My seventh ‘People Who Read People’ podcast episode is an interview with Robert Drysdale. Drysdale is a well-known Brazilian jiu-jitsu and mixed martial arts expert, champion, and trainer. If you’d like to know more about him, you can read his Wikipedia. He currently operates a training gym in Las Vegas: Drysdale Jiu-Jitsu.
My sixth ‘People Who Read People’ podcast episode is an interview with Seth Baldwin. Seth is an experienced fencer (swords, not fence posts) who, at the peak of his career, finished 3rd in 2004 at the U.S. National Championships and was 7th alternate for the Olympic fencing team.
My fifth ‘People Who Read People’ podcast episode is an interview with Jenny Radcliffe (www.jennyradcliffe.com), who goes by the title “The People Hacker”. She’s an expert in social engineering (aka, the manipulation of people to achieve access to goods or information) and non-verbal behavior and psychology. She offers her infiltration services (aka penetration testing or pen-testing) to corporations who want to test their susceptibility to social engineering and in-person hacking, and is a frequent speaker at security-related events. She offers consultation services, gives seminars, and has given TEDx talks. She has her own podcast: The Human Factor. She’s on Twitter at @jenny_radcliffe.
In August of 2018 I interviewed an acquaintance, Jon Bismut, who’s a big pinball aficionado/player/fan. He’s not a big name in the pinball world, but he knows enough that I thought it would make an interesting interview for people, like myself, who don’t know much about pinball. One thing that initially struck my interest and made me want to interview him was him saying how big an edge highly-skilled pinball players have on lesser opponents; it’s a very big edge. This was surprising to me, being a novice who usually can’t last more than a few seconds on a pinball machine, so I wanted to delve into what makes a great pinball player and what makes it such a skill game.
Also, did you know that “tilting” in poker has its origin (so it’s widely assumed) from when pinball machines would go on Tilt from being jostled too much? Just an interesting poker connection.
My fourth ‘People Who Read People’ podcast episode is an interview with David Zulawski, an expert in interrogation and interview techniques. Zulawski is the cofounder of Wicklander Zulawski and Associates, a company that consults and trains people on interrogation and interviewing. Before starting that business in 1982, he worked in several law enforcement and investigative positions; he’s been a licensed polygraph examiner, a licensed private investigator, and a certified fraud examiner.
Links to the show on different platforms (some stuff we talked about is below that):
I was honored to get a chance a couple months ago to talk to high-stakes poker player Brian Rast. The YouTube video is below. It’s rare to get a high-stakes players insights into poker strategy or tells, as many, for good reason, don’t want other high-stakes opponents to get insight about their game. So it’s great that Rast was willing to talk honestly about his stances on how important behavior/tells are in poker. I also plan on updating my Exploiting Poker Tells book in the near future with a few updates, and that would include some snippets from this interview.
This conversation was what led to my decision to start doing the People Who Read People podcast. Unfortunately, I wasn’t planning on doing anything with the audio when I recorded it, so the audio is quite bad, and I’ve decided to just put this interview up on Youtube, and not on iTunes and the other podcast platforms.
My third ‘People Who Read People’ podcast was an interview with Dr. Christina Marinakis, an expert on jury selection and voir dire. She is currently the Director of Jury Research at Litigation Insights, a trial consultancy firm. She has also contributed to the second edition of the book Pattern Voir Dire Questions. For a transcript of this talk, see this post.
Some things we talk about in this podcast:
What is the process of jury selection like, and how does it differ depending on types of court cases?
How important is voir dire? How much influence does it have on a court case?
If jury selection can be seen as a game, what are some of the strategies used?
How much does the behavior of potential jurors influence your decisions?
What are some ways lawyers or jury consultants use their own behavior to attain their goals?
My second “People Who Read People” podcast features Mark McClish, a former US Marshal, and a longtime trainer of law enforcement personnel in interrogation/interview techniques. He has written two books on his Statement Analysis® techniques: I Know You Are Lying, and Don’t Be Deceived. These are great books; the first book was one of the inspirations for me writing my book Verbal Poker Tells.
This podcast is meant to serve as an introduction to some statement analysis concepts. We talk briefly about quite a few cases, new and old, including OJ Simpson, Timothy McVeigh, Chris Watts, Making A Murderer, the KROQ radio DJ hoax, the McStay family murder, and the Van Dam child murder.
I’ve started a podcast, “People Who Read People.” It’ll be me interviewing people from different professions/industries about how they use and interpret psychology and behavior in their work.
And yes, the title is a bit of a play on Barbara Streisand’s “People Who Need People” song (which coincidentally is from the musical Funny Girl, which has a big poker/gambling-related sub-plot.) But mostly I think it’s a pretty accurate title for the concept of the show.
My first episode is an interview of Portland comedian, and winner of 2018’s Portland’s Funniest award, Alex Falcone. He talks about using psychology and reading behavior in standup comedy.