. You explain what their benefits are. You, you are empathic about, I’m sorry this happened. It’s a, you know, a corporate decision. Um, we resist it. There’s nothing we could do about it. We’re gonna help you write a resume. We’re gonna, you know, help you with job placement.
We’ve got counselors available. None of those things make you feel better about losing your job, but it, but it, it helps to soften the blow and make you a bit more accepting than you would be otherwise.
Zach Elwood: Yeah, it’s much more the, the, the way we communicate is much more important than I think most people tend to think.
Yeah. The how, um, and the, the framing around it. Um, yeah. Getting back to the, uh, the behavior thing, I, I want to say, I, I’m curious if you would agree with this. This is so, because I work on, uh, poker tells, uh, because I used to play poker for a living and wrote some books on. Poker tells, which by the way, I see applications of behavior as very different in game scenarios versus non-game real world scenarios.
Um, and, and because I have this, also because I have this podcast that’s focused on behavior, I often get people asking for my take on, oh, I wanna learn how to read people better. I wanna learn how to read body language or, uh, you know, uh, nonverbal things, facial expressions. And my answer is, you know, for real world non-game scenarios, I tend to say I think that’s a waste of time.
I think you’d be much better off thinking about the deductions you can make from what people say and what they avoid saying, and all of these kinds of things, the actual content, logical deductions around the content. I think it’s a big waste of time to focus on the behavior because I think that’s so much, so ambiguous and it’s very hard to get any meaningful, uh.
Uh, clues, you know, so I’m, but I’m curious if you’d agree with me there.
Gary Noesner: Absolutely. And the other thing is the advantage perhaps that we have versus what you were doing as, as a poker player, we can say, you know, Zach, you just said something and I, I wanna make sure I understand. Could you explain that to me further,
Zach Elwood: right.
Gary Noesner: That you said so and so what, can you tell me what you meant by that? That, that’s a powerful tool we have. Um, you know
Zach Elwood: Yeah. That, that has no, that has no very little analogy to, to poker in games and sports in general.
Gary Noesner: Yeah. Oh, exactly right. Yeah, exactly right. But, but, you know, we’re, we’re showing a curiosity.
We’re showing an interest. We wanna learn more. And, you know, and that’s why I think one of the most powerful tools is paraphrasing when you said something perhaps in the context of crisis. That’s, that’s, you know, worrisome. I might, I might ask you. More about that, you know, and, um, you know, I, I don’t understand.
And, and, and if I might say, you know, it sounds like you, you really wanna hurt your wife, you know, and you may say, um, no, I just wanna teach her a lesson. Well. That’s important for me to know. I mean, you know, uh, and, and, and it’s okay to ask those questions even if they’re unpleasant questions, you know?
Now, you know, we don’t repeat when somebody says, I wanna kill her, so, you know, you still want to kill her. You know, we’ve been talking for an hour and now we, we, we wouldn’t bring up bad things that have in the rear view mirror now. But yeah, I think, I think that is an advantage we have if we don’t understand, ask.
Uh, generally they’ll fill in the, the gaps for us and give us a more complete picture of what’s going on in their lives, how they feel, what their plans are, you know, and that’s all good stuff.
Zach Elwood: Yeah, and I could, I could go on for a while about the differences, but I see between game slash sport sports scenarios and non-game scenarios, because in games you have like.
Granular, discrete actions you’re trying to take that has no application or no, no analogy to real world non-game situations. And you have like polarized spots where you might be bluffing or non bluffing, which I don’t think has any direct correlation to like an interrogation room. Right. So I think that there’s many of these things that make it a very different scenario.
That and the main thing being. In like interrogation or interview settings, uh, it’s just so hard to determine what somebody is anxious about. Right? So, so many of these things get down to anxiety, but there’s just so many reasons. Somebody could be anxious for a multitude of reasons, which makes it really hard to get any meaningful deductions about, oh, they did this, which means anxiety and, you know.
Gary Noesner: Right. That’s
Zach Elwood: great. Yeah.
Gary Noesner: The only thing you can control and fully understand are your own actions. You know, I mean that that’s, I was always confident in success in the negotiation. Not, not because I was always successful, but because I knew I would be in absolute control of what I was trying to do, and that I would be able to convey that I wanted the situation to come out favorably for everyone I wanted to help.
I wasn’t there to make it worse. I wasn’t there to condemn them. I was there to help resolve the crisis, you know, and that’s gonna work, uh, uh, an incredibly, uh, high percentage of the time. But I go back to probably the most problematic area for police negotiators is suicides. And, and, and you know, I used to tell when training negotiators, listen, if you respond to enough of them, you know somebody’s gonna kill themselves.
And, and it’s not because you failed, you weren’t empathic enough, you, you didn’t. Do all the things you need to. So don’t take ownership of this. You don’t control that person. You can try to influence ’em. And usually we’re successful in being a positive influence, but we’re not a hundred percent. And anybody in the, and it applies to business world, to anybody in any negotiation, and it can tell you, I can guarantee a certain outcome.
You know, I, I kind of discount that sort of absolutism because I just, I just don’t see it in the real world. I mean, you know, you’re gonna, when even when I was consulting, you know, I did real well with, uh, generating business for the company I worked for, but not a hundred percent of the time. You know, and, and it may be because there’s factors you don’t even see the person you’re dealing with, you know, you’ve got a great relationship with, but they’ve gotta report to somebody that maybe has already made a decision and they’re just.
They’re just talking to you because they wanna get three bidders under, under their belt. And they can say, we, we, we, we, we talked to three different companies, but they’ve already decided they’re going with company A.
Zach Elwood: Mm-hmm.
Gary Noesner: You know, and your company B or company C. Yeah. You
Zach Elwood: don’t know all the fact, you can’t know all the factors.
Yeah, yeah,
Gary Noesner: yeah. You, you just don’t know. All you can do is again, control yourself and b, the best you can. And, uh, you know, and, and hopefully it’ll come through. And the other thing I used to tell people, you know, particularly in the business context, don’t burn a bridge because. You know, you are giving them a good opportunity and a good deal and they didn’t take it.
Don’t say, well screw you. You know, you, you gotta say, listen, I’m sorry. Uh, it didn’t work out this time. Uh, it’s been my experience that sometimes when someone goes with the lowest bidder, they don’t necessarily get the product they want. If you find down the road that, um, you know, you’re not really satisfied with the direction you went, and I hope you’ll think to call us back and maybe we can try to see if we can come together and make this happen in the future, that’s fine.
You know, it’s okay. It’s not a big loss. Like, you know, it’s not that. It’s, it’s not the end of the world, you know? Mm-hmm. We used to say you should care, but not that much.
Zach Elwood: Mm-hmm. Yeah. It’s good to protect your own, I mean, when doing such high stakes Sure. Uh, situations. It’s good to protect your own mental health and, and have realistic expectations about what’s,
Gary Noesner: what’s possible going to the suicide area.
I mean, I know a lot of negotiators who’ve been. Almost, uh, become dysfunctional is negotiating anymore because of a suicide, you know? Mm-hmm. And suicide is always, not always some bad old bank robber. I mean, it could be a nice grandma, it could be a, a, a, a teenage girl jumping from a bridge ’cause she didn’t get a date to the prom.
I mean, it could be a lot of things. And, and, you know, and, and when we’re not successful, we can take it real hard, you know, we can take it real hard. Mm-hmm.
Zach Elwood: I was curious if you had, say you only had a few hours to train somebody up, say for whatever reason, some person off the street, you were gonna train them for like four to eight, four to eight hours on, uh, dealing with an intense, uh, standoff situation with somebody who was emotionally unstable and such, uh, what would be the main, you know, one or two, three principles you’d focus on educating them on, would you say?
Gary Noesner: Well, we mentioned one, and that’s the self-control. And you know, I, I lived a lot of my career by the Serenity Prayer. You know, knowing what you can do and what you can’t do and understanding the difference. I think that’s a vital, I think that’s a vital thing to embrace and appreciate. I’m gonna come to the situation not of my creation, and I’m gonna do everything I can to help it, uh, end in the way I’d like it to, but I don’t control it.
And, and if it doesn’t end the way I would like. I’m not gonna own it. It’s not because I screwed up. You know, I used to tell people nobody can make a verbal mistake. And somebody says, oh, okay, now I’m gonna kill myself. ’cause Zach said the wrong word. That just doesn’t happen that way. So, self-control would be a big part of it.
The other part is, you know, really, really focus on not what you wanna say, but what they’re saying, and think about how you’re gonna feed back to them through a paraphrase, a summary of, of what you are hearing from them. Not only what you’re hearing, but how they’re responding to that emotionally. You know, there’s, there’s a whole bunch of, we teach seven or eight, uh, active listening skills in the FBI, but I think the two most important are paraphrasing and emotion labeling.
So you do those two things and you’re gonna come across as an engaging, empathic, caring person. Think about your voice, think about being likable, you know, don’t respond to a verbal attacks. Um, you know. You could do pretty good. I, and there’s, there’s people, frankly, Zach, who are naturally good at this and probably would succeed in the tense negotiations without any training.
Zach Elwood: Mm-hmm.
Gary Noesner: And then there’s other people that, for whatever reason, they’re just never gonna be competent. They’d
Zach Elwood: ramp it up. Yeah. They’d ramp
Gary Noesner: it up. It’s, it’s never gonna work out for them.
Zach Elwood: Yeah.
Gary Noesner: But I would say that probably, you know, on the bell curve, the, the majority of us in the middle. If we think, uh, carefully, we work with team support and we take our time, we’re, we’re gonna be successful more often than not, and we’re gonna benefit from that kind of negotiation training.
So, yeah. I like to think, keep things simple. You can load people up with too much information and, um, they get analysis paralysis.
Zach Elwood: Right. And they get frozen. Yeah. Uh,
Gary Noesner: and they get frozen.
Zach Elwood: Yeah. Oh, this has been great, Gary. I, I thought it was a great talk. Do you wanna share any other last tidbits of thoughts about anything we touched on or anything you’re working on these days?
Gary Noesner: No, I just, um. You know, I, I, I just think, uh, the things I’m working on now, I’m, I’ve started another book. I’m not sure if I’ll finish it, but it, it’s about negotiating with yourself. You know, get, get right with yourself about what is it you’re trying to do and why you’re trying to do it. And don’t be so hard on yourself.
I mean, people are what the number one fear is fear of public speaking or something like that. You know, just get out there and do it. Don’t worry about it. Of course, you’ll make mistakes. I make mistakes all the time. It’s all right. But overall, you, you should be comfortable in saying, you know, I’m not a perfect person.
Guess what? No one else is either. I can’t throw a football like Tom Brady, but I can do some things. Maybe he can’t, you know, I can’t, uh, sing like, uh, you know, uh, Beyonce, but, you know, okay, I can do some other things, you know, so don’t hold yourself up to some unrealistic, uh, example of, of which we do in society because of, you know, all, all the mass media.
But just focus on being a good, likable person. And guess what? There are people that won’t like you. Okay? There’ll be people that disagree with you. Um, okay, fine. That’s, that’s the way it is. But I’m a good person and I’m confident. I’m happy, you know, whatever. I think those are good life lessons for everyone.
Zach Elwood: Well, I do think you have a lot of great lessons that apply to so many areas. I mean, they, they apply to conflict and so much of life is about conflict, whether it’s external conflict or conflict. Within ourselves. So I think, I think you do have lots of great wisdom to share on so many, uh, on so many fronts.
Yeah. So really appreciate talking to you.
Gary Noesner: Okay, Zach, it’s a pleasure to speak with you today.
Zach: That was a talk with retired FBI hostage negotiator Gary Noesner, author of Stalling for Time. His website is at garynoesner.com.
I’m Zach Elwood and this has been the People Who Read People podcast. Learn more about this podcast at behavior-podcast.com. Send me a message with any interesting stories you have about reading people, whether that’s interpreting something they’ve said or something they’ve done in some practically useful way.
What actually makes negotiations work—and why do so many “tough” tactics backfire? In this episode, I talk with professional negotiator Andres Lares, of Shapiro Negotiations Institute, about why the most effective deals rarely come from winning at all costs. Drawing from sports contracts, Fortune 500 negotiations, and decades of real-world experience, Andres explains the “power of nice,” the importance of looking for creative win-win approaches, and why public posturing can kill agreements. He also digs into the hype around body language—what’s useful, what’s overblown, and what actually matters when you’re trying to read and influence people in the real world. Andres also talks about his views on AI-assisted sales-presentation-analysis programs (like Gong and Chorus). We also talk about the realism, or lack of it, in the movie Jerry McGuire. Andres is the CEO and Managing Partner of Shapiro Negotiations Institute and the co-author of “Persuade: The 4-Step Process to Influence People and Decisions.”
Topics discussed: the role of reading body language in negotiations; the role of adjusting one’s own behavior to influence others; the downsides and self-harm that can result from highly aggressive, win-at-all-costs approaches to negotiation; the so-called “power of nice” in negotiations, a principle which Shapiro Negotiations Institute is founded upon; sports contracts and negotiations; lesser known tactics in negotiations; the benefits of negotiating away from the public eye; the optimal amount of eye contact; and more topics.
TRANSCRIPT
(Transcripts are generated automatically and will contain errors.)
Zach Elwood: Say somebody was asking you to come up with a, a training, like a hundred hour training on negotiations, you know, what, what percentage of the time would you actually, uh, include like reading body language in the, in the training? Because I, I, I would guess like zero, but I’m, I’m, I’m curious what you would say that.
Andres Lares: Well, I mean a hundred hours is a long time, so I’d probably put it, you know, two to five hours type of thing. So a very minor amount. I think it’s an amazing question. ’cause it’s opportunity cost, right? Mm-hmm. If I’m covering behavior and body language, I’m not covering something else. Right. So I like that, where you’re forced to kind of make the trade offs. So the one other thing I would say is if this was a class for a very entry level, zero, absolute zero. If this was a class for very advanced, it would grow.
Zach: That was Andres Lares, a professional negotiator and the CEO of Shapiro Negotiations Institute. He’s also the coauthor of a book titled “Persuade: The 4-Step Process to Influence People and Decisions.”
As you may know if you’ve listened to this podcast in the past, I’m interested in practical applications of reading and using behavior, and I’m interested in conflict dynamics. Negotiation is an area that involves both of these topics, so I’ve been interested in talking to a professional negotiator for a while. I’ll also say that next week I’ll be talking to the well known FBI hostage negotiator Gary Noesner, author of Stalling for Time, so that will be another episode focused on negotiations in more volatile, chaotic situations.
If you appreciate the work I do with this podcast, please give me a subscribe on youtube or Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. The more subscribes and listens and episode shares I get, the more i’m motivated to keep doing this podcast.
Topics Andres and I discuss in this talk include: the role of reading body language in negotiations; the role of adjusting one’s own behavior to influence others; the downsides and self-harm that can result from highly aggressive, win-at-all-costs approaches to negotiation; the so-called “power of nice” in negotiations, a principle which Shapiro Negotiations Institute is founded upon; sports contracts and negotiations; how realistic the movie Jerry McGuire was; lesser known tactics in negotiations; the benefits of negotiating away from the public eye; the optimal amount of eye contact; and more topics.
Along the way, Andres includes some negotiation examples and anecdotes from his career.
If you’re interested in jumping to the behavior-related discussion, that starts at about 30 minutes into this episode.
A bit more about Andres’ career, taken from the Shapiro Negotiations Institute website:
Andres’ expertise is in deal coaching live negotiations, and has focused on sports clients such as the San Antonio Spurs, Cleveland Indians, Cleveland Browns, Milwaukee Brewers, Oklahoma City Thunder, and Brooklyn Nets. He also works in several capacities with clients across a wide range of industries.
Andres has guest lectured on the topic of negotiation and influencing at various universities and conferences including Ohio University, University of Baltimore, University of Maryland, Queen’s University, University of Iowa, and the National Sports Forum. He annually teaches a highly sought after course on Sports Negotiation at Johns Hopkins University.
Okay here’s the talk with Andres Lares:
Zach: Hi Andres, thanks for joining me.
Andres: Thanks for having me.
Excited to chat today.
Zach: So maybe we could talk first about what your, uh, what the day-to-day, uh, work is like at, uh, SNI. What kind of projects do you all generally work on, if you’d care to share that.
Andres: Yeah, for sure. So we are a global negotiation influence training company. So, um, this is a little bit of everything, but I would say most projects for us are a usually kind of Fortune 5,000 type of company.
A larger enterprise company comes to us and says, Hey. Um, whether it’s our sales team, our procurement team, or project managers or leaders need to improve their negotiation, influencing skills, or there’s, uh, there’s a specific challenge around negotiations or influencing, and so that’s really what we’re trying to address.
So sometimes it’s at the leadership level and it’s kind small scale, very deep. Sometimes it’s that, you know, sales and procurement that can be very large organizations within, uh, within a company. And so, uh, that’s really kind of for the most part the, the work that we’re doing. And it’s typically global.
So the global work is, uh, we train in seven languages. And so I think that’s one of the reasons we’ve gravitated towards more the enterprise. Not that that’s all we train, but the enterprise is because we are, uh, you know, typically able to kind of compliment those, those needs.
Zach: I know, uh, Ron Shapiro, uh, the, the founder of s and i got a start with a focus in sports athlete, uh, negotiations.
Is that still a big focus or, or not so much these days?
Andres: It is. So the, you know, what’s interesting about it? So, uh, Ron is, uh, is still with us and kind of an advisor of the firm. So he ran the company for the first, uh, 23 years. And then about seven, eight years ago, uh, we took over. Uh, so, uh, my partner, Jeff and I have been there already for, for many years.
In my case, seven or eight in his case, right? 15. And we took over. And so it’s continued very much in the same way it was functioning for the first 22 or 23 years. It’s become a little more global. That piece of it has expanded some, but, but the sports, and I mean a couple things. One is the, um, kind of power nice mentality and we could talk more about that.
Today is still very much the case. And then, uh, the other piece of it, it’s the sports kind of evolution and, you know, kind of, um, that aspect is, is still very much involved in that. Uh, we will help teams negotiate player contracts and large sponsorship negotiations across mainly the four major sports in the US We’re doing a little bit now in, in soccer, whereas as the rest of the world calls it football.
But, uh, the biggest and really kind of the focus of the four major sports. That still remains. But the one thing I find very interesting is, you know, we think of sports teams. They sell for a lot of money. I mean, the Lakers were valued at $10 billion recently in a, in a sale. But they’re actually really kinda small businesses in terms of revenues, right?
And so the valuations are very large for, for lots of reasons. But, um, and we could talk about supply and demand and why that’s the case, but in terms of business size and, and sheer, you know, straight revenues and p and l, they’re not really, you know, anywhere near the size of a Fortune 500 might be. So, interestingly enough, the bigger growth comes from the non-sports side because those companies are so much bigger
Zach: besides, uh, sports, uh, um, sports athletes, do you, do you do, uh, deal with a lot of other personal, uh, contract, uh, career contract, uh, assignments in general?
Andres: So not really because we are exclusively really a B2B company.
Zach: Mm.
Andres: So, and as a, so as a matter of fact, what makes us unique is that we are not doing the, you know, the agreement, the negotiation is only happening from the teams that we’re advising them. We are not representing players. So, and my background, and certainly Ron’s background, uh, he was a very, very successful sports agent for many years.
And, and I, uh, did a little bit of stint, uh, working at a few different agencies as well. But this is all on the team side. And so,
Zach: ah,
Andres: it’s all entirely B2B. So we’re coming into a company to train them. We’re helping a team do these, but, uh, we’re never kind of doing the one-off, Hey, can you help me with this agreement or that agreement?
I see the closest, closest will come is, might be, uh, an m and a, for example, where someone’s buying a company and it’s a very large transaction. We may advise on that project, but that’s realistically closer to the B2B than it is the B2C.
Zach: How realistic was Jerry McGuire?
Andres: So, um, I think there’s some pieces realistic. I think so. Um, I was just saying this the other day. So I, I worked with and for, uh, three or four agents in my time before kinda doing this and transitioning to the team side and, uh, and this kind of work and the, they were very, very good people that cared about their clients that, uh, in my opinion, negotiated the right way.
Like they, they really were standup in many ways. And so, um, I think. Jim McGuire, I don’t think positions agents necessarily as bad people, and there’s, they have kinda a bad reputation, but I think, so that piece of it, if, if anything, the fact that he cares so much, I think that’s a really good representation because I think the best agents really are like that.
Um, and the wheeling and dealing, I, I think, is, is pretty accurate in the sense that, you know, if you’re working in this space, if you think about it, you know, an athlete that you might be representing if you’re an agent is 19 years old and signs a 50, a hundred million dollars contract. I mean, that’s more money than most people know what to do with.
And if you’re 17, 18, 19, 20 years old, you know, that’s life changing. And, you know, all of those things I think are pretty accurately portrayed in the sense that, you know, it, it, there’s just so much going on beyond just kind of the on the field performance, right? These are people, right? It’s not like you’re making a manufacturing a widget, and that’s what the product is.
In this case it’s people. And so whether they, you know, break up with their spouse or having trouble with their dad or sister passed away or whatever it may be, all these things affect them. And so I think some of those things are captured very well in, in Jerry McGuire. For both the agent and the players.
Zach: Yeah. I imagine it’s like a lot of movies that probably, um, over exaggerated the, uh, you know, it kind of painted him as like the only person that cares and everybody else’s, you know, out for, uh, you know, very pessimistic, cynical reasons. And I imagine it’s not nearly that, uh, cynical as a whole industry.
Yeah,
Andres: it probably not bad, but I would say, you know, it’s a little bit like, um, you know, used car sales I think fits in that category and people think of kind of these areas where, and I, I think part of that’s because there’s not a ton of regulation. I mean, there’s more and more depending on the leagues, right?
The NFL is more regulation than other, for example. So being an NFL agent, I believe you have to have a graduate degree. And there’s some kinda restrictions that, so, you know, the more regulation there is, the harder it is to get into the, you know, that I think that typically will filter out, um, some of the less serious people.
Um, but it, the, the, the part that you can’t strip away, there’s a little bit of this in the movie that is, is really kind of. So unique to it is that the constant poaching of their athletes. And so if Zach is representing Player X and Player X is a great player and he’s up for a contract renewal extension, it’s those kind of things that really, it’s like, it’s nonstop.
It’s in the locker room and it’s indirect. And then like it’s, then you’ve got, you know, it’s essentially tampering of all sorts happening throughout the life of the contract. And so that’s constant. So you never know if you’re gonna keep your athlete. And so then that also means the agent is sometimes incentivized to do things to keep the client more than what’s best for the client.
And so that’s the one thing I would say that I bring that up. ’cause that’s from an economics perspective, I think the incentives are not always aligned and, and that’s just the realities of the business and that’s the piece that I think makes it very complicated.
Zach: Mm-hmm.
Andres: Or one of the pieces.
Zach: Yeah. Thanks for that.
Um, do you have certain stories, anecdotes, that stand out from, uh, negotiations you’ve worked on that you’re especially proud of or that stood out as being especially interesting you’d care to share?
Andres: So I’m proud of, I think, uh, you know, I think the, we talked a little bit about how the power of Nice, so the power of NICE is the, is the book, it’s really kinda the basis for this company.
So the first version was written by Ron, you know, uh, 25 years ago. And it’s been a couple of editions ever since. But really that’s the core of kind of the philosophy that we teach. And so I think for us, any of the proud stories are based around coming to an agreement that’s maximizing the objectives that you have, but at least satisfying the other party.
And so I think, um, one memorable, and for me is the first thing that I did when I came to us, and I actually, the reason I I came to us and I about 15, 16 years ago was that, uh, so Ron was the agent for Joe Mauer. And Joe Mauer is, is an incredible person, an incredible athlete. I mean, he was the Gatorade all American football player and he was the number one pick in the major league baseball draft.
So that tells you what kind of athlete he is. And what made him I think, really special was he was a Minnesota kid. Who got drafted first overall by the Minnesota Twins. And so Ron represented him. And, and so that’s kind of why I came to, to assist. Um, that was my, my first project really. And it was about how unique he wanted to stay in Minnesota and would be willing to take less and want to kind of leave the twins as much room as possible to build a championship team around him.
But he also wanted to be paid fairly. And so that negotiation where it was about maximizing what his total compensation was, but it was trying to do it in a way that was, that was not the only objective, very important to him, was staying there. If he could, he could, he could have gotten more from going to Boston or going to New York, for example.
And so I think that was very successful in the sense that, you know, his many generations set up, so he ended up doing an 8 million or eight a year, $184 million contract. That’s a lot of money. I think it was the second largest or third largest at the time. But he stayed in Minnesota in a way that was.
Feasible for the club to continue to function, right? They didn’t destroy the club and make them totally not competitive. And unfortunately he ended up having some injury trouble and in particular, being a roo, I guess, you know, sadly kind of what happens, but that’s just one example for me. And that was one that kicked things off here where it was so refreshing to see an athlete that wasn’t just like, I wanna get paid the absolute most amount of money.
And the reality is that’s pretty common. I think they wanna make the as much money as possible. That’s usually not the only thing they care about.
Zach: Mm-hmm. Yeah, the, uh, I read the power of Nice and I really like the points about, um, coming up with creative solutions that meet both sides, uh, desires and, and goals.
And I think, uh, Ron made very good case in there for how often we instinctively see a negotiation situation or a conflict situation. As, you know, somebody’s gonna win it. Somebody’s gonna lose it. And that’s kind of an instinctual in us, an instinctual way to see things often. And he, he made some good points about how so many times there’s more creative ways to look at things and parse who gets what and including, you know, non-financial aspects of the agreement.
Um, would you care to talk more about that? Because I, I think, I think that’s such an important point, not just for negotiations, but for, you know, any kind of conflict situation in general, you know?
Andres: Yeah. It’s, um, you know, I think, uh, that’s very much kind of in that power of, of nice philosophy in that you’ve really gotta be, I mean, it comes from an emotional intelligence perspective, right?
It’s, you’ve gotta understand what the ascent cares about and part of your objective would, would be to do that. And so earlier when I said, we’re really a B2B company, right? We’re trying, it’s B2B negotiations, and that means, uh, outta sports, right? If you’re a procurement agent at a large aerospace company.
Or you’re a sales person at a tech company. I mean, the selling of something or the buying of something or all of these deals are the beginning or the extension of a relationship. So it just doesn’t go away, right? If you land a hundred million dollars deal, if you’re selling for a tech company, or you land a airplane part that you’re buying $50 million worth of for the next five years, that’s the beginning of the extension of the relationship.
And so this concept that you’re gonna do whatever it takes to maximize at all costs, doesn’t set you up well for the life of a deal. And then certainly not the renewal. And I think that kind of mentality. And so, you know, one of the best examples I think of very simple one, and, and Ron talks about it in, in, in one of his books, is he was a, he was brought in to help, um, settle a kind of a, a dispute and mediate a little bit.
So I mentioned, you know, we, we typically don’t do that, but there’s some exception, and this was one of them that for pro bono, he was helping settle a dispute. Were a concert master who, I didn’t know this at the time, but it’s kind of the, the second position in an orchestra, right? The concept master was world class.
And what he wanted a increase in pay because his pay was not, was, um, not relatively, not, um, kind of up to par with other concept masters and other similar orchestras. And so they were at an impasse because there’s a pay scale that you have within an orchestra that’s, uh, collective, you know, kind of, it’s a, almost an equivalent of A CBA at the time.
This was some years ago. And so you’re, it’s collectively bound. You can’t, or collectively bargaining bound, and so you can’t really just pay whatever you want. There’s, there’s kind of max and minimums and things like that. And so they were an impasse because the orchestra would’ve been willing to pay more but couldn’t pay more.
And, but that they really weren’t providing anything to the concert master. And so what I loved about it is really the, the way that Ron found a solution was that he kind of pulled away from it all and met first with the concert master and then met second with the orchestra leader, completely separate.
It was not about the negotiation, it was not about the pay, it was not about the precedence. It was just about what they’re looking to accomplish. And when he realized very quickly that the concert master loves the orchestra, wants to continue to be a part of it, but just wants to be really appreciated.
And once he realized that the orchestra really appreciated the concept master and they thought it would’ve been worth the increase in pay, but just couldn’t do it because of the restrictions, it, the solution was easy and anyone could come up with it, right? The solution was they could use points on the credit card to upgrade into first class when they travel.
They could give ’em a bigger office there. They could, you know, do a piece in every one of the shows that would give, uh, you know, appreciation and recognition to the concept master. And really you could kind of separate him in a way where it still didn’t kind of break the rules. And so the solution itself is very simple that anyone come up with.
But the way he got there where he just kind of pulled everything away for a second and said, okay, why is this happening? Like, why aren’t you paying him more? Oh, we are, we’re trying to, you know, and then all those explanations, they’re really getting at the root interest. And so,
Zach: mm-hmm.
Andres: To me, that’s the win-win, right?
You can overuse cliche, that’s where it’s at its core. It’s really understanding what are you trying to accomplish? What am I, and then finding a way to make it work and, and that change the perspective when you’re actually genuinely thinking about the other party.
Zach: And you touched on this briefly, but, uh, I really liked in Ron’s book also, the, yeah.
Focusing on, uh, the long-term aspect of, of doing these kinds of, working on these kinds of agreements and negotiations because, uh, so many people, it seems like so many people have this, uh, sense that you need to be really hard-edged and win at all costs to be a strong negotiator. But as Ron, you know, makes the points in his book, doing that too much.
Taking that approach will really burn so many bridges, and then people won’t want to deal with you. And, uh, you know, nobody wants to, nobody wants to make a deal with you. And, but in so many people’s, people’s mind, and he uses the example from the movie, wall Street, Gordon Gecko kind of mentality. And he makes it, you know, Ron makes a good case that in, in, in the real world, if you’re gonna be doing these things for a long time, there, there’s very big downsides to taking that kind of, you know, I’m gonna win every, everybody’s gonna lose approach.
And I’m curious if, uh, if any examples of that stand out for you in your career?
Andres: Yeah, I mean, uh, a couple quick ones. So one is in sports, I think, um, I like the sports example here because it’s a closed system. So if you look at the NBA, there’s only a certain number of teams. It’s called 30 teams. And so that means there’s only 30 general managers making decisions.
And so what you, what happens is you get general managers that, um. There is trust. So, um, they’re, they’re trusted general managers in the sense that if you have a conversation with ’em, it will not get out in the sense that you could talk about trade opportunities and you could have confidence that it won’t be elite and you have somewhere that’s not the case.
And so what’s interesting is I like that close system because there are teams that I can say, you know, based on experience with certainty that do not get called for trade opportunities, even when they would have a very good matching set of assets that would work for a trade because the other general managers in the league simply don’t trust them.
And that could be ’cause they’re very difficult to work with. It would take forever to get a deal done or that because they leak the news. And so what’s interesting is, I love that example ’cause it is very clearly detrimental that you are being difficult to deal with is costing you a potential trade opportunity.
Mm-hmm. So that’s one. And then at kind of the, you know, the non-sports world, if I think of companies that we haven’t done work with, ’cause it’s not a match, but for example, Walmart. Is known for really, really pressing its partners. We’ve had some clients that work with Walmart and, and struggle with some of those, those, those negotiations and they struggle with ’em because Walmart is, you know, to be able to provide a very low cost to their clients, they need to really squeeze every dollar they can and maximize on the, on the purchasing side.
And so there’s, we have some clients that just will not sell through Walmart, even though that would be a massive account versus, for example, you look at the same clients, and again, this is kind of secondhand more than anything, but with clients we work with closely, there’ll be some that, Costco, for example, is not like that.
They sell at very large scale, but they partner and they truly care about, and, and Costco has that reputation about caring about their partners or employees about everybody. And so they really care about it. So they’re not the type to say, okay, Zach, show me your p and l and I’m gonna drive you down so you’re making 5% profit on my deal.
And if you don’t do that, I’m not gonna work with you. The exact opposite, it’s, Hey, we wanna partner with you, we want this to work for you, we want this to work for us. And so. Um, and then, you know, if you go further down the chain, there is a a, there are a couple of negotiation training companies that still train that way.
And so, uh, do we think it works? No. But in a, in a good way, the market decides for itself, those companies train companies that we potentially would not be a good fit for because we just don’t believe in that philosophy. And equally, there’s, uh, quite a few, especially over the last few years, have come to us saying, look, that’s the way we negotiated.
That’s the way we were trained, but we just don’t believe in this anymore. We wanna move over to this more emotionally intelligent kind of relationship based approach. And so it’s been very successful for us, but I can say, you know, not everyone does it that way, so we don’t believe in it, but it’s, you know, it’s tough to say objectively it doesn’t work.
But certainly that would be our opinion on it.
Zach: Mm-hmm. And you touched on this a couple times already, but the, uh, Ron also talks about in his book, the, the Power of Nice. He talks about the strength of, uh, talking away from the public eye and having more. Private conversations, because often the, when you do something in public, people need to posture and need to, um, you know, try to win, uh, public favor and win the argument in the public eye.
So stepping out of the public eye can be very valuable, and he had some really good anecdotes about that in there. And I’m curious, you know, do you have any, uh, stories to share on, on, on that front?
Andres: Well, so, um, sometimes we get asked to do a little PR and interview on, um, negotiations, major League Baseball, when they’re doing their last CBA negotiation or, you know, um, steel workers or any, you know, auto workers, any of those kind of big unions as they, as they do it.
And one of the things we talk about is, is always that, that if it’s going to the public, then typically you’re in real trouble. Because if it’s going to the public, it’s signaling that there’s kind of a, a loss in confidence, right? And so if if Zach and I could work through it together, then we would work through it together.
It’s just easier. You start adding things outside of your control, these externalities. If you start bringing in public opinion. And, and so I think if you’re playing those games now, it’s, I, I get it, right? If, if Zach thinks that he can get a very significant public support and so he decides to play the game publicly, then all of a sudden there’s some leverage change.
But the question is, does that outweigh the loss and trust from the other party? And, and that’s, you know, that’s really the kind of the, the lubricant that makes it work, right? If, if a negotiation, if there’s, if there’s a lack of trust, there’s less sharing. If there’s less sharing, you’re able to reach less optimal agreements.
That, and that’s, that’s the one other thing about this too, is that it isn’t necessarily black, white people think, oh, the power of nice guys. So it’s, you know, we share everything we hope they share back. The reality is, there’s some things that we talk about in our training is that understanding you, you’re kind of prodding and you’re trying to share some information to see if the other side will share back.
And if you’re in one of these collaborative negotiations, which are optimal, you’re gonna get to the best place because you both share. So now you’re looking at a bigger pie that you can. But if the other side’s not playing along, then you can still be nice about it. But you’re certainly sharing less information, you’re adjusting your approach, and so then you’re really trying to focus more on how, where you divide the pie, not where you first grow the pie, then divide it, if that makes sense.
So it isn’t to say that you’re just kind of sharing information at all times, it being, you know, um, kind of negligent in that way of being unrealistic in that way. You do need to, there’s some things you do to feel out the other negotiator and decide how much you share and when to share and how much to collaborate.
Zach: Yeah. That the, uh, reminds me of, I was reading Gary Neer’s book, stalling for Time, which is he, he’s an ex FBI hostage negotiator, and he talks about the, uh, the, uh, the power, oh, what was it? The, uh, the power paradox or the paradox of power or something about where when you push other people that can result in them pushing you back.
And I think it seems like in a lot of negotiations, people don’t understand how that, that conflict can. If they don’t manage the, the, the relationship that can really end up hurting them in ways that they don’t foresee.
Andres: Well, one quick thing I would say about a, a real life example that I think, um, I’ll, I’ll say generally just, I’m not sure if I have the approval to say exactly what company, but it’s a very large aerospace company that reset us many years ago, maybe seven, eight years ago.
And they were able to do that. They were able to really leverage and press hard all of their suppliers because they were such a big buyer essentially, right? They, they really had the, the economies of scale there. And so everybody wanted to work with em ’cause they’re buying so much. And what they said years ago is they decided seven, eight years ago when they reached out, you know, if things start to change, if what we’ve noticed is if, um, if things change a little bit in one small situation, like, you know, you’re buying a lighting system for your airplanes and all of a sudden a couple of the other suppliers of lighting systems are no longer in business and we have to buy from them and then they get leverage.
They really are aggressive with us because they’re kind of trying to make up for all the leverage you’ve had over the years. And so what, which I give a lot of credit, the leadership for the procurement team said we can’t have the long term, it’s gonna be a liability.
Zach: Mm-hmm.
Andres: So before any major issues came up, they ended up changing the way they negotiate, where they’re much more thoughtful about what the other side needs to get out of it.
And they, they really changed the way they negotiate. Now, it’s not that all of a sudden, you know, they started paying 20% more across the board for products, but they would be thoughtful more about, if it’s a tiny company, are you really gonna press them on net 120 days or do you wanna make it net 30 so their business is in a better shape and so they’re able to supply you more effectively because, you know, net one 20 for a tiny company, you can afford it while they can’t.
And, and, you know, there’s many examples of that. And so what I found was incredible and, and this could be one of the other rewarding ones, when COVID hit and there was a lot of shortages they had. Now for three plus years been kind of adjusting the way they were perceived in the market and their relationships with partners.
And so they, in many cases, in most cases, were not getting squeezed back, kind of that payback for all the leverage, but other way around. And so I think that was the test case where two or three years later, you know, something could completely outside of expectation that anyone’s control tested whether they had to advance there or not.
And the answer was a, an absolute yes. Mm-hmm. So I think that was, uh, that was definitely kind of another proud example of this really working and, and being put to the test.
Zach: Mm-hmm. Uh, so you’re the co-author of a book called Persuade The Four Step Process to Influence People in Decisions. Would you care to talk about any, uh, principles from there, or principles outside of that book, uh, that you think might be lesser known that apply to negotiations?
Andres: So, um, I think the, the one that makes the most sense is talk about kind of the four step process that we really outline the book. That’s kind of the basis for the. And I would say this is not completely novel. And, and actually very openly, we talk about how this comes from Aristotle. And so I would, you know, it’s, it’s impossible not to give Aristotle credit for this.
Zach: A note here. Andres talked here about the concepts in his book. To reduce the length of the episode a bit, I’ll summarize the points Andres talked about. Drawing on Aristotle’s classic framework of ethos, pathos, and logos, Andres explains persuasion as a four-step process. First is credibility: if people don’t see you as credible, nothing else matters. Second is emotion: people make decisions emotionally and only later justify them with logic, which is why factors like scarcity, reciprocity, and obligation are so powerful. Third comes logic, which helps people rationalize and defend a decision—often most effectively through clear stories rather than abstract arguments. Finally, Andres adds a fourth step Aristotle didn’t formalize: facilitating action. This means reducing friction and perceived risk—through guarantees, options, or flexibility—so that saying yes feels safer and easier. Together, these four steps explain how influence actually works in real-world decisions. Okay back to the talk.
Zach: So, uh, as, as you know, I, for this podcast, I sometimes get into, um, behavior reading people type topics, and one of my goals with this podcast, uh, occasional goals is to focus on real world practical, uh, impacts of reading and understanding behavior, whether that’s nonverbal behavior, verbal patterns, what have you.
Uh, so I’m curious to ask you, um, you know, obviously there’s a lot of exaggerated and just plain false information about behavior out there, including, you know, running the spectrum from like very. Irresponsible and just plain deceptive kind of behavior expert stuff to more credible, uh, applications. And so I’m curious, you know, what, in the realm of negotiation, um, how do you view, uh, reading behavior?
Do you see it as a highly important thing when it comes to reading nonverbal or facial expression things? Do you see it as a kind of a side thing that is occasionally use useful? Maybe you could talk about your, your view of that, that realm.
Andres: Yeah. I, I, so it’s a, it’s a fascinating area and one that we have spent a lot of time, especially more recently, over the last few years investigating.
So I think we lightly touched on that and maybe 5, 6, 7 years ago we started doing more and more. And, and certainly when we published the book, it’s, it’s a full chapter in the book and we’ve invested a lot of time and it’s a continued research because there’s just so much there. So, you know, our stance on it is that it is definitely a tool in the sense that.
There’s lots of tools you’re using when you’re influencing and negotiating and, and reading body language and, and behavior is important. I think what, what we find, and certainly we find the same thing, there’s a lot of, uh, you know, I would say kind of nonsense out there and it’s hard to separate the signal from the noise, but really it’s about consistency.
And so what I mean by that is generally, you know, there, there’s some behavior. For example, I think the average person would be able to look at a picture of me crossing my arms like this and say, that probably is a, is a bad sign, right? In the sense that it’s, it’s, it’s either neutral or negative. Let’s say they would say, and if we were having, if we were having a conversation at a networking event and I went from staring directly at you with my body position at you and I turned 45 degrees and I was continuing to talk, but I had my body now shifted away from you also probably either neutral or negative.
And then if I were, my hands were open and then my hands started to go towards kind of more of a clench fist. So you start to, those are objectively typically likely neutral or negative. But the concept that I have crossed my arms when we’re in a conversation does not mean and is actually very low probability.
It means I don’t like what Zach’s talking about. I am displeased with the question that he asked. If now you are doing multiple things together, if the rate of my voice, the tone of my voice, those could be too potential. Or I’m combining the clench fist and the crossed arms and the 45 degree away, or looking away more, or whatever it may be.
When there’s consistent multiple aspects that are doing the same thing, then you can read more into it. And so the idea is, I think ironically, while we have a chapter on it and we’re talking about some of these things, the arms crossed the face, all these things. It’s not so much about looking out for those.
’cause I think naturally we see those. It’s more about being thoughtful about, you need to see multiple things coming together because I could be crossing my arms because I’m cold and you, you overreact and change the subject and now start getting really sensitive about whether you think this is not resonating with me.
But the reality is, there’s nothing there not to mention that if you typically were a very strong communicator, you could ask something that would help, you know, give them an a chance and an out to change the topic of conversation, for example, and see if they take it or not. So it’s really kind of the, you wanna see the full body of work, what they’re saying, what they’re doing.
And one last thing I would say, and you know, curious your take as well is that this also falls under, so Dr. Mehrabian, A-U-C-L-A, uh, former professor there, um. We had something called the Mehrabian Law that a lot of people call it, which is that 93% of what you communicate is not the words that you say. So it’s the body language or the tone.
Now, um, we did some, we’ve done quite a bit of research on this, and I’m not sure that we’re finding the same 93%, but whether that is or is not, I think it is absolutely the case that what you say is a small part of whether it’s 7% or 20% of what you, and you know, how you say it, your body language, all those things are very, very important.
So even just shedding light on that is super, super important, I think for kind of the behavior, body language modeling, predicting, reading, all those things.
Zach: A quick note here: you’ve likely seen this kind of statistic that Andres is talking about; you can find alleged behavior “experts”, and other people just talking about behavior in passing, say things like that communication is anywhere from 70 something to 90 something nonverbal. This is just a pretty egregious misapplication and misinterpretation of what Mehrabian had studied and what he was talking about. Also the work he did could be criticized in various ways, also. Clearly our words convey a huge amount of meaning; if they didn’t, you wouldn’t be able to get much meaning from the words I’m speaking now. If you want to learn more about that, one good resource is checking out the Wikipedia for Albert Mehrabian and looking at the sections about misinterpretations and criticisms. Okay back to the talk.
Zach: These things can be hard to talk about in nuanced ways because it’s like a, you’ve got the, uh, I mean obviously there are obvious examples of people’s body language and facial expressions communicating information, right?
Like that’s, that’s true. We’re all aware of that every day ways that happen, uh, that happens. Then B, you’ve got the, the two separate areas of, you know, reading other people and making use of behavior. And then the area of like finessing and manipulating, uh, your own presentation to other people, which, you know, those can be seen as entirely different topics because you could be, you know, uh, adjusting your presentation even if you know that the things you do don’t necessarily mean much, but they might have an impact on other people.
Um, and then, yeah, so as I’ve told you, you know, to be transparent, people who listen to this, my podcast and I’ve told you my view is it’s actually when you look at, try to look at practical, real world examples of making use of other people, reading other people’s behavior. I find that it’s really hard to find really practical examples of how this plays out in, say, law enforcement or negotiation.
Because for example. Like, I, I think a lot of examples say you were in negotiation or similar situations. I think a lot of the examples you would find of say people like, you know, you reading someone for them, being upset about something, somebody said, I think in a lot of those examples, uh, they’re not actually trying to hide that, right?
Like they’re, they’re, they’re, uh, assuming they’re like pretty, pretty decent, uh, you know, fairly skilled people. I think a lot of the examples of them say, you know, rolling their eyes or getting a, you know, a tensed face, if they’re upset about something in a negotiation, they’re probably gonna say something about that.
So when it comes to like the practical uses of like when reading someone might actually sway your approach or decision, I think it’s hard to find many of those practical examples. And that’s not to say that it doesn’t happen because I think I, I think I’m pretty good at, you know, getting a sense of whether, you know, some, someone might be reacting in a, in a certain way to something somebody said.
But I think. Uh, and maybe, maybe there’s value to getting a sense of that earlier rather than later. Right. Uh, but I’m curious, you know, are, are there examples you can think of where reading somebody actually changed a, a, a major decision about how you approached a negotiation or, uh, you know, a text you, text you took?
Andres: So, um, this will be a, a kind of a crazy two very short stories that deviate us, but hopefully are, are interesting to think about for, for both us and for, you know, for listeners. But, so one is, if I look at, so we’ve got a, a deep bench of facilitators that are world class. So I do very limited facilitation because we have better than me, right?
So just, that’s the reality. You gotta be self-aware of what you’re particularly good at. So I do more of the advising and, and run the company. But there’s, you know, we have so many very skilled facilitators. So what I like to do from time to time is I’ll kind of, if, if I’m anywhere near them, I’ll go watch them do the training programs.
And it could be training programs of six people in a boardroom, or it could be, uh, a hundred people in a big conference for a couple hours. Or it could be a keynote for 2000 people. And what I will find is that our best facilitators are able to make some adjustments that the audience doesn’t realize took place.
But I do, because I know what the plan content was and what the plan was, and they make the adjustments based on reading the audience. They may cut a little bit of content ’cause they didn’t think it was resonating. They may speed something up or add something no one will ever know. And that is done entirely on kind of reading the room.
Right. And, and that is, and reading the room. And, and that is a hundred percent behavioral, like, or, uh, body language because mm-hmm. You know, while a few people may chime in, even our, our keynotes tend to be pretty interactive, but that’s getting a sampling of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 people out of, could be 20, a hundred, 500, a thousand, and.
So that is now in their case, I think there’s, some of it is natural and I think a lot of it is experience based. They’ve done
Zach: right.
Andres: A thousand presentations.
Zach: Right. They get a sense, they get a sense when people are like, uh, you know, starting to look at their watch or shuffling a bit more than usual or like looking
Andres: Exactly.
Zach: Looking
Andres: away and they catch it early.
Zach: Yeah.
Andres: And that’s the difference, right? I think, you know, so, uh, someone who’s not skilled would, would catch it towards the end and it’s kind of too late to shift. They are so skilled, they can catch it early, make the adjustment and do it so smoothly. No one even knows they made an adjustment.
So I would say there is definitely, and if you look at very, very good presenters like in front of a boardroom, they’re able to engage like, hmm, I think Zach’s gonna be a problem. And so they’ll engage Zach before he has shown almost to anybody else in the room that he’s gonna be a problem. That might be because.
Of some reactions that you’ve had. So I, I do think mm-hmm. There’s some of it there, but yeah, again, I, I think generally it’s overplayed. And then the other one, and
Zach: there’s a, there’s a map over to, you know, when I interviewed a jury, uh, consultant, there was some map over to that, you know, reading jurys reactions and which I, which I totally, you know, I for sure.
I, I agree. These things can, can, can play a role. Yeah.
Andres: And those are natural, right? I mean, if you think about, um, I can plan. Yes. I think something you said earlier I think is so important and we, we just, it has to be talked about again. Is that a good negotiator? A sophisticated negotiator will be responding with both what he says and his tone and his body language, right?
So we talk about a tactic might be the wi this is now an extreme, but I think it’s a good example that if we’re working through, and I’m expecting you to make a pitch and I’m hoping you pitch something at a hundred thousand dollars, right? You’re, let’s say you, you’re selling me something and I’m hoping the pitch will be at a hundred.
If you come in at 120. If I’m a sophisticated negotiator, not only when I say, well, that’s too high, right in the moment, I’m probably gonna flip and be like, Ooh, 120. And you know, your eyebrows are raised or something. Yeah, exactly. Eyebrows will raise and I’ll, I’ll lower, I’ll, my head will go backwards some, and my hands will open some and my eyes will open up.
And so, and that now part of that, some of that is natural, right? You were hoping for a hundred, it’s 120. It’s more than you thought, but you exaggerated some because you’re sophisticated and you thought about it beforehand. If they do, you know, if it’s more than 120, if it was more than 150, I might say there’s just no deal to be had here and walk away.
Now that might have been pre-planned, and if you’re sophisticated, you may do that. And so you know, then you’re reading into something. But that body language is really kind of the body of the work. It would’ve been the same if they had no body language. If you were just on a phone call and they said, wow, that’s crazy.
Because you can’t see the body language on a phone call, but because they’re aware of all the, you know, all it’s being communicated, they’re thoughtful about the body language along with the tone along what they say. So that’s that one. And then the last kind of crazy thought, if it’s worth thinking about is there was a, a former classmate of mine from many, many years ago ended up doing a bunch of research and I came across it some years later when they were doing I think their masters of PhD around DJs and they would also do the same thing if there’s some DJs that are particularly in tune with the audience and can change the, so the kinda the beats for a minute, the BPM of the songs they’re playing and adjust the style in order to engage more dancing.
So they would literally have, cameras would track how much dancing was occurring and you could track alcohol sales, these two factors that would say people were having a good time and they did a bunch of kinda experimentation and research and there was clearly some DJs that were more capable of adjusting to kind of that going downhill and then picking it back up and vice versa.
Things that they would be doing outside of the set that was predetermined. Mm-hmm. And so again, I think, and I know that is totally outside of the space we’re talking about in some ways, but I think exactly the space we’re talking about in others where that does have an impact. And, but you know, the million and dollar question is how much of it is nature versus nurture?
How much can be trained, how much is natural and Right. So that opens up a whole can of words, but I, I think it’s worth kind of being open to the fact that it can influence
mm-hmm.
Andres: And it can be improved, but I think we should be realistic with both of those.
Zach: Yeah. It’s tough to talk about because some people, you know, the, in a lot of discussions there can be this kind of like binary sense of like, you think it’s meaningful or it’s not.
And it, and it, the thing I try to focus on is like, well, no, I think it, it does play a role, but I also think like the amount of, there’s, there’s also really exaggerated, uh, a lot of exaggerated information about how big a role it plays. And I guess, you know, one way to, uh, and, and one way to ask the question to you is say you somebody.
Was asking you to come up with a, a training, like a hundred hour training on negotiations, you know, what, what percentage of the time would you actually, uh, include like reading body language in the, in the training? Because I, I, I would guess like zero, but I’m, I’m, I’m curious what you would say that.
Andres: Well, I mean a hundred hours a long time, so I’d probably put it, you know, two to five hours type of thing.
Um, oh yeah.
Zach: Okay.
Andres: And, you know, so very, very minor amount.
Zach: Mm-hmm.
Andres: Mm-hmm. You know, the biggest factor would be how much we do that. I think it’s an amazing question. ’cause it’s opportunity cost, right? Mm-hmm. If I’m covering behavior and b language, I’m not covering something else. Right. So I like that, where you’re forced to kind of make the trade offs.
Mm-hmm. So the one other thing I would say is if this was a class for a very entry level, zero
Zach: mm,
Andres: absolute zero.
Zach: Mm-hmm.
Andres: Mm-hmm. If this was a class for very advanced, it would grow.
Zach: Mm-hmm.
Andres: And, and I think it would grow because what I have found is when we do this type of work, the mere modules on body language.
Are, I find, increase the emotional intelligence of the participants.
Zach: Hmm.
Andres: So I, it’s, and, and one of the things that we’ve done, and actually is if I force you to try to look very carefully at what you’re doing with your eyebrows and your arms and your legs and, but in subtle things, you may never remember that and use that again, but I have seen for sure with confidence that you will always be more thoughtful of what the other side’s doing.
And there’s this level of authentic interest and what the other side is saying and how they’re saying it, that that in itself actually improves performance. Certainly I can say that with confidence and so Right.
Zach: Just
Andres: becoming aware
Zach: of it more.
Andres: Yeah. Knowing,
Zach: knowing it’s a dimension of
Andres: some sort.
Zach: Yeah.
Andres: What’s the, it’s like the, what was the main, the factory experiment where they said, Hey, we’re gonna watch you, and the performance went up and just because the mirror we’re gonna watch you, the performance went up. Right. And it had nothing to do with like the lightings that they were doing. And I forget there’s experiment that had that, and that’s kind of the example of that.
Zach: A quick note here: Andres response was interesting to me. It got me thinking about how i’d answer that question when it comes to poker. If you didn’t already know, i’m the author of some respected books on poker tells and behavior; that work is why i ended up creating this podcast. And my stance is that reading behaviors in game-scenarios is entirely different, and much more productive, than in non-game, real-world scenarios; simply due to non-game scenarios being so much more complex, and not involve discrete, granular goals and actions and such . But if someone asked me the same question; asked me to create a 100 hour training on teaching people poker, and decide much would I’d devote to teaching how to read people, i would say something similar here. I would say if it was an entirely amateur, never-played-poker-before audience, i would devote almost no time to reading behavior; i would probably devote maybe 1-2 hours to the concept, and I would mainly focus it on trying to make players more stoic and not give anything away, because trying to get beginner players to avoid common behavioral leaks is much more easy than it is to get them to successfully read and exploit other players’ behavior; there’d be too much opportunity cost to studying behavior much; the focus for beginning players would be almost entirely, like 98% strategy, if i were doing it. I think Andres might say something similar about this; if it were a class for people entirely new to negotiation, you might devote an hour or something to trying to get people to know the importance of being stoic and avoiding the more obvious leaks of thought and emotion ; making people aware of that dimension of information leakage would, on its own, make them more stoic and less likely to leak info.
And, similar to what Andres says here, if it were a more sophisticated, experienced class of poker players, i would devote a good amount more time to reading people and making use of tells; maybe that would be 5 hours of the 100 hour training, maybe a little more or a little less depending on how experienced they were. Like if they were highly experienced, that’s when i’d start devoting a lot more hours, because there’s less opportunity cost to not focusing on strategy, and also more experienced players will be in a better position to understand and make use of tells.
This goes along with my recommendations in my own poker tells products, where i make it clear to people they should only be thinking a lot about reading poker tells if they are already a strategically strong and quite experienced player.
Back to the talk…
Zach: I think another aspect that makes it hard to talk about you, you briefly touched on is, is like some people are just. I mean, maybe even most people are pretty good at picking up such things. But then I think you have a, a certain number of people that are just very bad at such things, which, and those are the people that are most likely to be like, oh, I found that training hugely valuable because they’re the people that are, you know, maybe, maybe even the minor percentage of people that are, that are just like, wouldn’t pick up cues that people are getting impatient in a room.
Whereas most people would pick that up pretty easily. So I think that also like muddies the, the field of like, and can help explain why some people will write reviews of such trainings or such books and be like, I found this all to be entirely common sense. And then other people would perceive the same training and be like, it helped me a lot.
Right. So it helps explain that, that range. And I, somebody pointed out to out to me recently a hedge fund, uh, a per person who works in hedge hedge funds in New York, who was saying, you know, we were talking about, uh, I was giving my usual spiel of like, you know, when people ask me. About reading behavior.
And the best, you know, best ways to, to use that in non-game real world scenario is I tend to say like, oh, I would, I wouldn’t focus on that. I would focus on logical deductions about what people say and, and things like this and, and actual logical approaches. But he was saying, well, maybe you undervalue behavior because it’s more intuitive to you.
So you see a lot of the stuff as common sense that other people wouldn’t see as common sense. And I thought that was a good point, and I think that helps explain those very different perceptions of, of the, of the trainings in that area.
Andres: Yeah, I mean, I think for all these soft skills, I think it gets exactly spot on where, you know, you may pick up on things that people don’t and vice versa.
They’re gonna pick up. Maybe it’s, you know, the tone or the approach or,
Zach: mm-hmm.
Andres: Yeah. And I think, you know, we can all think about that if you know a spouse or a friend where you might leave a party. And that certainly happened where it’s really interesting if my wife and I are on the ride back and we might talk about conversations that we are both in.
She’ll picked up on something like, oh, I wonder if this person’s doing okay. ’cause they seem like they were struggling, and I didn’t pick up on that. And she, and I’m like, well, you know, do you feel like he really likes his job because this? And she’s like, oh, like I didn’t get that sense either. It’s incredible that we’re in the same party potentially having in some of this exact same conversations.
Mm-hmm. But what we picked up on was, was different. And so I think that’s, um, and that’s, you know, that’s human nature. And that’s, I think that’s what makes this all very interesting. Right. If you know mm-hmm. If you’re robots, then this all goes away. Right. You just say what you mean. And, uh, it’s very direct and there’s none of this comes into play.
So that’s what makes it
Zach: interesting. Yeah. There are, there are such different skills we have, because, I mean, sometimes I’ll be completely blind to something and somebody will q cue me into some behavior related thing and I’m like, oh yeah, you’re right. How did I miss that, that, that that was some information.
And then. Other times, you know, other people are blind to things that I, I, I thought were very pertinent pieces of information. But yeah, so it is very interesting the different experiences and skills we all bring to the table. Yeah, yeah. Uh, I’m curious, in, in your book, uh, you talked about, uh, eye contact and how to approach it, and I’ll be transparent, and I’ve talked on this podcast about how I might be, you know, a bit on the autistic side.
I, I, I struggled with, I’ve always struggled with eye contact. It always seemed like something that came very naturally to other people that I had to really think about. Like, how much is too much, how much is too little? And you talk about that in your book, and I’m, I’m curious, is that something, uh, you, you train people on is, is thinking about eye contact and do some people have a, you know, are, are some people maybe more like me and need more, uh, conscious thought about how to approach those things when it comes to negotiations?
Andres: This fits into that category where we’re. We are trying to push them to think about it more than we are training them to do it. Because I think there’s gotta be a level of authenticity that mm-hmm. If you’re feeling very uncomfortable eye contact, we’re gonna have to push you somewhat outside of your comfort zone where you’re gonna have to do some of it.
Zach: Mm-hmm.
Andres: Otherwise, I mean, there’s definitely research to indicate, so this is, this could open up a can of worms, but there’s a lot of AI systems that, uh, do a lot of analysis of everything we’ve just talked about. Right. So like, you’re doing a video role play and the system will, uh, or it could be a real sales call that was recorded and it’ll analyze everything.
And I love it because it brings attention to this. I hate it because. We have so much research to indicate that we’ve done firsthand or secondhand, that there’s absolutely, you cannot say Zach, 70% eye contact is best at all times. You should do that. I mean, that’s,
Zach: yeah.
Andres: So
Zach: you’re saying, you’re saying these, you’re saying these, these people might not know there, there are these programs that are analyzing behavior, including eye contact and eye direction and such,
Andres: and it would tell you after the fact.
So for example, if you know, and, and what happens is, what I love about it’s, we will come into an organization that says, okay, we want you to train our salespeople to negotiate, and there’ll be 500 sellers and they’re using some of these programs that review all of their video calls they have with clients and it’ll give ’em coaching.
So what I love about it is you’re getting objective coaching in the sense that it is data-driven. Right. It’ll say, for example, definitely if I, if I were to review, so after we do training, sometimes we’ll do kind of coaching in small groups. And if I were to review one and I said, Zach, you talked 77% of the time of the sales call.
I can say with 99% certainty, without looking even more to the sales call, that’s probably not good.
Zach: Mm-hmm.
Andres: You should not be doing all the talking for yourself and, and if you’re negotiating on something, it just, that’s counterproductive. Right. You’re missing on so much information, engagement, all these things.
And then I would look, how many questions did you ask? Have the answers to, again, two and 45 minutes. Probably not good either. So that there is objectivity there and, and what I like about is it the application does it or many of, ’cause there’s quite a few do a very good job of that.
Zach: Hmm.
Andres: What I don’t like is they go a lot step further and they say, well, Zach, your eye contact on the screen in the sense that like where you were looking away or whatever it may be was 25% and you really gotta get it to 75% when you’re talking.
And so conceptually I appreciate the value of eye contact in that again, objectively. Eye content is important. If you totally don’t look at someone in the eyes at all, they’re gonna think you’re lying. There’s plenty of evidence that they keep there. Right. There’s a perception
Zach: even if it’s not true. Yeah,
Andres: exactly.
You to,
Zach: you have to think about perceptions even if it’s not
Andres: true. Exactly. And so, so yes, being aware of that, but to say that on every sales call you should be looking 70%, that is, that is such a overgeneralization without kind of understanding context. That, and, and that’s a bit of the concerning part for me, where it’s like we’re just kind of telling people this is a fact when, when it’s not.
And so that’s the eye, like eye contact for me. So people to understand. And so we might show ’em a video or I might do it with ’em and a role play up front where they don’t know I’m doing this, but I’d be talking to ’em and I’d say, you know, and so I’d say, what’s your confidence in me right now? I’m looking down the entire time I looked it up at you for two seconds.
Out of the 45 second role play. What’s your confidence? And everyone in the room is naturally, it just comes out. They’re gonna say, you know, two outta 10, they’re gonna rate it.
Zach: Yeah, you’re
Andres: shady. I got the next one. I’m gonna look at you quite a bit. Not ridiculous, not a hundred percent, but most of the time.
I’m gonna increase the confidence in my tone in my voice. Now what’s your confidence in me? They’re gonna say, okay, eight outta 10. Okay, well, so eye contact matters, but to say that it’s gotta be 70% when you’re talking, um, I think it’s kinda like listening. I mean there’s gotta be a genuine
Zach: Yeah.
Andres: Authenticity. Be authentic to you. Exactly. Yeah. It’s gotta be authenticity and there’s gonna be a general interest and yeah, you might have to remind someone they have to look at it a little bit more, but, but that’s really kind of the, the box in which we operate.
Zach: Well, now you’ve got me, uh, this is opening up a whole new area of interest.
Can you name a few of the products that do this kind of analysis? I wasn’t really aware of these things.
Andres: Yeah, yeah. So, uh, a couple. So Gong, it’s gong.io and then Chorus is another one. There’s quite a few.
Zach: Hmm.
Andres: So, and what’s interesting, so for, for us this is, is we’ve got a bunch of patents pending in this space because we have our own video role play apps.
And that’s what we differ from ev, almost everyone I’ve seen in the market, which is I want the objective things like, I want your speech pace because I wanna be able to talk about that.
Zach: Mm-hmm.
Andres: I want your tone because there’s some aspects of that that are completely objective. I want how much you spoke, how many questions you asked, all of those things.
How long were the times you spoke in a row versus interruptions from the other party. All of those things. How many ums you used. Okay. Those are all objective that you can review and potentially you could with a coach or by yourself, improve on.
Zach: Mm-hmm.
Andres: Mm-hmm. What we don’t wanna do and stay away from is some of these things that are just gonna, like I said, you know, it’s gotta be 70% eye contact.
You have to ask five questions per hour.
Zach: Right?
Andres: Right. And so that depends. This is a first call, a discovery call. You should probably ask 10, if this is a closing conversation, it’s 10 minutes. You may not want to ask any ’cause you want to come, come off as like. You know, there, there may, it depends on Myra, your strategy.
I can’t tell you how many questions you should ask if I don’t know your strategy. Right. And so that’s kind of where I’ve become, you know, um, hesitant to
Zach: Yeah, that
Andres: portion.
Zach: I mean, that’s what get gets me about some of the, you know, the, the behavior experts who try to coach people in presentations. Like I, I, I understand it is important as you, as you say, there’s, there’s nuance in terms of, uh, adjusting, trying to manipulate perceptions is important because whether it’s, whether the presentations are true or, or not, the perceptions are real.
But then if you, yeah, like you say, if you, if you lean too much into do this, do that, do this, but in some sort of rote way, you end up creating, you know, like an army of all the same people who might come across as inauthentic because it, they’re just like doing these. Behavioral things that, uh, you know, there, there’s, there’s, there’s like the risk of coming across like some, you know, the stereotypical used car salesman, like full of confidence and, you know, trying to, trying to manage you.
And, and people can shy away from that. So you want to, you want to have some level of authenticity and comfort in your shoes and not come across as somebody who’s managing perceptions too much. Yeah.
Andres: And one last thing I would say about this in a little bit related is that one of the fa fa or favorite programs that I have, and I mentioned I don’t typically teach much, but there’s a two person, so there’s two facilitators we do for kind of the larger, uh, advisory accounting, you know, the big four type of, of companies.
And so we’ll, with a partner or director, they’re, they’re very seasoned and we do some role playing with them on camera and then they get coached.
Zach: Hmm.
Andres: And one of the reasons we, we, I, I, I particularly enjoy this one from time to time, I’ll just do it to kind of stay sharp, is that the coaching isn’t. Zach, why’d you do this, Zach?
Why’d you do that? The coaching is entirely based on what was your intent and did you accomplish it? And it changes the way they see it, right? Like they’ll start off a meeting with something negative or positive. And so then the question is, why did you do that? What was your intent there? Now sometimes they’ll say, here’s why.
And so whether it worked or didn’t work, then it’s about execution. But sometimes it’s, I, I didn’t have an intent there. I that just kind of came out naturally. It’s like, well, then probably we should think about how we start our meetings because you kind of directed down this path that you never got away from in the entire meeting in this role play, and you went down that path.
So if you did it intentionally, and then whether it worked or didn’t work is one thing, but if you didn’t do it intentionally, it just, it just was happening then that is the first learning is there’s gotta be a, you know, you, you have to understand that this has an impact or the way you open a meeting, right?
If I were to say, you know, Zach, these are the three things we disagree on. I want to meet with you today to make sure we can figure out all three. That is a very different tone. If I were to say, Hey, Zach, I love that we’re on the same page about working together, and out of the 57 things we’ve agreed on all but three, which is awesome.
Mm-hmm. And so what I wanna do is just work on these last three things. Mm-hmm. That is a completely different opening that will lead to a complete different meeting. Mm-hmm. And I can tell you that for sure, being, advising a lot of these and doing role plays with, you know, real, these negotiations that are kind of based on real negotiations that occurred.
And so that’s the piece that I find very interesting is, so with them it’s about intent and execution of the intent. And so that’s why some of these apps can’t tell you whether that’s right or wrong because it doesn’t know what you were trying to do. It can tell you whether, you know, it was effectively done, but the reality is you don’t know what the intent was.
So I, that’s the context with, I think it has to be seen. Mm-hmm. Now, obviously if some things are totally wrong, right? If, if I, and we could go into those, but that, that’s, those are typically, especially at a partner director level of big four, they’re not gonna be that common. They’re not making atrocious, you know, obvious mistakes generally.
Zach: Um, yeah, this has been great. Andres, uh, do you, before we go, do you have any more, uh, stories, anecdotes that come to mind related to reading, opponent behaviors in a negotiation setting? Or, or anything? Anything come to mind there?
Andres: Not, not that I can think of. Okay.
Zach: Not,
Andres: not
Zach: sure
Andres: was worth sharing.
Zach: Okay, cool.
Uh, I think we’re good. Yeah. This, this has been great. I really appreciate you coming on and talking about some of these things and, and more nuance than I, you know, than I think is often talked about. I thought it was a great talk.
Andres: Same. I mean, it’s, it’s a pleasure. I think, uh, as I mentioned, I think we’ve put a lot more time and effort into research in this and, um, and, you know, it’s interesting to me personally, it’s certainly interesting to us and I professionally, um, so yeah, I mean it’s, it was a, it was a very interesting conversation that I think kinda inspires me to continue to, to look into this and the way the word used early was practical, and certainly that’s the piece, right?
It’s like. All this research then has to go into something that’s practical, whether it’s practical guidance of what to do, what not to do, what to be aware of or, or whatever it may be.
A talk with Eric Robinson, a recently retired Federal Bureau of Investigation agent and former pastor, about what actually works in real-world interrogations—and what doesn’t. Eric is the author of a soon-to-be-published book with the working title Irreverend: From Saving Souls To Chasing Sinners In The FBI. Drawing on 24 years in the FBI, in this talk Eric explains why techniques like friendliness and rapport are so powerful, discusses the use of silence to induce information-sharing, and talks about the importance of asking only a single question at a time. Eric also explains why he thinks nonverbal “body language” cues are not useful in law enforcement and interrogation settings. Other topics include: the reasons why so many people talk at length to police, despite it being so well known that you should ask for a lawyer; the downsides and risks of deceiving people to try to get information and confessions; some body language ideas discussed in Joe Navarro’s books; Eric’s opinions on the lie detector; and more.
(Transcripts are generated automatically and will contain errors.)
Eric Robinson: The one that I learned along the way, coming from a young agent and then seeing how interrogations go, was not to interrupt silence….I found that asking a question and then just sitting. it feels awkward… And then I realized. Oh, if I feel bad, this guy’s gonna feel terrible… Oh, that’s great. Let’s use that. And so I would just sit there because the question remains. I asked you when was the first time that you met the victim? You’re sitting, you’re sitting, you’re sitting, and I’m sitting, I’m sitting. Mm-hmm. And you have to do something with that question…
Zach Elwood: That was Eric Robinson, a recently retired FBI agent, talking about some interrogation strategies he’s found effective. Eric is the author of a book that will be published later this year about his career in the FBI, which has the working title Irreverend: From Saving Souls To Chasing Sinners In The FBI. The title Irreverend is a play off the word irreverent, and is making reference to Eric’s career as a pastor prior to joining the FBI. The book was a good read, full of many stories, some disturbing and some funny, and all of them interesting. When the book comes out, I’ll be sure to mention it on this podcast.
I learned about Eric when I was talking to his wife, Becky Robinson, who has a marketing company called Weaving Influence and who I was consulting for help on promoting my books. Becky also happens to be a co-author of the book Beyond the Politics of Contempt, whose other co-authors, Doug and Beth, I recently interviewed for this podcast. Becky mentioned her husband was retiring from the FBI and had written a book, and here we are.
Topics we discuss include:
The differences between FBI work and general law enforcement work
What Eric has found most useful when it comes to interrogations and information-gathering
The importance of asking one question at a time, and avoiding multiple questions
The importance of being friendly and non-threatening in maximizing the chances people will talk to you
The reasons why so many people talk at length to police, despite it being so well known that you should ask for a lawyer
The reasons why Eric sees very little use for reading and analyzing nonverbal behavior in law enforcement and interrogation work
The downsides and risks of deceiving people to try to get information and confessions
The usefulness of the lie detector
Along the way, Eric discusses several interesting scenarios from his career.
We spend a good amount of time here talking about nonverbal behavior and the difficulty of getting practical use out of that in real-world, high-stakes scenarios. I’m going to be focusing on this for the podcast in upcoming episodes, so if this interests you, please hit Subscribe where you listen to this. I’ll be talking to a former CIA operative about nonverbal behavior, another FBI agent who is quite well known, a professional negotiator, and more.
Here’s a bit more about Eric’s career:
He spent a dozen years in Christian ministry, and that included pastoring a Baptist church in Western New York. In 2002, he changed careers to join the FBI, where he served for 24 years, investigating drugs, gangs, crimes against children, organized crime, and counterterrorism, among others. Eric was a firearms instructor, tactical instructor, fit instructor, and spent 15 years as a SWAT operator and Breacher. Married to his wife, Becky for 33 years, they have three children and reside in SE Michigan.
Ok, here’s the talk with Eric Robinson:
Zach: Hi Eric. Thanks for joining me.
Eric: Pleasure to be here.
Zach: Yeah, I really enjoyed your book, uh, found it very enjoyable. Read lots of interesting stories and observations from your career. Maybe you could talk a little bit about what led to you wanting to write that book, write that book. What was that journey like?
Eric: Sure. I am a week into retirement after 24 years in the FBI and was looking to consider what’s next in my life. My wife Becky, who runs a marketing and publishing company said, you should write a book. And I said, absolutely. But, uh, after all these years, I’d never written down anecdotes or stories. Always had wanted to do that.
And so Becky gave me a book that said, well, here’s how you write a book. And I read it and one of the things suggested is. Probably to plot things out first. So I sat down at the computer to plot out what a book might look like and thought, well, let me, let me, let me start with the beginning and just went from there.
So I didn’t end up graphing it out, I just started typing.
Zach: Mm-hmm.
Eric: And literally it, the, the base of it was five weekends and I would spend all day typing and I’d tell Becky, oh, I’m at 10,000 words. And she’d say, how are you at 10,000 words? I said, I don’t know. It’s just coming.
Zach: And yeah, the stories are just flowing.
Right?
Eric: They do. And it’s very natural because if, if we’re sitting around, uh, after an op or search warrant or we’re waiting on an informant to show up. Agents start telling stories, Hey, you remember that time that, uh, you got caught doing this? And then the guy came out and people just start telling stories.
And for us, like, we’ll chuckle and laugh, but I can easily take myself out of that and think, actually that’s, that’s pretty cool. Mm-hmm. So through 24 years I got to do some cool things and enjoyed exposing on them, just giving information of what happened, what I went through, and some of the lessons learned from that over the years.
Zach: Yeah. And as you point out in your book too, the, the fact that you often do kind of, um, retrospective analysis after cases, that was kind of the structure of your book too, to, to go into, you know, what you learned and looking back on what happened kind of thing.
Eric: Yes. Uh, that’s something that we’ve done for a long time.
I’ve been on the SWAT team for about 15 years, and we do an after action, which is just a review of what did we do well, what did we do poor, what do we need to keep, what do we need to throw away? How can we handle this better? And over the years as well, my investigative squad began taking that on. Look, we just arrested somebody.
Uh, how was this set up? What did we do well? What, what mistakes did we make? And so those after actions are what I placed in the book then of, well, here’s a, here’s a funny story. Here’s something I thought was interesting. Here’s a few other related anecdotes. And now. What did we get out of this? And what I try to do in the book as well is I, I feel like I come from a bit of a unique experience where I spent 10, 11 years in ministry.
I left a Baptist church last preached April, 2002, uh, in Easter. And then the next week I was in Quantico, Virginia at the FBI Academy. And then the week after that I preached again because they didn’t have a chaplain and they knew, uh, I could do that. So
Zach: mm-hmm.
Eric: That’s a bit of a unique position. I had not met anyone who came from a full-time ministry position through my 24 years, so
Zach: mm-hmm.
Eric: Though many people are religious. Uh, that was a little bit. So tried to connect that to my background as a pastor too.
Zach: When I was started asking you questions, one of the topics that came up that I realized I part partly why I wasn’t asking the best questions, was the differences you pointed out between, um, FBI work and regular, uh, law enforcement work.
Maybe you could talk a little bit for, for people that don’t understand those differences, what are the, the Major D differences between FBI and, and general law enforcement?
Eric: Certainly, uh. Law enforcement, the police on the street typically do policing, which is you see something suspicious down the road, or there’s a car accident or there’s a break in, and the police come to clean up that problem, which might be just a quick investigation, gathering details, and then coming back to a prosecutor to say, here’s what we’ve got.
Um, do you wanna prosecute this? Um, are we finding someone, so for the most part, police, many times just get thrown something. Here you go. You need to solve this. And even if it’s a detective or an investigation that carries on for some period of time, they’re much more at a need to clear those cases. So even if someone is looking into.
A long-term investigation, their long-term is much different than the FBI. So an FBI investigation comes from, uh, informant work, from complaints, from tips. Might even come from a newspaper where you look at it and think, that seems suspicious, but our long-term investigations can last years. I had one that lasted probably five years, and I was doing other investigations along the way too, so we have time to build cases to work on digging out the route.
I had worked drug cases early in my career and that entails not grabbing somebody off the street doing a dope deal. It involves doing a dope deal. Pulling, they got off the street and now working up the chain to suppliers eventually. So that might mean taking some, uh, doing a drug deal, ripping the drugs, sending the guy back on the street, and then writing a title three or a wiretap on that person’s phone until we hear who the next guy is.
And we move up from there and do more deals, pinching more people along the way. Mm-hmm. And that takes months and months. Uh, it takes a lot of labor. A wiretap is very manpower intensive, and I sat on many of them. And it takes an entire squad of agents. So typically your local law enforcement just doesn’t have the time or manpower to f find out who major suppliers are, who don’t even live in their area.
Their job is to try to get rid of that guy. Right there. Who’s selling drugs on the corner? Let’s get rid of him and deal with the next problem that comes up.
Zach: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Is another major difference generally, that you, you tend to more often know who the, who the bad guys are. You already have that sense and you’re more building stronger cases and getting more information about other people and, and such compared to general law enforcement.
Eric: Absolutely. So many times local law enforcement will be thrown into a scene and have to make a decision on who’s the aggressor here, who’s at fault. Um, for us, I have a case on this known subject. Through the investigation, I very well may find other individuals who are involved. I worked white collar cases, financial cases for a while, and that begins with this person seeming to have stolen money from investors.
And then throughout the investigation finding out, oh, here’s attorneys who are involved. Here’s an accountant who’s involved. How involved are they? Did they know what was going on? Can I prove it? And so through the subpoenas, through interviews, through bank records, now we’re gonna find out more who else is involved in this?
Is it just the one man who had stolen money or are others complicit in this too? So we have that time and we, we work more comprehensive investigations. So for the most part, the FBI has more patience and the ability to do that. So
Zach: Right.
Eric: We hit a case, it’s higher profile because we spent nine months on it.
Zach: Is it also true, would you say that it’s less about getting confessions than about gathering information? It seems like a lot of the general law enforcement work is, is about. Getting confessions and seems like that would be less true for FBI. Is that, is that right?
Eric: It is. Obviously everyone, if you have a confession, you’ve, you’ve sealed a coffin.
So not only do I have this case on you, but you’ve admitted Yes, I did that. So in doing that, we’re done. That gets presented to the defense attorney and he looks at it, and now he’s just looking to make a deal. So everyone in a post arrest interrogation is looking for some type of confession, but also if it doesn’t come, we’ve, we’ve got all the evidence we need.
So I, I’ve been there on dope cases where I’ve sat for two hours trying to elicit a confession from a drug dealer who just refused to do it and he, he, he didn’t mind talking, but in no way would he admit to what he’s done and. Brought up crazy stories of explanations, what these statements were that he was making on the phone.
And ultimately I just ended the interrogation because it wasn’t going to happen and I now I’m just wasting my time. So.
Zach: Mm-hmm.
Eric: Yeah. When we come to arrest the FBI has you dead to rights, could lose a case, but the confession is just the topping.
Zach: Yeah. I, I want to ask you a few questions about interrogations.
I’m very in, interested in, in interrogations as clearly are many people, the interrogation videos are so popular on YouTube. You know, you, you probably know that. Uh, so one, one question I have, I often wonder this is, uh, why do you think suspects so often talk to police? You know, you see all these popular videos of, of various people talking to police and giving information to police.
In, in all of these interrogation videos. And it, and it’s, it’s surprising to me just because you so often hear in culture, in, even in pop culture, about how, you know, you should ask for a lawyer immediately, don’t talk to police, it’s bad to talk to police, but yet you so often see people, uh, engaging in these long, drawn out discussions with police in the interrogation scenes.
And I’m curious, what do you think helps explain that? Uh, what, what do you think the major factors are there? And then also I’m, I’m curious, maybe, maybe it’s a distorted view because obviously we only see the cases on YouTube and such where they are talking to police for an extended period of time. So those might actually be the outliers.
I don’t, I don’t really know.
Eric: Well, two things with that. The, the second question first, I, I think what you see on YouTube is. The bullseye effect where, um, somebody shoots an arrow into a side of a barn and then draws a bullseye around it. So absolutely, you can point out, this did work. This is a person who spoke because why do you wanna watch a video where a guy just obfuscates for for hours?
So yeah, we’re gonna show you the ones at work
Zach: or immediately a or immediately ask for a lawyer. That, that was kind of my, that was kind of my joke where I was like, I, I wanted to create, uh, my joke was I wanted to create a YouTube channel about like genius criminals, and it would just be short videos of them immediately asking for, for a lawyer.
But yeah, it’s a, theres a, there, there’s a big selection bias and like what we see on, uh, the shows and such. Yeah.
Eric: Right. Those would just be reels. Just a 15 second, I want an attorney. And then you play the music out
Zach: masterminds.
Eric: Exactly. But, but the reason that people who are guilty and they know they’re guilty, it’s not somebody who’s.
You know, just a suspect. But this is someone that we know is guilty and everyone in the room does the reason they talk. And this is something that I always try to utilize, is that they need control. Uh, so if you imagine I walk into your house with 10 of my friends and we have guns, and we set you down, and I simply say, you’re under arrest for this charge.
Let’s go do, do you want to know anything you, you need, you need to, you have this feeling where you need to find out what’s happening to you. And, and I would use that often. We had a case once where we were executing a search warrant and we’re looking to gather more details that could charge, uh, a white supremacist who hated police, hated the government, and here we were, the government coming into his workplace.
And I really wasn’t sure if he was going to talk to us because he had no reason to want to. But I began with telling him, well, right now my colleagues are at your house, your family’s fine. And they’re executing a search warrant. I’m sure you have questions, but if you’d like to talk about this and learn more about what you might be facing, I’m gonna read you your rights and if you’d like to talk more, you can waive those.
So at the very least, he wants to know what’s going on. And then once we’re engaged, and though I’m engaged in an interrogation, from his point of view, it’s, it’s just a conversation.
Zach: Right.
Eric: And I wanna bring it forward that way. I want the subject to feel like we’re talking
Zach: It’s low stakes. Yeah.
Eric: He’s asking me for information.
I’m giving it to him. Uh, I’m not threatening him. I’m not. Challenging everything that he says. And what’s more on building rapport? So this individual liked guns. I like guns. So I’m talking to him about hunting that he did with his father when he was young. What platform does he use? You know, what type of rifle and what does he have decked out on that.
And we’re engaged in that. And we’re also now talking about some of the threats that he was making online towards Obama, Pelosi and Biden. And what did he mean by those? And I’m trying to. Give him the sense that I’m on his side in, in as much as I can, because here comes the FBI and he hates the FBI. And I tell him ahead of time, look, just like your boss tells you what you have to do, we have a job to do.
Department of Justice tells us we need to come and address these statements you’ve been making against political figures,
Zach: right.
Eric: We have to do this. So
Zach: making it very impersonal. Yeah. You’re not, you’re not invested. Yeah.
Eric: I I I’m not the bad person.
Zach: Yeah. Yeah.
Eric: I’m, I’m just an instrument and I’m playing to his perception of the government manipulating people anyway.
Zach: Mm-hmm.
Eric: And yes, I am being manipulative as I’m doing this, but I’m trying to bring this conversation to a place that’s as normal as anything else that he’s had.
Zach: Mm-hmm.
Eric: And what’s more, he’s been online saying these hateful things and there’s no change. Well now the government’s in his office. And maybe he can do something now.
He can speak directly to these people that he hates. Right? And tell them what he means and say, yes, I meant that to threaten this person’s life. Of course I did because this guy is a traitor, because he needs to be hanged and I’m looking for avenues. Fortunately, he bit on all of them.
Zach: Mm-hmm.
Eric: To tell me and gain some control, find some purpose in all the things that he is always said.
Now he has an outlet. But to your question, uh, if when I come to him and I say, look, we’re executing a search warrant at your house, just wanna let you know that, and then walked out, I mean, that would fry your brain. So if you can imagine how that is giving someone a chance to have some. Bit of control over their lives that we just came and disrupted is very appealing to almost everyone,
Zach: right?
It seems like there’s a number, can be a number of factors. It’s also, I, I get the sense I could be wrong, and then there’s also the selection bias aspect. But sometimes it seems like, um, there there’s a sense that yeah, they’re trying to control, they’re trying to manipulate and, and they, and they think that to ask for a lawyer immediately would seem guilty.
So some of them have a inflated sense of how much they can control it. So they’re in their minds, they’re like, well, I’m gonna act really innocent and act and try to act like somebody would who wouldn’t ask for a lawyer. And maybe I can manage it and deflect them enough, or they don’t like go down the route of looking at me more.
But I, I, I don’t know what you think of that.
Eric: Uh, well, uh, I’ll tell you, if, if somebody does ask for a lawyer, I immediately do think they’re guilty. It it, it’s how it is. I, right.
Zach: I,
Eric: I’ve, I’ve interrogated lawyers. Or interviewed lawyers and they bring a lawyer in with them. And that second lawyer is just a totem.
It’s, it’s just a, it’s a, it’s a rabbit’s foot for them to rub. Because if, if I talk to you, if I came to your house and I said, I’m doing this investigation on a company used to be part of, so there’s maybe a slight implication that you could be guilty, or at least you think that I might think you’re guilty.
You are smart enough, you should be to know what you should say and what you shouldn’t. And, and as I sit there interviewing a lawyer and his lawyer’s right there, the second lawyer just sits.
Zach: Mm-hmm.
Eric: Now, part of how I would put people at ease too, is I tell them the truth, which is, if at any time you feel like ending this discussion, we can do that.
If at any time you don’t wanna answer a question, I’d prefer if you just say, I don’t want to answer that, as opposed to telling me a lie. And now we’re setting up an expectation of honesty. And at the same time, if I ask you a question, Zach, and it seems to implicate you, and you say, I’d prefer not to answer that, you know, oh, I’ve just told him I’m probably guilty of that.
So now you’re going to just keep talking. So yeah, the idea of asking for an attorney, you’re right. You look guilty. And I think that is a part of people thinking they. Might.
Zach: Right. They can avoid that by going the opposite way.
Eric: Yeah.
Zach: Yeah. Yeah.
Eric: So,
Zach: and then they end up, then they end up just saying way too much sometimes, which is what we see on the YouTube channels and such, but Yeah, they don’t always do that.
Yeah.
Eric: Which is what we see. And, and, and Zach, I’m, I’m gonna make a wild assumption, not knowing you well, but you’re probably smarter than you. You know, you’re on the, uh, other, you’re not at the hump of the bell curve that you’re likely smarter than most. And most of the criminals that we encounter are not, uh, also when we have arrested them or are executing a search warrant, it, we’re not doing this.
So you and I are talking, and this is calm. Their heart rate is flying. They’re, they’re trying to think of these things while answering my question. So they’re thrown off too. They’re at a disadvantage. And so if I try to keep this as a normal conversation, that perception. Or
Zach: lowers their guard. Yeah.
Eric: They, they’re, they’re willing to take that because they’ve got so much going on right now, they’re just going to accept that Yep.
This is just a conversation and it’s normal.
Zach: Mm-hmm. Totally. Yeah. No, it makes sense. I mean, and that, and it helps explain why the lower aggression techniques are so effective in general. You know, you that it’s kinda like the Yeah. The, the more you push people, the more likely they are to clam up and go the opposite way and Yeah.
Eric: Oh, absolutely.
Zach: Yeah.
Eric: And I’ve, I’ve never come to a place where I’ve ever used aggression on someone or played bad cop ba, bad cop just shuts ’em up and bad cop comes when I’m fighting with a guy to put handcuffs on. That’s it. But in an interrogation, it’s, it’s all rapport, rapport building, iso empathy, all those things that, all those things that work when you’re on a date trying to impress somebody.
It’s, it’s the same.
Zach: Right. Um, do you have any, uh. Any lesser known, um, strategies that you’d care to share about interrogation and techniques that you think are effective that may be, uh, lesser known by general audiences?
Eric: I don’t think it’s anything special. I, I feel like I had a positive method of interrogating and it, the FBI teaches interrogation methods.
If you asked any agent who’s been in over 10 years, what they learned, they’re not gonna remember anything. Um, if you’re a good conversationalist. You’re likely going to be good at interrogations too. Mm-hmm. Because that’s going to draw people out. The same things that you do on your podcast to draw people out are the same things that you would use if you have someone in front of you that you think is guilty of a crime and draws ’em out.
The the one that I learned along the way, coming from a young agent and then seeing how interrogations go, was not to interrupt silence. And I found myself asking a question, often asking, uh, a compound question, do you remember where you were on this night? And was there anyone with you? And can you explain why people might have said they saw you there?
So here, here’s a compound question. What, like, how can I take the third part first?
Zach: Yeah.
Eric: It
Zach: mu it muddles the muddy, muddies the water about what they even say. Yeah. What, what are they replying to Exactly. Yeah,
Eric: absolutely. Oh, and, and if you did that, that would be a poor interview technique as well.
Zach: Right.
Eric: But I would have subjects pause to answer, and they’re trying to think through the best way that they can answer this as truthfully as they want to. Because people naturally want to be truthful. Even if they’re trying to be deceptive, they want to hang onto some type of truth. And they would pause, and then I would break in and ask another question.
Which completely negates all the questions I had before. And now they don’t have to deal with that.
Zach: Right.
Eric: And now, and now I come back with something else. They’re off the
Zach: hook. Yeah. They, they’re like, oh, great, I can move on to something else. Yeah,
Eric: exactly. And even if that question is a, a better one, now we have, now we’ve gotta backtrack to get the other.
So
Zach: yeah,
Eric: I found that asking a question and then just sitting, and people don’t realize how awkward it is unless they have a friend who’s like this, where if you ask a question and the person sits there for just five seconds, not answering
Zach: five seconds is a long time. Yeah. It feel, it feels really awkward.
Yeah,
Eric: it feels awkward.
Zach: Yeah.
Eric: And so I felt awkward. I felt the stress of the situation, and so I was looking for a way to relieve that for myself. And then I realized. Oh, if I, if I feel bad, this guy’s gonna feel terrible.
Zach: Yeah.
Eric: Oh, that’s great. Let’s use that. And so I would just sit there because the question remains.
Mm-hmm. I asked you when was the first time that you met the victim? You’re sitting, you’re sitting, you’re sitting, and I’m sitting, I’m sitting. Mm-hmm. And you have to do something with that question.
Zach: Mm-hmm.
Eric: And I’ve sat for 30 seconds waiting for an answer. And that is, that’s hard to do. Mm-hmm. But that shows the subject, they, they need to address this one way or another.
And so that silence, that pausing, not interrupting myself, not interrupting them, uh, was one of the things that I learned
Zach: to be
Eric: effective. And,
Zach: and related to that, I think you also talk about this in your book is. At the end of their response too. So to leave that room also. ’cause sometimes they’ll, they’ll start adding more stuff to the end too.
Maybe you could, I think you talk about that in your book too, right? Maybe.
Eric: Maybe. But, but because,
Zach: because sometimes there’s an awkwardness when they have answered somewhat and, but they, they clearly, or, or you get a sense that maybe there’s more to say and you leave them some more room and they keep going.
Eric: Absolutely. Yeah. I, my silence suggests that you’ve, you need to say more. So Yes. Asking, uh, when did you first meet the victim? Now we pause. We pause. I’m not sure. Well, I’m not gonna respond to that.
Zach: Yeah.
Eric: It may have been 2010. Still waiting. No way. It, it was 2012. ’cause I remember it was after college and, and it.
I’m letting them work that through. And then if they’re saying things that I know are wrong, I’m gonna let them finish until I can confront them with, well, by my understanding and talk, talking to the victim. They say it was 2010 and they remember because of this. How do you respond to that? Oh, okay. And then let it go again.
Zach: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. No, I think, uh, to your point about these are just, some of these things are just general, uh, information gathering techniques, no matter what line of work you’re in. When I was, uh, I have a video film degree and I started out in commercial video production, which involved a lot of interviewing of, of people.
Um, and I pretty quickly learned there too, where, you know, it, it was a, making sure your questions were muddled, b giving them a lot of space to respond, including, you know, sometimes the most valuable stuff from a production, um, standpoint was, was when you. Ask them a question, they would respond and then you would give them a few seconds pause to say more.
And sometimes they would come out with some of the best, most emotional things because there was this like kind of awkward pause and they were kind of like thinking, should I say more here? And then they would come out with something a little bit more heartfelt almost. And that often happened. And I think, yeah, I think, I think it ties into, to so many of these, these areas where giving people, people a little space to breathe and maybe feel a little bit of tiny bit of discomfort or a lot of discomfort can kind of get them to cough up something, something valuable sometimes, you know?
Eric: Well, and some of that, I came to realize it, it’s, it’s almost stepping out of being an agent and being in the front yard and looking at, wow, this is what’s going on. I, I came to realize that, oh my goodness, like unexpectedly, a dozen people just broke down this person’s door and pointed guns and. There is, we, we have just shown the, the greatest amount of power that they’ve ever experienced.
So I am in control, and so I’m, I’m going to, I’m going to use that, I’m going to recognize that they are in this a jumbled mind fried situation. You, we, here we are, waking them from bed with lasers pointed at them, whatever it might be, and that is something that I can use. So as we’ve thrown them off, I, I don’t need to show I’m in power.
I don’t need to yell, I don’t need to make demands. We just, we just did that by breaking in your door or coming to you, grabbing you in the streets, you know, on your way to your car. We have just shown the power that’s there, and so I’m recognizing that and letting that underlying. Stream play through, right?
As we now conduct the interrogation.
Zach: It’s almost like a built-in bad cop, good cop dynamic by the show of force almost gently.
Eric: It is. And, and again, even if it’s, and I’ve arrested people this way of like just coming alongside them with a couple of us, grabbing them by the arm gently and saying, with the FBI, you’re under arrest.
Just that like again, you imagine coming outta targets and walk into your vehicle and somebody says, Hey, you’re under arrest. That it’s shattering. It’s, you’re just thinking, I can’t wait to eat these honey nut cheerios when I get home. And all of a sudden your life is different.
Zach: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Uh, does anything else, um, anything else come to mind for lesser known interrogation techniques?
You care to share
Eric: the I. One of the more significant things, as, as you and I have talked offline, is the basic, the basic way that an interrogation works. For the FBI typically is, uh, two people. Two agents or a task force officer, and an agent with one being the main interrogator, the main questioner. The other taking notes or just making observations, keeping a mental track of what avenue you’re going on, and then what we may have discussed prior that I’m getting away from that this, this secondary person can remember and bring back later.
But without interruption, letting one person just have that straight line of thought, if I’m doing this, I’m asking you this, then this, then this, knowing I’m trying to get to here and, and I’ve been there where. I start asking questions and the other person jumps in with a great idea, wonderful question, but has nothing to do with my line.
And now we’re off of that. And so just having one person do that interrogation while the other is there to keep tabs of where this is going. Maybe taking note where, oh, he says he had a blue Pontiac, we need to come back to that.
Zach: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Eric: But letting the, the primary person go along the way. So that’s the setup.
It’s, um, we, we may do it videotaped in an office. We may most often do it in a kit in the subject’s kitchen, wherever we feel like we can get the, the best out of this. And it’s, it’s not the two-way glass. It’s not someone. Watching each little bit of behavior and, and considering what that means. It is really just a one-on-one with another person there to support without it being too much of a show of force to, um, make them ill at ease while they’re answering the questions too.
Zach: And speaking of working with the, the partner, you talked a bit about, uh, in the book you, you wrote about, um, some little signals you can have with your partner. For example, like the instance of your partner jumping in with a question you’d rather not have them jump in with you. Can you like put, you know, touch their, touch their knee or something like little signals, let ’em know, like, hey, hold off on that kind of thing.
And there’s some of those, those kind of communications that go on Right?
Eric: There is a bit, for the most part, when I’m going to be primary interrogator, I’ve done homework, I have, I, I very literally almost have, um. A presentation ready where I have an idea of what route I’m taking. I’ve got the facts and I’ve got the idea.
And, and now I’m talking through that with my partner too. So, so we’re on board with each other ahead of time. And in this case, you know, my partner had jumped in and it was in a, in a situation where the subject was just, each time I’d ask a question would go, and it was long. And so my partner was jumping in, I placed my hand on his knee.
Uh, any other occasion if I had done that, they’re gonna send me to hr. But this time we’d worked it out that, Hey, let, let’s come back to the way we go. But we don’t have too many signals that, that we use along the way.
Zach: Mm.
Eric: It’s, it’s, it’s really very practical. Mm-hmm. So I hope people aren’t really bored as they were looking for amazing secrets from the FBI, because for the most part it’s, it’s really just.
Trying to win an audience with somebody. Mm-hmm.
Zach: Rapport or getting them to talk, making suddenly them at ease.
Eric: Yeah. I mean, it’s very manipulative, but on the surface it’s just the same thing that we’re doing right now and having a conversation and you don’t even realize I’ve gotten you to admit to so many things that you’d be
Zach: Yeah, I, yeah.
I’m, I’m now, I’m, now I’m worried I’m gonna clam up. I’m gonna ask for my, uh, podcast attorney to join us. Um, so I, I, I was curious, one thing I’m curious about, um, I mean this ties into my behavior, nonverbal interests. It’s, it can be hard to get a handle on. Um, and I’m sure they don’t, you know, advertise this either, but I’m curious what the general, uh, principles and, and, uh, trainings are that, uh, FBI agents go through to learn about interrogation techniques.
And maybe it’s quite minimal. Maybe, maybe it’s mostly like you’re, you’re learning on the job and you know, learning it as you go and you’re learning directly from the people you work with to start and, but I’m, but, but I’m curious, are there recurring. Or a lot of upfront trainings related to like, here’s all these interrogation techniques.
We’re, we’re gonna teach you that kind of thing.
Eric: At Quantico, they teach interrogation techniques, uh, much of it being rapport, building minimization, um, giving subjects and out like, oh, it it, you
Zach: Right. You were, you were emotional. Uh, you, it’s understandable you were upset. These kinds
Eric: of things. Yeah. Ab anything that allows them to say yes.
Zach: Right.
Eric: But as you said, it is, it’s on the job. Um, any training that I got was from practice observation and then reading books on my own to, to consider, okay, this might be something useful to do. So someone who’s good will sit in as much as they can. With a senior agent to watch them and observe, take notes, even do an after action from that.
Why did you ask this? What was your thinking? Um, and I think the bureau is just fortunate that they hire good people who are fairly intelligent. And so by and large, just by circumstance, most of the folks who come in are pretty good at what they do. They have an ability to communicate anyway. Part of the process to hire involves a period of it.
It’s almost an interrogation of the applicant of, tell us a time you did this. And it’s 15 different questions of, give us an example when and if you can’t speak well to that, if you can’t think on your feet, then. You’re probably not getting hired.
Zach: Mm.
Eric: So much of it is just the experience that you’re gonna learn along the way.
Zach: Mm-hmm. Well, and I, I could be off base on this, but one thing that it strikes me in that, in that area is there’s theoretically an incentive to, for the FBI or any law enforcement agency, to not give too much hard and, uh, hard guidelines or hard requirements, uh, about these kinds of things because the more you make it a formal, kind of like, here, you must do this, this, and this, or you should do this, this, and this, it’s kind of harder to defend all those various rules.
And, and, uh, you, you, you can theoretically face more pushback. Like if, you know, the, the, if it gets leaked that, that these are the official trainings for interrogation, right. There’s theoretically more things you have to defend versus, you know, let’s let our agents, let’s let, let’s let our, um. Officers and agents learn from each other about what the, you know, most valuable techniques are and not be too, like these are all, you know, hard guidelines for how you should do it.
Um, but I, I could be off base on that, but it, it, it strikes me in terms of sometimes, sometimes there’s been these controversial things that get out about like, oh, they’re training on this, or they’re training on this. And it seems like the, the more you can reduce all the granular trainings, the, the less likely you are to face, you know, controversial, uh, you know, objections about what you’re doing basically.
Eric: Well, and you may be right, I’m haven’t been part of the decision making process, so I don’t know. But also it’s, it, it’s, it’s subjective, right? So if you gave me, this is what you need to do in an interrogation, but that doesn’t fit my personality, then well. What’s to say that this manner is the best.
Zach: Right?
It is so much of it. So much of the, the granular things are, are, are subjective and it needs to fit. You need to be comfortable with it. To, to do it. Yeah.
Eric: Absolutely.
Zach: Yeah.
Eric: Which, which goes to one of the discussions we had offline was dealing with, uh, deception. So whether I feel comfortable with deception, and this is one where I feel absolutely anybody, any police officer can lie as much as they want to, to get whatever they want from that lie.
I’ve never lied in an interrogation because if someone is lying to get somewhere, I, I simply wanna know, what value are you thinking you’re getting from this? So if that was part of what the FBI says, like emphasize reuses and deception to. Find out how people react. Well, as soon as I say Zach, we’ve got your DNA on the weapon and you know that we don’t
Zach: Yeah, exactly.
Eric: Yeah. By something, I have no credibility.
Zach: Right.
Eric: Anything that I say, now, I, I’ve got a solid case against you. But now when I tell you, well, we got back the bank records and we can see money moving from this person to you, you’re like, how do I know that? Mm-hmm. So I’ve, I’ve never used deception because I can’t see the, the value I had.
We arrested a guy once when I was a new agent and another new agent told him that we had satellites trained on them, and that’s how we knew there was gonna be a drug deal. And I thought that is the stupidest, like, this guy’s gotta be very, very dumb to believe that we’ve got. Access to satellites and we care about some Latin King drunk dealer in Chicago.
Mm-hmm. And that struck me early, that if there’s value, I’ll do it
Zach: right.
Eric: But I’ve never come across a situation where I considered, yeah, it might be useful if I use some type of ruse in this situation.
Zach: Mm-hmm. Yeah. No, that’s a really good point. Yeah. You don’t know what they know. You don’t know how it’s gonna make you seem less credible depending on what they know.
I was curious how, what are your views of the, the polygraph and I mean, my, I I’ll say, I’ll say what my perception is. It mainly seems to be a, a tool used to, you know, for intimidation purposes because it’s not, you know, obviously not admissible in court.
But, uh, I’m curious for your take on it and maybe your take on how the views of polygraph have, have shifted over your years in the FBI.
Eric: Well, I, I think you and I probably have the same idea of polygraphs. I just have seen it used successfully, o obviously because being on the inside. So polygraph is a regular tool that the FBI uses most often in, uh, child sexual abuse cases.
Because if we have an individual whos, uh, downloading child pornography, child sexual abuse material. We want to know if there has been hands-on events and we want to find victims. So I’ve seen the polygraph used many times and it’s, uh, I listened to your, uh, episode, um, talking about polygraphs and I liken polygraphs to they, they are a tool.
It’s, it’s like a gun. If I put the gun in the hand of an officer who is just and honest, then it is a tool to get bad people to comply. If I put the gun in the hand of an officer who is wild and corrupt and untrained, then it, it’s could be dangerous. So the FBI uses POLYGRAPHERS regularly. They’re well-trained and they are are best interrogators.
So they are tr trained well to interrogate
Zach: Mm.
Eric: But also they’ve got enhanced tools. So I can use this polygraph to give me a suggestion where you may be telling lies or trying to hide something and I’m gonna use that to root it out. And depending on how you, as the bad guy accept this, this might influence you.
Mm-hmm. I have seen, I arrested a man who had sexually abused a 13-year-old boy. We interviewed him at his house. He had continually denied any involvement. And then our polygrapher said, well, how about if you come downtown for a polygraph? And the next thing I know here he is admitting to things even the young boy had not told us.
So it, it can be very useful. And I definitely understand there’s situations where it has been used to abuse as well. Um,
Zach: yeah. But it sounds like you, you, you, you would say it gets a, a bad rap, which is kind of my, I I’ve, I’ve often wondered that like it’s, you know, it’s really hard for me from the outside to know how it’s being used by practitioners and such, but I, I have often thought like I could, I could understand because it is, even if it’s far from a hundred percent reliable, obviously.
Eric: Yep.
Zach: It’s, it, you you’re saying because it is accurate enough, um, you know, by and large, you know, it’s, it’s significantly above, um, you know, uh, random, uh, chance obviously. So the fact that it, a, it is fairly reliable to detect lies for general population and then even if it does, you know, get things wrong and that, but then b.
In concert with a skilled, uh, interrogator and practitioner, that it can be used as a useful tool to be like, Hey, uh, you, you, you, you should, you should, uh, allow for that. Let’s dig into that more. And they follow up. And so, yeah. I mean, I get your, I get your point and I can, I’ve often wondered that, ’cause it’s really hard for me to understand the, the nuance of how it’s being used.
’cause that’s a good, it’s a good point to hear your observation. Yeah.
Eric: Well, for me it’s, um, I was not a sniper, uh, for our SWAT team, but I have shot a sniper rifle and if the sniper set me up and said, here you go, get down there, and you, it’s, it know, whatever, it’s all worked out. I can, I can hit targets as well as they can, but I don’t know how to do the complications and all the mathematics for it and how the rifle is set up.
So if you gave me a polygraph and I started working on you, you know, maybe I’d do okay, but without that training. That the polygraphers have, I, I know to trust our guys fairly well. Mm-hmm. That being said, I had a colleague who was coming through to apply to the FBI, very, very close person to me, and they failed, or they had questionable results on drug use.
And I said, I talked to the polygrapher and I said, what are the chances that you might’ve made a mistake here? He goes, maybe you don’t know your friend as well as you think. And I thought, no, I, I do. There’s zero chance this person has done drugs and you’ve made a mistake. So I know they, they don’t, they’re not perfect.
Zach: Right.
Eric: So when you say getting a bad rap, I don’t think they get a bad rap. I think they get a fair rap.
Zach: Mm-hmm.
Eric: They’re just not as understood that here’s how they can be used with someone who is confident and not abusive.
Zach: Right. Yeah. I think, and I, I, I’ve had a few of these conversations for the podcast where.
I, I think, uh, there can be overly pessimistic views about this or about, you know, the use of nonverbal behavior in law enforcement scenarios, because I think, I mean, I think the worst case scenarios are when someone uses the results of a polygraph or their vibe about somebody’s nonverbal behavior or something to reach like an, an extremely certain conclusion.
But if you’re only using that as a tool to investigate further and you know that, you know, these things are just tools that can be fallible, then you’re not, then you’re avoiding the, the bad things because you’re, you’re using them and, and being like, well, if you’re, you know, if you’re using a polygraph to interrogate, you know, somebody who may have molested children or, or whatever, uh, if you’re getting information out of them, that, that you can then verify is correct, and that is, that is a good use of it.
And, and, and it was a meaningful. Use of it, but you know, on, on the, on the opposite end of if you’re using it to like, reach overly certain conclusions that then go in the face of evidence, that’s a bad use of it. Right. But just to say it’s a, like a lot of things, it’s a, it’s a nuanced area. Yeah.
Eric: Well, and this is much like your question about, uh, why do bad people sit down to speak with officers post-arrest?
Why are they willing to talk if I’m polygraphing you and I say, it looks here like you’re lying and I have a very good friend who’s a polygrapher. Like, if you wanna stick to it and go, I’m not lying. Okay.
Zach: Yeah. That’s kind of the end of it. Yeah.
Eric: That’s the end of it. Yeah. Like, I can’t put that in. I, I, I, I can’t charge you with that.
So, right. If, if I wanna lie on a polygraph and you call me on it, I’ll just go, Nope. Tell ’em the truth.
Zach: Mm-hmm.
Eric: And we can sit there as long as we want. Yeah. Or,
Zach: but if they, if they start volunteering information, then yeah. That’s then, so, you know, that’s great. Yeah,
Eric: absolutely.
Zach: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That’s a good, it’s a good point because yeah.
I, it’s a, it’s a nuance I think is often lost with a lot of things. There’s so many binary views of, of things these days in general. Yeah. Um, so yeah. Let, I was gonna ask you, um, uh, sorry, I’m looking at my notes here. Um, I had an idea, I’m try to remember what I was gonna say.
Well, maybe we can, uh, maybe we can pivot to the, the nonverbal behavior aspect. I mean, that’s one, been one focus of my show and especially the last year or so, I’ve, I’ve been more focused on a lot of the, um. Exaggerated or just plain wrong information about behavior that, um, sometimes is used in law enforcement, but then also is just the source of a lot of, um, you know, general life advice things about how to use or exploit, uh, nonverbal behavior.
So I’m, I’m curious, uh, can you think of, uh, you know, what, what are your, what are your views on that area in the law enforcement space? Are there, are there times that, you know, you, you’ve, you’ve based major decisions on things in the nonverbal body language sphere?
Eric: Boy, I, I would think anybody who bases major decisions on body language is making a huge mistake.
So I have never run into. An FBI agent who has said that they use that. It’s not to say that some don’t, but I’ve never met one. I’ve never done it myself. As, as I set up the interrogation scenario for you. It’s me. I’m a primary interrogator, and then my colleague who is scribbling notes and trying to remember things.
There’s no space for in the moment watching what’s going on. Moreover, if I can’t testify to it or put it in an affidavit, it just has zero value. I, I won’t say zero value. It has very small value, so I cannot write in an affidavit when asked, did you kill your wife? He looked down into the left. That, that doesn’t do that.
Doesn’t do anything. If, if at all, if there’s anything, it would be something I just tuck back and think, well, let me come back to that. ’cause that was a little odd that he did that. I had a, uh, friend in college who was a super nice guy, and we would talk, and whenever he talked, like he’ll, I’ll talk to him and he’ll look at me.
But as soon as he started talking, he never gave eye contact. It was a, it was an odd tick that he had, but he would never give eye contact when he was talking to anyone. And God forbid, something terrible happens to his wife where she dies strangely, because that guy is gonna be a suspect. But I, I don’t know your life.
I like, maybe I would trust that I know how my wife reacts to questions, but body movements. Micro movements, I would never trust, I would trust much more, uh, verbal and trying to keep a sense of that. For example, I asked an individual once, like, uh, have you ever done this? And their answer was, I typically do this, this, and that, which didn’t answer the question.
So trying to tell the truth, which is, yes, I typically do this, but your question about this event, I didn’t. But it is true that I typically do that instead watching, listening for those rather than micro signs mm-hmm. Of behavior. There’s no space for it.
Zach: Yeah. I mean, and and by verbal you mean the content of what the actual communication people are saying?
I mean, that’s, that’s what I, when people have asked me, because I. Because I do this podcast because I’m interested in, I’ve done work on poker tells. I often get people asking me, oh, what nonverbal body language stuff should I focus on in everyday life? And I, my general answer is, you shouldn’t really focus on that.
You should focus on what people are actually saying because what people actually say, I think it’s very different in games and sports because there’s like little clues you can pick up and it’s a very formalized environment, but in real world non-game scenarios, my stuck answer is exactly what you related to what you said, where it’s like you’d be much better off spending your mental efforts thinking about what people say and what they don’t say.
Yes. Like are they avoiding the question? Are they, did they not answer what you asked? Or do they seem to do, do things not add up at this meta level for their stories? You know? So just to say that there’s a, an abundance of information there and then you have like all this ambiguity and variety and the body language would, so to me it’s like to spend.
A significant amount of time on the body language is just a huge mistake in any kind of high stakes situation. Real world, non non-game, I mean, yeah.
Eric: Well, well even take it to game, obviously in poker it’s all about lying, but, and trying to hide things from your opponents, but to what degree, even if you feel like you have a pretty good idea of poker tells, and you have a half million dollars to bet on this, do you really trust it that well, and, and then it comes to objective facts, which is this person may be lying, but their hand is still better than yours, so mm-hmm.
Tho those little, yeah. There
Zach: can be a lot of ambiguity even. And, and to be clear, like, yeah, I would agree because in my, in my work, I often emphasize that there’s a lot of ambiguity and you might only use a poker towel to sway a decision in like a couple times in like an eight hour session or something.
Zach: A quick note here: I have a lot of thoughts on why nonverbal behavior is much more useful in game scenarios than in real-world, non-game scenarios. I see them as entirely different scenarios for a few reasons – one reason is that there are much more granular, discrete actions and goals in games (for example, physically trying to score a goal, or making a bet) whereas those discrete events are not present in non-game, real-world scenarios. Also, because many game-scenarios are often so close in terms of advantage, even a small clue, even if far from 100% reliable, can bring an advantage; and that has little correlation to non-game scenarios. Also, contrary to what Eric said here, in poker there is no lying; a bluff is not the same as a lie; and getting a clue to whether someone is bluffing or not is not about deception detection but just about sensing variations in relaxation and tension and such. The various differences present are why I think behavioral information is much more actionable in games and sports, and yet mostly non-actionable in non-game scenarios. I’ll probably soon do an episode and write-up about my thoughts on that. I talked about that in a previous episode from 2025 with deception detection researcher Tim Levine, if you wanted to hear more thoughts on that. But, to Eric’s point here; yes, behavior even in game and sports scenarios is still often still quite hard to read; there is still a lot of ambiguity; that is something I stress in my own poker tells work; and that fact is especially true the more experienced the player is. But it’s also true that making practical use of such things is just much much more hard in non-game, real-world scenarios than it is in games. And while I’m on subject I’ll mention that I wrote a book titled Verbal Poker Tells, and I think that verbal aspects, the things people actually say in poker or other games, are also just so much more meaningful and reliable as clues than nonverbal aspects; so that’s true across the board. Ok i’ll get off my poker tells high horse now and get back to the talk…
Eric: Well, and, I’ve seen for example, uh, Chris Watts who had killed his family in Colorado, and people go back to the video and say, look at this, see how he’s not crying?
And, and, and, and his is kind of a bad example ’cause it’s, it’s fairly egregious and you can see Yeah, that’s, that’s pretty bad. And yet they still had to get a confession. Just looking like you’re guilty doesn’t help. But I don’t know Chris Watts, I don’t, I don’t know how somebody deals with a tragedy like that.
I don’t know. Why are you not crying? I,
Zach: and I, and I would say for, I
Eric: would cry,
Zach: I would say for Chris Watts. I mean that, that’s a good thing to bring up because I actually did, you know, speaking of like verbal. Patterns. I actually wrote a piece on Chris Watts about the, the verbal, like what he actually said.
But, and, and I think it can be hard to separate those two things from the non-verbal behavior because you watch, you watch somebody like Chris Watt, which as you say was, I, I think, I also think it’s a rather egregious behavior when you, uh, when you add up all of the things, right? When you add up the, the, the way he reacted in various spots, you add up the things he said at a meta level.
I think, I think it, it, it can be hard to separate the, um, the nonverbal from like what act, the, the meta level things of how people are responding, what they say. Uh, so just to say, I, I think it can be hard. A lot of people might be like, oh, he, this person acted strangely in some nonverbal way. But if you took away, like, did they really act strangely?
Like if, if you had replaced what they said with more reasonable. Things would you have really drawn attention to the nonverbal. Right. So that’s just to say, I, I, I think it can be hard to separate those fears, which, which helps explain I think why some law enforcement or other people might watch an interrogation, uh, footage or do an interrogation.
They’re like, he’s acting weird. But it’s like, I I Is the weird part about the nonverbal, or is it mainly about the, the ways somebody’s responding. Right. It’s like, yeah. It’s, it’s hard to separate sometimes.
Eric: Well, and so here’s a case with Chris Watts and the investigators still have to find the bodies, get a confession.
So, you know, and his girlfriend, you know, tells thing, so Right. They still need the
Zach: information. Yeah. You
Eric: still need to prove,
Zach: you still
Eric: to
Zach: prove it. Right.
Eric: And it, it, it’s a, it’s a bad example ’cause he’s the husband and that’s always the first you look at. But if he was the neighbor and you look at that like you, an investigator can’t make that.
So strong of an influence that now I, I’ve blocked out other possibilities. I’m so biased that this is my guy. ’cause look at that, that I’m ignoring or dismissing other evidence along the way.
Zach: Mm-hmm. Because I, I mean, I, oh, go ahead. Yeah.
Eric: Well, to your question about like, so law enforcement, behavioral analysis and listening to the words is one thing, but even bringing this up as to going on a date and trying to read people or your boss, it’s, it’s so negative.
So in law enforcement, I’m, I’m trying to determine if this person is a killer, if this person’s a drug dealer, if they’ve stolen money, I think people tell the truth. So if I’m trying to read you as we talk, why, why am I, why am I so. Cynical that I want to see if you’re lying to me or what your true intentions are.
If I wanna see what your true intentions are, I’d say, Hey, Zach, you mentioned this. Can you tell me more about it? Hey, look at that. Look at that. Some
Zach: actual, some actual words to analyze. Right,
Eric: right, right.
Zach: Yeah, you were a
Eric: little vague. Can you expand on that?
Zach: Right, totally. No, that, that’s where it gets into, like, don’t, don’t waste your efforts delving into that stuff.
Focus on asking questions and interpreting responses. Right. Like, yeah. Um, and to your point too about the, you know, the Chris Watt thing, it’s like, uh, like it’s, it’s basically never gonna happen where you’re gonna base a major decision in a law enforcement scenario based on some nonverbal stuff. Like, usually if in the cases where you think somebody is acting weird in some nonverbal, you know, body language way, I, I would say.
Almost all the time you have some sort of evidence to act on, like you there, there’s a story not adding up or you have some physical evidence or whatever it may be like. So the idea that yeah, like you said, you have to get the evidence and, and usually you’re gonna have more to, a lot more to go on than any sort of body language thing.
So yeah.
Eric: At at the very best it is a, it’s a clue. It’s,
Zach: yeah. It, it inter it can be interesting.
Eric: Sure. And, and the, the one example I can ever think of where body language played into a discussion I was having, we had an investigation into John Burge who was a police commander in Chicago in the seventies and eighties.
And he and those with him were accused of regularly torturing subjects, almost exclusively black males. So we had one of the subject victims who told about how. Burge and his men beat him, got a confession, and then took a picture of him in a lineup. After that, he then spoke to the Cook County prosecutor, who then took down his confession as was the process, and I asked him, is there any way that this prosecutor could not have noticed your condition?
He said, absolutely not. I could hardly stand. I was bleeding. I was clearly beaten. So we had a photograph of a photograph of a photograph of him in a lineup, and the Assistant United States attorney and I then flew to speak with this former Cook County prosecutor, who at the time was working in the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, ironically, and when we confronted him, showed him the picture.
And I asked him if he remembered this. He was holding up the, the, the fo he was hiding behind it.
Zach: Mm.
Eric: He wasn’t looking at it. He was hiding behind it and very clearly was lying to us.
Zach: Mm.
Eric: And then we walked away and that was it. Because I can’t charge you with hiding behind a picture.
Zach: Right. You can’t charge Yeah.
You can’t charge somebody with just reacting in some suspicious way to something. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well that, that, that’s a good segue to, I mean, I recently reread Joe Navarro’s book, um, what everybody, what Everybody is saying, and he’s a former FBI agent, but I reread it with a focus on, you know, what are the things in this book that are actually practically useful.
And, um, he starts, and I’ll say. I found very little in the book that I would think would be practically useful. There was only not even that many examples from law enforcement. Um, like I, things I would actually like sway a decision in, in law enforcement, even in that book. But he, the, the, the things that stood out as being theoretically the most useful or practically useful were the, were this idea similar to what you said, where Joe, uh, or maybe it was other, somebody else going through a list of items to a suspect where the first thing he opens his book with is going through a list of murder weapons and getting a nonverbal reaction to a specific murder weapon.
And then there’s another example he gives later in the book of going through a list of associates and seeing someone react to a specific one. Uh, but I would think, I mean, I, I, I’m skeptical. As to how useful that is in practice for the reason you mentioned. It’s like if they don’t, if they don’t continue talking, there’s, there’s nothing you can do.
And then b how useful is that anyway? I I, I would predict that if you actually studied that with a lot of people, you might get a lot of false positives, especially if you’re talking more subtle behaviors. Like your example was quite, it sounded like it was quite extreme, but just to say, and then another reason I’m skeptical is like, if that was so valuable, I would think it would be trained as a technique in the FBI and you would’ve heard about that kind of like, well, let’s go through a list of items and see how people react to get information.
But I’m curious, yeah. What, what are your thoughts on all, everything I just said there?
Eric: Yeah. So the only thing I would say, so if I show you a murder weapon and you respond oddly again, that’s just a cue to me. Mm-hmm. So now all the rest of it is Zach. Uh, I noticed you flinched when I showed you that. Tell me why that might be.
And, and you could lie to me and I can, but it’s, it’s still gonna be verbal. I’m gonna come back and I’m gonna drill down. Uh,
Zach: right.
Eric: One of the things that often police officers are, are taught is the read technique. And I sat in on a read class when I was probably one year in the bureau just to learn some investigative techniques, and their methods are to start with a factual basis.
And then second is behavioral analysis, which is just god awful because I, I’m not a human lie detector though anything that comes through with that I really shouldn’t put any weight on. But then everything that follows there is like setting a pattern for my interrogation, dismissing your denials. And, and this is if I believe you two, possibly or likely be the subject.
But if I dismiss your denials or your claims of innocence, I’m missing out on what might be useful.
Zach: Hmm.
Eric: So if I say, Zach, I believe you killed your neighbor on December 8th, and you say, no, no, I, I didn’t. And I, and I stop you, and I don’t listen. Well, if you tell me, well, I was at the Steelers game and I’ve got ticket stubs, and I took pictures on my phone that has metadata.
Like, well, okay, well that’s gonna help me instead of shutting you down repeatedly. And if you, if I shut you down and I don’t listen, and we don’t have the conversation, if you, if you say I’m not guilty, and I say You are guilty, and here’s why. But if you say, I’m not guilty, and I let you, and I say, well, please explain to me why you’re not guilty and I’m open, I’m curious, rather than shutting down, you say.
Well, I’m not guilty because he came at me first with a knife. Well, now I have you admitting to it, but we can let a jury determine whether or not you are guilty. But the idea of shutting people down of using these behavioral techniques to lock into a belief are gonna get you down the wrong path. And I’ll emphasize one more time.
The, the, the openness and the curiosity and the listening, that’s the method that I’m going to get. I’m gonna get good information from, even if you start lying to me, I’m getting good information.
Zach: Yeah. The, um, made me think of, you know, the example in Joe Navarro’s book of going through like the list of murder weapons.
And then as you say. Getting any value on that Depends on if that person will really follow up and talk. So it almost seems like if you were gonna use that method, you might as well just like fake it and read them a list of murder weapons and be like, and, and just claim to have seen something which is getting into the highly deceptive, you know, losing uh,
Eric: right
Zach: report territory.
If you were just gonna be like, oh, I saw you react when I said candle. You know, when I read candlestick, like if they’re guilty, maybe they’ll give you something. Um, but then you all, then you risk, you know, losing rapport in such way if you, if you do that, you know, wrongly, or, or, or, or, you know, I, I guess it all depends on, it seems like a lot of it can tie down to like, is this a person that’s going to easily break under interrogation in the first place, you know?
Eric: Yeah. Well, and, and, and I don’t want that either. The difference is, again, with the FBII, I. I had a defense attorney question me once. He said, you, you were telling witnesses that my subject was guilty. I was on the stand for this before he was even charged. And I said, yeah, I don’t investigate people that I don’t think are guilty.
If I find out they’re not guilty, I stop investigating him. So coming into this, I, I have an advantage where I pretty much know that you are guilty. Um, that allows me, I
mean,
Zach: especially in the FBI as you’re
Eric: right.
Zach: You know, you not compared to general law enforcement. Yeah. Yeah.
Eric: And that allows me to maybe lock in more to these, this isn’t true, you’re lying to me.
But if, if I’m just out there throwing things out, now the problem is I, I’m biasing the path I’m going on. If, if I’m not curious and open and I’ve locked into, I’m gonna get a confession out of you. I might.
Zach: Mm-hmm.
Eric: And then it might be false. And that should be the last thing. That I want.
Zach: Mm-hmm. Were there, um, I know you had mentioned the Reed Technique trainings in the FBI.
Is that something you’ve seen change over the years? Um, ’cause I know, you know, there’s been more criticisms of things in the reed technique area. I’m just curious, have you seen that change over the years?
Eric: Uh, I don’t know that I really say I’ve seen a change, but when I was offered this opportunity in the Chicago Field Division, it was maybe 2003 or four.
And I’ve never come across another opportunity. It’s not one that I pay attention to. So it might be something they’ve gotten away from, there’ve been a lot more criticism about it since then. What we have seen is, uh, the FBI developed what’s called a fly team. And so these are agents who fly to different locations to interview high value subjects who’ve been captured.
And they have methods that they’ve gone through that, uh, are along the lines of ISOM and rapport building and empathy and openness. It’s, it’s like these guys really should start their own dating app because everything about the FBI investigative tools are the same kind of things you’re trying to win a date over for.
I am curious about what you have to say rather than shutting you down, which is contrary to the read. I am letting you talk instead of controlling the conversation.
Zach: Mm-hmm.
Eric: I am, uh, giving you the appearance of, um. Agency where I ask you to sit where you want, and um, I speak to you in terms that show that I care.
Like, that must have been difficult growing up that way. I can imagine that would be hard.
Zach: Mm-hmm.
Eric: So all of this, it’s the same thing that I do if I’m on a date and I’m trying to impress somebody.
Zach: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Eric: And, and that’s manipulative too. So this also is, but it’s to bring the person to a comfortable level where they feel like they can make a confession.
If, if I get to a place where you feel comfortable enough that you want to tell me what’s true, that’s what I’m looking for. Mm-hmm.
Zach: That.
Eric: Ultimately, you don’t think we’re at odds? I’ve given you a great opportunity to get things off your chest or to make things right?
Zach: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And not only is it more effective, you, you don’t have the perception or, you know, it’s very unlikely you run into false confessions in that type of en environment too, so,
This is a talk with Doug Teschner and Beth Malow—co-authors of the book Beyond the Politics of Contempt—about an aspect of bridge-building/depolarization-aimed work that rarely gets discussed: the backlash. We dig into the criticisms and skepticism that people on both “sides” throw at depolarization/bridge-building efforts—claims that it’s naive, weak, morally compromised, or even a form of complicity with the “bad guys.” We talk about why contempt can feel justified and righteous, how protest and resistance can unintentionally fuel us-vs-them cycles, and why simply “listening” is often seen as legitimizing harmful views. If you’ve ever thought “that empathetic bridge-building stuff all sounds nice, but now isn’t the time”—or if you’ve rolled your eyes at such work altogether—there’s a good chance this conversation addresses some objections you have.
(Transcripts are automatic and do contain errors.)
Doug: I do post about the book and some of our ideas in the book and the work of Braver Angels and yeah, I’ve had some family members come on and make some really nasty comments…
I had a comment that, uh. For instance, the other day that contempt is better than complicity. Mm-hmm. So the implication is that somehow, uh, it’s okay for me to have contempt, because otherwise I’m accepting what other people say is, you know, I’m giving into them…
If you didn’t know, I myself have written a couple books about polarization, which you can learn about at american-anger.com. That’s why I sometimes discuss polarization-related topics for this podcast.
For this talk with Doug and Beth about their book and work, I wanted to take an approach that might make it more engaging for some people. As someone who has talked about this topic a good amount, i’m always worried that people will think “i’ve already heard this before.” So for this talk, I focused on the pushback and criticism those of us doing this work can receive from people on both quote “sides”. And some of these criticisms we’ll talk about there’s a good chance you yourself have (believe me, even just a few years ago, I would have had many objections and criticisms of this work). So if you are skeptical or critical of this work, i hope you stick around and listen a bit. For example, if you’re someone very scared about what Trump’s doing and you think ‘I don’t see how I could be a part of this, with the fears and concerns I have,’ I think you’ll find some answers to that in this episode.
I’d also add that my own books on this topic are specifically focused on objections; I start my books with a list of objections that many people on both quote “sides” have; even as they may word those objections in very different ways.
A little bit about my guests:
Doug Teschner ran the Peace Corps in Ukraine and led a community education effort to end the Ebola epidemic in Guinea. As Braver Angels New England Regional Leader, he led the effort that led to the creation of a bipartisan caucus in the NH House of Representative where he previously served as a GOP legislator.
Beth Malow is a neurologist and science/health communicator working in public health and climate change and has given a TEDx talk, The Art of Communicating Science. Beth has appeared on NPR-1A, PBS Newshour, and other news outlets. She moderates workshops and debates for Braver Angels, the bipartisan non-profit grassroots organization focused on uniting Americans in our divided time.
Okay here’s the talk with Beth Malow and Doug Teschner, co-authors, along with Becky Robinson, of Beyond The Politics of Contempt.
Hi, Beth and Doug. Thanks for joining me.
Beth Malow: We’re happy to be here.
Doug Teschner: Delighted.
Zach Elwood: Yeah. So I thought, uh, you know, honestly, I, I think a lot of the talks about polarization can be a, a little boring and, uh, repetitive, especially as I’ve done a good amount of them for my own podcast. So I think my, my own audience can be.
A little bored of hearing about it. So I thought for this talk we could delve into something a little bit more, you know, controversial and exciting, and, and talk about the pushback and the skepticism that you and and I and others doing this work sometimes hear from people who are skeptical or outright hostile to the idea of reducing, uh, toxic polarization and, and contempt and such.
So, um. Maybe with that, uh, with that focus, we can start with, you know, how do, how do you all in, in a nutshell, if you were trying to describe what you were trying to get people to do at a practical level, um, in like a few sentences with your work, uh, what, how would you describe it? And, and maybe I’ll, I’ll go first real quick in a, in a real quick, high level.
Approach. I think what I’m trying to do is, is basically just get people to see how there is a self-reinforcing cycle of conflict going on and to even as they’re doing their activism and even as they’re being. Quite angry and pushing hard against various things. They don’t like to see how they can unintentionally feed into that toxic conflict cycle and try to try the best they can to avoid unnecessarily ramping up toxic conflict and contempt and such.
Because it’s a self-reinforcing cycle. So that’s kinda like the high level view. But I’m, and maybe I’ll kick that off and, and pass it to one of you to talk about, you know, what is it you want people to do with, you know, the, the work that the, the book that you’ve written and other, the similar work that you’re doing.
Beth Malow: Why don’t you, why don’t you get started and I’ll add,
Doug Teschner: um, you know, I think we’re trying to give people, when, when we really drill into it, we’re trying to give people some hope. You know, people, there’s a lot of despair, there’s a lot of anxiety, there’s a lot of, of, uh, anger. Uh, and, and, and, and what, what can people be do that’s gonna be constructive?
I mean, I think that’s when what we’re trying to do. So we’re trying to create a hopeful roadmap for Americans trying to make sense in this dark moment. And the goal was really to transform the politics of fear and contempt into the politics of hope. And, and we think of it as multiple levels. You know, we begin by, uh, thinking how to better our lives, which is kind of what, what, what you were referencing.
We talk a lot about relationships and bettering our relationships and our conversations over the holidays with local Fred and as well as our communities and, and our country, but we think it can start from the ground with our own little actions that can make a difference.
Beth Malow: Yeah. I, I just wanted to add and maybe elaborate on your specific questions, Zach, about the.
Idea that when we protest or uh, resist that it can add an element that of that anger and that contempt that can then cause others on the other side maybe to react and then you start getting into this us versus them. I, I, I definitely view myself as predominantly a bridge builder as, as does Doug, and I think that really motivated us to write this book.
However, I’ve learned through, um, my interactions with a lot of different people since the book came out. And being a liberal myself, um, leaning more to the left, I, I, I definitely see. The the anger, and I think it’s important for bridge builders like us to realize that it’s hard when people feel that the world is on fire, right?
That the world is burning down to. Understand the work we’re doing and, and, and embrace some of what Doug is saying and, and what you write about so eloquently in your book. And, and what I truly believe in my heart, which is that if we’re gonna get the fire to go out, if we’re gonna stop the fire, we need to start with hope.
We need to start with civility. We need to start with dignity and respect. Uh, so what I’ve tried to be do is become really curious, uh, and really try to listen, uh, and understand people who are really upset and really angry, and give them the same level of curiosity that I give some of my friends on the right, you know, who, uh, I sometimes feel, um.
Like I am, I’m really stepping out and, and being respectful of them, even if I don’t agree with their policies and, and just affording that to, to people on the left as well, because I think we’re all, as Doug says, we’re all looking for hope. We’re all trying to make this a better world. And when we get at our values.
We often find we have the same values. It’s just our ways of expressing them can be different. And, and, and Doug, I love how much you emphasized values in the, um, the first draft of the book. That, that truly made me wanna join you as a co-author.
Zach Elwood: Hmm. Yeah, I think, uh, oh, go ahead.
Doug Teschner: I would just add to that, that, you know, we are asking pe people to take a, take a look inside themselves and, and their own and take a look at your heart and, and, and, and it has to come now, start from there.
I mean, the, the, you know, we talk about the conflict entrepreneurs who are the people that are driving a lot of this division, but we don’t wanna be conflict enablers, which is to, to contribute to that. I think a lot of this that we talked about is, is how do we step back and, and, and take a little look at our own behavior and not, not only in terms of are we contributing, uh, but are we, how are we feeling about it?
You know, how are we, people get so caught up on their cell phones and doom scrolling and. Is this really working for people? So, so I, as I, as I, and we started off talk, writing the book making about how can we change our country, but, you know, how can we coverage people to be, uh, to, to get involved, uh, like we do with Braver Angels, the national organization that we’re involved with as volunteers, but we think it’s really has to start with a little stepping back.
A little, a little more, uh, what can we do to help you with, with Uncle Fred or with, or at Thanksgiving or the holiday dinner, or, or what can we do to make you feel a little better about yourself as you’re dealing with this, uh, uh, this challenging times in our country?
Zach Elwood: Yeah. I think, um, I, I was gonna ask you all, um, you know, I, I’ve gotten so much.
Pushback and just outright hostility doing this work. And I think, I think it is, it is important to delve into that. I think. I think sometimes it can, you know, by addressing that. Addressing that head on can be important, I think, because as you say, yeah, so many people do have these skepticisms because I think a lot of that skepticism and hostility is due to misunderstanding what the work is about, I think, um, and also just the fundamental aspects of how conflict works makes people skeptical of attempts to reduce the conflict.
But I, but I wanted to ask you both, uh, do, do you have stories that come to mind of, of, uh, instances where you got. Some hostility about this work and even places where you were surprised to find that pushback and hostility. Do you have any stories to share? Uh, maybe in person or just. Online comments or things like that that come to mind?
Beth Malow: I think Doug has some Facebook to share. I don’t know if you,
Doug Teschner: I’ve had, I’ve had, um, family on both sides of the issue and, and, and some of them have gone at each other. But, um, you know, and, and sometimes, sometimes I know, I, I think, I think politics on Facebook and social media. Mostly, uh, unwarranted and I really try to avoid it, but I do post about the book and some of our ideas in the book and the work of Brave Angels and yeah, I’ve had some family members come on and make some really nasty comments.
Um, and you know, I had a comment. I had a comment that, uh. For instance, the other day that, uh, con contempt is, uh, better than complicity. Mm-hmm. So the implication is that somehow, uh, it’s okay for me to have a lot, have a contempt, because otherwise I’m, I’m, I’m accepting what other people say is, is, you know, I’m, I’m giving into them.
And we’ve had a lot of conversations with people where, where they’re saying things like, um, I can’t talk to them because I don’t wanna. I, by talking to them, I’m gonna be somehow acknowledging that I, that they have the right facts.
Zach Elwood: Mm-hmm. Right. You’re, yeah, there’s, there’s a, there’s a sense that you’re.
Enabling or helping people in a way by engaging with them,
Doug Teschner: having a conversation with somebody, you’re actually enabling them.
Zach Elwood: Right?
Doug Teschner: And, and so this just pushes people away. And, and, and, and I, and I, you know, I think we’ve gotta create a climate where people feel. By doing that, aren’t you just reinforcing the problem?
Mm-hmm. Because you’re, you’re by, by pushing people away saying, I’m not gonna talk to you. Then, then they’re just, they’re just, you know, buying this, this, this, the idea that you, you, you’re shame, you’re treating them with shame, right. And, and
Zach Elwood: contempt leads to contempt. It’s a
Doug Teschner: Exactly, and, and, uh, now, but the, the, the key is how do we do it in a gentle way and how do we do it to win people over?
And how do we do it in a way that’s, that’s, um, uh, you know, how do you connect with people who are who, who feel this way? And, and you know, it’s just little conversations and, and, and, and, and you’re not gonna get to, you’re not gonna reach everybody, unfortunately. I mean, we talk about, uh, a lot in the, in the book about the Hidden Tribes report, uh, the exhaustive majority that talks about how they put people in different categories.
And this was done by a study, by, uh. Um, more in common
Beth Malow: Hawkins,
Stephen
Doug Teschner: Hawkins. Stephen Hawkins is the leader of this, of this study. And, and, um, you know, the, what, what happens is the people on the extremes are kind of dominating or the, when I say the extremes are the most, the most, the most passionate people about this are the ones that are driving the agenda.
But there’s a, a majority of the country that are kind of looking at this and seeing. You know, some know that something’s wrong, that something, this isn’t working very well. And so we have, we have to start with the exhaustive majority, kind of get them to, uh, to sort of rise up and say, wait a minute, we, we, we don’t want this.
And the people on the extremes are, are more challenging. I mean, there’s no question about it, but we, we still gotta work at it. But, you know, I just try to keep. I, I keep, I don’t see social media as a, as a very, very positive way to engage. So I don’t engage in those conversations, but I try to have a, a personal conversation when we’re, when we’re, uh, uh, in, especially in the same space, uh, with people as opposed to, uh, uh, any kind of, any social media isn’t gonna work.
I don’t think email would work very well. Maybe a phone conversation. But, uh, these, these conversations are hard and sometimes if people, people are just, are digging in it, it doesn’t create a lot of, uh, a lot of opening and you kind of have to accept that.
Beth Malow: Yeah. I wanted to add a story. Uh, it’s in our book.
It’s on page 42 and, um. I’ll, I’ll just, I won’t read the whole story, but I’ll just, I’ll just um, mention a few things. It starts with, after the 2024 election, many of my friends and family members could not understand how President Trump had won the election, especially the popular vote. They considered anyone who voted for him to be misguided at best, and I saw it differently with the economy and immigration and other issues playing an important role.
And when I tried to explain to my friends on the left that some of the people I talked with who voted for Trump were actually thoughtful, kind and respectful. I didn’t get anger, but what I got was this, it’s wonderful that you’re so nice, right? Right. That you’re naive, you’re nice. And there are moral issues at play here.
You know, we’re on a higher moral ground. And it was very painful for me, uh, because I really did and do feel that, uh, people have different opinions and, uh, the higher moral ground has always, I’ve always struggled with it. I’m Jewish and I’ve had Jewish friends say to me, well, this is just like the 1930s with the rise of Hitler.
And it’s really been hard for me, uh, with my friends. To counteract that. Um, but what I’m trying to do as a true bridge builder, I really wanna, wanna step up to that, um, that distinction is, is try to cross a bridge and talk to my friends on the left and try to understand where they’re coming from and sometimes.
If I can listen to them and use the same skills that I used with people on the right it, I do break through and then I agree with Doug. Like then I’ll invoke, for example, the conflict entrepreneurs and say, look, it’s not that everyone on the right or everyone voted for Trump or whatever is necessarily divisive.
Some people just. Had other reasons and, um, just trying to let people also see how easy it is for people on the right and on the left to be dated by the conflict entrepreneurs and social media. I mean, I I not only hear it on, um, conservative talk shows, but on liberal talk shows as well. Um, I, I hear these.
Uh, I mean, I’ll just start getting riled up myself, right? Mm-hmm. When I listen yeah. To some of these shows, and it’s not on one side or on the other. It’s, it’s truly on both sides. And, um, it’s, uh, it’s not everyone, but it’s, it’s enough that people, uh, get baited by it.
Doug Teschner: Yeah, we people in categories, us versus them.
Beth Malow: Mm-hmm.
Doug Teschner: But we don’t even know what them is, you know? I mean, humans are, is people, individuals. You know, we make assumptions about people, we make assumptions about how they voted. And, you know, everybody has a story to tell. You know, it’s quick. We’re all quick to make assumptions. Somebody walks in the room and you look at, you sort of look ’em over how they’re dressed, whatever.
You kind of, it, it’s natural, but I think, I think for all of us to be really, and I, I try to be really, uh, aware. Of when I’m making a lot of assumptions. I is this, is this, is this really fair to, to other people? Are they, what, what are the assumptions they’re making about me? And, and, and so this us versus them and, and, and if we can’t talk to them.
How are we even gonna know what they believe? You know, people are so siloed nowadays or, and sorted and geo geographically, and, and even though we have a lot of Facebook friends, they all think like us, you know, or, or there’s more and more of that and, and, and, um, so people are really in bubbles and it’s, it’s very concerning.
Uh, when we, we find ourselves in this kind of, uh, a, uh, mentality. And then as, as Beth said, we’ve gotta do a little pushback on our own side a little bit, which this is, this is kind of critical that, that, you know, if you don’t stay in your own lane and you start questioning some of what you, you, your people believe that, that you can end up sort of out in the middle with no, with no, uh, no, no alliances at that.
And it’s, it’s kind of a scary. I
Beth Malow: touch on one more thing if I can, Zach, which is that that different set of facts that, that Doug alluded to. ’cause this comes up a lot when we talk about the book, when we do our workshops with braver Angels, is people say, I get it. I wanna speak to people on the other side.
I understand the importance of speaking to my sister, whatever. Um, but how do I talk to people who are operating with a completely different set of facts? And one of the things that Doug and I have, have started talking about is well dig deeper, right? Dig deeper into the values. Uh, for example, Doug and I were, um, you know, we were, I was doing, actually, I was doing a workshop on COVID during COVID.
I, I brought people who believed in the public health response and that it was generally good. With people who were questioning it. And, um, you know, we on the public health side had a whole list of, of recommendations about vaccines and masking and whatever, and on the app. On the questioner side, they really wanted to talk about Iber, ivermectin and, and, and other therapies.
And what we ended up doing that was very powerful is talking about what we wanted for our communities and. Some of us wanted to eradicate as much COVID as possible so people wouldn’t get sick, particularly elderly people. Um, but the questioners also cared about the community. They cared about the schools being open.
They cared about the, the businesses being open, that the community continued to be healthy, uh, especially if there were relatively low rates of COVID in that community. And it, it really hit me hard that. You know, we, we might question each other’s facts, right? They may question our facts on vaccines. We may question their facts on Ivermectin, but we agreed on the value of the community and the health of the community.
And that’s, I, again, if I break through to someone, that’s the kind of, um, story I try to share. Um, but breaking through to folks is, to me, the hardest part, right? Is, is really getting them to. There’s such a barrier with the, as I said, the higher moral ground and the If I, if, if I listen, even if I don’t agree, I’m somehow giving weight to anti-democratic norms and I we’re still struggling with that, how to break through that.
Zach Elwood: Yeah. The, uh, speaking of the, I mean, I think one of the most common reactions, um, negative reactions from people who are skeptical of this work is, you know, what do you said about saying that? Well, that’s all nice and, and stuff, but it’s naive of you to work on that. Right? I, I mean, I get that a lot. I get, I get that from friends and family.
Um, they don’t, even, the ones that don’t outright say it, I can tell that’s how they feel. Right? ’cause I know that they. Don’t really care about the work or they, you know, kind of dismiss it. Uh, so I think, but, but I think it is, IM, and I think it is important because, you know, toxic conflict inherently comes with more people scoffing at such work, right?
That’s the nature of how conflict works. But I, and I think it’s important to make people see or try to get them to see that. Maybe I’m not, maybe we’re not being the naive ones. Maybe. Maybe you scoffing at it is, is the naive thing that maybe you’re not looking at the conflict from a holistic enough perspective to see that this is such a common human dynamic and to see that there are many ways that toxic conflict makes us so many of us act in ways that amplify the conflict.
I think people that are naive when they scoff at or act in, uh, conflict amplifying ways that they would judge other people for, you know, hypocritical ways. Mm-hmm. I think many people are being. Naive themselves because they’re just not seeing like, Hey, maybe you don’t have to act in those ways. Maybe you can pursue your goals without acting in those ways that, you know, insult and throw contempt at a wide range of people and so on and so on.
These kinds of things. So I think, I think it is important to, and I, and I, and I think that’s, uh, I think trying to get that message out is a big part of this because just, you know, it’s understandable as you said it, it’s completely understandable why people. Our skeptical of this work, it feels very, it can feel very, you know, milk toast and weak when we’re, when we have so much emotions and, and we’re upset about so many things.
But I think getting, trying to get people to question like, Hey, maybe, maybe you’re, you’re the one being naive at not in trying to embrace this work and. And, and maybe there’s a reason me and many other people Yeah. Like yourself, see this as the most important work and to try to see how these ideas can live alongside activism and things like that.
So yeah, I think, I think it is very important to, you know, and, and I think, yeah, we, we, we often get that reaction. It’s like, Hey, that’s very nice of you. You’re such a nice person. But, you know, go away with that for now. We, and I, yeah. One specific message stands out that I put in the book was. You know, somebody saying like, I think we can reserve trying, you know, we can wait on trying to reduce contempt until after we defeat Trump.
And you know, right. It’s like, but, but that’s exactly the kind of mentality on both sides that just. Amplify the toxicity and get us to more extreme us versus them approaches and so on and on. Yeah.
Beth Malow: Yeah. No, I, I agree. And um, there was something I clipped in your book that I just wanted to say. I really felt like you hit the nail on the head with this particular issue.
Um, you wrote on page 32, if you’re trying to reduce polarization, you’re wrongly and naively. Valuing civility and unity more than morality and justice. And when I read that I was like, that’s it. You know? That’s the key thing. Um. The other thing you wrote right after that though, really gave me a lot of pause, which is ’cause it reflects me in a way.
Working on reducing polarization is a mark of privilege. Some of us have to fight hard against ideas and people who threaten us and. And in some ways I am very advantaged. I, um, I’m working part-time, I’m a physician, but I’m not like where I was 10 years ago with my grants, where my grants, my, my National Institutes of Health grants might have been canceled by the new, um, administration.
Uh, I am, um, I’m in a, in a much. Better place. I’m, I’m living in New England right now. I’m living in a blue state. I used to live in Tennessee, which is red State. I’m just in a different place and I realize that I just have to keep reminding myself that it’s not as easy for everyone to embrace the idea, Zach, that we are putting forward and you’re putting forward about being bridge building and.
And I’ve wondered if I can ask you a question. I mean, is there an emotional side to this that you’ve thought about how you can break through? Because I mean, we can give people skills, we can talk about values, we can talk about conversations where they listen to others and then they state you state your own opinion.
Right? I mean, there’s lots of steps. Um, the step that has been the hardest for us. Has been overcoming that, that emotion and that anger, and I’ve just wondered if you’ve had any insights into that. Well,
Zach Elwood: well, I think, uh, I mean, I think practically in a, in a practical sense, people that have that objection, like it’s a mark of privilege or, you know, we really need to work on these things and it’s a, it’s a market privilege to be able to work on the bridge building.
I think it kind of. Is actually a cover for them not agreeing with the work, because I think if they actually agreed with the work and saw it as valuable, then you wouldn’t reach for these, you know, reasons. Mm-hmm. To dislike it because, you know, I, I mean there’s, there’s plenty of, I’ve talked to plenty of people who are passionate about views on the left, passionate about views on the right, who believe in this work.
So it’s not as if these things can’t live alongside each other. And I think. I think a lot of times that’s covering up hostility to the work and just saying like, oh, it’s a market privilege. Whereas like, well, but do you agree that it’s a good idea or not? So, and I think, I think that everybody should agree it’s a good idea and let you know, with the exception of people who actually want to make the conflict more, more toxic, which those people exist too, but I think people that genuinely want to achieve their goals.
Not, you know, not amplify toxic conflict, should see this work as good. So I think, I think a lot of times, I would say for people that throw out the privilege, uh, comment, uh, I would ask, well, do you, do you think it’s good or not? Like, am I persuading you it’s a good idea or not? Are you persuaded or not?
’cause that’s really the important thing. ’cause then it’s like, well, okay, maybe if you don’t wanna work on it, at least you can be supportive of people that do work on it. Right. So, and I think that there was a good book too about, um. This book, I don’t know if you’ve heard of it. It was called, um, the perils of Privilege about the, the unpaper persuasiveness of, of, of, uh, frequently using the privilege mark to try to, you know, throw shade at, at various things people are doing, which is a, some often just a shield for like, I don’t like the work you’re doing.
And then be, um, not a persuasive approach because I mean, you can be a, you can be, be a very, uh, you know. If you can be someone who’s struggling with all sorts of things and still do this work, right? Like there’s, there’s nothing That’s a good point. They’re, they’re not, yeah. We shouldn’t see these things as like blockers to other, but I think that’s, that’s what toxic conflict does to us.
It makes us think like, well, trying to reduce polarization cannot live alongside my passion or even my anger, even my. Contempt. But I think it’s important to get people to see, like these things can live alongside each other and I think actually make political activism more persuasive and more effective.
Yeah,
Beth Malow: I agree. It’s like Dale Carnegie, right? I always tell people how to win friends and influence people. If you, and Doug says this too, if somebody thinks you’re treating them with contempt or, or thinks you feel they’re stupid or not a patriot or deplorable, or whatever. They’re not gonna listen to you.
So, um, really connecting with people, listening to them, um, getting beyond that I am, I’m acknowledging, um, things that are not moral, whatever, you know, just listening to them, connecting with them, and then being able to share with them what you think, whether it’s bridge building is important, or some of the policies that the left feels the right.
Needs to, um, be educated on is, is so important.
Doug Teschner: Yeah, I’d add that, you know, I mean, contempt and when I would, I would say to a relative that what, is that where you want to be? Is that where you want to be? Is contempt, is that who you want to be? And so the, this, we talk a lot about values and stepping back on our values and or, or we got this system where I can treat people with kindness if they’re us.
But I treat people with, with contempt who are uh, who are them. But I think a big part of this is we really need to step back and look at the, look what’s driving this. Look at the factors. We, we spend some time in our book talking about the factors that are driving the polarization. And, and you know, a lot of it is so, uh, social media algorithms and the conflict entrepreneurs.
And by the way, we used, uh, we, we wanted to make our book really user friendly and. You read and we added graphics like, uh, we have a, we have a crocodile trying to eat the American flag as an example of a, of a conflict entrepreneur. And they’re not doing it. They’re not doing it for the country. People are doing it to divide us and, and for their own power and their own benefit.
And a lot of this is foreign powers. I mean, this is, so, I think people are gonna really step back and say, wait a minute. Am I being manipulated here? Am I, am I really, am I really, am I behaving in a certain way that’s being driven by other people or am I reacting, and this is how the social media algorithms work.
They’re playing on people’s fears, they’re playing on, they’re trying to reinforce a lot of bad behavior. So I think it has to, it has to start with a little stepping back. Yes, we can teach people skills about how to engage with difficult conversations. But it has to start with your own, your own, looking at your own heart and your own values and, and, and embracing, uh, listening skills which have kind of fallen out of vogue.
I mean, we listened to, to reply, not to understand which, and that was one of the se the seven gr categories from Stephen Covey’s great book, uh, and of, of, of success. Successful people listen to understand, not to engage. So listening skills. Humility, humility. I mean, whoever talks about that anymore, being a little, you know, and, and, and curiosity.
Being curious and not furious as be says. So the, these are things we kind of, we, we kind of walk through the book and show people where they can, where they, how they can move and how they can embrace things and how they can feel better about themselves. ’cause that is a big part of this. And feel better about those, those difficult conversations at, at the holiday gathering.
Zach Elwood: I was gonna, uh, another, I think another area of skepticism that comes up, pushback from people on the right and the left is this feeling like, uh, well, what, what do you, what do you mean? Uh, you know, our side has contributed. It’s all the other side’s fault. Like, what do, what do I or people on, you know, my side of the divide.
We, we haven’t really contributed to this, to this problem at all. That, you know, I, I think you, you and i’s, uh, work is aimed at a more liberal, you know, uh, anti-Trump audience. I think it, it kind of goes in that, uh, those realms. And so the main, I’ve heard it on both sides, but the main, uh, pushback I’ve heard is from more liberal people who say like, well, what do you mean, you know, liberals have contributed and, and I think people that are curious.
About that. Well, first I’ll just open up to you. Do you, do you often hear that, uh, that kind of, uh, pushback or skepticism from people as, as a blocker to, you know, absorbing these kinds of ideas?
Doug Teschner: Well, sure. But you know, how do we help people to, to get there where they’re doing a little self-examination? I mean, we, we, we use the term conflict enablers, you know, are, are, are, are you, you might not be a conflict entrepreneur making money conflict, but are you an enabler?
I use somebody, uh, who’s like, who’s like, if, if, if you see some um, nasty post on on Facebook, you uh, repost it as opposed to, you know, are you, are you feeding the beast? And I think that this is where we’ve all gotta step back and encourage, we’re trying to, you know, edge people over towards thinking about it.
And again, you know, how we say it and how we do it. Is, is is not telling people they’re wrong. It’s has, it has to kind of come from the heart and how we care about people. And, and, uh, you know, we, we, we, we have a lot of quote in the books and, and, and, and I like, I like some from, uh, one of my favorites from Abraham Lincoln.
I, I don’t like that man. I must get to know him better. And, and, and, and there’s another great one from Lincoln. Uh, he has a right to criticize who has a heart to help. I love that quote. He has a right to criticize who has a heart to help. We’re so critical of other people, but are we doing it with a heart to help?
Zach Elwood: Mm-hmm.
Doug Teschner: I, I think that that’s an area that can really, you know, to, to work and help people to, to take that within themselves and ask that kind of, those kind of questions.
Zach Elwood: Yeah. Yeah. I
was
Zach Elwood: just gonna, oh, go ahead.
Beth Malow: Um, I was just gonna say one thing about activism, though I do believe. Through the work we’ve done and the people we’ve come into contact with, that activism can be a very powerful, positive force.
I think if you can take the contempt out and you can add just a smidgen of bridge building or at least respect for those who are doing the bridge building. We don’t all have to be bridge builders. Uh, I think that activism does have a role and I just wanted to get that in here on this podcast. Um, I’m watching, for example, Ken Burns the American Revolution.
Now it’s a great series and you realize how. Activism played a role in the formation of our country and how powerful that was. And I just think that, um, it’s important to respect activists and when we do that, I think we can also get through to them and say, Hey, you know. Don’t demonize the other side. I, I think, as you said earlier, Zach, two things can exist at the same time.
Um, one can be an activist and a bridge builder, or at least can be an activist who tolerates bridge builders, uh, in our world. That’s all.
Doug Teschner: Yeah. Also, you wanna bring people to your side, right? Don’t you wanna bring, what don’t you wanna expand you by when you push people away,
Beth Malow: right?
Doug Teschner: It just reinforces it by engaging with people.
You can, you, you, you might, you might win ’em over, you might not.
Zach Elwood: You need a bigger tent to be effective, basically. Like, yeah,
Beth Malow: exactly. Exactly.
Zach Elwood: Um, yeah, I did want to throw in Yeah. ’cause we’re coming up on the time. Yeah. But I, I wanted to throw in like a big objection. I think people listening to this, uh, if, if people skeptical of this have gotten this far, I think a big, uh.
A big objection they’ll hear they’ll have is they’ll hear like, well, but I really do think people like Trump or other people, you know, various specific people, I do have. Great contempt and judgment for them. I don’t need to get to know them. I think they’re very bad and that’s a common source of obstacles to getting people to absorb this too.
But I think, I think the way to overcome that is to see that like even if you think specific leaders and activists are, are very bad and harmful, I think it’s important to see that. More us versus them. Approaches are a product of this increasing contempt and polarization. So I think it, it helps to see, like say you think Trump is a very toxic person, us versus them person as I do, I also think he’s.
Been, uh, you know, people take the worst case interpretations of various things he says and all these things. I, I think it’s important to see that people that you see as taking highly us versus them, high animosity approaches are more of the product of a very polarized system, a as, and see them less as the cause of it.
Because a system is very complex, so, you know, a system. Like, say, say if Trump suddenly took, uh, you know, low animosity approaches, it, it would help. But I, I also think the system is such that it would lead to, you know, all the contempt in the system and, and us versus them thinking would lead to more support for, you know, people who took highly us versus approaches.
And the system is very complex. It manifests in different ways on different sides. There’s different factors in the groups and et cetera. So I think getting people to see that. Even if you, you know, your dislike or, you know, judgment of one person or specific people on the other side doesn’t mean that all those people on the other side are like that.
’cause groups are very, not the, not the same. We know that they’re not the same, even though our minds make us think that they’re all like that. Right. So I, I think getting people to see the complexity is very important. ’cause I think that’s like one of the number one obstacles is like, well you’re telling me to listen to the other side.
I don’t wanna listen to Trump, or I don’t, I don’t wanna listen to. You know, Kamala Harris or whatever it is, you know, there’s these obstacles that they’re like, well, I’m not doing that, so I’m not gonna listen to your, your ideas. Right.
Beth Malow: Amanda Ripley wrote a wonderful book called High Conflict that I’m sure you’re familiar with, and, um, she has a technique for reducing polarization, uh, called um, complicating the Narrative and introducing Nuance.
And Zach, when you speak, it reminds me of that. And just being able to stay. It’s, it’s much more complex than we think. I’ve had people tell me that Trump is a product of the conflict rather than Trump causing the conflict. And I, I can see that, uh, going back to the roots of polarization, it’s been going on a long, long, a lot longer than Trump, you know, being president.
So, uh, yeah, I, and it’s worth throwing in
Zach Elwood: there too, that, you know. For people that are Trump’s supporters or Trump voters. It’s like that the, what we say can be true. And also there are very rational reasons why people, you know, voted for Trump because they’re upset about things on the left. Right? So e even if we’re talking about one specific area, it’s not to say that that, you know, Trump was elected only because of polarization.
There there are like rational things people are upset about. So Exactly. Just to say like there’s all sorts of ways people can interpret. Anything we say. To kind of like, you know, want to disengage or not pay attention to these polarization ideas, but we hope that people listening will be curious enough to go down the rabbit hole a little bit more and
Beth Malow: look at these ideas more.
A lot of times people, right, a lot of times people vote against what they believe rather than for what they believe. So just feeling, that’s what I tell other people, like when you, they vote against what they’re, what they dislike.
Zach Elwood: Yeah.
Beth Malow: When you talk to your relative, you may actually be preventing, you may be getting what you want.
In the end by damping down some of the hate and animosity toward the left, you know, because you are trying to connect with people. So, um, yeah, we have a lot of reasons why being a bridge builder is a positive thing. Uh, we just have to crack that, that, you know, anger and frustration and, and we’re still working on, get the message out there.
Work in progress. Yeah.
Zach Elwood: Well, I want to thank you both. I know we’re getting near the top of the. Hour there. Is there anything you all wanted to share?
Beth Malow: Yeah, I just wanted to throw out, and then maybe Doug has something to add, is we do have a substack, um, which is together now. Do substack.com. It’s also called together Across Differences, and these ideas continue to evolve.
Uh, I’m gonna be posting, for example, a. Uh, article on the intersection of Bridge Building and activism, uh, very soon. And we’ve, we also have guessed. Um, you know, we’d, we’d be happy to have you, Zach, post. Uh, we have lots of, um, different ways that people can absorb the material in our book beyond the politics of contempt, uh, in, um, in their lives.
We encourage everybody to look at that substack together across differences.
Doug Teschner: Yeah. I, I just, I, I thank I thank you a lot, Zach. I appreciate your book and, and, uh, that we both came down on contempt and so kind of a key word, which I think is really important. Mm-hmm. You know, we wanna give people hope. We’re, we’re trying to make, we’re trying to make our vote.
Our book, very practical and very easy to read. Send questions that you can reflect on. And, uh, we encourage you to, uh, you know, connect with us, connect with the, uh, substack, and, and have a little more hope in, in, in your life. And, uh, we hope that, uh, we hope that, that we can offer that.
A talk with former CIA officer Kent Clizbe about his exposure of Wayne Simmons, a man who spent more than a decade on Fox News posing as a CIA counterterrorism expert—but who was a fraud and serial liar.
And we talk about how that case mirrors what we see with self-proclaimed behavior expert Chase Hughes, who claims to be in possession of advanced, top-secret military intel and techniques, but who is a clear fraud.
Topics discussed: how Kent met Wayne Simmons; why Kent suspected quickly he was a fake; how Kent’s intuition about Wayne relates to Kent’s system of holistic contextual analysis; and the negative impacts on Kent’s life from questioning Wayne Simmons. We dig into the psychology of belief and gullibility, the social and career incentives that keep scams alive, and why fans and followers resist evidence even after it’s laid out clearly. This will be one of two talks with Kent Clizbe: the second one will focus on his view of the importance of nonverbal behavior in law enforcement and credibility assessment scenarios.
(Transcripts are done automatically and do contain errors.)
Kent Clizbe: This guy was on Fox News seen around the world for 13 years, and he was touted as a C, Fox News’s, CIA counter terrorism, Islamic extremism expert… 13 years, CIA, people saw him all over the world. Not a peep. Nobody ever said a word. After he’s arrested many CIA people, uh, came to me and said, oh, yeah, yeah, Uhhuh. Yeah, I, I had questions about him from the beginning. Bottom line is nobody said anything. Nobody did anything except me.
Zach Elwood: That was ex-CIA officer Kent Clizbe, talking about a popular Fox News contributor, Wayne Simmons, who claimed to be a former CIA operative but who Kent helped expose as a serial liar and fraud. A 2016 NYT article covered how Wayne Simmons was exposed. On Kent’s site, he references that article, writing:
The shocking story of how Kent uncovered and brought down an in-your-face fraudster–on a par with Bernie Madoff.
For 13 years, Fox News, the political/military establishment, and millions of Fox News viewers were scammed.
Kent Clizbe, applying his proprietary Holistic Contextual Credibility Assessment technique, revealed the fraud in minutes.
How could millions of Fox viewers–including legions of former, retired, and current CIA officers–be unaware the network’s leading “CIA counter-terrorism expert” was a fraud?
Isn’t the CIA’s job to vet people? To be sure they are who they say they are?
The answers will shock you. One man grasped the truth. And he pursued it to its conclusion.
Kent recently reached out to me regarding the con artist Chase Hughes, whose many lies and unethical behaviors I exposed in 2024 on my podcast. Kent had been interested in outing Chase as a fraud and then saw that I’d already done a lot of that work.
So in this episode we’ll talk about Kent’s work in outing Wayne Simmons; how he was introduced to Wayne; what it was that quickly tipped Kent off that Wayne was a fake — and how that immediate sense of fakery relates to Kent’s own credibility assessment method, which Kent has written a book about. We’ll talk about the pushback Kent got from powerful people in the government who knew and supported Wayne Simmons, and how his efforts to expose Wayne affected Kent’s life. And we’ll talk a bit about Chase Hughes: how Chase Hughes’ claims of expertise in military and intel and psy-ops areas map over to Wayne Simmons’ lies. Although if you really want to know about that, I recommend reading the expose on my site behavior-podcast.com; go to my site and search for ‘chase hughes’ and look for the piece titled ‘The many lies of Chase Hughes’.
Kent is a harsh critic of self-proclaimed behavior experts, in general. He argues that systems for assigning meaning to “nonverbal behavior” — specific body and face movements — is worse than useless in law enforcement- or espionage -related work, or other high stakes real-world environments. In Kent’s book Holistic Contextual Credibility Assessment: A Reality-based Alternative to Deception Detection, he lays out an overview of the work of the well known behavior researcher Paul Ekman and makes the case that Ekman is an irresponsible liar and con artist. I have to say that I largely agree with Kent; Kent is of course not the first person to call Paul Ekman out for bad science; there are many fellow researchers who have harshly criticized his work. On this podcast, I’ve talked to respected deception detection researcher Tim Levine about the weakness of Ekman’s work. Kent’s view of Ekman is a lot more pessimistic than most, but I think he makes a great argument for why we should see Ekman as an extremely untrustworthy person – someone who the record shows is not interested in the truth and much more interested in promoting himself as a genius.
This episode will only be the first part of our talk, though; this talk will focus on the frauds Wayne Simmons and Chase Hughes. The second episode that I’ll air in a couple weeks or so will focus on nonverbal behavior and its role — or its non-role — in law enforcement and credibility assessment scenarios. So look for that later.
Here’s a bit more about Kent’s career from his website kentclizbe.com:
Kent served as a staff CIA case officer in the 1990s, and as a contractor after 9/11. ** He has worked in various capacities in intelligence positions in Southeast Asia, Africa, Europe and the Middle East. His specialty is Counter-terrorism and Islamic Extremism.
Kent has also worked Counter-intelligence, Counter-proliferation, Counter-narcotics, and other targets. In addition to extensive liaison work with foreign intel services, he has worked in the US Intel Community in inter-agency, inter-governmental intelligence operations since 9/11. He was awarded the Intelligence Community Seal Medallion, the highest civilian intelligence agency decoration for contractors, for his counter-terrorist operations in the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia. His work in the Philippines was described in an article by Mark Bowden in the Atlantic Monthly in March 2007, “Jihadists in Paradise.”
Okay here’s the talk with Kent Clizbe:
Zach: Hey Kent, thanks for joining me. Sorry I said that right as you drink
Kent: to be with you today, Zach.
Zach: Sorry, I said that right as you were drinking coffee. That’s alright. Uh, good. Off to a good start, but we’ll keep going. That’s kind of funny. Uh, okay. So yeah, maybe we could start out with, uh, what, what made you, uh, what got you reaching out to me if you’d care to share that, uh, story.
Kent: So I’ve been following Chase Hughes for several years.
Uh, I was introduced to him. Probably four or five years ago, uh, by some former associates of his. So I, they, they had given me a background on Chase Hughes and I, I had never heard of him, so I had started following him and, uh, did a little bit of due diligence and saw that he was, uh, he, he was not what he claimed and that whatever it was he was selling was snake oil.
Um, I’m sort of one of my, uh, one of my, uh, interests, professional interests is exposing people like that. So I had been developing a dossier on him. It had fallen to the back of my, uh, of my things to do. I have other things going on, and I hadn’t heard of him or seen anything from him in quite a while until late 2025, probably in the fall, early winter sometime, uh, I saw an interview of him, uh, that he did on some national podcast.
It was either Joe Rogan. Was he on Joe Rogan?
Zach: Yeah. But late, uh, yeah, he was on Joe Rogan. He was also on some other big ones like Diary of a CEO, uh, which is pretty popular.
Kent: Yeah, some actually I don’t see any of those, but I saw a clip, uh, of what? Of a big one, and I’m pretty sure it was Joe Rogan, but that’s when it suddenly hit me.
What in the hell? I thought this dude was gone.
Zach: Yeah,
Kent: I thought, I thought he faded away and here he is showing up on this very high profile, uh, uh, uh, media. So I went back and started, you know, re re reenergized my Chase Hughes, uh, project. And in the course of that I did a couple searches. Is anybody else looking at Chase Hughes?
And boom, uh, you showed up. Uh, Zachary Elwood, uh, poker Tell Guy, uh, has a a
Zach: I got my own dossier.
Kent: Yeah. Had had a fantastic article on your substack or your, your, uh, your website. And as I read that article, I was like, man, this guy has done way more than I have you. Your dossier, your, your background, your, your analysis of Chase Hughes was extensive.
And that’s when I reached out to you, uh, to said, just, just offer my. Uh, let you know there’s a kindred soul out here who’s, who’s also offended by the Chase Hughes scam. And, uh,
Zach: yeah.
Kent: Wanted, wanted to see if we could somehow collaborate.
Zach: Yeah, there’s, and as I told you and other people, it’s like, we need more people talking about it.
’cause he’s, he’s continuing to peak in the, uh, popularity, which is kind of amazing. Um, amazing what he’s been able to do in that regard. But, yeah. Another funny thing too, when, you know, you, you reached out to me via LinkedIn last, like a month ago, and I had missed your message, and then I randomly unrelated, stumbled across your work because I was doing some research on Microexpressions and, you know, Paul Ekman’s work the other day and saw your critiques of him.
So it was kind of funny that we ended up connecting because we, I was, I was reaching out to you and you were reaching out to me, which is, you know,
Kent: totally independent of each other, coincidentally reaching out to each other at the same time. Yeah, that’s, there’s, there’s some kind of karma or something there it was meant to be.
Zach: Yeah. Uh, and maybe we could, uh, I mean we could talk about Chase for a long time, but we’ll leave that aside for now. But I, I wanted to ask you about your work outing Wayne Simmons. Uh, that that was a, that is just a very interesting case and I, and I had not, somehow, I had not heard about that at all when you, when I looked into what you had done, I think there’s a, is was it a New York Times or some article about you exposing him or helping expose him?
Kent: Yeah. Yeah. There was a, a front page on the New York Times Sunday magazine.
Zach: Mm-hmm.
Kent: Uh, story extensive went into great depth of
Zach: That’s
Kent: great. I I, I didn’t like the headline, uh, something like, uh, the Operation to Out A Fox News.
Zach: Uh,
yeah.
Kent: I
Zach: didn’t like that headline either. I was like, what? That is not at all.
Like, it made it sound like there was something, uh, uh, you know, underhanded going on. It’s like that.
Kent: I didn’t like the headline
Zach: either. Yeah. Uh,
Kent: but so I, I, I, I worked really closely with the guy that wrote the article and the guy that wrote the article totally understood. And if you read the article, uh, it is not an operation to out a a Right.
A Fox News commentator. It was a expose a liar and account exposure of fraud.
Zach: Yeah. Yeah.
Kent: And so, so it turns out that the guys that write the headline are totally separate from the guys that write the article, but
Zach: Right. Anyway, yeah. I’ve had that experience too. Uh, yeah, I was wondering, yeah, maybe we could, uh, I mean, there’s so much to say about, just about the Wayne Simmons thing too.
We could spend a long time with that. But I, I am wondering, I mean, people should definitely read that article and, and look into that. It’s a very interesting story, but I wanted to ask you about that. Maybe you could talk a little bit about how you, fairly quickly, what, what instincts you had about how, uh, he was likely a fraud and how quickly you knew that and what those circumstances were.
Kent: Yeah, so I, I think really the most important. Takeaway from that. The, the, the operation that I ran, if you want to call it that, to expose Simmons as a fraud, was the fact that this guy was on Fox News seen around the world for 13 years, and he was touted as a C, Fox News’s, CIA counter terrorism, Islamic extremism expert, CIA offices at that time during the Global War on Terror, all had big screen TVs that were on all the time, and many times kind of depending on the politics of the, uh, of the management.
But uh, at that time, Fox News was probably predominantly the choice for running 24 7 on these TVs and in headquarters head, CIA headquarters. There’s Fox News is on everywhere. C the Counter-Terrorism Center everywhere. It’s on 13 years. This guy. Was blatantly in your face. It’s not like he’s hiding, you know, sneaking around in the backyards, whispering in people’s ears.
Hey, I’m a CIA guy. Let me give you a secret. He was in your face, Fox News Day after day after day, 13 years, CIA, people saw him all over the world. Not a peep. Nobody ever said a word after he’s arrested many CIA people, uh, came to me and said, oh, yeah, yeah, Uhhuh. Yeah, I, I had questions about him from the beginning.
Bottom line is nobody said anything. Nobody did anything except me. The, as soon as I, I, I met him. A, a mutual friend introduced us. I, I didn’t have cable, didn’t watch Fox News. Don’t watch Fox News. So, never heard of him. Never seen him. Our mutual friend said, Hey, you guys are just alike. Counter-terrorism operators, you guys.
Oh, I, you gotta meet him. He is plugged in. He is a cool dude. Sure. Let’s have lunch.
Zach: Quick, quick question.
Kent: Sat down.
Zach: Quick question, Kent. Yep. Did you, did you have suspicions about him based on, you know, your read of the situation before you met him, or did your suspicions ar No. Okay. Yeah, go ahead.
Kent: I, I did, I did no due diligence before meeting him.
Zach: Mm-hmm.
Kent: I, uh, I just took the word of, uh. This mutual friend who now is clear, uh, had no idea what he was talking about, and he was misrepresenting himself as well. I knew, I knew the mutual friend through at the time. I was, uh, uh, teaching, instructing, facilitating instructional, designing in, uh, intelligence training for both civilian and military human intelligence.
Uh, I, I knew him through a professional, um, um, organization, intelligence educator. So International Association for Intelligence Education. I knew him through that, had never met him, but assumed his. There’s, there’s no, no reason that I needed to do due diligence on this guy, but I assumed his competence turned out he’s, he’s totally incompetent, and he was a borderline fraud himself.
He was a, turns out he was a, a, a a, an air force cop who was, uh, spinning him trying to create a new, uh, a, a new career spinning himself as an intel guy. But anyway, so he introduced me. I, at the time, I took his word for it. Yeah. My colleague, mutual friend says, I should meet you. I didn’t do due diligence on Wayne.
All I knew was the sort of headline. Wayne Simmons, uh, CIA counter-terrorism expert, uh, he’s on, been on Fox News for the last 13 years. So that, that was, that was the setup when I sat down to have lunch with him.
Zach: So yeah. And then so when you met him, you fairly quickly had a sense that, that things were off based on what he talked about and the way he talked.
Yeah.
Kent: As soon as we started talking, um, he, he, there there’s, I I, I call it, it’s like when dogs sniff each other’s butt, that’s it’s butt sniffing. When you’re, when you’re a CIA officer and you meet some another CIA officer, there’s sort of, it’s not standard, but, you know, you, you, you ask about assignments, you ask about training.
When did you go through training? Uh, where were you stationed? Did you know somebody that, you know, Joe, who was stationed there the year before?
Zach: Right.
Kent: Um, which yeah, the
Zach: language they used to describe the positions, that kind of stuff. Yeah.
Kent: Yeah. It’s the context. It’s, it’s what, what I ended up at the time, I had, I, I had in my head my system of credibility assessment, but I had never, it, it, it was all, um.
Implicit, I never explicitly
Zach: Yeah.
Kent: Extracted it from my head and said, okay, here’s how I do credibility assessment. I did extract it and make it, IM, uh, explicit later, and now I can use that. That language is, I had a gut feeling. And what a gut, your gut is based on contextual. It, it’s, it’s the, uh, sum of your experiences in context.
Zach: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Kent: So your gut, my gut is totally useless in brain surgery. If I sat down with a brain surgeon or somebody pretending to be a brain surgeon, and he starts babbling about, whoa, you know, I was cutting into the hypothalamus the other day and the vagus nerve was blah, blah, blah. I’m like, yeah, okay.
Sounds good to me. Right. Because I have no contextual expertise.
Zach: Mm-hmm.
Kent: My contextual expertise, uh, I is, was totally wrapped around Wayne Simmons scam. Mm-hmm. I, I have a gut for that context.
Zach: Mm-hmm.
Kent: Uh, when, um, I can smell a rat. Because of my gut, because of my contextual competence.
Zach: You know, the domain, it’s like domain specific knowledge,
Kent: domain specific.
Exactly. I call that context. Yeah. It’s it’s cultural language profession. Uh, so this guy had no clue. He was, I I was at the time, uh, formulating the explicit, uh, form of my credibility assessment. Mm-hmm. Uh, approach.
Zach: Mm-hmm.
Kent: Mm-hmm. And his case was, was just this, it was like a god-given case study of here you go, man.
Apply your expertise here.
Zach: Mm-hmm.
Kent: Mm-hmm. So here that, that’s a long, long description of why I knew he was a fraud within five minutes.
Zach: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Kent: He was, he had been, turns out who he fooled and who he scammed were military guys. He had a very, uh, high level network in the military. Hi. His sister was an under Secretary of defense.
She was like rumsfeld’s, admin guru. Evidently she went everywhere. Rumsfeld went. She went, she was Assistant Secretary of Defense for admin or something like that. Simmons was a. Lifelong screw up. He’d been kicked out of the Navy in, uh, in, in, in basic training. He had been arrested multiple times for DUIs.
He had been, uh, he had some kind of record with, uh, dealing drugs. It appears to me, looking back at it now, his sister wanted to help him, and he may have spun a story to her that he was CIA and she went to Rumsfeld and said, Hey, my little brother Wayne, you know, uh, he’s, he, he’s, he’s fallen on hard times, but, you know, he was a 30 year CIA guy, and he really could use some help.
And that then comes the global War on Terror. And, uh, Rumsfeld is his, is his angel, is his top cover. And Rumsfeld was tied in with Fox News. And that just, he, he, he had, he had Rumsfeld’s Rumsfeld was vouching for him.
Zach: Mm-hmm.
Kent: And everybody in the DOD in, in the military was terrified of Rumsfeld.
Zach: Mm-hmm.
Kent: If Rumsfeld said it, it’s, it’s from, from God’s mouth to Rumsfeld’s ear.
Zach: Mm-hmm.
Kent: It’s, it’s may as well be the word of God. Mm-hmm. So the, the military was terrified. Uh, of, of Rumsfeld. And if he, if he vouched for Simmons, then Simmons was what he said he was.
Zach: Right.
Kent: That, that’s, that’s what I discovered as, uh, as this went on.
Zach: Yeah.
Kent: So he was used to, so the reason I give you that background is he was used to conning military guys and military guys have this, um, ha have a misconception or a stereotype or a idea.
They think they know what the CIA is and what CIA officers do, but they don’t, they, they may as well, they, their, their concept comes from watching movies, generally speaking.
Zach: Mm-hmm.
Kent: Mm-hmm. So Simmons was able to use his top cover from Rumsfeld with the military’s misunderstanding of civilian intelligence and scam his way.
Right, right. Through anything that the military touched, he was able to be the CIA guy in there. So I’m not, I, I’ve been in the military. I, I, I’m also, I also have military, uh, expertise. I have the con contextual competence, so you can’t scam me military stuff either. But he was trying to scam me at just like he scammed the military guys and.
Uh, it, it was alarm bells go off within five minutes before they even brought my water in, in the restaurant. I knew this, this motherfucker is, is trying to play me for a fool.
Zach: Yeah.
Kent: And, and the only thing I, I, I don’t, I don’t have a temper, but the only thing that pisses me off is somebody trying to play me for a fool.
He did. And that pissed me off. He didn’t know it.
Zach: He played a lot of millions of people for a fool. Yeah. Uh, I want to, I want tie some, he didn’t
Kent: know it.
Zach: I wanted to tie some of the things you said into the Chase Hughes stuff because there’s a lot of overlap here. Uh, so for example, I’ve had a couple people, uh, who, who were ac were actually did work in military and intel kind of things, reach out to me and say they, either they or people they knew had encountered Chase Hughes at events and tried to talk about like these, the alleged experience, you know, military government experience that Chase Hughes claims to have had in, you know, Intel or interrogations or PSYOPs or whatever the various things that he claims to have had.
And, and, uh, it was very clear, like they, they were, they, their bullshit meters immediately went off too, where they’re like, this guy didn’t talk about it in any sort of way that made, made sense. You know, their bullshit meters went off. Uh, then you also have the aspect of Chase, you know, claiming that he has these, some, some of these books.
And, and things on his site and things he talks about where he is like, these are top secret military secrets that I’m sharing. You know, this kind of Jason Bourne kind of stuff. And it’s like, sort of like you said with, uh, Wayne Simmons, it’s like if these were, uh, you know, really, uh, top secret things that required a lot of clearance to have, like, would he, he can just hand these out on his site or give, you know, give them to people and there’s no problem.
Like, that alone is a sign that something’s off because like, the military is not just gonna let somebody like, share all these alleged top secret, uh, things, which kind of corresponds to what you were saying about Wayne Simmons over 15 years claiming to be this like, you know, into all this espionage, espionage stuff.
But like, nobody talks about ’em or, you know, nobody. He, and, and he’s talking about these things openly. Um, so just to say there can be these various clues and then you also have, I think there’s also the fact that this kind of, you know, the espionage, uh, CIA type of things kind of lend themselves to bullshitters because it’s kind of a perfect cover where people can say like, oh, of course you can’t find any evidence of me doing that.
I was so, you know, it’s undercover stuff. It’s plausible deniability stuff, uh, which is what, you know, Wayne Simmons did. It’s also, uh, what I think what Cha Chase used. I haven’t heard him do it recently, but it’s also what I see a lot of his fans say. They’ll be like, oh, he was just so deep undercover.
Nobody knows about the stuff he’s done. I’m like. Okay. Uh, yeah. Right. It’s,
Kent: yeah. That, that is, that is exactly Simmons’ approach as well. Right. And yeah,
Zach: even when he got arrested and such. Yeah. Yeah.
Kent: Say again?
Zach: Even when he got arrested and afterwards he was trying to say like, oh, I, you know, and he never, he never went back from his story because he was like, no, I was just doing such top secret stuff and nobody, uh, knew what I was doing.
You know, nobody can talk about it, blah, blah, blah. You know, e
Kent: except, yeah, absolutely. He, he, uh, till today, uh, I, I haven’t seen anything from him in a while, but even while he was in prison and when he got outta prison, same thing is I’m, I’m on a quest to, uh, to, to exonerate myself. I am who I said I was.
That’s, that’s the last I heard from him.
Zach: Yeah. Yep.
Kent: Except, uh, I ran an operation with, with my, uh, my buddy who was an old boss of mine in the CIA, uh, he was retired at the time. He’s passed away since. Um, but, uh, he, he was, he was a real 30 year veteran, had done everything in the, in the agency, been everywhere, manager level, highest, highest kind of manager level.
And I, I convinced him, uh, that Simmons was fake. He was a Fox News watcher, and he had, he as a veteran, CIA, uh, officer accepted Simmons because. There are many compartmented operations that not everybody knows about. And that’s, that’s what my friend Jim assumed is Yeah. You know, it doesn’t sound right, but let’s give him the benefit of the doubt.
Uh, Fox News has to be vetting their people as this is his thinking.
Zach: Right.
Kent: Fox News has to be vetting their people. They wouldn’t let a fake on. And I, yeah, I knew pretty much everything, but not everything. And maybe he was in one of those compartment operations. So when I first started, uh, doing my vetting of Simmons and reaching out to my network of, of former CIA officers, I talked to him and it took a little convincing.
I had to present it. I I, he wouldn’t just say, oh, yeah, your gut told you he was fake. I had to, I had already built a dossier that, that showed, uh, convincingly that, that Simmons was a fake. So I, I got him onto my side and I was in touch with Simmons on Facebook and Simmons would, uh, chat every now and then.
You know, he didn’t know I was gathering details. And, and I, I, uh, suggested that he meet. A fellow, CIA officer, my friend Jim. Yeah, sure. Yeah. Uhhuh, he, you know, he is Simmons was happy to, to network. So I put those two together and then Jim and I came up with a, uh, an approach in effect, it was an operation.
Mm-hmm. It was an operational approach. I, I did, I did the turnover, and then I sat back and let, I, I was kinda like good cop, bad cop. Uh, Jim established a relationship with him, started talking, and then he started asking very, uh, specific vetting questions. The, the best one is, um, every CIA officer has an employee identification number.
If you are an employee, you have an EIN. It doesn’t matter what your status is, what your cover is, doesn’t matter if you’re deep, dark, undercover, triple secret, or you’re a knock, you are, uh, overt, you’re covert. You have an EIN that is your agency identifier, and everybody knows it off the top of their head.
So Jim started asking him things like that. What’s okay, Wayne, what’s your EIN Who, who was your, you were a knock. Who was you not there. There’s a trade craft of running knocks. Uh, every knock will have an inside officer handler who takes care of his admin stuff, meets him occasionally, they swap receipts or, uh, or, or advances or whatever.
What’s your EIN Who was, who were your handling officers through your 30 year career? You know, you’re handling officers. They are, uh, your lifeline to the bureaucracy, to your career, you know, e everything there, there’s all the admin issues. Um, your pay, your advances, your expenses, your retirement funding, all of those things come up all the time, and you’re dealing with them as a knock through your handling officer.
Jim starts asking him these questions and very quickly it got, um, it, it got, uh, uh, uh, uh, aggressive and finally, uh, Simmons, you know, became very defensive. And this is all [00:27:00] on Facebook chat. So we have the transcript. Sim Simmons gets defensive and says, oh, you, you know, you don’t trust me. I am who I said I am, blah, blah, blah.
They come back the next time and maybe a day or two later, Simmons had time to sleep on it. And Jim tells him, Hey, Wayne. You know, you’re, you never, you’re not CIA and you never were. It’s very obvious. And he and Wayne in the chat says, alright. Yeah, I, I admit it. I I will never again, um, present myself as a CIA officer.
You were right. And, um, and, and Jim said, okay, well you need to make a public announcement or something like that. And at the time, I was writing a, um, an article to go out to expose him. And that was the final piece that I needed. I, his, I have a transcript of his admission.
Zach: Yeah,
Kent: you got the confession
Zach: put in there.
Yeah.
Kent: Confession. Put it in the article. Send it to and send it to Simmons. It said Simmons. I’m gonna, I’m gonna publish this as soon as possible. Give you a chance to respond. And, hi. His response was, this is bullshit. I never said any such thing. If I did, I retract it. I was a 30 year knock and you are gonna pay for it.
Frisbee, uh, you know, a, a threat. He followed through on that threat he had. He did have a very, and he still has, he has a high level network of military. It’s pretty much all military. There’s one CIA officer who, uh, a woman who’s been totally on his side, just unbelievably, but the, the rest are at retired admirals, retired generals, you know, four or five stars, uh, you know, the, the highest level, uh, military brass.
Um, and, and he was connected throughout the media. So when he said, I’m gonna, you’re gonna, you’re gonna, you’ll hear my response. So his buddy, the one that, um, that introduced us the next day, published an article in an online, uh, uh, military Special Forces military soft rep. It was, it was, back then, it was widely read, and I don’t know if it’s still read, but, um, article denouncing the attacks on Wayne Simmons.
Uh, and I don’t think they, he, he, he mentioned me by name, but it, it was clear exactly who he was talking about. And then when I tried to place that article exposing him, everybody, no one would accept it. None, none of the usual websites that I had published on would accept it. So he did use his military contacts to, to shut it all up.
Zach: Right.
Kent: Uh.
Zach: He, um, and, and maybe you could talk briefly about, I mean, did he make your life harder? Did, how hard was it for you? Did you suffer much or did you just kind of like, were, were you thinking like, well he eventually the truth’s gonna come out, talk, maybe you could talk a little bit about that process until he got in trouble eventually.
Kent: Well, well after that, um, that, that I was pretty much blackballed, uh, I was not able to, uh, place any more articles, uh, until I, I don’t know if it was a year, maybe, maybe a year and a half before he, that, that before he, uh, um, spread the word that I was, you know, harassing him or whatever, or that there was a, an operation to, to denigrate him.
And he was, uh, and his great reputation, um, I, I wanna say it was a year, maybe more before the FBI contacted me and I shared my dossier on Simmons with them. And he was arrested probably within a several months after that. Uh, but in that time I was unable to, uh, place any articles anywhere. I was, I was the real deal.
I was a real, uh, CIA counter-terrorism expert. I’ve done the operations, I’ve been all around the world. Uh, Islamic extremism, counter-terrorism, uh, counterintelligence, and, uh, in, in, in, instead of, and, and there’s many other people like me as well, who lost opportunities because of Simmons.
Zach: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Kent: Um, not that he was, he was bad badmouthing them specifically, but he was filling a slot that could have been filled by a real person.
Zach: Right.
Kent: But yeah, he, he, uh, blackballed me, him and his military buddies blackballed me and I was unable to publish anything and nobody wanted, wanted anything to do with me until he was arrested. Uh, and that was sort, sort of indication, my vindication.
Zach: Yeah.
Kent: And then when that New York Times article came out, you know, then it was, everybody knows.
Zach: Did you start getting, uh, any, any media invites when you got vindicated? Did you appear on any,
Kent: um, those, or you got, got contacts from people who, uh, from media who never would’ve been in touch with me before?
Zach: Hmm.
Kent: Uh. The, my, the, my previous places that I had, uh, websites that I had wrote for, none of them called up and said, oh, hey, sorry about that.
Uh, can you, can you give us something new that that didn’t happen?
Zach: Mm.
Kent: Uh, but, but it did open up a whole new, whole nother channel of, you know, the, the New York Times article ended up opening eyes of say, uh, um, producers of like, I, I think that they, they did a couple podcasts. Uh, they, they, there may have been some kind of, I don’t know if, if like Discovery Channel or somebody did something on it.
I, they, they did do a, a, a couple of shows on an operation I did in the Philippines. So I’m getting kind of confused. I confused the two. I don’t know. I don’t know what they, but it did open up, um, a lot of publicity for my, my skills.
Zach: Yeah, it seems like you could write a whole book just about the outing of, uh, that person and Yeah.
That, I mean that whole story is, is so interesting and just talking about, yeah. Maybe you could work Chase Hughes in there too, if you do. I mean, I still think you should. I still, I mean, I still think you should do your own, uh, e expose of Chase Hugs. ’cause, because we just need more people talking about these people.
I mean, the thing I’ve, I’ve told you and other people is like, a lot of people think like. Oh, I did the work. You know, other people don’t have to do it. But it’s like, I, I get people reaching out to me, chase Hughes fans that are like, you’re just a bitter person lying about Chase Hughes. If it was, if it was really a story, you’d have more like, uh, journalists and, uh, you know, people with experience, uh, covering it, talking about it.
So just to say, I think the more the merrier because I, I think there’s a lot of people that, it’s kind of like this assumption thing you were talking about with Wayne Simmons, where it’s like, people will will say to me and publicly on these Reddit threads, they’ll be like, well, if Chase Hughe was really such a fraud, you wouldn’t have like Joe Rogan promoting him.
You wouldn’t have diary of a CEO guy. You wouldn’t have Dr. Phil. You wouldn’t have these guys who work on this behavior panel show wouldn’t work with him. And I’m like, well, it’s clearly wrong because he’s clear, clearly a fraud and a, a serial liar. So you have to examine your assumptions about, uh, what’s going on there because your assumptions are, are leading you way astray.
Yeah. Yeah.
Kent: I mean, people don’t want to admit that they’ve been, that they have been played for fools. That they have been scammed.
Zach: Yeah.
Kent: I mean, there’s so many case studies like this and Simmons is a great one. Mm-hmm. Because the exact same, uh, the exact same responses when when I expose Simmons is same thing.
People don’t want to believe it. They’re bought into it. Bernie Madoff. And that’s billions of dollars. Perfect example, you know, these, these, chase Hughes is is a, is is small fry. Yeah. Simmons is small fry.
Zach: Yeah.
Kent: They, Bernie Madoff was billions of dollars and people didn’t want to hear it. It’s, oh yeah. He’s got, he, he can beat the market consistently.
No freaking way.
Zach: Yeah.
Kent: You know, anybody who has, who’s ever put their money in a bank account or who’s ever bought a share of stock knows nobody can consistently create that kind of return. But people, especially those who were in on it, who had, who were getting their paper profits. Right. So people who are somehow invested.
Zach: Yeah. They’re invested financially or emotionally or something. It’s like you believe or you have
Kent: money ethnically too. Yeah. The Ponzi schemes are, are almost, they started out at, uh, the Ponzi was an ethnic Italian and he preyed on the Italian immigrant community. Uh, Madoff was an ethnic Jew. He preyed on the Jewish community.
He, he was a huge, uh, donor to all kinds of Jewish causes.
Zach: It’s like he’s one of, he’s one of us. He won’t, you know, he’s, he, it increases the loyalty aspect. I mean, we see this with the political polarization aspects where people are more likely to believe people who they see as, like on their side, on, uh, for any.
Cause or, or, yeah. Goal. Yeah.
Kent: And once they’re invested emotionally or financially, it’s very, very difficult to bring people around to the truth. So it’s a a a long way of saying, you know, confirming what you’re, what you’re saying is with, with Hughes is that these people who are bought into the cult, whether financially or emotionally, don’t wanna be told, don’t want, they, they don’t, not just told, they can’t, cannot process it intellectually or emotionally.
Right. I mean, there’s, back in, back in the, I guess seventies and eighties, there was a whole, uh, industry of, uh, deifying, or I can’t, I forget what they call it. They have, they have a deprogramming.
Zach: Yeah,
Kent: deprogramming, yeah. Yeah. Deprogramming. Which is, they, you know, they, there’s these, uh, different cults back then, and I’m, there’s cults now.
Mm-hmm. The same way. But maybe they’ve made it illegal to kidnap your kid and, and deprogram him. But I, you don’t hear about it anymore. But they used to be a big industry of kidnapping. Usually young adults who had been, who had been recruited into cults and deprogramming them. And that deprogramming process was long and arduous and not always successful in effect.
You know, they, they, they put ’em in prison. They, you know, they put ’em in, lock ’em up in a hotel closet or something and separate them from their cult experience. It’s the same thing with Hughes or Simmons, or Madoff or Ekman, acolytes. They’re so invested emotionally, financially, intellectually, they cannot see reality.
Zach: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Kent: I give up, I, I, I never even try to, um, deprogram someone. I just, I see my role. I’m really good at vetting, uncovering the truth, and laying it out there for people to see. Um, I cannot co change someone’s mind. Uh, I don’t think I, if they, if they see the truth and they decide to change their mind, fantastic.
Zach: Yeah.
Kent: But
Zach: it’s hard.
Kent: I don’t know. I, I might be, I might be up for, uh, starting a new deprogramming service.
Zach: Well, you know, uh, you, I don’t know if you know, but Chase Hughes claims to be an expert cult deprogram or too, that’s one of the many things he claims he’s an expert.
Kent: you are kidding me.
Zach: No, that’s one of the things, there’s a Reddit, there’s a Reddit thread joke.
There’s a Reddit threat about him being an expert, cult de programmer. People are like, is he really? And you know, it’s just, he’s claimed to be an expert in literally everything psychology related. It’s just, it’s so funny, you know? Uh,
Kent: Pitiful. Pitiful.
Zach: That was a talk with ex-CIA officer Kent Clizbe, author of Holistic Contextual Credibility Assessment: A Reality-based Alternative to Deception Detection. I thought the book was good; it includes a lot of interesting stories from Kent’s career and from the spycraft trade in general. You can learn more about him on his website www.kentclizbe.com.
In a future episode, I’ll share the second part of this talk where Kent and I discuss nonverbal behavior and its non-importance, as Kent sees it, in determining veracity and credibility.
This has been the People Who Read People podcast, with me, Zach Elwood. You can learn more about this podcast at behavior-podcast.com.
I talk with Jackie Miller, host of the podcast “Out of Crazy Town: Your Guide to Divorcing a Narcissist.” Jackie shares her personal story of escaping a coercively controlling, psychologically abusive marriage—and how that led her to try to help others navigating similar nightmarish situations. We talk about how these relationships evolve from subtle manipulation into abusive domination and control; and we talk about the mind-bending psychology of narcissistic abuse—projection, gaslighting, smear campaigns, and the delusional self-justifications that make these people so hard to understand. Jackie also describes why victims often seem “crazy” to outsiders, how abusers weaponize children and the legal system, and why staying calm in the face of harassment can be the most powerful defense.
(Transcript is done automatically, and will contain errors.)
Jackie Miller: “And after a relationship with a a disordered person like this, you end up this shell of yourself. And I’m thinking, how did I start out this really successful, independent, um, owned my own home, was a, you know, climbing the corporate ladder, making a lot of money. How’d I go from that to 16 and a half years later? I don’t have my name on one bank account. I don’t have access to one penny.”
Welcome to the People Who Read People podcast, hosted by me, Zachary Elwood. In this episode, I talk with Jackie Miller, host of the podcast “Out of Crazy Town: Your Guide to Divorcing a Narcissist,” about her personal experience in a psychologically abusive marriage and the insights she’s gained helping others leave highly narcissistic and abusive partners. She created her podcast to give people practical advice on surviving post-separation abuse—which is when controlling individuals escalate their behavior after their partner leaves them, using legal, financial, and emotional abuse and manipulation.
Topics we discuss include: the various ways toxically narcissistic people respond to being left by their parnters, which can include smear campaigns, stalking behaviors, stealing email and phone accounts and devices, trying to turn the kids against the other parent, legal harassment of various sorts, and more. We talk about the common patterns of behavior and thinking malignant narcissists have: their inability to ever admit fault, their obsessive need to control narratives, and their patterns of projection—accusing others of the bad things that they themselves have done and are doing. We also talk about psychological factors: what motivates these people to try to make their own partners’ and children’s lives a living hell? What makes such people so weak that they can’t bear looking inward and always must be lashing out at others? It’s admittedly very hard to understand; but we should try to understand it, as it helps us recognize such personalities and deal with them.
You can learn more about Jackie Miller at her website https://www.jackiemillercoaching.com/. Or search for ‘out of crazy town’ on youtube or other podcast platforms; I’ve listened to quite a few of her episodes and there are some really good and helpful talks in there for people dealing with such abuse.
Narcissism as a label is so overused these days; the word gets thrown around way too much; but there are clearly some people who are highly narcissistic and who, as a group, show many common and predictable behaviors. If you enjoy this talk, I think you’d like a previous episode where I talk with Craig Malkin, author of the bestselling book Rethinking Narcissism. That was a popular episode, as we delved into the nuance of narcissism; from the more healthy and normal forms to the more toxic, malignant forms.
If you like this podcast, please subscribe to it on the platform you listen or watch on, and please share episodes. The podcast has been doing pretty well these days; a typical episode is getting between 7,000 to 8,000 listens in the first month of release on audio platforms, and some episodes get quite a bit more views on youtube. Getting more listeners is the main way I’m incentivized to work on new episodes and keep this going. If you’ve enjoyed listening, sharing episodes and subscribing are the best ways you can encourage me to work on it more.
Okay, here’s the talk with Jackie Miller….
Zach: Hi Jackie. Thanks for joining me.
Jackie: Hi, how are you? I’m so glad to be here.
Zach: Yeah, thank you. I’m, I’m good. Uh, so maybe we could start with. Uh, how did you start your podcast? What led you to that?
Jackie: Absolutely. Uh, so I have a podcast called Out of Crazy Town, your Guide to Divorcing A Narcissist.
And that’s because I divorced one and, um, I, I named it that and used that word because it’s just widely recognizable now. But it’s basically about divorcing individuals who are pathological, um, and very disordered and. They [00:01:00] just end up in a, a level of conflict you can’t even imagine. And, and, um, I know that you had mentioned this e even in our written correspondence, but we use high conflict all the time to describe these divorces.
I. And that’s not really what they are. There’s one disordered individual causing 99.999% of the problems, and the other person just wants it to stop, but they can keep the damage, the chaos going for a very long time, and it’s terrifying. And when I got into the family court system, I couldn’t. Believe what happened.
I couldn’t have ever guessed what the, those court professionals think or how they approach things. Um, there are so many pitfalls that just the average person doesn’t understand until you get into that system. And, and attorneys can do their best, but they, you know, you can’t sit with them all day long and, uh, you know, have them explain everything to you.
That’s too expensive. And, um, you sound [00:02:00] crazy sometimes when you’re trying to tell people. What’s going on. They just, they can’t believe it. And, you know, eventually their eyes glaze over. And so I thought, you know, I have to create a resource that people can go to and get information, you know, that’s a little bit legal, a little bit mental health, a little bit, you know, real world and, and just hear what other people have gone through.
And so that’s why I started my podcast.
Zach: Yeah. That’s what stood out to me. I was, when I was searching online for this kind of thing, your, um, your work definitely stood out. It didn’t seem like there were many other people. Doing what you do. Try to, trying to help people. Oh, sorry. Trying to help people through those situations.
So that’s, um, yeah. Very good. You’re doing that. Um, do you want, do you wanna talk a little bit about, I don’t know if you want to, if you talk about this, but do you wanna talk about your story? Uh, yeah. In a little bit more detail if, if you’re willing. Sure,
Jackie: sure. So I was married for 16 and a half years and, uh, I often say that.
After about three years, I knew I was in trouble. Um, but I knew that [00:03:00] leaving him was going to be a nightmare. And we had two children right away. And, uh, I just thought I can’t. For me, it was my personal decision and everybody’s situation is different. I couldn’t fathom leaving before they could really talk and articulate themselves and know they’re at his house probably 50% of the time.
Because most states love 50 50 regardless of what the other parent, you know, the other parents. Like if, you know, we have a saying, if, if you have a pulse, you’re a great parent in the family court system, so. It, I, I, I, it took me a long time to muster not only the courage, but there was a lot of financial control and financial abuse, frankly.
And I had no access to any money after 16 and a half years of marriage. And there was plenty of money. I had no access. My name was on nothing. And you, for people that go through something like this, um, part of the reason I started the podcast as well is I wanted to let. [00:04:00] People know, I wanted to validate them, that you can be this really intelligent, outgoing, successful individual.
And after a relationship with a a disordered person like this, you end up this former shell of yourself. And I’m thinking, how did I start out this really successful, independent, um, owned my own home, was a, you know, climbing the corporate ladder, making a lot of money. How’d I go from that to 16 and a half years later?
I don’t have my name on one bank account. I don’t have access to one penny. Nothing is in my name, like, and it was a deliberate, slow, insidious. You know, um, exercise of control over me over time, that included isolation and financial control that you don’t see happening in real time. And it’s not until you look back that you realize, oh my gosh, this is how I ended up here.
And so, because I went through that and then when I entered the family court system, you, you may [00:05:00] be experiencing abuse in your marriage. But once you leave what’s called post-separation abuse kicks in and that person has lost control over you in the normal ways that they had control when you were under the same roof.
So now that they have to pick up different tools. And to sort of try to continue to maintain that control and abuse of you. And so it turns into legal abuse. It turns into financial abuse using different tools. It turns into, you know, weaponizing the children. So they pick up these other tools to continue the control and abuse.
And there is literally a wheel now called the posts post separation abuse wheel that you can look up and see all of the tools, um, even if the person wasn’t necessarily. A stalker during the relationship. Many of them pick up stocking tools because. They don’t know what’s going on and they need information to control the narrative.
They need information to continue the smear campaigns. [00:06:00] They need information to be able to manipulate you better in court and manipulate the way people think about you. So they very often will engage in, um, you know, higher sort of elevated stalking mm-hmm. Uh, practices to try to maintain that control and gain information about you.
Zach: Right? Yeah. Uh, yeah. It just seems like thinking about these cases. It seems like there’s so many, uh, aspects that are demoralizing that, you know, like you said, can make you feel like a shell of yourself. I mean, there’s the fact that it just, it, it’s so, uh. It’s so demoralizing and, and, uh, crazy making that someone would do these things.
That’s, that’s the one aspect that knowing that someone who theoretically is supposed to be, you know, care about you would do these things or anyone really would do ’em. It’s disturbing. Uh, and then b it’s like knowing that, you know, beating yourself up a little bit, maybe thinking like, how did I let this happen as a part of it too, even though, you know.
[00:07:00] That shouldn’t be a part of it, but it just seems like there’s multiple areas that can make you just really feel like, who am I? Like how did I get to this? Place a absolutely life. Yeah, absolutely.
Jackie: And depending on, on the dynamics too and the relationship, you know, and I meant kind of hinted to this earlier in mine, I was afraid to then create a situation where my children were alone with him and not have, you know, any coping skills or just be, you know, defenseless if, you know, he becomes volatile or you know, they just start really.
Saying bad things about you and, and putting the kids really in the middle and forcing them to choose and like, you know, just have these loyalty conflicts, you know, between parents and that’s a whole nother dynamic. But the, the coercive control, which is a word I didn’t have, you know, until well after my.
Uh, divorce, uh, that term really didn’t exist in everyday conversation, so I didn’t understand, for instance, why he wouldn’t blatantly say I [00:08:00] couldn’t go out with my friends. But if I, I look back over the relationship, he let me know so many different ways that if I went out for a glass of wine with my friends, I was gonna pay for it, right?
Uh, there’d be days of silent treatment. There would be. Um, underhanded comments to, while we’re out with friends about, you know, I just go party all the time and I don’t take care of my kids. Like things that just are blatantly not true. But I would have to suffer death by a thousand paper cuts if I did something like go out and have a glass of wine with my friends.
And so I would very often make plans, and then at the 11th hour when I was supposed to leave, I would call them and back out. Because I couldn’t, I was too afraid to tell him. Mm-hmm. I was walking down in know downtown three blocks and I’d be back in two hours. Like, you know, we all deserve a little alone time, you know?
And to hang out with our friends. That’s a very healthy thing to do. But that was the coercive control. Could I point to a time that he said, you are not allowed to go out with your friends? No, I couldn’t. Right. But, but [00:09:00] now I understand the slow insidious control, you know, that was happening and the modalities, he used to exact that control.
Zach: And it seems like in a lot of cases those things ramp up, especially at the point when somebody actually leaves, that’s when it reaches a whole new level or, or before that. Uh, I mean that’s, that’s when it, and, and maybe that’s a good segue into, maybe you could talk about. Some of the people that reach out to you for consulting or, or stories you hear about?
I think, I think a lot of people have a hard time understanding some of the, how common this stuff is and, uh, and just how bad it is. Maybe you could talk a little bit about some of the stories of clients you’ve had or, or, or people you’ve consulted for.
Jackie: Sure. Uh, you know, it really runs the entire gamut of, I’ve had clients that have endured a lot of physical abuse, um, but they’re still dealing with a court system that says that that’s a, it’s ignorant.
I. On domestic violence, and [00:10:00] b, it’s willing, willful ignorance. We don’t want to deal with it, in other words. Um, so they will say things like, well, he may have been hitting you, but he wasn’t hitting the kids. So he can have 50 50 or she can, you know, and it happens both ways. You know, she may have been doing these awful things, um, but she wasn’t doing them to the kids.
And I, I personally believe if you’re abusing. The parent of your children, you’re abusing your children. How are your children supposed to function healthily and it it, you know, have a healthy mental health? When they know, even if it’s instinctual and they haven’t witnessed it, they instinctually know that one of their parents is abusing the other parent.
It’s, it’s abuse by proxy. It just is. There’s, there’s no argument for it. But in the family court system, again, if you have a pulse, you’re a good parent. So yes, that parent gets the children. And how terrifying is that? Because sometimes the, you know, the, the one child becomes the new target. In your absence, [00:11:00] um, you know, and then you watch the other dynamics play out where there’s a scapegoat and a golden child and you see them pitting the children against each other.
And so you’ve worked so hard to have your children have this wonderful lifelong friendship and sibling relationship because, you know, you know, once you’re gone, that’s all they’re gonna have in the world, you know? And you, that was for me. I really want my kids to be close. I want them to be able to talk about anything and rely on each other.
And I saw dynamics at play where a wedge was trying to be driven between the two of ’em, um, by making one scapegoat and one a golden child. And so there’s so many dynamics, um, that I see that my clients come to me with, even though that was an example of I gave myself, they’ll be dealing with those kinds of things.
They’ll be dealing with the, um, we had $10 million in the bank when I filed for bankruptcy, and he has stopped all the money. Blocked it off and, and no one’s doing anything. I’ve already paid my attorney $25,000 and nothing’s happened yet. I hear that story all the time, like, how can [00:12:00] this be technically?
Is he allowed or is she allowed to block all the money? No, they’re not. But by the time it gets in front of a judge and you have a hearing and you jump through all the hoops of the one attorney’s supposed to ask the other attorney nicely, but then your attorney needs a $20,000 retainer and now they need another 10,000 by the time you get there.
Where you get to tell on them or her, you know, to somebody who matters, who can actually make a court order, a lot of time can pass. Mm-hmm. And you can spend a lot of money. And so we, I spend a lot of time strategizing with clients on how do we get from A to B, the, you know, the quickest. It’s not gonna be easy, there’s gonna be a lot of potholes.
How do we save the most money? What are some tips and tricks that we can come up with? You know, and, um, so again, I’ve seen everything from physical abuse, cops being called, you know, restraining orders
Zach: to devices, uh, being stolen and spied on that, that kinda stuff. Yeah.
Jackie: Oh, absolutely. I, my daughter found a military grade [00:13:00] GPS tracker in my car.
I. Um, you know, and I was just like, what? So that, you know, and yes, laptops being stolen and Yeah, absolutely. P phones being stolen and Oh, ob
Zach: obsessively, uh, contacting every, you know, all the contacts that people know to try to ruin the other person’s reputation, that kind of thing.
Jackie: Absolutely. So one of the spokes on the abuse wheel is this, you know, the smear campaigns.
Mm-hmm. And the reasons for that are a, you know, it helps them control the narrative. Um, b it. It helps it isolate you If they can get everyone to be thinking against you and see, it’s to just show you that they can. Yeah. And it’s very scary. But the, the interesting thing about the smear campaigns is I.
Most of my clients will find, and I found they started much earlier in the relationship and you didn’t even know about it. So it was a, a comment behind your back when you’re out with friends, like, oh, she’s got really drunk again. You know, or, or you know when that never happens, or, oh, [00:14:00] you know, when they’ve been feeding you wine all night and you’re like, oh mom, look at my husband or wife being so nice.
Keeps up and getting me drinks. Alright, sure. I’ll have another one. God, they never act like this. This is great. Well, it’s intentional. To, you know, so you get a little more drunk than usual, and then they look over at their friend and they’re like, oh God, this is what I deal with all the time. So it’s, you know, it’s, but it’s mind blowing Yeah.
To think someone’s been doing that.
Zach: Yeah. Well that’s, that
Jackie: the relationship, let alone after
Zach: that is really the, you know, the, it is really mind blowing. Like some of this stuff, I mean, listening to the stories on your podcast or the, you know, the people I know, uh, it is pretty mind blowing in terms of like.
This is really cr like, it’s really hard to wrap your mind around like, you know, in, in, in the same way that a lot of personality disorders are. It’s really hard to wrap your mind around, well why would they do this and why would they do this over years? These are people that are the only people, the main people in their life, and that’s how they treat them.
You [00:15:00] know, it’s, it’s really, it is really hard to, to wrap your mind around, I think. I think that’s actually getting into, you know, why sometimes these people. Can get away with this or convince other people that they’re, that they have valid points because it is so hard to believe some of this stuff, right?
It’s like, you know, you, you’d hear somebody say this, my ex or my current husband has done all these crazy things to me. And you know, at some level I think a lot of people who have, who don’t know about these things are thinking like. That that sounds completely wacky. Can that really be true? You know, and so they’re thinking like, there’s gotta be more to this story here, right?
I think that’s what accounts for some of the power some of these people have maybe in court or even just talking to other people. But I’m curious what you, what you think about that.
Jackie: Absolutely. One thing I see, one tactic is that they will create a story that’s so outrageous. It has to be true. And, you know, and no matter how much, the more you defend yourself, the more [00:16:00] guilty you look at it.
And, but so I, I’ve seen that happen. Well, they’re just come up with something that’s just so, like, you know, I didn’t tell anybody about this, but this is what was going on. And you’re just like, wait, what? Um, just completely outta left field. So there’s that. And then there is, you know, some of the more subtle manipulations.
But I, again, going back to the mind blowing, most of our brains don’t work like this. We don’t have this inherent, just really instinctual ability to manipulate. All the time. And they,
Zach: and desire. And desire to constantly, constantly
Jackie: manipulate it would be exhausting. Oh, I know. That’s what strikes me for
Zach: It would, yes.
It seems exhausting. I can’t even imagine, you know, living like that Yeah. Would seem
Jackie: exhausting. But it’s instinctual. They, they, they just have, they see these openings and that is why I believe, and again, I’m, I’m not a PhD, but I. Believe that that is why. Um, and I’ve had this described to me this way, like in the diagnostic, you know, [00:17:00] manual where they, they identify personality disorders, which narcissism falls under one of them, but the cluster B personality disorders, these individuals basically wake up every day and decide to behave this way.
They do not have a mental illness. It’s not, you know, so there’s not, a psychiatrist isn’t necessarily gonna be able to prescribe a medication like for schizophrenia to make it better. These are disordered individuals, but the reason they can stick them in a diagnostic manual is because they all displace similar behaviors.
Right. That’s the crazy thing. Yeah. Yeah. So it looks like they’re all following the same script, even though they’ve never met each other. They’re not related. They didn’t grow up in the same family. They all use similar tactics. So it is a personality disorder, um, but it’s not a mental illness and it’s a, it’s an interesting nuance to sort of consider.
Zach: Yeah, I mean it’s, I think there’s a lot of nuance there. ’cause it’s like, I think it’s some level, these [00:18:00] people really can’t control it. Like they, you know, it’s, and in many cases it’s been instilled in them in some way since they were. Kids even. But I think there is something there, like I think the, the main thing we can say is like, if you don’t want to get help, you’re not gonna get help.
And these people. Do not want to get help. Like, you know,
Jackie: they, they do not wanna get help. And, and it, that is a really good point because, and I dunno if you’ve heard of Dr. Peter Salerno, but he has a book called The Nature and Nurture of Narcissism. And he does talk about how there are a lot of clinical studies that you can have two children, you can pop one out that, you know, uh, it’s just kind, loving.
Empathetic and the other one will come out with kind of predisposition to have some of these traits. So, so he does see a nature side of that. Um, but you’re right, they don’t want help. They don’t get help, they don’t get better usually. Um, they don’t improve. And so it’s. It’s, and, and you had mentioned something too in your writing about just this super fragile ego, you know, and they, they have to [00:19:00] just sort of protect that at all costs.
So they can cannot take blame for anything. It’s, you rarely ever hear the word, I’m sorry. And if you do, it’s a manipulation to get something.
Zach: Yeah. And I think, yeah, to talk to you more about, I wanna talk to you more about that because it’s like, to me, and obviously I’m not the only person who thinks this, but.
It really seems like the fact that these people will never self-examine the fact that they will never say, I’m sorry, the fact that they will never admit blame, and they so often project everything on everyone else. I mean, I think that’s key to understanding their fragility because at some level they find it so hard to self-examine something that everybody, you know, most of us find easy to do.
For whatever reason, you know, nature, nurture combination. They, they find it so hard to be honest with themselves and to self examine and they have some instinctual desire to always be casting all the blame on everyone else and, and seeing everyone else’s enemies. But I think that’s, you know, I’m curious if you have any [00:20:00] thoughts.
I know neither of us are psychologists. Sure. With all your experience, I’m sure you’ve thought a lot about what drives, you know, the, these kinds of behaviors.
Jackie: Yeah, it’s, and you’re absolutely right, the victim. Mentality. And, and, and that’s the, you know, usually the, at the crux of, say the smear campaigns or you know, when you read these declarations that they write for court in family court, I mean everything is victim, victim, victim.
In fact, I often will tell clients like, Hey, look. They’ll usually get some early wins in family court because the judge is like, whoa. You know, they’re writing all these outrageous things in their declarations and they’re the victim. They’re the victim. Um, it’s a chip away mentality in family court. It is a or, or just when you’re dealing with these folks in general, even if court’s gone, um, and you’re in the aftermath dealing with co-parenting or whatnot, but it is this chip away mentality.
It’s a marathon. Hold on tight. Stay the course. I will often say to, um, you know, point out [00:21:00] behaviors. Obviously we never label anyone because most of us aren’t qualified to do that, but just point out concerning behaviors and don’t play the victim. It’s okay to point out things that they’re doing, but eventually.
Though that will start to be really contrasted, like whether it’s in your declarations or things that are happening in the court system, it will start to become apparent like, wow, this person, it’s always, always poor me. And they, they’re all doing it to me and they’re all, you know, and it, it will eventually.
Come to light. But it’s very scary in the beginning because they do get early wins in the family court system because they, they come out just, they come outta the gate, come out swinging, just swinging. I mean, and you’re like, whoa, I just thought we could talk about this and go to mediation and maybe work it out, you know?
And, and next thing you know, you know, you’re being accused of all these outrageous things. But yeah, the victim, oh, the victim card
Zach: is heavily played and that’s part of the mind blowing nature of it is like the never admitting any fault is kind of like the mind [00:22:00] blowing thing too. ’cause it’s like. It’s just, I think for most of us, it’s, it’s just such a, a minor thing to admit like, Hey, maybe I played a role in this.
Maybe I did something wrong. You know? But for people that just are completely, they cannot do that. They, they, they’re not capable of that. It, it, it is so painful for them to even think that other people. You know, might be that, that, that they themselves, maybe, or other people are, are seeing them in a negative light is, is so painful that for them, they just combat it, you know?
Uh, tooth and nail or whatever. Yeah,
Jackie: absolutely. They, yeah, they, they, they need everyone on their side. Um, it’s just a, um, gosh, there was something that I was gonna say. Darn it. Uh, it’s a horrible coping me mechanism. It is. Oh, what I was going to say is in two, they know your buttons. I mean, part of, early on in the relationship, what they were doing, um, was.
Information gathering. So what felt like, oh my gosh, they ask a lot of questions [00:23:00] about me and they really want to know a lot about me. And it’s very scary. ’cause you go out to try to date again and you’re like, how do I discern between someone who’s just trying to get to know me and someone who’s information gathering?
Yeah. Why do they wanna know that? Yeah. Um, but they are, they have minds like still traps when it comes to information about you so that they can pull it up later and use it against you. And so. There. I always say, you know, look for the themes that they pick. Like I, I bet you could pick a theme that this person constantly said about you.
Um, mine before I got divorced was like, I can’t handle anything. I’m stupid. Like, I can’t even handle like getting the kids to the right birthday parties on time. I can’t, how come I don’t have that date? Right. How do I have that thing wrong? I’m thinking, like I said, it was a super high functioning adult before I met you.
Like. How could this be true? But it was a narrative that kept being beaten to my head over time, and I started to adopt that narrative myself. Um, and then post, um, you know, separation and after the divorce had gone on so long, the one button [00:24:00] he knew would get me is he would say, you spent the kids’ college.
You know my, on that divorce, you’re the one that drug it out. You’re the one. I mean, oh my God, I was not the one that drug it out.
Zach: Right? And
Jackie: even I have to, I have to fight the temptation right now. Not to tell the whole story to defend myself, but it was, he, they know what button to push that’s really gonna get to you.
And so. Just sort of trying to be aware that that’s what’s happening. That’s the dynamic that’s playing and not fall for it is a really big hill to sort of climb and overcome. But it’s a really important one if you can do it. If you could stop and breathe and not react. Mm. And just be like, okay, they’re playing that cart again because they know they’re gonna get mileage out of it.
And I’m gonna start spinning right now. Right. If you can sort of shut that down in any way, shape or form by taking a breath, not responding, changing your response, shortening your response to not give them the fuel they’re [00:25:00] looking for. Right. I always give that advice ’cause they know exactly what they’re doing and what buttons to put, buttons to push.
Zach: And as you say on your podcast, as you and others say. Trying to not be over reactive in the legal and custody setting is very important too, because people will often perceive that in and wrong in, in, uh, ways that don’t help you. So you, it pays to be calm and not be reactive and you know, and how you respond.
Yeah.
Jackie: Yeah. It really does. And I’ll even say like, visually look at your messages to each other. If there’s a ranting for seven paragraphs. And then you respond for two, and then they ran for seven more paragraphs and you respond for two. Just on visual. If I’m a judge that’s not reading all this, I’m kind of flipping through it.
I’m already like, just visually like, okay, that’s, you know, I see what’s going on here. He’s crazy, but I see what’s going on here. Yeah. Like, like, oh my God, this is, this person’s a lot. Yeah. At the very minimum, this person’s a lot. So I’m like, you know, just start with that.
Zach: I think another, uh.
Counterintuitive weird thing [00:26:00] about these kind of dynamics is, you know, some of these people will seem like, you’d be like, well, they clearly, they treat their spouse this way. They clearly hate their spouse. And they may even sometimes say like, you know, I don’t want to be with you, and these kinds of things.
And on the surface they hate them, but on the, on another level, they really need them. Like they need that control, like. The control of another person is what gives them some sense of like existential stability or something. So when, when, you know, and I’ve heard this, you know, from, from people, from stories where you know that the, the abused person leaves and, and is surprised that the person fights so hard to control them and or keep them, or, you know, try to control the situation and not let them go.
And it’s, but it’s like at some level. They really wanted that, uh, that, that, that relationship as toxic as it was, was what gave them major stability in their life for, for a lot of these people, it seems, seems like to me, [00:27:00] but I’m curious if you have any thoughts on that.
Jackie: Yeah, absolutely. It’s, it is about control and it’s almost like I work so hard to get you into this, you know, submissive shell of yourself, state, how dare you leave?
Or, you know, or, or even if I treated you so badly and told you to get out, you weren’t really supposed to leave, you know, because I control you. And it is quite literally their fuel, their oxygen. That’s how I look at it. And so by. When you leave, you, they’re, they’ve lost their oxygen.
Zach: Is that, is that, is that when you say that’s their, this might be going too far, but is that, is this like their version of love for these people?
Like that’s the only kind of love they, they might be able to know. Do you think? I.
Jackie: Uh, I guess, yeah, if we wanna try to label it that, you know, I have a hard time, I mean, putting the word on it, but Yeah, no, it’s in, in their minds
Zach: though. And, and it’s,
Jackie: yeah. Let me put it this way. It’s the way they have a relationship.
Yes. Yeah. So, so what we thought was love, you know, we got into this person and we maybe [00:28:00] married them or whatever, you know, we thought we were committed for life, or for at least for a very long time. Yeah, we would call that we did that because of love and theirs is just for control
Zach: and it’s not love.
Yeah. Don’t get me wrong, but it’s like it might be the only way that they can like connect to other person, at least how the way they are now. Yeah.
Jackie: It’s the only way they can connect to the other person. And the other thing that I say is, it’s interesting in these relationships, they very often pick.
Intelligent, attractive, articulate, you know, uh, creative types that A, it makes them look good. Mm-hmm. And BI say a lot of ’em, maybe not all of them, but a lot of them, it helps make them acceptable to society, um, where they wouldn’t have been on that level on their own. Because you will hear often like, oh my God, he was so nicer.
She was so nice. And then, yeah, I like their spouse. They’re okay, but, but they wouldn’t have been, you know, invited all these places or done, you know, it’s, it’s really one, you know. Wherever they’re being invited eventually. It’s usually ’cause the nice, the nice part of the mm-hmm. Of, you know, of the couple, but [00:29:00] they also are very good at putting on the mask.
Zach: Right, right. So a lot of them are very good at acting and, and manipulating and putting on an act. Yeah. Uhhuh. Mm-hmm. Uh, so that
Jackie: if you do leave you, you, you know, everyone’s like, oh, I’m so surprised. He or she was charming, so nice, so I don’t get it. Yeah,
Zach: yeah. But the, uh, it’s complicated. One thing I thought was a practical tip in one of your podcasts was talking about how, because you know, the words, uh, the, the word narcissism is so overused these days.
Like, you have so many people that will just like, toss it around at the drop of a hat. Like, they don’t like something, somebody does their work and they’re like, they’re a narcissist. You know? But I think, um, you know, learning about. Real, very narcissistic people will, uh, maybe help you not use that word.
Uh, a, a as, as loosely as some people do. But the practical tip though, in one of your episodes was, uh. Talking about, uh, how when it comes to talking in, in legal custody settings, you know, it’s good to avoid that word. [00:30:00] I think somebody said to avoid the word abuse too, and just describe what the people are like.
Describe what their behaviors and actions were like, and so to avoid the perception that you’re trying to like label them and, and manipulate other people’s perceptions basically.
Jackie: Right. Absolutely. It’s, uh, it’s definitely a rule in court that, that we don’t label anyone. And yes, you describe the behaviors, uh, and I know in one episode you’re right, that was about custody evaluations.
Um, the guest had whi, which has been really valuable for a lot of my clients is, is explaining the progression of things. So when we started out, um. You know, this person is so sweet, so charming, um, you know, really outgoing, really good at their job, really da, da da. So describe all the things that a judge or an evaluator or somebody else is going to see when they meet them, because that’s the face the mask they’re going to have on.
And then they’ll say like, oh, yes. Right? That’s what I see. They’re, you know, they’re, they’re funny, they’re hilarious. Like they’re, they’re really good at cracking jokes. They put me at ease when I’m with them. And then I [00:31:00] was really saddened and surprised when. All of a sudden, you know, I wasn’t allowed to go out with my friends and, um, the, you know, I started calling me really, really bad names in front of the children, um, through a vase at my head once and in, you know, and describing the behavior.
So you don’t have to say abuse and you don’t have to say. Narcissist or you know, how, you know, you’re saying I was being controlled, I was being isolated. There were physical, you know, times that they were physical. Um, there are times that they’re, you know, they’re doing things in front of the kids that is not good.
Not good parenting, not healthy, not safe. So you’re just able, you’re set the stage and then you’re able to describe all those behaviors. Without throwing out any labels. Now I do have to say in the comfort of our own home, talking with our friends, listening to a podcast, I think labels are great. I think it’s feels good to read about something that you’re experiencing and then have someone give it a name.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And I know a doctor Diverso Romney is, is really big on that and she [00:32:00] has a book. Um, it’s not you. And I completely agree with her. Like I remember it was 2:00 AM when I stumbled on Tina Sweeten’s book. Um, and she described everything in my marriage is, is what she had went through. And then she, you know, said that he, I think, believed her ex was officially diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder.
But I remember just. Feeling this relief, like, oh, this is a thing, this me. Yeah, there’s all the patterns,
Zach: there’s all the behaviors. Here’s the
Jackie: pattern. Somebody else went through this and the, and there’s a name for it. So I think it’s very therapeutic and validating to be able to study it and read it and understand what the names are.
But then, yep. When you’re in the family court system or is anywhere that don’t, yeah, don’t, don’t diagnose it. Don’t use it yourself. Describe the behaviors that’s gonna, what’s gonna get you. Mm-hmm. Um, you know what you need.
Zach: Yeah. I’m curious if you have any stories about, or observations about projection, because it’s such a cliche that narcissists, uh, narcissistic personalities [00:33:00] will project things about themselves on other people.
It’s almost like I hear that and, and in a similar way as people too, sometimes too loosely. Throw the narcissism label around. I also hear people say, too often say, uh oh, they’re projecting where I’m like, um, I don’t think they’re projecting, but it, but it is really a thing. And when you actually see some of these things close up, like a specific, uh, you know, case I was telling you about in other many other cases, there, there is this thing or a very real projection thing where the things that are, that they’ve done wrong, they will.
Accuse the other person of, they’ll accuse other people of like, you know, say it’s drinking or drugs. The other, if they have a problem, they’ll accuse the other person of having that problem. If they, if they’ve had many affairs, they’ll accuse the other person of having many affairs and at, and at some level it’s like, it’s not, it seems it just a, not even a, a strategy.
It’s, it’s a, it’s a genuine, [00:34:00] like I really. At some level, some of these people really do believe these things in a, in an obsessive, obsessive way. The more, the more obsessive ones. But there is this thing that, that happens with this projecting. But I’m curious if you’ve heard many stories or, or do you have any observations about that?
Jackie: Yeah, no, it. It does happen all the time. I see what you’re saying. I mean, I think a, sometimes they use it as a strategy. If I beat them to the punch, you know, and say it first, then when they say it about me, it’d be like, oh, well, well great. So you’re right. Right. I’m doing it too. So I think in, in lots of times in the court system, we’ll seem ’em try to beat you to the punch by accusing you of at first.
Um. Two, it’s just, it’s a level of gaslighting that will absolutely make you crazy. So it is a very useful tool to gaslight you, to get you to react and then see I. Right. See, I told, so I, I believe it’s a, it’s a heavily used strategy in that manner, and then I think you’re absolutely right [00:35:00] that some of them, like, I’ll take the cheating for instance.
They do it so often and they’re so promiscuous, and whether they’ve lied to themselves to make themselves feel better or they, they have always believed it or what they’re like, everybody. Right. That’s the, everybody’s, everyone’s doing it cheating. Like there, there’s no such thing as a marriage that doesn’t, there’s no such thing as a guide that hasn’t, there’s no such thing, and I have seen that play out before too.
And I’m like, no, I, they really believe it. Yeah. They really believe that literally every neighbor is doing each other. Mm-hmm. And every like. They actually believe it. They actually believe that if I go take tennis lessons, that I will be sleeping with the tennis instructor. They believe it. Mm-hmm. And so I, I, you know, I think both can be true.
Yeah. It’s a spectrum. Spectrum. It’s, it’s to, it’s a spectrum. That’s what I was gonna say. It’s a strategy sometimes, and sometimes it’s complete delusion.
Zach: And I think it could be, yeah. It’s, and it’s, it can be hard to tell which is, which is in some of these cases, yeah. Hard to tell, which is, which I think in some cases they might not even really know.
Like they might be like. I, I’m [00:36:00] paranoid that everyone is doing these things against me. Yeah. And I want it to be true, so I’ll say it and believe it. Right. There’s, I think, I think especially for the less functional or the, the more, the less mentally well examples.
Jackie: Yeah.
Zach: There is this case. I mean, ’cause there’s studies that show that really pathologically narcissistic people have a hard time with memory.
They have a hard time, you know, distinguishing. Past reality from, from, from fiction that they’ve created. Like that’s a real Yeah. Thing. And I think at some level some of these people just want to believe something so much. They basically believe it. You know, they, they. They just, I will it into exist existence.
Jackie: The false narrative is, is safer for whatever reason. It’s, it’s, it’s safer to my, you know, my, my, the shell of false self that I’ve built to think that you’re cheating to, it’s safer to, um, yeah. Whatever the reason is. I, I completely agree. Yeah. It’s a spectrum, but, um, it, yeah, yeah, either way it’s, it’s just, it’s crazy making you write for the other person [00:37:00] on the other end.
Well, that’s why your,
Zach: that’s why your podcast is aptly named.
Jackie: Yeah, it, it really is. Like I, I had a friend that I was in a book club with at the time, and she was so excited I was doing this. I wake up one morning to a text on my phone and she, I think it was a text or an email, and she’d taken a screenshot of, she’d like been up for hours, scribbling all these possible podcast names, and they were like in the corner and then written this way, written that way in circles around ’em, and this one underlined and that one.
I just, this one stuck out. She’s the one that named it. And I’m like, oh my God, this is absolutely brilliant. And I always get, I always get comments about it. So I have to give a credit, credit to my friend. And
Zach: it’s, it’s called, uh, what was it out of, out of Crazy Town? Was it Out of Crazy Town?
Jackie: Yeah.
Zach: Right.
Jackie: Yeah.
Zach: I didn’t actually send you this beforehand, but just something I was thinking about before we met. I, so something I’ve long thought about, more toxic people. Narcissistic or just toxic in general. It seems like a lot of them in my experience.
Uh, had, you know, had toxic, uh, parents or, or main parent than one main parent, the themselves, which led to them having some of those traits. And I think another factor there is I think some of those people, uh, some of the more toxic people never were able to examine the bad things that their parents did to them.
Parent or both parents, so that they kind of still put their. A parent that mistreated them on some sort of pedestal, which, which prevents them from ever [00:39:00] like examining the bad aspects of that relationship. And I think the healthier people are able to be like, oh, I didn’t like these things that this parent did.
Um, so I’m able to process it and examine it and not do those things myself maybe. But I think for a lot of the people that have the worst outcomes. In this area. I think a lot of them still at some level want to please their, you know, toxic parent. But it, this, this, you know, I’m not a psychologist, obviously this, this is just my own kind of working theory, but I’m curious if there’s anything in there.
Um, do you have any observations about that? And no problem if not.
Jackie: Yeah, no. It’s, my, my experience is basically your experience. Um, that is that. Uh, the people that I’ve dealt with in my life that probably have a personality disorder or cluster B personality disorder did have some pretty decent dysfunction going on, um, in their family.
And, and yeah, there’s like a, a, a parent dynamic there. Usually [00:40:00] that’s, um, you know, that just was really harmful for whatever reason. Or just, or just a really unhealthy bond or relationship or, you know, um, I did do a blog post on, um. You know, narcissistic men and their mothers, not because they’re all that way, but it happens enough that you can write a blog about it.
Right? And, um, it, there’s, you know, often some enmeshment, and again, I know we can’t just put a blanket, you know, label on all of this, but there’s definitely patterns that can be identified. And, but that at the same time, that’s also why I called out Dr. P um, Peter Sonos book, because. He does point out that there is a lot of, are there a lot of studies where, you know, there’s a, could be a genetic component and basically the argument is like, so if you know, you stick two kids in a family and they grow up very similar, you know, but one emerges with these extremely narcissistic traits and the other one’s, you know, a compassionate, empathic person.
How is that? You know? And so that’s why they’re kinda looking, you know, at some of the more genetic based studies, I [00:41:00] guess is the best way to say it. But by and large. Yeah, I, I mean, my experience is, your experience is that I, and I often will see like narcissistic family systems, you know, I’ll see a, I’ll see a, a mom and a sister and a brother, you know, or three brothers and a dad, you know, so it’s, and, and it.
I’m not qualified to examine what’s going on there, but right there you will. I did another blog called, did You Marry Into a Narcissistic Family? ’cause oh my gosh, sometimes they will grab hold of the sweet people pleaser, you know? Um, and I don’t mean to label all of us that way, but that’s what I was, and they’ll, the whole family will eat you alive,
Zach: right?
There’s, there’re gonna be dynamics of manipulation and, um. Yeah. Harassment, manipulation, boundary, boundary stepping, just people that have unhealthy ways of engaging and that, you know, we’re not gonna solve the nature nurture thing on this podcast. Right. But like those, those kinds of dynamics I.
Obviously not [00:42:00] everybody comes out of that, uh, extremely narcissistic, but those kinds of dynamics can make somebody, you know, start seeing those things as like, oh, well this is just how you behave with people.
Jackie: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, why, you know, why does one person grow up in a really dysfunctional family and think to themself, I’m never gonna do that to my kids.
Right. I’m going to be the, you know, I’m gonna do way better than that, and then the other person repeats it. Exactly. Yeah. It’s hard to say, but
Zach: yeah. I think there’s, I think there’s like pathways you can go down, like, you know, if we, if we completely remove the. The nature aspect, you know, not, not to say it’s not true, but I do think there’s like pathways that it’s kinda like chaos theory.
Like you start dripping down one side of the mountain or another and like yeah, the, the, the, the personality traits start compounding and such, so, you know, that’s, that’s just how I think of it in terms of like, it’s, it start going down one path and, um, I do too. I think that’s, it’s hard to, and, and if you start doing, I think it in general, if you start behaving in bad.
Unhealthy ways [00:43:00] you continually start to justify those things, which has an impact on your current personality and so on and so on. So you, you continually kind of like can spiral down to worse behaviors because you’re for sure it’s a
Jackie: dark hole that it’s very difficult to climb out from. And even what, what you were saying something earlier that made it come to mind often there’s a huge component of lying among these, you know, disordered individuals.
And you’re right, they. And I think that that disengagement from reality and what’s going on is because they truly lie so much they can’t remember their lies. And then Right. It, it’s not even about remembering the lies anymore. It’s just I’m gonna make up the reality wherever I am, in front of whoever I’m standing in front of, and I am going to believe it.
Yeah. Because that’s been my pattern for so long. Whatever comes outta my mouth is the reality. Yeah. And I, I don’t care if it is raining right now, I’m gonna tell you it’s not. Yeah.
Zach: Yeah. Yeah. It’s like, it is really the, the tangled web wee weave thing where it’s like you start constructing so many lies and deceptions around you.
At some level, it’s, you’re just living in a [00:44:00] web of, you know, unreality. Right. So you might as well just say, you know. And that if you’re in that spot, you know, just say whatever you want. Right?
Jackie: And you have to almost believe that you’re the smartest person in the room because you’ve, you’ve now become so manipulative and so able to twist people’s realities.
You become so good at it that you now start to believe that you are the smartest person in the room no matter where you go. ’cause I can convince them that the sky is purple and that it’s not raining when it is.
Zach: And even because I’ve done it before. And even when you fail at convincing them, you’ll just tell yourself, I’m still a genius.
’cause you know, you’re used to. Telling yourself whatever. I’ll still go home
Jackie: and tell myself that they, that they bought it and I’m a genius or, or they’re, or there are
Zach: morons for not believing it. Yeah. It’s like, uh, well this has been great, Jackie. I appreciate it. Is there anything else you’d like to add before we wrap up?
Jackie: You know, I just want folks out there that are going through these hard times to know that it, it does come to an end. I don’t wanna say it gets better because they get better because they don’t. But my big, [00:45:00] um, hill that I want to die on is that extract yourselves from them. Any way possible. So even if you’re going through the divorce, like minimize your contact.
It, you know, if you have to communicate, uh, you know, I have this joke, like if it, it was a paragraph. See if you can get it down to a sentence. If it’s a sentence, see if you can get it down to a word. If it’s a word, see if you can get it down to a thumbs up. Um, like the, any way that you can cut them off from access to you and attention from you is, and again, I know that that’s, there’s a million different scenarios, um, to talk through, but.
If, if at all, at all possible, do that because you are their supply and they need to be cut off from, from your attention, from using you as a supply and move on to another one.
Zach: Thanks. That’s great. Yeah. Uh, really appreciate you joining me and thanks for your efforts and work.
Can you really tell who’s lying just by watching their body language? Are there any practical takeaways you can reliably and regularly get from studying nonverbal behavior in interrogation/interview settings? In this episode, I, Zach Elwood, author of some well known books on poker tells/behavior, talk to Chris Shelton, host of Speaking of Cults. We take a hard look at the booming industry of self-proclaimed “body language experts,” behavior-based deception detection, and viral behavioral analyses of interrogation videos (popular on YouTube). We unpack why confident claims about blinks, posture, eye direction, and micro-movements are often misleading, how pseudoscience sneaks into true crime media and even law enforcement, and why innocent people can easily be anxious and seem suspicious under pressure. We talk about alleged behavior experts who spread bad information (including Chase Hughes, the Behavior Panel, and Jack Brown). We discuss if there are realistic uses of body language in interrogation and other real-world settings, and what that might look like. If you’ve ever found yourself persuaded by a self-proclaimed “behavior expert,” this talk might change how you think about body language.
(Transcript is done automatically and will contain errors.)
Chris Shelton: “Do I know what that facial expression means? No, you don’t. You don’t. You can only guess, but we crave certainty. We want it so bad. And so when somebody comes along and says, well, I know all about it. See, I’ve studied this for years. See, and I know that when that man raises his right eyebrow, it means something different than when he raises his left eyebrow.”
“This is just one break point of where I look at these guys doing these analyses and I, I, I, I don’t have years of background in this, but I know what I know about psychology and I see the conclusions these guys make, and I’m like. Oh, please shut up.”
Zach Elwood: “They’re basically ringing blood from a stone. There’s almost no information there—but they’ll find all sorts of meaning in it.”
That’s a clip from Chris Shelton’s Speaking of Cults podcast, on which I recently appeared as a guest. We were talking about the bad, irresponsible information spread by alleged behavior experts, who claim you can get strong, reliable, and practically useful information in interrogation and interview contexts from reading people’s body language. So I’ll be resharing this episode on my own podcast channel. If you want to see the original, you can go to speakingofcults.com or to the Speaking of Cults youtube channel.
This will be one of a few episodes I’m doing focused on the immense amount of bullshit in the alleged “behavior expert” space. I have another episode coming out with an ex-CIA operative soon, talking about the con artist Chase Hughes, and about the general uselessness of using nonverbal behavior in interrogation and espionage-related fieldwork. That talk includes discussions of Paul Ekman, and of micro-expressions.
I have another couple episodes coming out with retired FBI agents, one a quite well known one who you might have heard of, to talk about these topics.
I have another episode coming out where I’ll be talking to a professional negotiator for their thoughts on nonverbal behavior.
Just to say that I have decided to really focus on this for a bit, talking to people who work in high stakes situations, asking them about what they see as nonsense and what they see as realistic when it comes to making use of body language.
Also, I should say that this is the second time I’ve appeared on Chris’s Speaking of Cults podcast. The first one was a deep dive on NLP, neuro-linguistic programming, and the nonsense and pseudoscience in that area. NLP is a foundational aspect of many alleged “behavior experts,” so if you really want to understand this area well you should understand NLP well, and that’s a good video for jumping into the topic.
I’ll also say that if you like these talks, you should look at the couple interviews I’ve had with Tim Levine, the respected deception detection researcher.
In this talk with Chris, we discuss:
The huge variability and ambiguity in human behavior
Alleged behavior experts, like those on The Behavior Panel, and the bad, irresponsible information they spread
The misleading idea that you just need to quote “baseline” someone’s behavior
My own views on the major differences between game scenarios and real-world, non-game scenarios
The negative outcomes that can result when people wrongly think they can reliably tell truth from lies based on reading body language
Okay, here’s my talk with Chris Shelton on his Speaking of Cults podcast…
Chris Shelton: [00:00:00] The speaking of Cult podcast is presented solely for general informational, educational, and entertainment purposes. The use of information on this podcast or materials linked from it is at the user’s own risk. The views, information, or opinions expressed by the host and guests are solely those of the individuals involved and do not constitute medical or other professional advice.
Hello, and welcome to the Speaking of Cults podcast. This is Chris Shelton, your host. Thank you very much for joining me again this week. I am very happy to have your viewership and your support. We are, as you know, a, a podcast that dives into the subjects of cults, coercive control, destructive behavior, and you know, the kind of abusive stuff that people get up to with each other.
And we try to shed a light on either abusive organizations or activities [00:01:00] and how these things can be measures of, or reflective of, you know, extreme behavior. Like people just kind of taking things too far, going to, taking a belief, taking a belief set, taking a group, and just kind of dialing it all up to 11 and doing bad things.
As a result, human beings definitely have a tendency to go, uh, too much of a good thing or take a bad thing and, and, and really blow it up. But either way. You know, we, we end up in bad places and one of the ways that we like to look at things on this podcast is to break down behavior and what is behavior driven by what motivates behavior?
Hell, I’ve put a whole psychological model together where I dare to think that I might have some answers as to what drives people to do what they do, you know, in terms of emotions and morality and, and you know, and things like that. But. There’s a difference between trying to like categorize or broadly, you know, look at [00:02:00] behavior and then making claims about human beings that are unfounded, untested, and really do not, people just have no business making these claims, but they have no compunction in doing so anyway.
And so we get this broad field of pseudoscience and we talked a couple weeks ago with Zach Ellison about, or sorry. Say that again. We talked a few weeks ago with Zach Elwood about neurolinguistic programming and Chase Hughes, one of the Grifters, now I’ve just used that word very liberally here, um, in this pseudoscience space of human behavior and, and sort of this idea of deception detection and body language is a whole other thing that Chase has sort of put himself into this world of people who put themselves out there on YouTube mainly.
And in the written, they, they write books, they make videos, they do classes and workshops, and [00:03:00] they, and they present themselves as experts in something that is not really. Something you can be an expert in. If I kind of put my go all the way out on the limb here and really like put these people in their place because there’s no science, their body language analysis is haphazard.
Guesswork is kind of what the science tells us when studies and research get done on this. It doesn’t turn out good for the Chase Hughes of the world, but that doesn’t stop him and other people from forming what they call a behavior panel and getting together and sort of mutually reinforcing each other’s language and ideas around body language analysis.
And they’ll come up with terms and language like turling and baselines and, and this sort of language and jargon enters into it that makes it seem as though it’s, again, [00:04:00] legitimate science and that there’s these concepts that are, that are researched and that people have done a lot of work on this and, and really figured out the percentages and how people act, and that these are universal human principles.
People in Cambodia or in Malaysia or in South Africa are gonna respond the same way as people in Montana. Like really, you know, one of the things you learn in psychology very quickly is how incredibly different people are culture to culture. So, but that doesn’t stop these guys from making these very generalized claims.
So I thought, let’s do a show about this. It is right up against, um, its deception and even coercion when we talk about how law enforcement and, um, regulatory bodies start using this analysis information, this pseudoscience that’s pedaled to them as though this is how they should make decisions to hire and fire [00:05:00] people decisions about whether somebody is innocent or guilty of serious crimes and whether or not they should, you know, be in jail or not.
So these decisions and this data has very large consequences beyond individuals. There’s societal implications to this work and. Therefore it has a, a degree of danger that could even touch your life. Who’s watching this right now through no fault of your own. So all that being said as this big intro here, Zach.
Hi, welcome back to my show and thank you very much for agreeing to be part of this. This is kind of the topic that you really got into this whole thing with the body language tells and kind of through poker games, right? That was kind of how you got into this whole thing.
Zach Elwood: Yeah. Hey Chris. Uh, good to be back.
Thanks for inviting me back. Uh, yeah. I got into this world, like went down the whole rabbit hole eventually, you [00:06:00] know, ending up with the Chase Hughes and behavior panel stuff that we talked about last time. But how I initially got into the space was I used to be a professional poker player and I wrote some, uh, well-known books on poker.
Tells my first book got translated into eight languages total. A couple of those were me doing it, but six other people, uh, publishers published it in other languages. Lots of people called it, you know, the best book on the subject. Uh, I got very good reviews from, you know, both amateurs and very experienced players.
I’ve consulted for World Series of Poker, main event, final table players. I’m consulting for a high stakes player right now. So just to say that was what got me into the, uh, behavior space was my interest in interest in psychology and behavior. And I think, uh, yeah, the interesting thing we could, depending on which way, which direction you want to go, is like, I, as you know, as I’ve discussed on your show, there are, there are many people in this, you know, [00:07:00] kind of like what I call pop behavior space.
These people on YouTube, like Chase Hughes and the Behavior Panel and many other people who just say clearly false things about what you can do with behavior. And that that’s in the realm of like just speaking a about clear, about just plain false things. And then also. Exaggerating things that are realistic or, or known or supported, but acting as if you can do amazing things and reach amazing conclusions with them, you know, and the, one of the main ways that manifest is watching, you know, like interrogation footage or interview footage and, you know, having so much to say about every few seconds about some minor, you know, eye blink rate or some minor way that they move their hands on their legs or what have you.
So it manifests as all these things that are just plain false and exaggerated and don’t have basis in, in real science or, or just lack common sense when you get down to some of these things. And, and then you have a [00:08:00] lot of people that are eating that up because it, it basically functions as a kind of glorified, you know, pseudoscientific gossip, uh, kind of, uh, you know, content where people are just like examining.
Behaviors of criminals or examining behaviors of famous people and using those to kind of like bolster their, you know, views that, oh, I knew Meghan Markle no good, and she’s a liar and a deceiver, blah, blah, blah. You know, just kind of using these things as kind of like a, a glorified, uh, pseudoscientific seeming, uh, or scientific seeming, you know, gossip and celebrity gossip and true crime, you know, kind of content.
And that’s, yeah, I think that’s one of the main ways that kind of junk plays out. But then as you say, some of those ideas have drifted into real, uh, you know, spaces like police work and, and such with the NLP kind of ideas and things like that. But it’s all kind of related in, in terms of like exaggerating what you can do with these things.
Yeah.
Chris Shelton: Very much so, and it’s the, and let’s be [00:09:00] clear that it’s the exaggeration that I take exception to. It’s not the fact that somebody can’t guess or look at somebody else and, and, and have some estimation based on, you know, their knowledge of this individual or the situation in the context. And it come to some ideas about what’s going on in this person’s head or what this withholding or knowing or knowing about or something like that.
We make assumptions and we do this thing, you know, called, um, you know, the heuristics, right? We, we have a, we have a little bit of information and we have to, you know, from that try to figure things out, right? And we use these measurements, these, these, these estimations, these ideas of, okay, well the guy’s wearing a lab coat.
Zach Elwood: Well, maybe he’s probably kind of scientific,
Chris Shelton: right? Or there’s something formal, or there’s something proper, or there’s where these words come out, right, of like, what would we think of somebody who’s wearing a lab coat versus somebody who’s not the, the, these are called [00:10:00] biases or assumptions or, you know, guesses of, and this is just how our mind works all the time.
There’s nothing wrong with this. There’s nothing weird about it. We’re not gonna educate ourselves out of it. This is how brains work. But because they work this way, we have two, we have a couple little factors that kind of get in the way of our lives, right? Uncertainty is a big one, right? But do I know what that lab coat means?
Do I know what those words mean? Do I know what that facial expression means? No, you don’t. You don’t. You can only guess, but we crave certainty. We want it so bad. And so when somebody comes along and says, well, I know all about it. See, I’ve studied this for years. See, and I know that when that man raises his right eyebrow, it means something different than when he raises his left eyebrow.
It is that granular of analysis of body reactions during conversations, during speeches, [00:11:00] during, uh, trials, during job interviews, during interrogations. And these are almost always unusual, stressful situations where we’re gonna see unusual behavior from people. Right. But they’re guided or they’re, they’re judged as though these are normal situations.
This is just one break point of where I look at these guys doing these analyses and I, I, I, I don’t have years of background in this, but I know what I know about psychology and I see the conclusions these guys make, and I’m like. Oh, please shut up. You have no, I mean,
Zach Elwood: they’re, I, they’re just, to me, they’re just ringing blood from a stone basically.
There’s like, there’s like no information there, but they’ll find all sorts of information,
Chris Shelton: right? Yes, that’s right. And it’s, and, and I’m only making this big, I’m only monologuing here because I’m trying to make this point that it is the certainty which, which they deliver it that sells this stuff to people.
Because we all walk around knowing, we’re just guessing. You know, we don’t know if Amber [00:12:00] heard really, you know, did what she did to Johnny Depp. We just know that this is what these guys said about each other in the trial. Right. And so some people are like, but I want her to be the, the, the good person.
And other people are like, no, I know she’s the bitch. Right. And both of them will read into the behavior they see. They’ll
Zach Elwood: filter. Yeah. They’ll
Chris Shelton: filter for
Zach Elwood: what they wanna see. Yeah,
Chris Shelton: exactly what they want to see. So there is this other thing called, we call that confirmation bias. It’s when you’re using your perceptions to confirm that something you want to think is true, is true.
We do this all the time. We talk about it on the channel all the time. ’cause it’s a great way to get people into cults and it’s a great way to fool people. Right. And this is one of the things that, that, that gets a lot of traction in the body language analysis space. Right. Is I, this is one of the reasons why I think, but we’re, we’re probably jumping to the.
So the conclusions before getting through some of the stuff here, but in terms of [00:13:00] describing it, uh, you know, I was really amazed watching some examples of this. I’ve seen clips now from Australian News, from uh, BBC, from Newsmax, from Fox News, from various news agencies as well as behavior panel videos from these YouTubers and individual YouTubers who are talking to TMZ or other celebrity media and offering these deep, very certain, this is the thing I watched over and over and over again with these guys, is they are selling these, uh, conclusions or judgements about these people.
And I was really shocked ’cause I expected it to be a little bit more generalized. So they could get away with it easier, but these people were not, I mean, they were making claims that, you know, they have no business making about people. Could you talk about that a little bit, just as far as like what, what you’ve seen too and, and where this, how this developed?
Zach Elwood: Uh, I [00:14:00] mean, it is shock. Yeah. I, I agree. It is shocking. I mean, it’s the, it’s the certainty and it’s the straight up exaggeration of credentials, right? Like, so for example, the behavior panel people, like, they just called themselves the best behavior experts in the world. Like, they use that to describe their channel.
It’s like there’s no, they have no, no reason to, to, to, to describe themselves as such, right? Like, look at Chase Hughes. We, we examined all of his lies about his past. He’s a clear con artist. He’s a clear serial liar. And I have no problem saying that. Like, ’cause I know I’ll never be taken to court for that.
Or if I did, I would win. Like I have no problem calling him a clear con artist, but. Him, he calls himself, you know, the best in the world. And he, uh, the, the behavior panel promotes that group as the best behavior experts in the world, which gives them this veneer of respectability and credibility. I mean, I could just as easily call myself, you know, the best behavior in the world.
Like it would hold as much credibility as them calling themselves that, right? [00:15:00] Uh, so yeah. And then you look at these examples and it is amazing to me that these people get on TV shows. Like I, I, I think it really speaks, you know, to the desperation for content that is out there, which is a big part of this, why these people get attention, why they succeed at, at these these things.
Because there is such a desperation from news shows and other shows. To just produce content and to Brutus content. That seems exciting. Right? So for example,
Chris Shelton: oh, I gotta say, I gotta say real fast just to, just to, just to throw this in here. I mean the, the watching the endless parade of TMZ, Meghan Markle, prince Harry critiques by these people, I mean, these are, this is a, a, a whole organization with way too much time on its hands as far as I’m concerned.
Zach Elwood: And a lot of this behavior stuff is, is right in the same area because it’s just basically filling the demand for people to watch stuff about true crime or watch stuff about celebrities, right? So, yeah, I mean, one of the first. [00:16:00] Grifters and, and, uh, liars in the behavior space, behavior bullshitter as I called him when I made a, a article about him was this guy named Jack Brown, Dr.
Jack Brown. I think his doctorate was in ophthalmology or something, but he, he presented himself as a, uh, a doctor, you know, and he gave his behavior work more credibility. And I was amazed to find that despite the obvious bullshit in the same way that chase u’s stuff is obviously bullshit. Like you look at the Jack Brown stuff and it’s like, this is ridiculous.
Like, speaking of granular stuff, like he would, one of the reasons he got so popular was because he was always criticizing Republicans. And so it tied into a political. Uh, some people’s political views. Right. We see
Chris Shelton: that too. That’s right.
Zach Elwood: Right. That ha that happens too. On, on, you know, for both sides.
That’s right. So he, he was, Jack Brown was doing this stuff where he was like, I could tell by Trump’s uh, constriction in his pupils that he is some sort of cocaine or other and pH addicts. And it was just like completely, he would show these closeups of his [00:17:00] pupils and it was like, this is based on absolutely nothing.
Right. Like that’s, and he would go into all these, he has all these details, detailed reads, like he said at one point that he thought the pipe bomber that was caught on video during January 6th showed signs of being Marjorie Taylor Green based on his read of the, uh, of the, of the behavior and the way they, that, that the person walked All this crazy stuff.
Right. Yeah. Just to say it was completely nuts and like none of it was based on, he just said clearly false things about eye direction. That’s a common thing that we talked about for NLP. Yeah. For example. And despite all this. He was on, uh, CNN talking to Anderson Cooper about stuff. And I think that was his biggest, luckily, I think that was his biggest, uh, you know, media win.
And I think I had something to do with that because I put out an article that it was like the first thing that came up for if you search for Jack Brown behavior, and I put an article down, I think I kind of like stymied his attempts to get popular basically in the same way. I think I might’ve helped do that for Chase Hughes.
Uh, but [00:18:00] it’s just kind of amazing, the granular things that they will go into where you’re like, how can people, you know, and most people I think, know how complex psychology and behavior are and how complex the world is. So like, most people, I think bulk at hearing like, I’m gonna take this tiny bit of information and make all these deductions from it.
Right? Because we all know in real life, you know, we can reach some deductions about other people, but we know it’s pretty hard because there’s so many factors that govern their behavior and so many un. Unseen things that might explain why they’re feeling, how they’re feeling or how why they act, what, how they act.
So it is, it’s kind of amazing that they will go into these really granular things that just, I think most, you know, reasonable people bulk at that and, and realize that that’s a sham. But for the people that are, I think not as, don’t have that filter. They’re, they’re, they’re, they’ll absorb all that.
That’s right. And that’s, and because of these people present themselves as being, you know, the best in the world and it’s based on science and blah, blah, blah, a lot of people just absorb all that. [00:19:00] And, and their filters are down for just absorbing a bunch of nonsense and fill, filling their heads with nonsense, basically.
Chris Shelton: V, very much so, and unfortunately we deal with a bit of a culture lag in, in actual science versus what, you know, the, the cultural public awareness of science. And so for example, you get, these guys get a lot of traction talking about, you know, the lizard brain and you know, the, the, the, the, you know, the referring to systems of the brain as though, you know, there’s this old idea and, um, and it’s, and it’s, I get where it comes from.
It’s completely understandable that, that people have this idea, it was talked about for years. So it’s not like, you know, that, that they’re idiots for thinking this. I’m not in any way implying that. I’m saying people do the best they can with the knowledge that they’re given. And a lot of people have been given for a lot of years this idea that the brain is sort of like this lizard brain with layers built on top of it.
And, and, and they talk about the brain that way. And [00:20:00] it’s just one example that’s that’s on my mind right now. ’cause I watched this video earlier today about this stuff. MCAP and Yeah, exactly. Muse Cab. She did a great breakdown on this and yeah,
Zach Elwood: her uh, if people are curious, it was called, I debunked everybody language expert on YouTube and
Chris Shelton: yeah, there’s link to it, but I’m putting a link to it.
Yeah. ’cause I thought it was so damn good. Um, and it, um, but my point is that people don’t know that science moved on from that. That’s not how scientists, neuroscientists or psychologists or neuropsychiatrist think about the brain. It’s an integrated organ that evolved as a whole entity. It’s not something that evolved to a certain point.
And then nature just came and slapped some shit on top of it, and now we can think better. It. That’s not how evolution works. And, and by the way, evolutionary psychology is a whole nother area where, you know, we, we, we, we’ll probably have done another show I’ll have to do in the future on that one, but point is that, um, people take what they learned in school or what they [00:21:00] think they know about this stuff and these guys come along and confirm, oh yeah, you’re right, because look right, this is the lizard brain thing going right there.
There it is. There it is. And they show you an example. And a picture is worth a thousand words. So when people see a guy, you know, at a being, being interrogated in a police station, hunched over looking pretty bad. That’s all they see is that little clip. Well, obviously
Zach Elwood: the
Chris Shelton: guy’s guilty. Well, yeah. Look, he’s all hunched over.
I mean, obviously he’s the, the literally the weight of his guilt is pushing him down into the table, right? Like this, like people can start thinking this way. No, he, he’s been in that room for 15 straight hours. I’d like to see what you would look like after being in that little room for 15 straight hours.
Right? But we’re gonna take this little tiny clip and we’re gonna tell you all about how guilty this guy is because of his body posture, right. In an out of context way’s
Zach Elwood: where he knows he is been accused [00:22:00] and he is stressed out and he knows he is suspect. And yeah, I think, uh, I mean, getting back to the, the overall point, it’s like, I think really when you, you people just need to understand there are so many factors involved in why people behave, how they do.
It’s a, it’s immensely complex. And anybody who’s. I, I’ve watched a lot of interrogation footage because it’s something that interests me, and I’m interested in those, those, uh, those videos where they are talking to somebody who’s innocent. But that person has done some things that do seem suspect and strange, and you’re like, why did they do that?
It doesn’t make any sense. And like that kind of stuff would lead you, you know, wrongly to think, oh, this person, you know, then, then that gets into the content of what they say too, which is another important distinction too. But I think even for like behavior of like somebody acting just purely behavioral, like acting stressed, like as you pointed out earlier, they are in a very, uh, stress stressful environment, right?
Like, and then that’s also [00:23:00] true of many of these situations where behavior so-called experts are analyzing, you know, like high stakes interviews by, of celebrities or whatever it may be. Like there’s many reasons for somebody to behave in ways that seem stressed out or unusual or whatever it is. You know, you, I mean, you put me in front of a high stakes.
Situation I’d probably behave in, in all sorts of ways that I, I, I think people would think we’re weird. And that’s under, you know, that’s completely common for people to do those things that you, afterwards you’re like, why did they do that? I, I have no, you know, it doesn’t make any sense, but those are the kind of situations these people are in, whether it’s interrogations, whether it’s, you know, interviews, whether it’s, you know, political situations or what have you.
I think that’s what we really need to understand is like, there’s just so many things going on that that can impact somebody’s behavior and make them uncomfortable about a question. And maybe their discomfort isn’t even about that question, but something related to it. Or, you know, they’re thinking about something else suddenly that they, they’re thinking about.
That’s not even related to that question. So just [00:24:00] say there’s, there’s just so much complexity. Um, but yeah, I think. Wherever you want to go from, from, from that which direction?
Chris Shelton: Well, yeah. I mean, it, it’s a, it’s a layer cake and there’s just a lot going on with us. And to pretend that you can take one layer of that and determine the big picture, maybe, maybe.
To say you can do that a hundred percent of the time, even 90% of the time with certainty. I mean, this is where there it gets a little ridiculous. And I wanted to ask you about something because it seems that one of the things that is used to give this an air of legitimacy is this idea of a baseline.
This is something that’s talked about a lot, this emotional baseline. I’m gonna observe this individual and I’m gonna see their baseline, and then I will note the differences from that baseline. Well, that baseline concept is itself interesting. You can make it make sense, but that doesn’t mean it’s a true thing.
I don’t know that human beings have a baseline emotional [00:25:00] state. In Scientology, we used to have this concept of a chronic tone level, you know, the average emotional state that a person is in most of the time. Uh, he is a chronic angry, right? You go up to the guy, he is always angry or you know, they’re always sad, or they’re always this or they’re always that.
Since when is any human being always anything, we generalize these things, but the fact of the matter is reality doesn’t agree with any of that. We can be anything mood wise at any moment depending on context. So, um, so to make these broad statements and then assert that they’re simply true, ’cause I said so is itself kind of a problem in this space?
The other problem I see in this space that is sort of this accepted sort of foundational thing is that there is some list somewhere, or some paper must have been written somewhere that I can’t find that, that lists or describes what normal human behavior is in a [00:26:00] police interrogation or in a job interview, or in a celebrity interview or at a funeral.
All these places where these analysts have a heyday breaking down the behavior of Meghan Markle or Prince Harry. And, and, and thinking because he is tapping a piece of paper on his leg or he is, you know, or he is a little, a little nervous or he is, you know, doing something with his hands. This means exact behavior, A, B, c, because, and this is how they phrase it.
And because a normal person or a normally you would see this kind of behavior. And so there’s this, there’s this idea that there’s this standard somewhere of how people are supposed to act in these different situations. And I thought I’d bring that up early on here ’cause I wanted to ask you about it and what you’ve seen with that.
Where does that idea come from? They all fall back to it and everybody accepts it and you’re like. [00:27:00] Who, who said normal people act like that? Where is that coming from?
Zach Elwood: Well, I think, uh, to, to, to your start of the baseline thing, like I’ve written and talked about that before in some mm-hmm. My videos, I, there’s, there’s two levels of difficulties there.
As you say, it’s hard to even know what anyone’s personal baseline is. Like, for example, I’ll, I’ll wake up some days and feel pretty down and low energy and not even understand why other days I feel high energy and confident and such don’t really know why. And then even during an activity that that feeling can change.
Like, I might start out one way and end up the other way. So just say, yeah, they, even the idea of personal baselines can be very difficult. There’s, there’s all kinds of factors. Um, then you’ve got on top of that, like theoretically. Yeah. I think the idea of baselining is good. So for example, in poker, I’ve done a lot of an analysis of poker players on video.
And that’s a, that’s very different though, because it’s a very formal environment where they’re doing repeatable actions. It’s a, you know, that we can get into that later. The difference between like games and [00:28:00] sports Yeah. With very formalized environments, with very particular actions versus like a real world scenario where you’re just loosely talking and you can do anything you want.
And there’s, there’s not really any constraints and there’s no specific actions you’re taking. Right. It’s a very different environment. Yeah. So theoretically though, the idea of baselining is good. Like if you, but, but to get a meaningful baseline for some, a specific person Right. Like that in a scientific way to, to map out like, oh, they do these kinds of things in these scenarios this many times.
I mean, that, as we’ve said, that’s such a complex area. So to try to do that scientifically to me, would take like dozens if not hundreds of hours. Right. Like it’s just an that’s undertaking. So,
Chris Shelton: yes, exactly.
Zach Elwood: So if you could do it at all, that’s, you know, that’s even assuming you could do it, but to, to, but for these people that pretend like, oh, you know, you gotta get a baseline in an interview or a baseline in this interrogation.
It’s like you’ve only got such a small sample size to work with. And, and do you mean to tell me that you’re [00:29:00] mapping out precisely like what they’re doing and you know, precisely what all the factors are in that situation that led them to a, a do that one behavior. Like the idea that you can do that kind of baselining on the fly in some sort of like several minute or even several hour scenario is, is ludicrous to me for the, you know, sheer complexity of it that we discussed.
That’s right. Uh, but yeah, that’s, that’s what gets me about the baselining. To me it’s a way to cover up the fact that it is so ambiguous and low practical use, but by saying like, there, there’s a couple benefits to this baselining thing to, to saying that because it’s makes them seem. More credible because a lot of people will balk at a lot of these things.
So by saying you gotta get a baseline first, it makes it seem more credible. Credible. But also for the people that take their classes and their content, when those people find that they can’t actually do anything useful with the content that they’ve consumed, they’ll be like, oh, I guess I didn’t get enough baseline.
Or I guess I don’t know how to baseline properly. [00:30:00] So it puts the idea in people’s minds, it’s like a fallback for, for, uh, putting it in people’s minds that consume this so they can blame themselves instead of blaming the people that gave them this information. So it serves a very valuable practice, and that’s why you’ll hear it so often when they discuss these behaviors, they’re, they’ll always throw in these things like, well, you gotta get a baseline first.
As if, as if that gets them off the hook for the bad information they’re spreading. Right.
Chris Shelton: Uh, there’s a really good analysis of that. Thank you. I, I couldn’t agree more. And I, and, and then this additional point, I think it’s a really, really, really important one, and I think it’s one that goes over the heads of almost everybody watching this crap.
And I, and I, and when it hit me, I was kind of like, oh my God. Right? Which is the point I just made, which is that, you know, you address the baseline thing, but then there’s this other aspect, right? Which is Yeah, yeah. This assumed idea that we all know what a normal innocent person is going to do, and then we take that baseline, that comparative that is completely [00:31:00] imaginary.
People just make this idea up. Well, if I were in that situation and I were innocent, I wouldn’t look like that dude. Reality check right? To any human being watching this, I’m sorry, but I’ve, you know. You don’t know what you are going to do in a situation that is high stakes until you’re in it. Mm-hmm.
Because the way you think right now, lemme just make this really super easy, right? Because the way you think right now is you’re in a calm, rational place where you have time and no threat. Nobody’s pointing a spear at you, and you get to think through all the things you get to think through right now about what you think you would do in that situation.
But when that situation comes around and adrenaline is pumping in your veins and, and you’re not thinking straight, you’re not gonna [00:32:00] remember anything you’re thinking right now. Yeah. We know this, this is studied beha. We, we know this. Right? So, so we are the ones who keep screwing it up by making these unfounded, egotistical assumptions that we know what a normal person would do.
Right. So that’s my bottom line on that, but I wanted to get your take on that. Yeah,
Zach Elwood: yeah. I mean, I, I, I agree. I think, you know, to give us spec some specific specificity, uh, screw that up, but, you know, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. Uh, to give, to give some specifics to it. I, I can think of, you know, I’ve watched a good amount of interrogation footage, like I said, and, you know, I do think there are certain patterns that show up, like kind of meta-level patterns of behavior that are useful at.
Uh, that, that are correlated with, you know, guilt or innocence in certain situations. And we could talk about, you know, why I think that and how sure it fits alongside, you know, what I’ve said so far and my skepticism about specific behaviors and deception detection. But I will say there’s plenty of examples for people [00:33:00] that have, have watched a lot of interrogation footage and our interest in that and are, and are not, you know, don’t have major cognitive biases around what they’re trying to see.
I mean, there’s plenty of examples you can find where people, uh, guilty or innocent people acted in ways that seemed quite suspicious. You know, like for example, somebody’s close relative was, was killed. And they act in a very calm demeanor, which most people would be like, how can that, that seems very suspicious.
Why, why would he act that way? Most people would be very distraught or at least showing signs of immense anxiety. But, you know, someone can. Act in those ways. And that can be how some people react to immense, uh, stress and anxiety is just to kind of shut down and act calm. Right. So just to say there can be various things like that where, you know, yeah, like you said, what’s normal is very hard to define for a general population, even if, even if, you know, police officers, interrogators may have some, you know, [00:34:00] justified inkling about what is more common when, but when we get down to it, you know, it’s the certainty we’re talking about here, right?
It’s the, it’s the immense certainty that people can have. That is the problem, not, not the inklings that can develop from, you know, doing a lot of specific work or being in the field, doing a lot of specific work, whatever it is. So, yes, we’re talking about the certainty. Yeah.
Chris Shelton: Well, very much so. Because I wanna be clear that there is, there is such a thing as experience and there is such a thing as working with people and there is such a thing as, you know, reading people’s.
Body language for, for, for lack of a better term, right. The way they move. And
Zach Elwood: general de general deductions too. It’s like we do that every day. Yeah. About, oh, they said this and they said this while they were doing this. We’re reaching some deduction. Like they’re uncomfortable or they don’t wanna talk about that.
Or, you know, we’re, we’re reaching those conclusions every day. And I think that, I think the main difference is most of us know that we’re often wrong, you know, about, about those deductions that we can reach or, you know, and so we shouldn’t be overly certain about it. And, and that’s where, yeah, that’s where we’re get getting into the certainty part of it to,
Chris Shelton: well, for sure.
That is definitely my [00:35:00] primary criticism with this. The other point that I think needs to be made about this exact point though, is that there is no. Person who is able to separate their pure observation of somebody’s body language from their other perceptions and observations of the language the person has used, the way they talk, when they talk, when they don’t talk, when they, when they, you know, yes.
How they stand, how they sit, how they posture, how they move. All of these things on top of where the person lives, what their background is, what their educational level is, what who, what culture they’re from. All of these things are in the mind of the interrogator coming together to form a picture of an estimation of this person in front of them.
You cannot, there is no human being who can credibly and reliably separate out [00:36:00] just the body language part of this.
Zach Elwood: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Chris Shelton: And decide accordingly. Right. We c we integrate all of this together. Mm-hmm. So it’s a little ingen, you know, disingenuous for somebody to go, oh, the body language tells me when, in fact, it’s a combination of all of these things, if we’re being honest.
And those are the things that give you that experiential advantage. ’cause you’re putting mm-hmm. All of this stuff together.
Zach Elwood: Right.
Chris Shelton: You know,
Zach Elwood: and usually, I think it’s mainly about the, for the, for the people that are experienced and actually have reliable, you know, useful deductions. Sometimes I think it’s mainly about the content.
Right. It’s mainly about what people are saying. Yeah. I think they might, I think sometimes they, as you say that they sometimes may be getting confused about like, which is which, because I think exactly a lot of, a lot of times it all rolls up and they’re like. Oh no, the behavior is very useful, but they, they might not be distinguishing between [00:37:00] like, oh, it was what somebody was saying or not saying, coupled with that person, you know, looking up uncomfortable and, and the fact that the person looked uncomfortable was actually very minor and in context there, or like completely meaningless compared to like the things the person was actually saying.
Which gets back to what I often say is like the verbal, the statement analysis or, you know, just analyzing what people are saying or not saying in their stories is so much more meaningful than focusing on the non the, the nonverbal behavior. To me it’s like, you know, it, it’s, it’s such a huge difference in importance to me.
Like the nonverbal is just so low importance to me. Yeah,
Chris Shelton: exactly. And in fact, studies that were done on this, and there have been studies done on this and meta studies done on this, indicate that if you turn the sound off. Just to back up exactly what you just said. You take a trained interrogator. You take, you take people who supposedly know what they’re doing and you show them with the sound turned off somebody in an interrogation room and with body language alone.
[00:38:00] Right. Can you tell, this guy’s lying? Can you tell this person’s guilty less than half the time? These skilled interrogators on body language alone? And that tells you something. Right? That’s the kind of
Zach Elwood: science they, and they did better. They did better when they, uh, turned
Chris Shelton: the sound on when
Zach Elwood: they heard, yeah.
Yeah,
Chris Shelton: that’s right.
Zach Elwood: Yeah,
Chris Shelton: exactly. In fact, you could turn the vol, you could turn the video off and turn only the sound on.
Zach Elwood: Right.
Chris Shelton: And by sound alone, they were getting 64% accuracy versus
Zach Elwood: Right
Chris Shelton: less than 50,
Zach Elwood: which makes sense. It’s like, as we’ve talked about, it’s like the behavior stuff. The nonverbal behavior is so complex and so many spots are ambiguous.
But what people say contains a lot of information. Like that’s, that is literally like where we get most of our meaning from in life is words, right? Like, so the idea that you’re gonna get some. You know, a much more information from the, the nonverbals and the verbals is, is to me, um, you know,
Chris Shelton: that seems to be the point where of departure for me too.
It seems to be a point where they’ve taken a, a mole hill and turned [00:39:00] it into a mountain. Yeah. Statistically, right. Statistically speaking, we know, again, through studies and research on this with controls, put in that through body language reading alone. You know, you are, you’re, you’re we’re talking about a difference of less than 1% of accuracy in determining whether somebody is.
Telling a lie or telling the truth when body, you know, as far as what, how much of a contributing factor is the body language analysis in determining the accuracy of a liar? Well, it turns out it’s like one, 1% or less. You know, when you, once you do all the math and break it all down. Did I read that right or am I misunderstanding what I read?
Zach Elwood: Oh, I can’t remember that exactly. But I was gonna say, if you wanted to talk about the deception detection research, you know, specifically, and, uh, yeah, I, I could talk a little bit about that if you want. Please regale me. Yeah, I think, I think that’s, uh, when I was going through, you know, preparing for this, I’d been wanting to put some of these thoughts in order.
And I think the, the rea I, I think so often people are talking past each [00:40:00] other because it’s like, yeah, there is no, when you talk about deception detection, especially in the research setting, you’re talking specifically about getting people to say a lie or say a truth, and getting people to make guesses about reading that.
And when it comes to that, like it seems pretty clear to me. That there is no, that there’s evidence against the idea that there are general, uh, non-verbal behavior markers that we, that, that will make, uh, you know, that, that are tied to, to lying significantly tied to lying. So Tim Levine, uh, I think, I think he pronounces it.
Tim Levine, I’ve interviewed him for my podcast. He’s a well-known deception detection researcher, and he has written papers and talks about, uh, how there’s no good evidence for general behavioral markers for deception detection.
Chris Shelton: Right.
Zach Elwood: And I, I believe that, but you know how that maps over to me working on poker tales and believing that there’s, you know, many people would think like, how can you believe that?
And also believe that there’s valuable poker tells or valuable other, uh, tells and, you [00:41:00] know, interesting reading spots in interrogations or games or sports or whatever. So the way I map it out, well, not just me, uh, the, the way to map it out I believe is. Recognizing that, you know, for example, let’s take poker.
There’s no, all the, all the tells that I and other people use in poker are not about deception detection. They’re not, we’re not, we’re not like getting a read that we think somebody is lying or telling the truth. We’re getting reads about level of relaxation or level of, uh, how much alertness someone is paying to their cards or to the board or whatever, these kinds of things.
And the, these are not about deception because the person is not just, you know, in a, like, in a research setting. And it has no, has no analogy to someone just saying something and you reading whether they’re telling the truth or telling a lie. It, it does. So it, this, this lets us see the distinction between like, oh, we’re getting, we’re getting clues about how they might be feeling.
Now, you know, me getting, making a read in poker, there’s some general population things. That I have [00:42:00] no problem basing decisions on because I know that they’re so common in the general population. And, uh, and there’s also, you know, things that I think are lo much lower liability where I’d like to see it present a few times before I base a big decision on that, you know, player specific reads.
Uh, so this, and I think the similar, similar things are in other, uh, games and sports environments, but I think the important thing is recognizing that games and sports and these kind of formalized competitive environments where there’s repeatable actions and you do specific things like there’s no correlation.
Uh, analogy between that and real world non-game scenarios where you’re just talking to people, right? There’s, there’s not like specific things you have to do. There’s not specific turns you take. There’s not specific physical actions you have to do. You know, for example, in like in, in soccer, you might, you know, you can get reads maybe that someone’s looking a certain direction and gonna kick that way or something like that, right?
There’s, there’s not that kind of thing. This, this, uh, physical turn base kind of thing in, uh, real world scenario. So it’s [00:43:00] much more open-ended, it’s much more dynamic. And that to me is the big distinction about why these things are so much more useful in games and sports than in real world scenarios.
And the other big difference is that. You know, to make a, uh, there’s so many small decisions you make in, in games and sports, and even if it’s not highly reliable, you’re so often in close spots, like you’re so often in 50 50 spots that could go either way in poker and in other games. So if you think a reed is like, even like 60%, you know, above chance or more, that, that’s like a, that can be a huge edge in spots where you’re 50 50 to, you know, you, you’re not really sure which way to go.
Right. So, uh, just to say it’s a, these scenarios are very different, which is what gets into me thinking, you know, me working on poker towels while saying I all, there’s so much bullshit on these other, you know, real world scenario, uh, behavior expert, uh, things people say. Uh, so that, I think that helps map out the, the area a little bit more.
But also I think [00:44:00] it also helps us understand, you know, when people like, uh, ’cause Joe Navarro talks about this in his book, the FBI guy who I have some problems with some of the things he does in the behavior space, but I think he’s much more. Uh, much more, uh, credible and respectable than, you know, the, the behavior panel people of the world.
Because Joe Navarro will say like, yeah, there’s not evidence of, uh, you know, no good evidence that there’s, uh, specific behaviors tied to deception detection. But he’s also saying, well, you’re just getting, you know, reads about, uh, likelihood of what someone is feeling at any given moment, which is, you know, defensible.
Getting back to people, having a lot of experience, uh, interviewing a lot of people, they may get reads Again, I think the problem is when it gets into this high certainty areas, because I think a, a, a good practitioner, whether in poker tells or in interrogation scenarios, a good practitioner knows that there prob, you know, often could be wrong because we’re just talking like, you know, things that increase, things, increase likelihood a bit about what someone is feeling.
They also [00:45:00] know that there could be many reasons for why that person is feeling that way. So, you know, I think that most. I think when it comes to defending what people do with behavior and interrogation kind of settings, I think the main thing that to me, the most useful and, and uh, reasonable way to use it, is just when they get an inkling that likes, oh, I asked this question and this person seemed uncomfortable, so maybe I’ll follow it up with a few more questions.
I won’t, like, reach some grand conclusions. Uh, so there’s that, that kind of thing. But then there’s also like the metalevel thing of like an interrogator, like we said, using all these things, like not just nonverbal behavior, but the whole multitude of how a person has acted in a setting, right? That’s, that’s like a whole meta-level analysis of like what they’ve said.
How they’ve said it, how the pauses, they, maybe they’ve, you know, done various things throughout that has made this person to form a picture. And I think often they may be, like we said, they may be focusing too much on the [00:46:00] behavior part and not realizing that their meta level picture is mostly about the content of what that person has said in the, the, the, maybe the, the unusual mannerisms they had.
Like they, you know, like one extreme example is, you know, suspects who act like they’re crying, but there’s no tears or, uh, you know, uh, liquid coming out. Right? That’s, that’s weird. So just to say that there can be these metal level, uh, you know, more extreme things that rise to give a a, an interrogator a picture of what’s happened.
And to, to tie that, you know, to, to, to tie that to the nonverbal behavior, like specific granular examples is a mistake because that person has built up that read over, you know, using a lot of data points and things that are not even related to, to nonverbal behavior. So I think that’s, uh. That’s kind of how I mapped out the territory of like meeting in the middle in terms of like, yes, there are some things that I think can be useful for, for people that are skilled practitioners.
They, some of those things may be just [00:47:00] getting a read of somebody being uncomfortable and maybe that helps them, you know, ask a few more questions about something. I don’t know, but mm-hmm. But I think the, the main thing we can say is like, even if that’s true. The, the main thing we’re talking about that the, the main bad thing is when those things get into more highly certain areas where you use a few behavioral things, like a cop using a few nonverbal behavior things to be like, oh, this person’s guilty, and I know that now, you know, that’s, I think that’s where all the bad stuff happens.
And then, then you’ve got the, these behavior experts, you know, so-called experts. Spreading such kind of high certainty ideas to other people, which is, has a just a general, you know, filling people’s heads with, uh, bad ideas and leading them to, you know, more cog co confirmation bias and hate of celebrities and, you know, these kinds of
Chris Shelton: things.
Oh, it’s, uh, it’s, it just constantly used to rile people up. But I think that it really is dangerous when we enter into the interrogation context. And the, and it’s a, it’s a little old chicken and egg. I’m [00:48:00] not really sure which is, uh, I, I mean, I think obviously cops were around before these grifters were, but I think that the idea that, you know, that there are these techniques or ways of making police work easier, whether it’s reading bumps on heads, uh, you know, or whether it’s, you know, measuring, you know, finger nails or something, or know.
Zach Elwood: Yeah.
Chris Shelton: What’s that?
Zach Elwood: We want easy answers for, for
Chris Shelton: understandable reasons. Exactly. Have reasons. Yeah. There have been people peddling these ideas to the police for a very long time, and when they have the, you know, the air of science to it and they start using jargon and science, sciencey concepts or ideas or things that people think are sciencey, then they get a lot more traction in that world, in that law enforcement world than you might imagine.
People think, you know, oh, this stuff gets, you know, side checked and fact checked and this and that. No, it doesn’t. No it doesn’t. These guys take it on in the police forces and sheriff’s office all over the [00:49:00] United States. These guys take this stuff on because they’re looking for easier ways to get their job done and, and if some expert comes along and says, well, I know how to do it.
’cause I used to interrogate people in the military and I’ve interrogated people, you know, like to Chase Hughes, you know, this guy is just so in disingenuous. He, he, you know, he says things that he’s never done and. Puts out there that, that he has this experience. He doesn’t have to sell these techniques and ideas, which have no credibility, but they believe they do because of the packaging.
And so, so that little round robin thing tends to be going on and on and on in law enforcement for quite some time. Mm-hmm. And I wanted to, um, say that we need to be aware of that fact because Right. We should be as citizens who are, who are at the receiving end of this stuff. You know, I do think we should be pushing back on that a bit.
Zach Elwood: Luckily, uh, and I will say, yeah, there is this kind of, uh, snowball effect like Chase Hughes getting [00:50:00] on, you know, one, one podcast appearance leads to another podcast host. That’s right. Believing that he is more credible. It has the same effect, and it can have the same effect in, you know, police or law enforcement organizations where you get one gig, like say, chase gets invited to one small department somewhere.
Um, and this is, I think this has happened, you know, with many people, not just single all Chase, but you get one invite invited to one small organization, then you use that in your, on your resume, it looks, it looks legitimate to some other organization, et cetera, et cetera. Uh, but yeah, the, um, oh yeah, what I, I think I lost my,
Chris Shelton: I mean, this is how the false memory folks got around.
By the way, the whole repressed memory thing from the, remember the whole Satanic panic thing in the eighties and all the repressed memory stuff from the eighties, that’s how it got to law enforcement was the same drill. It was experts coming along. Oh, I’ll tell y’all about it. And then these law enforcement guys looking like complete idiots when they start repeating.
What these people have told them and taught them, and then they come up with felt false confessions. People are in jail who [00:51:00] shouldn’t be. And, and it really does have these downstream consequences. You know,
Zach Elwood: I do think, uh, yeah, I think we talked about this a little bit last time. I, I’m not really sure. I, I don’t, on the plus side, IWI do think that law enforcement in general these days, most of them understand that these things are mostly debunked.
You know, there’s been a lot of coverage of like, the TSA program that yielded no results. That got, you know, that got some headlines. Uh, I think there is more examination and awareness that those things, you know, I think, I think a lot of this stuff goes through cycles where in different formats, right?
It’s like there can be cycles of thinking like. Back, you know, back in the eighties or nineties, I think it was like, oh, can we use these NLP concepts for, uh, that’s
Chris Shelton: right,
Zach Elwood: that’s right. You know, for policing, you know, now it’s like you, they were using, uh, ekman’s, you know, stuff that, oh my God, formed that.
And some of it has overlaps, but just to say there’s these rounds of like, oh, can we use this system? You know, and, and, [00:52:00] and maybe, and some of the systems, I mean, some of the theoretical systems might have some value, but, you know, just theoretically like, not to say there’s specific ones that I, I, I don’t know if there are specific ones, but just to say like, I can imagine versions that could have value, but I think that, I think there’s always this, you know, demand for these systems.
Like, you know, we need to, we need to solve this problem of the border checking or this flight stuff. Yes. Or whatever, you know, flights ’cause of nine 11, you know, there’s a demand for like, what can we do? So who out there has ideas that we could run with, and so, so that we can show that we’re doing something right.
I think, I think a lot of it’s just proving. That we’re doing something and showing that we’re taking the problem serious. Like, and then, then when it doesn’t work out, they can say like, well, you know, at least we threw some money at it and we, we tried to do something Right. Which, which is under understandable kind of thing, you know, as long as we’re not running with, uh, really bad ideas.
But yeah, I, I do think there’s, on the plus side, I will say, I think a lot of, I think most, uh, you know, serious, educated [00:53:00] cops and, um. Mil military type people understand that these things are, you know, have, have dubious or, or low use, you know, for the most part, despite what the chase use of the world say that acts as if you military and, uh, PSYOPs people are using all these advanced things to read and control people’s mind, you know, leaving that bullshit aside.
You know, I think most people, oh
Chris Shelton: yeah, no, let’s, yeah, screw the conspiracy crap, but it’s just, yeah, no, the real world effects of this stuff are bad enough. We don’t have to go conspiratorial. I, um, you know, and I’m pretty down on this, you know, and I, and I, and I look at the negative consequences of it. And I, and I think I’m, I, I, you know, I think I have good reasons to, to get down on these guys, but at the same time, I understand that they are trying to, as you say, there’s a, this is a, you know, every few decades, there’s another thing, right?
And, and when it comes to, let’s, let’s talk about this for a second. ’cause this goes back to also to, um, some of my education and coercive control when I was reading papers on police interrogation and the history of it. And, and I, and I did quite a dive on it, [00:54:00] and as part of my, my learning. And so, you know, the third degree beating, taking people into the back of the, of, of the, of the precinct and beating them up.
Standard procedure. That’s how you did law enforcement for a very long time. Then the Reed technique came in ’cause people got sick and tired of, of, of pe, police brutality. And that became a thing. And public outcry and injustice, uh, as tons and tons of racial injustice with that. And so we come over to the Reed technique, which is now we’re gonna apply that same level of physical pressure, but we’re gonna turn it into the psychological arena and we’re gonna use coercive methods, sleep deprivation, food deprivation, stuff like that, isolate you in a room for hours.
You can get false confessions that way and stuff too. All of this I recognize, is coming from a place where you’re doing work that is really, really hard. Finding criminals [00:55:00] and getting them to say that they were criminals is hard work. I don’t, yeah, it sounds real hard when you put it
Zach Elwood: that way.
Chris Shelton: Yeah. I don’t pretend it’s easy.
Right. It’s a job that has a lot of trauma and a lot of not nonsense, connected with it. I recognize that. Right. In the desperation to either meet the quotas, get the job done, enact justice, whatever the motivation is, you know, people’s logical fallacies and deficiencies are gonna come out and, and when they go in this direction, right, people’s lives are ruined.
Um, you know, seemingly, I mean, a, a person’s life can be destroyed overnight because of this nonsense. So that’s why I stress that it is nonsense. But I, but I, I say all that because I really wanna make it clear. I don’t think of police as a bunch of bad guys or ignorant boobs or nonsensical people, but I do wanna recognize that they’re just as [00:56:00] fallible as anybody else, too.
Zach Elwood: Yeah. Have you seen, I was just thinking of that documentary, American Nightmare. Have you seen that by chance? Mm, it’s about this, it’s about this, uh, murder. Uh, well, actually it was a kidnapping, uh, and it’s really convoluted because you start, you start out thinking. Uh, that her boyfriend did it because of how it goes down and you start thinking, oh, somebody else did it.
And, but it also involves cops to, uh, reaching conclusions too quickly about who’s guilty and such. It was a really good documentary. It’s on Netflix. That’s, but yeah, there, I think it gets back to this, you know, this certainty idea of what we’ve been talking about. That’s, that’s, and I think, you know, there are, there are these abusive, unfair things that happen.
I mean, especially like the whole, the whole lie detector thing is very, a very, the lie, the lie detector, everybody knows, well, I mean, most people know that it’s not useful, you know, it, it doesn’t, it’s not reliable. Most people know that. Uh, but it’s, the main way it’s used is just as an intimidation technique.
Right?
Chris Shelton: Yeah.
Zach Elwood: [00:57:00] Which, you know, I, and I’ll claim to be an expert on the. Or have even strong opinions on the ethics of that. But some of the instances I’ve seen where they talk about, they just deceptively lie to people and say, oh, we know you’re guilty from that lie detector. That to me seems, uh, you know, I’m okay with some of like, you know, I, I, I can understand why there’s an inclination to use ambiguous language and kind of imply things that aren’t there to get the job done, to get a confession.
Some of that makes some sense to me, especially with some safeguards, you know, like ensuring you’re getting information that only the murderer or the, the, the criminal will know. That’s like a big safeguard that they do a lot, is trying to get them to say something that, you know, will ensure that they’re not, don’t have the wrong person, but, you know, getting straight, straight up lying to people and saying that, you know, the, uh, lie detector’s infallible.
We know that you’re guilty now. Like that is, that just straight up seems abusive to me. So there’s other [00:58:00] things. In that realm that I think are,
Chris Shelton: yeah,
Zach Elwood: just quite, quite unethical, even in the context of like, I know what they’re trying to do and I know why they, like we said, it’s a hard job. We know they’re in tough spots.
They’re trying to solve murders that, or even find missing people that might still be alive, you know, these kinds of things. Uh, so yeah, it’s a tough thing, but there are definitely some things in those areas that stand out to me as, as quite bad practices. And I think some of the worst stuff happens like that, that, uh, documentary I mentioned American Nightmare.
Yeah. Some of the worst stuff happens when you have police that wrongly reach overly confident views of who’s guilty. That’s right. And that ends up like dictating how they go about the case. Right. Because, you know, with, uh, they, they, they should, they should be willing to know that in many of those situations things can point in different directions than they know.
Right. And especially like that’s even just talking about. Evidence, like real evidence, [00:59:00] but let alone, like not if you’re talking about, be reaching certainty about someone’s non-verbal behavior, that is just absurd. And that should, you know, that should, that should never be, never happen, you know?
Chris Shelton: Well, and that’s the thing that really bringing it back to the behavior panel now, right?
And these guys, right, these are people who really, it really is entertainment. I mean, if we’re gonna really categorize this somewhere, it really should be categorized that way. I,
Zach Elwood: they might even have a, they might even have a disclaimer. ’cause I know like Chase Hughes and his books would put like, this is for entertainment purposes or something like that.
Chris Shelton: Right?
Zach Elwood: So they, if they’re, if they’re being smart, they really should they, and they might have it. I haven’t watched enough of their shows to remember if. Do do
Chris Shelton: have that.
Zach Elwood: Right.
Chris Shelton: Well, you know, obviously, I mean obviously if you’re watching this podcast, you know, I have an intro that says, Hey look, this is professional advice.
Don’t, you know, don’t run with this. Well that’s ’cause I need to protect myself. Right. And I, you know, I wanna make sure the audience understands that, you know, this is two guys talking, um, it’s
Zach Elwood: opinions. Yeah.
Chris Shelton: And they don’t do that though. And that’s one of the things that [01:00:00] really bugs me about their work is maybe they do bury a disclosure, you know, uh, say in the fine print, but they really don’t lead their shows with that.
And they don’t present as though what they’re offering are opinions. They offer it, you know, they offer it up as though it’s scientific fact and they throw these, you know, jargony words around and, and know that that will. Kind of muddy the issue enough with people, um, that they can kinda get away with it.
And it is, it bugs me that these guys do that. And you know, if we can just think of it as entertainment. I know that’s kind of funny and Oh, print, you know, Megan is at it again. Oh, look at that. You know, today she didn’t wear any makeup. What does that mean? Oh, well, clearly it means they’re about to get a divorce.
I mean, if people want to think that, fine. Right. But when it ha, like I said, I, I bring it to those real world consequences ’cause they happen so often that I, I think it’s, it’s not just entertainment, it’s not just silly. Laugh it off goofiness. You know? I think that there are, I think there’s, there’s a good reason to be talking about this
Zach Elwood: and also bullying [01:01:00] online.
You know, I mean, there’s, there’s people like, um, oh, what’s her name? Who got accused of murder in the other country? I, I always forget her name, but the, uh Oh,
Chris Shelton: right. The, uh, Italian. Yes. Yes.
Zach Elwood: Uh, Amanda Knox. I mean, like people, yeah. Amanda Knox, uh, and other, and other people. Like, there’s people that. Are just normal people that wind up in these situations.
And even just, I’m just talking about celebrities too, where you have people analyzing their behavior in irresponsible ways. I mean, this stuff leads to just straight up bullying and hate from a large number of, of people when you, when you’re acting like, oh, I can confidently read that They’re, you know, they might have some psychopathic tendencies, or they, that’s a sign of them withholding something and these, these kinds of silly things.
So I think, you know, I mean, Amanda Knox is a good example. I mean, she and you and, and, and, uh, she, she’s experienced a lot of hate Yeah. And stressful situations because of the ways people reacted to her, the public reacted to her and [01:02:00] various media. Um, but yeah, that these things have real world effects. I mean, just imagine that you were an innocent person who wound up on one of these.
Interrogation or interview police interview videos. And everyone thought, you know, people were reading your body language in wrong ways. Imagine how you’d feel. And everybody’s like, I know he is a piece of shit. You know, kill him. You know, like, just imagine that’s, that’s a pretty maddening thing. And you have people doing this about so many videos where they just know so little about the situation and, you know, but, but that doesn’t stop people these days from just lashing out online.
And that has real impacts to people, you know, people, you know, become depressed and maybe, you know, even kill themselves over that kind of stuff, you know?
Chris Shelton: Well, there’s, there are consequences. And, um, and I, and I, and I just don’t want people running around thinking they know more than they do. It’s, it’s because, it’s, because it’s, this is hard enough.
This work is hard enough. Helping people is hard. Working with people is hard. Working with people who have stress and trauma is significantly harder. And [01:03:00] working with people who have stress and trauma, when a criminal act has been committed is even harder. So I know that, you know, we’re, like I said, we’re looking and these guys are just looking for any, any help they can get.
But, um, but some help is better than others. And, you know, and, and, and, and on that note, just to kind of put it there for the audience, in case you all don’t know, you know, this to the level that we look into it, you know, the UK right now, uh, is actually doing a whole new system that is not the Reed technique in terms of police interrogations.
They’ve, they’ve kind of changed up their game in terms of how they go about interrogating and talking to people and treat it more as a data collection rather than a, uh, I’m gonna beat you into submission so that you tell me what I want to hear. It’s okay. What do you have to tell me? And let’s explore this and let’s investigate this, which is kind of what you imagine police have been doing the whole time, but kind of not really.
So the more you look into this, the more kind of like, wow, it really kind of becomes in, in some ways. Okay. So moving on [01:04:00] from cops and robbers and crime and all of that kind of stuff. And, and by the way, I, I, I do think the, the lie detector, uh, comparative or bringing that up earlier was a, was a great point because it’s kind of exactly the right and wrong of this.
If you know about lie detector, we’ve talked about lie detectors a lot, right? And one of the things about lie detectors is that, is that in the hands of an amateur or in the eyes of an amateur, it is a yes no device. And in the hands of a trained professional who uses it as a, in their job, when you hear polygraph operators interviewed, it’s not a binary yes no device.
It’s a device that is, is helps you go down a trail of questioning, uh. W with movements that may or may not indicate something, and so it, it’s an investigative kind of thing. In that sense, I think body language could be useful and interesting as a guide, maybe to a skilled interrogator, [01:05:00] but to assume or think that any of these points are binary yes nos, this means this a hundred percent of the time because I said so.
I think that really is the bottom line of where we lose the plot with this whole subject. Having
Zach Elwood: said that, I just meant, and many of the things are just straight up false, like the I direction, you know? Yes. Giving clues. We should, we should also say like many of these things are just straight up silly and have no evidence, you know?
Chris Shelton: That’s fine. Yeah, but I, but I kind of tend to go in that place in terms of wrapping this up as sort of like,
Zach Elwood: yeah,
Chris Shelton: it’s not all throw it in the trash, but, right.
Zach Elwood: Exactly. Exactly.
Chris Shelton: If you don’t have the right look at this, if you don’t have the right attitude about this, you are gonna make massively stupid mistakes.
Sorry,
Zach Elwood: I didn’t, people, I didn’t mean to screw up your, uh, outro your, your
Chris Shelton: wrap. No, no, you’re fine. You’re good. So anyway, so that’s, those were some of the thoughts I had on that. So, um, did, what were your sort of, now that I’ve said all that in my conclusion, what are your sort of, uh, [01:06:00] overall sort of, uh, thoughts about this?
Zach Elwood: Uh, yeah, I mean, I, I actually wanna write something up because, you know, you, you, you asking me to. Come on. The show was getting me to think through some of these ideas more and I was gonna write something up about it. So maybe I’ll share that later. But I did, I did. I do think the main thing is, you know, for people interested in this stuff, just stay skeptical.
Like I think it’s okay, it’s, it’s good to be interested in behavior. I think there’s a lot of interesting things, especially like the statement analysis things. I think those are interesting about analyzing, like the patterns that people have in their speech and such.
Chris Shelton: Yes.
Zach Elwood: And uh, I think there’s a lot of interesting things in behavior.
I just think people need to be very skeptical of these people that are claiming to have all these answers. And basically like ringing blood from a stone is how I view it as like taking something that might be a few interesting things to talk about and like trying to get all this amazing information out of it.
You should be very skeptical when people try to do that thing. That kind of thing. Yeah.
Chris Shelton: Absolutely. All right. Well I want to thank you very much, Zach, for taking the time to appear on my show today with me [01:07:00] and, and responding to my invite. Um, and I hope that, uh, we will have cause do this again, because I really do enjoy talking to you and, and your, and your take on this stuff and the way you kind of, you know, take a measured look at it and, and you’re looking at the pros and the cons.
And that to me that’s always great. ’cause I love it when people will also check me with positivity, you know, check my negativity with some of their positivity too. I really appreciate that. ’cause sometimes I know I can be a little down on Oh, it’s all bad. It’s all bad. Well, it’s not all bad, so.
Zach Elwood: Well thanks Chris.
No, I appreciate it and thanks for having me on.
Chris Shelton: You bet. Alright, folks out there, thanks for coming around, listening to us, uh, Gabon and Madre about all this. I know debunking videos are not, you know, uh, enticing and wonderful, but they are necessary, uh, in this space. And so I hope that this was useful and formative and, you know, mildly entertaining this week.
Aemula is a new kind of media platform that’s trying to tackle a big problem: the fact that the structure of our news media leads to various outcomes that amplify toxic polarization. (Sign up for free at aemula.com.)
Instead of the usual “engagement = more exposure” logic, Aemula flips the incentives. You read an article, then you tap a simple Support or Disagree button — and those signals build a living map of Aemula’s community: a 3D social network graph showing how readers, writers, and articles relate without slapping on ill-defined partisan labels like left and right – labels that often unintentionally amplify us-vs-them, team-based thinking.
Aemula creator Don Templeman and I get into:
Why left/right-type labels can be a misleading way to understand beliefs or categorize content
How Aemula uses social network analysis to map out relationships and ideological groupings in an objective, data-driven way
How Aemula’s social network can help define a sort of ideological center, and how promoting content from the widely supported regions of the network can help reduce polarization
How the blockchain aspect of Aemula makes it self-governing and therefore infinitely scalable
How Aemula’s approach could matter even more in an AI world, where chatbots and LLMs need better sources than “Reddit + Wikipedia”
If you’ve ever felt like the incentives of the media ecosystem seem destined to drive us further apart — I think you’ll appreciate learning about Don’s paradigm-shifting approach to the news.
Don Templeman: “So we’ve created this explore page, which shows this perspective map, which is essentially showing how you relate to all the other users on the platform, articles, and authors that wrote them. So as you’ll see here, I’m this blue, white, blue dot and our authors on the platform are these orange dots and the dark gray dots are articles. And you’ll see other like white dots that represent other users. But this is a 3D graph that shows where you fall relative to these other authors and users in the space. And the reason we do this in a 3D map is we don’t want to try to collapse everything into just a left versus right thinking, because we are trying to reverse polarization. And what we find is you can find points of consensus between users that you may not typically agree with on everything, but you may share some close views on some perspectives. And we can use that to map out and find communities of ideologies and determine what are the best articles to recommend people to open new lines of communication between these different communities on the platform. So this is really a visual representation of how we go out and find articles that we think you’ll like.”
Zach Elwood: That was Don Templeman explaining some basics of content recommendation for his new blockchain-based journalism platform Aemula.com; that’s AEMULA.com. You can sign up for free for Aemula, and I recommend that you do, and hope that you do. Aemula is a new kind of media platform that’s trying to tackle a big problem: the fact that the structure of our news media leads to various outcomes that amplify toxic polarization.
Instead of the usual “engagement = more exposure” logic, Aemula flips the incentives. You read an article, then you tap a simple Support or Disagree button — and those signals build a living map of Aemula’s community: a 3D social network graph showing how readers, writers, and articles relate without slapping on ill-defined partisan labels like left and right – labels that often unintentionally amplify us-vs-them, team-based thinking.
Don and I get into:
Why left/right-type labels can be a misleading way to understand beliefs or categorize content
How Aemula uses social network analysis to map out relationships and ideological groupings in an objective, data-driven way
How Aemula’s social network can help define a sort of ideological center, and how promoting content from the widely supported regions of the network can help reduce polarization
How the blockchain aspect of Aemula makes it self-governing and therefore infinitely scalable
How Aemula’s approach could matter even more in an AI world, where chatbots and LLMs need better sources than “Reddit + Wikipedia”
If you’ve ever felt like the incentives of the media ecosystem seem destined to drive us further apart — I think you’ll appreciate learning about Don’s paradigm-shifting approach to the news.
A quick note: if you’re listening to this and not watching it, this episode might be rather weak, due to this being a visual-focused episode. If this topic interests you, I recommend watching this on youtube: my youtube is at youtube.com/peoplewhoreadpeoplepodcast.
I myself have been working on reducing toxic political polarization for more than five years. I’m the author of two books on polarization, which you can learn about at www.american-anger.com. I’m quite skeptical about our ability to reduce toxic polarization, as I see it as the result of so many nested and self-reinforcing cycles of contempt and anger. There are only a few ideas I’ve seen that have excited me and made me think: here’s something that is capable of shifting things in a big way; of changing the underlying social incentives in ways that reduce us-vs-them contempt and anger instead of amplifying it. And there are also few paradigm-shifting ideas I’ve seen that have the potential to actually be used by a lot of people and scale up and create big changes; some ideas seem good but require top-down enforcement to be implemented, whereas Don’s project is user-focused; a private market product that gives people what they want while also incentivizing better behaviors.
I think Don Templeman’s Aemula project is a great idea. I think it’s revolutionary, and paradigm-shifting, and I think Don is a very smart person. I hope he succeeds in getting lots of funding to build out Aemula. This is why I personally hope you will take a look at Aemula and sign up for it. It’s just possible it might be the future of how news and journalism is done. You’ll maybe look back one day and think, it was cool to be in on the ground floor when this thing first got rolling.
If anything I’ve said has intrigued you a bit, and piqued your curiosity, I hope you watch this episode of Don explaining how Aemula works.
And speaking of media companies having incentives to promote fringe, extreme, and polarizing content, the last episode of my podcast was an examination of the paranoid and insane content that Instagram has been promoting to me and others. If you’re curious about that, it was an episode I uploaded only to youtube due to it being so visual. You can find that on my youtube at youtube.com/peoplewhoreadpeoplepodcast.
Okay, here’s the talk with Don Templeman, founder of Aemula.com.
00:00:03 – Zach Elwood: Hey, Don, thanks for joining me again.
00:00:04 – Don Templeman: Zach, yeah, thanks for having me back on.
00:00:07 – Zach Elwood: I appreciate it. Yeah, I’m really interested in the work you do. So I thought maybe we could start with you walking through the Aemula login process and what you see there and then talking about the social network analysis and graph kind of stuff.
00:00:26 – Don Templeman: Yeah, happy to give an overview. I just requested to share screen.
00:00:31 – Zach Elwood: Okay, it should be able to do it now.
00:00:32 – Don Templeman: Perfect. I’ll pull it up and just start from the beginning. If people go to aemula.com, hit our landing page, and you can click start reading to sign in. If you don’t have an account, you just type in your email and we’ll create an account for you. I know a lot of people, they don’t like entering emails when they’re creating new accounts, but we actually don’t store emails on our end. So it just creates a hash. We won’t send you marketing materials or anything. It just takes a few seconds to set up. And what you’re met with here is a front page that’s curated just for you. Obviously, if it’s your first time on the platform, we’ll show you some high quality articles for you to get started. But importantly, the core of what we’re doing is trying to support independent journalism. So all of the articles you see, they’re published independently by the writers. They’re owned by the writers. They’re stored and served on a peer to peer network. So nothing is coming from our servers. and they’re recommended to you through an open source community governed algorithm because we’re trying to remain as neutral as possible as a platform just to give writers the tools to publish and report and readers the ability to have one subscription to access all the information on the platform. And the basic functionality is you go in, you read articles and at the bottom of each article, there’s just this little support or disagree button And after you read, you can determine if you want to support the author or disagree with them. And what we can do is we can link that to create a connection between you and that article and our system. And so as you begin to read and interact with articles, we can understand roughly what your point of view is, whom you typically agree with, and we can start to make recommendations that are close to your beliefs while still promoting articles that are more moderate or more widely supported by diverse user sets. which is how we determine quality. And this front page, it’s meant to just be like a quick, simple way for you to get in, read some articles that we think you’ll like, but we wanna give users more control to freely explore the articles on the platform and freely discover new writers and new perspectives. So we’ve created this explore page, which shows this perspective map, which is essentially showing how you relate to all the other users on the platform, articles, and authors that wrote them. So as you’ll see here, I’m this blue, white, blue dot and our authors on the platform are these orange dots and the dark gray dots are articles. And you’ll see other like white dots that represent other users. But this is a 3D graph that shows where you fall relative to these other authors and users in the space. And the reason we do this in a 3D map is we don’t want to try to collapse everything into just a left versus right thinking, because we are trying to reverse polarization. And what we find is you can find points of consensus between users that you may not typically agree with on everything, but you may share some close views on some perspectives. And we can use that to map out and find communities of ideologies and determine what are the best articles to recommend people to open new lines of communication between these different communities on the platform. So this is really a visual representation of how we go out and find articles that we think you’ll like, but rather than relying on our ranking, you can go in, you can find articles on here and you can say, I think this is you. Yeah. Zach Elwood can find one of your articles, click on it and I can read it directly from there. So not having to rely on pure recommendations that come from your front page, if that all makes sense.
00:04:14 – Zach Elwood: Yeah. And that’s, uh, and it’s pretty early, obviously in Aemula’s, um, Aemula’s just started, so it’s not there’s not very many things on there. But as it grows, you know, I think you were saying as it grows, you would expect to see some mapping reflecting like the polarization in society where you would, you know, assuming you’ve got a standard sample size of the American population, you probably see a grouping eventually of like these two clusters of, because of the related stances on issues that people on both quote sides have, but it’s too early to see that because it’s just starting out, right? Absolutely, yeah.
00:05:05 – Don Templeman
We have a few hundred users, a few hundred articles, and just over a dozen publications on the platform. Within the Explorer page, I will note that this is just my local community. So these are people that are close to me. Obviously, I interact with the platform a lot, so this does represent a large portion of it. But we also have this separate perspective map, which shows you all of Aemula, so you can see roughly where you fall relative to everyone. And the reason we do that is we don’t want someone to go and just find opposing points of view and try to disagree with them to demote them in the process. We want people to interact and explore their immediate communities and beliefs and articles that we think are likely to support, likely to agree with, and not just go out and try to find competing points of view from the get-go. But we do want to show everyone roughly where they fall. And going back to left versus right thinking, like obviously as we start to grow the platform and it is more representative of everyone’s ideologies, we would expect to see some filtering into left versus right clusters. but we want to avoid having to label things as left or right or keep it that simplistic. So this is why it’s in like this three-dimensional space. And we don’t actually know what on here is left or right, because we as a platform wanna remain verifiably neutral. And one way to do that is say, we actually don’t know what the underlying content of these articles are. We don’t know the ideologies of the underlying users on the platform. All we know is their public address, their account number, and we know the address of the article, and we can map it out just based on everyone’s relationships and how they’ve interacted on the platform so that no one can point to us and say, oh, you’re pushing a specific narrative, you’re platforming specific writers. We can say we actually don’t have any insight into that, and it’s all just generated based on how the community’s operating and interacting.
00:07:01 – Zach Elwood
Right. You’re using transparent algorithms that are value-free in how the handle content it’s just using a transparent constant algorithm is the goal and you’re not getting into yeah that you and i’ve talked about this on the on the last call about this on the last episode and i’ve had episodes about the illusions of the left right spectrum how there can be there’s a lot of a lot of critique that the left right spectrum is an illusion and also a a conflict amplifying illusion because it kind of the the the embedded nature of talking about our political divides as a left-right spectrum can itself be very false and also just get people thinking in these left-right terms. That can help explain why there’s this filtering for everything being part of this monolithic left-right But that’s the great thing about what you’re doing and social network analysis in general, because it’s because it’s value free and label free, right? You’re not getting into, you know, trying to determine what makes something quote left or right or all these kinds of labels. Yeah, exactly.
00:08:19 – Don Templeman
So that’s it’s overly simplistic. So you start to over categorize things in the left versus right. And then people get into the thinking of, oh, I identify on the right or I identify on the left. if you show me something that’s labeled as being from the opposing point of view i’ll automatically discredit it just because i know it comes from the other team and i don’t want to support anything they’re doing but when you actually start to look at underlying beliefs you’ll find that there’s a lot more nuance there and there’s a lot more complexity so some people may disagree on a wide array of things but have a lot of agreement on a certain topic and so what we want to do is be able to make it as easy as possible for those people to start communicating open up new lines of dialogue to be able to understand some of those other perspectives that they may disagree on, just so they can start to have the conversation, start to see information from other people. Because the way that we currently discover information with traditional publications or on social media, you’re normally only finding stuff that’s within your immediate cluster, stuff that the publication thinks you’ll like, or stuff that the algorithms on social media think you’ll like. And so you just get further and further reinforced into your current beliefs. And we want to do the opposite. We want to reverse those forces by mapping everyone out in one holistic space and saying, you can start to discover these new perspectives that are around you in these different communities, just so you can start to get a better sense of the world around you.
00:09:46 – Zach Elwood
Yeah. For people that are curious about the idea that the left-right spectrum is an illusion, I’d say it check out the book, The Myth of Left and Right, and check out maybe an episode that I did where I interviewed the co-author of that book. Yeah. So maybe you could talk a little bit about, have you seen interesting patterns in the clustering so far of Aemula? Do you have any interesting observations about what you’ve seen in the behavior?
00:10:15 – Don Templeman
A lot of our early writers are people like yourself that understand what our mission is. and they’re writing from an inherently centrist depolarizing perspective. So even though we do have some clusters of information here, it is still so early that all of these people are roughly in what we would call the center. But we have seen interesting interactions on the platform just with the recent contest that we ran with our $5,000 essay contest. So as users were coming on and trying to support the writers that were sharing those essays on other platforms, they’re coming in as new users and starting to interact. So you can see like with your article here, a lot of support there and some support where it’s a few readers largely supporting one writer’s piece of work. So we started to see some behavior like that, which we would expect to see more of at scale. But for the time being, I would say it’s too early to start doing some of the more interesting things that we can do with this type of structure and these types of algorithms. because you really do need a lot more data to start more accurately reflecting the ideologies of the population so that we can start doing some more interesting things.
00:11:30 – Zach Elwood
Can you talk a little bit about the concept of like the gravity or how more connected ideas clustered more towards the middle of the graph, that kind of thing?
00:11:43 – Don Templeman
Yeah. So what we want to support in our way of reversing polarization is if you map everyone out, you can see that There’s some clusters here that are more on the fringes and a lot of users here in the middle that are interacting with a wide diversity of authors. So we want to promote authors that can write an article that gets diverse support from multiple different ideological communities in our graph, because that indicates to us that they’re making strong arguments. They’re presenting factual information. People are willing to interact and engage with their content. Whereas someone who may be more on the fringes and getting a lot of traction from some small group of people. If we were just using pure engagement metrics, we would say, Oh, they’re getting a lot of reads. They’re getting a lot of eyes. If we were trying to sell advertisements, that’s a very valuable person. So we would try to promote them more. But the thing is that typically happens when you look at traditional social media with people sharing inflammatory content, that’s from a more radical ideology. And that’s the opposite of what we want to support. So by mapping everything out in this 3d space, we can start to say like, This is the center of our community. This is where we want to start to draw more eyes and more attention. So for people on the fringes, when they join the platform, we have information that is relevant to their beliefs. They’re willing to engage with it. They can start reading and interacting on the platform. And then over time, we can slowly show them articles that are closer and closer to that center. And the way that we’re able to determine what the center is, is every time there is a connection made between a reader and an article, it creates these little edges. You can see if I zoom in all these little connections. And essentially what we do is those have a gravity about them. So if I’m supporting a lot of your articles and making a lot more of those connections, we’ll grow closer and closer together in this 3D space. And we can use that gravity to determine who’s getting a lot of connections from a lot of different perspectives. because that’ll pull them in closer to the center. And if someone isn’t getting a lot of diverse attention, they’ll be drifting off further on the side. So it’s more like natural way of using that gravity force to see who is being pulled into the center, who’s more on the fringe, how can we start to promote articles to people on the fringes to pull them in and which articles would be the most impactful that that person would likely agree with and actually be able to interact with, but will also move them closer to the center. And that’s really the underlying basis of how we drive our recommendation algorithms.
00:14:24 – Zach Elwood
Yeah. And you briefly mentioned this, but this is basically the opposite in terms of how a lot of content recommendation algorithms work on social media and such where, for example, people might have heard about these uh, like on YouTube where you, you express interest in one thing and it, and it shows you something like get you down a rabbit hole of like more extreme and conspiracy minded content because it’s, you know, that’s, that is a, uh, a valid way to get people more engaged, but especially like the ramping up the emotionality of it too. Uh, but yeah, what you’re trying to do is, give people what they want, but also move them a little bit in the, in the opposite direction of going down some like really fringe rabbit hole. Right.
00:15:14 – Don Templeman
Exactly.
00:15:16 – Zach Elwood
And it is not just discovery.
00:15:18 – Don Templeman
We’re also trying to change the incentives of how the content is actually produced because when you’re on a platform like YouTube or on X or really any traditional social media, you’re trying to optimize for the incentives that are at play in those ecosystems. So if what is being rewarded by the algorithm is some clickbait thumbnail headline that gets a lot of inflammatory people arguing in the comments, you’ll start to create content that aligns with that. It’s audience capture.
And you can’t blame the creators in that context because they’re trying to maximize their earnings on the platform. They’re trying to maximize their views. They’re trying to spread their message as wide as possible. So if that’s what the platforms are incentivizing, that’s where you would expect the content to… That’s where the system leads.
00:16:09 – Zach Elwood
The system naturally leads that way. Yeah.
00:16:12 – Don Templeman
Exactly. And that’s… The deterioration of content quality that you see on a lot of platforms where they’ll just start out and people will speak so highly of like, oh, look at how this platform is creating all of this new content that you can’t find on other platforms. Writers are able to freely express themselves, but then as they grow and those incentives become more prevalent, you start to see deterioration collapsing back towards that. I’m just trying to gamify the algorithm to maximize my exposure. And that’s what we’re seeing now with Substack. where Substack started as like the cultural engine of change, inviting a lot of independent writers who are now free to write and own their own perspectives. And there was a lot of great content on the platform, but as they’ve grown and they’ve implemented traditional social media style algorithms with their notes feature, releasing the Substack app, a lot of these writers are now trying to play the Substack game of how do I get the most subscribers? And that’s leading towards more what they style headlines, people writing about very similar topics that are being promoted well in algorithm. And that’s, if you look at people talking about Substack and their opinions on it, some people are starting to leave because they’re seeing that occur on the platform, but really that’ll occur on any platform, unless you change the underlying incentive structure. So where we are promoting content, that’s high quality, getting diverse acceptance from across our user base. we’ll start to incentivize writers who, if they’re trying to gamify our algorithm, they’ll start writing higher quality content that is more widely appealing to more people. And that’s what gets promoted. That’s what gets more monetization on the platform. So we’ll be able to reverse that trend where if you start to try to gamify our algorithm, it actually increases the quality of content over time.
00:17:58 – Zach Elwood
Yeah. I mean, you’re talking about shifting a paradigm that’s kind of unquestioned and is the dominant. There’s just no, basically nobody else really questioning that the basic paradigm and you’re trying to shift the whole underlying paradigm of incentives. Yeah. And make it infinitely scalable at the same time. Yeah.
00:18:19 – Don Templeman
Yeah. And I would say a lot of people realize that this is happening. A lot of people feel like content quality degradation. A lot of people realize that when the incentives are forcing clickbait style like short form content that’s how content is going to go but when you remove those incentives or change them like we’re trying to do a lot of the creators like this is what they would prefer to be doing if given the freedom to actually be able to create that style of content so it’s more just a factor if you start to switch those incentives you can start to let people write more freely share what they’re actually wanting to create and over time that’ll be able to increase content quality.
00:19:03 – Zach Elwood
Do you want to share anything else about the visuals of the graph? I was going to ask you some kind of like broader questions about social networks, but I don’t know if you wanted to mention anything else you want to highlight there.
00:19:15 – Don Templeman
No, I think it’s, if people are listening and want to check out the platform, like if you go in and you start to interact with algorithms, you can play around with it yourself and always happy to hear feedback from people as they start to interact with it.
00:19:28 – Zach Elwood
No, it is really cool to play around with. And I, I’ll enjoy seeing it grow over time and see what patterns develop. I think that’s one of the interesting things about the, the social network graphing is, is seeing the patterns and how those map over to a societal patterns, you know, and, and how that, how that’ll grow. Yeah. Um, yeah. So yeah, the, and maybe you could talk a little bit about how that social network graph is a implementation that many social networks network platforms use and where that idea comes from. Obviously, you didn’t create that. You’re using it and harnessing the idea. Maybe you could talk a little bit about the social network analysis idea in general.
00:20:12 – Don Templeman
Yeah, I think it goes back to really the start of the internet and the start of the web in general. I believe it was Tim Berners-Lee when creating the initial form of the internet in the form of the World Wide Web, talking about the semantic web and how You could have context from how websites and servers are all interconnected. And that idea was really built on through networking in the early stages of the internet. And I think popularized by early social media platforms like Facebook as they started to grow. But it really is just like an intuitive way to think about relationships of people and content online. So it is just saying like, if I… post something on Facebook and you like it, then there’s a connection that we have made where you like to post that I’ve made. And it’s just a very intuitive way to start thinking about networks. But the other reason they’re used so prevalently, especially on the internet, is because it creates these social graphs, which are a whole field of mathematics with graph theory and information theory. So it makes them easy to study. And what it allows you to do is start to gain insights on user behavior and how information is flowing through networks, purely from just interactions on the platform, which is really why we’re starting to leverage and use it. But it is used widely across a whole array of different use cases. So obviously in social networks, we’re using it as a recommendation algorithm, which like Netflix uses their recommendation algorithm based on a social graph like this, just interactions of content you’re consuming and what they think you’d like. But it also can go into kind of like wider fields where it’s fraud detection with banks. They use similar technology to determine fraud, epidemiology and contact tracing, which I think a lot of people became familiar with during COVID uses similar technology. Also Google maps and Uber and Finding direct routes places use similar technology, but all different sources of data. So it is widely used. They’ve become pretty efficient. And all we’re doing is using that same technology, but changing where we’re implementing it and the incentives that we’re putting behind it to try to create something that hasn’t been done before. I think you’re muted.
00:22:51 – Zach Elwood
Yeah, yeah, sorry. I’m muted because of these damn sirens. I’ll cut this out, obviously. Do you have any idea what direction we should go in next?
00:23:02 – Don Templeman
I liked those decentralized, centralized graph diagrams you had. I actually have a little whiteboard thing on my computer where it had a similar… image. So if you want to talk about that and like how networks are formed, I can talk about like information theory. I can share my screen again.
00:23:28 – Zach Elwood
Sure. Do you want to just keep talking about it or do you want me to queue it up with a specific question, you think? Because if you had an idea, like what would I ask to queue that up, you think?
00:23:42 – Don Templeman
If you say like, oh, I was just pulling up some like images of network analysis or something, I can key into it from there.
00:23:50 – Zach Elwood
I think. Um, actually, why don’t you just, uh, why don’t you just start talking and I’ll, and like creating a, like starting a new topic. And I’ll, I think, I think it’ll be a seamless edit if you’re just like, I want to show you these, you know, things on my computer. I think that’ll work.
00:24:07 – Don Templeman
Yeah.
00:24:08 – Zach Elwood
Yeah.
00:24:10 – Don Templeman
Okay. So I saw that you pulled up some images there of network analysis and, um, I think that segues nicely into some of the concepts that we’re working with and some research that we’re doing at Angular that we’re trying to publish on how you can structure information networks and how that can actually make them more resistant to polarization and misinformation to create higher quality information environments. I actually have very similar graphs that I have on like a whiteboard on my computer.
00:24:41 – Zach Elwood
Oh yeah, let’s see that, yeah.
00:24:43 – Don Templeman
If I share my screen. So this is similar to what you just pulled up on different ways that you can structure information networks. And the current way that most social media platforms and actually how we naturally coordinate as people in societies is what’s called preferential attachment. So there are people that have significant influence that a lot of people follow. And a lot of clusters form where people different people who follow these like influencers or power users may not necessarily communicate with people that are in or power users or followers of another influencer. And through this preferential attachment, it actually creates the most complex information network possible. So while it is natural and easy to form, it’s actually one of the worst ways that you can form an information network if you’re trying to promote high quality content and everyone having access to the most information as possible. So this is like, if you were to think about it, it could be like traditional publications where you subscribe to a specific newspaper and like this newspaper has some subscribers, this newspaper has some subscribers, or it can be like on Substack where a large writer comes on board and they have their own subscribers that follow them, but it’s all relatively just jointed. And the reason that it is so complex is because there’s, multiple centers of influence that all are able to influence their own followers, but there’s not communication across those followers. So there’s two different ways that you can try to structure an information network that are more stable. And one of them is fully centralized. So this is like, if you think of how news was shared early on in the development of newspapers at the start, but also kind of like more prevalently as propaganda, where there is one information center and it distributes information to all of the users or all the people in a community. So while this is very simplistic and it is stable, there is one consensus truth that everyone is agreeing on. Everyone’s working on the same information.
00:26:50 – Zach Elwood
Like having just a few broadcast networks, you know, up until the 80s, you know, between the, yeah, like 19, you know, 1980s or something like that, like this monolithic… Distribution, yeah.
00:27:05 – Don Templeman
Yeah. And that’s why back then there was, I trust in the news. Everyone felt like they could operate and have communication with people of different ideologies because you were all working off of the same information source.
00:27:18 – Zach Elwood
Mostly. Much more than we are now. Yeah.
00:27:20 – Don Templeman
Much more than we are now. But obviously there’s problems with centralization where there’s really only one point of view and there’s a lot of control over that point of view. So there’s a lot of incentive to skew that into… trying to use it for securing power for whoever is the person that is sharing that information. So this doesn’t necessarily result in the highest quality content or people having the most access to the widest amount of information, but it is much more stable for people being able to agree with each other. The other option is fully decentralized where everyone can communicate with everyone individually. And this is what has only recently become possible to do at scale because With a subscription news service, really news needs to rely on subscription. So there is stable revenue. So you have the ability to go out and do longer form investigative reporting processes. It is an expensive process to do high quality reporting. So you need to rely on subscription revenue, but you can’t really do that. You previously or prior to 2024, you couldn’t really do that just due to technical limitations, because as a subscriber, you need to just pay revenue. one subscription and then be in the network and everyone can work and operate seamlessly together. What we saw with subscription models in the past was closer to this preferential attachment where you’re subscribing to one publication, you’re subscribing to one writer, and that’s really like where you get your information from. When you decentralize the network, information flows more freely and people are able to communicate across different, there’s different paths for information to take across the network. And it is, more stable and resilient to people trying to put influence into the network. Whereas with preferential attachment, there’s really only a few power players that are really controlling the narrative. That can’t really happen in a decentralized information environment, which is why we’re building Amul with that type of technology is because we want to create an as open as possible of an information environment for people to communicate freely. And it creates the shortest path of information directly from the source to the reader. So there’s as little outside influence as possible over the information you’re seeing. And you can individually trust that the person is a credible source, which we can get into reputations and how you determine credibility. But that’s really the core of what made this technology possible now is we have that ability to work in this trustless system, but everyone can still trust that the quality is there. You don’t have to rely on trusted intermediaries like publications in the past so we can avoid this preferential attachment problem.
00:30:04 – Zach Elwood
And am I understanding correctly when you say it’s something that is only recently possible, that’s because of the blockchain technology and the ability to do these smart contracts where you set something up to operate and it enforces those rules? Am I understanding that correctly?
00:30:23 – Don Templeman
Exactly. So in the past, decentralized information networks were more akin to villages or people where your immediate community, everyone is able to communicate with each other freely. As we started to grow societies to larger scales, you really had to figure out a way to be able to communicate across long distances or with people that you’re not personally acquainted with. Because the process of news inherently is hearing information from a stranger. So something that you didn’t directly experience, you’re hearing it from someone who did. And once you kind of grow out of like 100 to 200 people in your immediate community, you’re really having to figure out like, how can I trust that this information is accurate and true? And How do I know if I want to incorporate that into my worldview? Which is why we moved into preferential attachment where these publications are saying, we are trusted intermediaries. We have a track record of reporting quality journalism. You can subscribe to us and you can trust that even though it’s coming from strangers that you don’t know, we’re vetting it and making sure it’s all credible information. Since the 1970s, those institutions have started to lose trust. And there’s a lot of reasons that go into why, but if we wanna try to rebuild that trust, we really need to go back to that decentralized architecture where everyone’s communicating freely. But if you want to do that at societal scale, it comes down to the problem of how can I trust a stranger? How can I trust that the information they’re sharing is credible? So on social media, we’ve had the ability to communicate as decentralized as possible by being able to communicate with anyone online. We just didn’t know if they’re a bot account, if they’re from some foreign actor. These are all things that have happened and influenced our news cycles in the past. And that’s one of the core issues with misinformation and finding news on social media is there is all of that inherent mistrust where you can’t really know what someone is sharing or if it’s true, which is why social networks also fall into preferential attachment where When you first join a platform, it gives you like, here are some accounts you should follow and you follow them. And then those become the centers of influence. Those are the people that you’re largely filtering a lot of your content through, but you know that like, I trust them. They’re strongly followed account. A lot of people agree with what they’re saying. So I’ll use that as my trusted source of information. But if we want people to be able to operate at scale in a decentralized manner, they really need to be able to trust individually this person has a reputation and has credibility. And now that we have blockchain technology where we can tie reputations to individual people, we can do proof of personhood on chain. We can say I’m verified. I’m not a bot. I’m not a foreign actor. I’m a real person. I have my credibility and track record. We can store that all immutably on chain. So it’s given us all of these tools to allow these trustless systems where I don’t necessarily need to know you, I don’t need to know who follows you, but I know that you have a reputation on the platform. So I know that I can trust that what you’re saying is credible.
00:33:38 – Zach Elwood
Yeah, maybe we can talk a little bit more about judging reliability and such in a bit, but I was thinking when you were showing the middle diagram about how people affect other people. It made me think of one of my favorite talks for the podcast was with Michael Macy, a researcher who’s done some really good work on polarization-related topics. One of his studies was about what he calls opinion cascades, which is how major opinion makers shift the perspectives of other people. He studied how we tend to think, getting back to the myth of the left and right divide where we to put all these different stances on issues into this like spectrum of left and right and leading to this illusory clustering of you know of labeling uh stances and such he he was showing how the the opinion cascades research research showed how influential opinion makers like say for example trump like how trump would uh react to a new issue like covert for example would greatly influence our resulting polarization, right? Like, so we, we tend to, but we tend to confabulate reasons after the fact for why this stance on an issue is related to left or related to right or liberal or conservative or such. But so much of it is actually due to these chance outcomes of like, which way is an influential person in this, you know, in one side or another going to go on, on a new issue. And then, that the opinion cascades kind of follow after that. Right. Um, and there’s just, you know, a lot of chaos in the system too, but yeah, getting, getting to the idea that, uh, what you’re trying to do is basically trying to combat the, the emotion and kind of like team-based reasoning that results from like the usual ways of social are, are, are instinctual operations of how we interact with other people and how our emotions and, team-based affiliations can guide our judgments. And basically you’re trying to create this system that is pushing against that and try to make a more reasonable, less biased, less team-based, less emotional outcome, I think. Yeah.
00:35:59 – Don Templeman
Yeah, exactly. And opinion cascades is a good way to put it. There’s a lot of interesting research around it, but when you have that preferential attachment, it only takes a few steps and a few people to strongly influence large groups. So the way that people describe systems that are structured in this way with preferential attachment is that they’re in a state of criticality where they can very quickly change perspectives of a large portion of the graph or a large portion of the network. And that’s like one of the interesting examples of it is if you think of like the six degrees of freedom thing, if you’ve heard it where it’s like, you’re only six connections separated from anyone else on earth. And that’s because there are these strong, like centers of influence or people who know a lot of other people and have a lot of influence over those people. And so that’s research that’s been done that like that is how we have structured our society where we are only a few steps away from large portions of the population. And that in an information environment makes it very difficult to find stability because one or a few people’s opinion shift can start to shift and influence large portions of that network. So more resilient ways to structure it, where it’s decentralized, where you’re communicating more closely and more frequently with people that are around you, but everyone is able to freely move and shift their own opinions and their own opinions have kind of more weight and the overall like emergent traits of the entire system. Because if you look at preferential attachment, a lot of the like collective ideology of the network is influenced by the opinions of those few small centers of influence. If you look at a centralized network, the main like perspectives of the entire network align with whoever that centralized point of like centralized news sources, but with a decentralized system, the overall perspective of the network more accurately reflects everyone’s individual beliefs because it is this average consensus of how everyone is interacting and kind of perceiving each other and understanding the world around them and coming up with their own views all independently rather than being influenced by these large opinion cascades.
00:38:18 – Zach Elwood
Do you want to talk about the AI aspect of this work? You and I have talked a little bit about how this plays into LLM AI tools using content. Do you want to talk a little bit about that or would you rather talk about the… you know, how to judge reliability and accuracy using this kind of model, which would you rather, the direction would you rather go on? We can go on both.
00:38:50 – Don Templeman
I’m happy to talk about both of them. Yeah, we can talk about the AI a little bit, because that might be interesting to people, yeah. Yeah, so with AI, obviously, if we’re focused on trying to create resilient information networks and to determine better ways for people to discover news, a big portion and like a new player in that space is AI and LLMs and specifically people discovering information through chatting with LLMs. That’s a growing portion of how people discover new information. And we’ve seen that with like Google search usage has gone down and more people are using open AI or perplexity or cloud or any of these tools to chat, to discover information. So in trying to think of how we play into that ecosystem, A lot of new sources are trying to leverage AI as their ability to find and discover information. But we want to take a different point of view because we do believe that you still need to rely on real people doing the hard work of reporting and discovering new information to actually make sure that LLMs have accurate up-to-date information because since the training cutoff for a lot of LLMs, if they want to have some opinion or provide information real-time relevant events, they need to go out to some third-party source to be able to pull in the information, cite it, and use it in their response to the user. So if more people are discovering information that way, we want to make that process as robust as possible. But currently, when an LLM is asked a question that needs to go out to some third-party source, 40% of the time it cites Reddit, 20% of the time it cites Wikipedia, And the rest of the time it’s trying to cite stuff that it’s able to find online because they really need large data sets. And the only places those exist are really in Reddit and Wikipedia. And while Wikipedia as a source over time becomes more and more credible for real time news on current breaking events, what LLM companies have found is they really need to rely on professional newsrooms. So we’ve seen this trend of, It’s just under $3 billion of spend that’s been committed to licensing content from professional newsrooms to LLM AI research labs for them to be able to license and access content that’s produced out of a professional newsroom. So that’s deals between like OpenAI and the New York Times or Wall Street Journal, Amazon and New York Times. There’s all of these massive deals where they’re trying to get access to this high quality information because That’s really the differentiator between these models and how people choose to use them is which one can give me the best information. The problem is if you’re relying on traditional publications as your source of news, you’re still falling into all of the traps that we’re trying to solve with polarization in media, distrust in media, all of the reasons why how those companies are structured. results in audience capture and them including their own biases.
00:41:56 – Zach Elwood
Bubbles of thinking, biases, yeah.
00:41:59 – Don Templeman
Exactly. So what we’re able to do is we can take all of the benefits that we’re creating for our information environments and make them accessible to AIs if they need to go out and reference some real-time event that’s currently being reported on. And the reason that we’re able to do it so easily is one, Since we are decentralized, an LLM company can come in and make a licensing agreement at the protocol level. So they don’t have to go out and try to find all of the independent individual writers and make individual agreements with all of them. They can just say, we want access to all of Aemula’s content. And then each individual writer on our platform can determine if they want to license their content or not. So everyone still independently owns all of their work. We have record of everyone’s ownership. LLMs, if they want to come in and cite something that one of the writers on the platform has published, that writer can determine if they want to license it. And then that writer gets paid when their information is accessed. Because a lot of the time, currently when writers publish independently, if it’s through their own site, if it’s on Substack, that can still get parsed by an LLM and cited and used in their responses. But that writer never sees any value that came from the use of their work in an LLM response. So we want to make sure that everyone is always paid for the work that they produce. And through our protocol, we can say, if you elect not to license your content, we can protect it so it’s actually not discoverable by LLMs, so it can’t accidentally be licensed. But if you do want to license it, you’ll get paid every time an AI actually accesses it. So it’s a lot more robust for the independent writers. it’s a lot more efficient for the LLM providers because they don’t have to make all these bespoke deals across newsrooms. It’s just one ecosystem that they can plug into all of our information’s in a standardized format. It’s easy to parse and it’s actually stored and structured and how LLMs think. So if you think back to the explore map that we showed of all the articles and 3d space without getting into too much detail, When LLMs, when you’re prompting them and they’re trying to generate a response, they are relating words and trying to figure out what to respond with based on how closely words relate in three-dimensional space, it’s called vector space. And that’s a whole separate category, but you can kind of abstract that away and have a conceptual vector space where an LLM can go in and say, I want to answer something on this topic. It can find that topic. within our information map and determine what is the best article here. It can plug into our credibility ratings, rank what it wants to respond with, license that content directly from the writer, and use it and cite it in its answer to an end user. So it makes the whole LLM information discovery process significantly more robust for the end users that are discovering information through chatting with LLMs. And it’s a lot better for the writers because they actually get paid when their content’s used.
00:45:08 – Zach Elwood
Yeah, I was thinking, I mean, getting back to the idea of how you can create algorithmic approaches to judge accuracy and reliability of news sources and such, it seems like there’s a lot of value in coming up with some approach that uses the social network analysis to say like, oh, this source, this person is creating content that appeals to a lot of different clusters of thought and that a lot of people across a lot of different clusters of thought, appreciate. And it seems like, I mean, A, that’s valuable for people in general, but it also seems especially valuable for these AI, LLM agents that are trying to find non-controversial and agreed-upon information. It seems like that’s a way to theoretically do that that doesn’t involve humans doing fact-checking, which leads to various biases, too. I mean, it’s still going to be hard no matter what, but it seems like that’s… using this kind of algorithmic objective approach in some way leads to some really good outcomes of like these statements and these works appeal to a broad range of people.
00:46:24 – Don Templeman
Yeah. And that’s when you’re dealing with AI and LLMs, like the scale of the data really matters. Like you need a lot of information for them to come up with good answers. And so when you’re dealing with that type of scale, you, have to rely on algorithms at some point. Like you can’t have some massive army of fact checkers going through and trying to check the credibility of all the sources.
00:46:49 – Zach Elwood
Right. Yeah. It’s way too much time. Yeah.
00:46:52 – Don Templeman
So we need that scalable process for determined credibility. And we’re able to do that through that social network analysis where we can say, if a post is getting a lot of diverse support from people with different ideologies, we know that that is likely a high quality source of information. On top of that, We have newsroom tools for writers so they can go through a peer editorial process if they want more people to offer feedback on a piece that they’re about to publish. And we can say that if they’ve gone through that process, it’s also likely higher quality. We can give them access to research and analysis tools, data sources, tip networks, credentialing, like all of these tools that they can use. And as they implement them into their reporting, we can increase that quality metric of what we perceive that quality to be. And then we also have individual reputations for readers and writers. So if a writer is getting a lot of support from users with high reputations, then we know that they also likely have a high reputation and we can build their reputation into those quality scores. And looking at everything holistically, you can start to come up with credibility rankings for not only authors, but also individual articles and use that to allow LLM responses to easily discover what is likely the highest quality source that I can find for this specific topic, but also it can allow it to start to adjust its responses based on who’s asking the question. So if I have an annual account, it knows roughly where I fall relative to some of the sources it’s trying to find for me. It can give me a source that is closer to my beliefs that I’m more likely to agree with. rather than giving me some source that may be from an opposing point of view, where I’ll ask the question, immediately discredit it and say, like, I disagree with this take, like there’s bias in how the LLM was coded, there’s bias in the training data and then discredit it and either prompt my way into getting it to say the answers I want it to say, or going out and trying to find a different source of information to support my point of view. Like really, if we’re trying to optimize for providing the best answers to the users, there’s not one answer that is best for all users. You can start to gear it so it’s the best answer for that specific user to better understand what concept they’re trying to understand.
00:49:15 – Zach Elwood
Yeah, because at the end of the day, you have to worry about customer satisfaction and so do the AI. You and everybody, it’s like no matter what our wishes and goals are about how these things work. Like you have to give people what they want at the end of the day. And you, you can’t give them like, you know, if somebody’s using Grok and they’re like, Elon Musk is a, Grok’s telling you Elon Musk is a genius and all these recent things where it was praising Elon Musk with these weird responses. It’s like, if you’re doing too many weird things that don’t appeal to your customer base, they won’t want to use your product. Right. So you, you do want to give them what they want while also, you know, aiming for, accuracy and responsible implementations and stuff. But yeah, you want to give people what they want. Yeah. Exactly.
00:50:03 – Don Templeman
And then that becomes a fragmented environment in and of itself, where if I like what Grok is telling me about Elon, then I’d start using Grok more. And then Grok is my source of information. And that likely differs pretty drastically from someone who’s using Anthropics Cloud or or chat GPT, so people start to work out a different information environments and you would expect as they get access to wider and wider information sources, hopefully the LLMs kind of converge on some general consensus where they all have similar answers, but there is a wide divergence currently on the types of answers that they give. And so if you only use the ones that you like, it goes back into that same problem.
00:50:44 – Zach Elwood
Polarization cycle.
00:50:45 – Don Templeman
Yeah. Yeah. Everyone’s only going to work in the information environments that they want to engage with.
00:50:49 – Zach Elwood
And that’s kind of how the polarization works. It creates these two spheres of like, there’s different schools, there’s different kinds of companies, there’s different, you know, circles of various types of, you know, there’s different churches, there’s different, you know, so yeah, it’s like, yeah, you’re trying to break out of this entire paradigm and create entirely new paradigm and incentives, which is awesome. That’s why I’m so excited about your project. And I just haven’t seen anyone else doing stuff that I think is really trying to break these fundamental paradigms in a way that you are. So I think that’s great. Anything else you want to talk about? Because I think we’ve covered a good amount of stuff. Do you want to throw in anything else interesting before we go?
00:51:36 – Don Templeman
No, I mean, I appreciate the support of our mission and what we’re trying to do uh obviously a long way to go it relies on scale and we have a cold start problem where we need content and readers and really these things always start to work once you have large scale right so we do have a long way to go it’s a challenge work in concept but uh kind of going back to like giving people what they want like we don’t want to try to act against human nature. We want to be able to make it as natural of a process as possible to happen. So that’s why we’re so focused on being fully open, fully transparent, everyone operating independently, owning all of their own work, everyone communicating independently. Those mechanisms only work if people are actively involved in them. So that’s why we want to use human readable algorithms for all of our algorithms so that people can actually go in, read them, understand what they’re doing and start to have a say in the process because it is all community governed. People can vote on how they want to see things change. So whereas some platforms like X have open sourced their algorithms, a large portion of it is through AI where it’s this black box where no one understands it and it takes real technical expertise to go in and understand how it’s operating. So like that’s not a community governed process if no one’s able to actually understand it. So that just goes to show like, we need people actively on the platform, participating in it, helping kind of go through those iteration cycles to make everything better and start to actually align with our missions. But overall, like really excited to get people on the platform, start to hear their feedback, start to see how we can improve, but hope a lot of these ideas resonate with people and obviously always willing to share more information, help answer more questions on anything that may not have been clear.
00:53:39 – Zach Elwood
Yeah. How, how can people, if people are listening to this and they’re excited and, or even just interested, how can they support you? What are the different ways, like from a regular person, you know, a non influential person versus like, say somebody wants to invest a bunch of money from that scale. Yeah.
00:53:58 – Don Templeman
So yeah, The easiest way is just going to amyla.com, creating an account. Like I said, it’s a pretty lightweight process. We’re not going to start emailing you a bunch of marketing materials. It’s just to prove that you own an email address because you do own the account. It’s able to hold money for you. So like you need to have some recovery mechanism, but we actually don’t have any ownership over that. So join the platform, start to mess around. You get a free trial. So it doesn’t cost anything. You don’t have to put your card in or anything. But if you do like it and you’re enjoying what you’re reading, start a subscription. Any subscription goes a long way at this point as we’re starting to build up our subscription pool so it’s better and more attractive economics for the writers on the platform so we can actually reward them for all of the great work that they’re doing. If you are writing, we need content. We want to be able to support your work. So you can publish directly on the Aemula app or you can go – link your Substack if you’re already writing on Substack, and that’ll automatically cross post anything that you’re publishing on Substack anytime that you publish. You retain full ownership of your work. You earn from our paid subscribers at the end of every month. So there really is no downside. You can stop at any time if you don’t want to do it. And then from there, just following us, providing feedback, starting to interact and be active in our process of iterating and improving the platform. but really just creating an account and going in and starting to play around with things is the best way to get involved.
00:55:32 – Zach Elwood
Awesome. Okay. This has been great, Don. I’ll let you go and thanks for joining me and best of luck on the project.