Connecting The Dots

Alright, Greg. We are rolling here now. So, good morning. We have officially saved the daylight once again this year. So, we've made it through Daylight Savings Time. So, congratulations, everyone, for saving the daylight. Still want them to stop doing this, but anyway.

Today's topic is sort of a continuation from last week's episode where we're really talking about non-standard observations and really understanding the background noise in your environment or background setting to really get you the context for different observations, especially when it comes to human behavior. So, I figured this week I want to talk about anomaly detection and really just connecting the dots, right?

So, people often say, "Hey, I saw something odd," or "This seemed weird to me." But it's good, maybe you see something, but it's really connecting it all together and putting it all together, and the "so what" is the most important part, right? Because humans do odd stuff all the time. Most of it doesn't really matter at all. There's a lot of noise out there, so it helps if it's more domain-specific. But I want to go over that stuff and then also why we miss those things.

There are a lot of investigations or after-action reviews, and afterwards it's very easy to see, which is why there are so many people making videos and talking about things that already happened in the past. I don't see a lot of them going out and showing stuff, but that's a separate issue, I guess. But it is, you know, it's always, of course, hindsight 20/20 and Monday morning quarterbacking. There are all those terms for a reason, right? It's in the moment in time.

So, I was hoping that again, you could start off. You have a couple of personal stories, and it came from another "Lessons Learned" that you wrote. So then, of course, any of our Patreon subscribers, you can go on there, read the whole thing, which I would highly suggest because there are some great stories that go along with it. Maybe you'll mention some of them here, but I mean, meaning stuff you can read about news stories and the headlines, not just your personal ones. And there's a ton of great information in there. But there's this one section, I guess I'll have you read, because it's some personal stories that are kind of exactly what I'm talking about. And of course, we teach this stuff too because how many examples do we use of us missing things in the moment, then afterwards, the slap in the forehead, "Should have had V8!" "What the hell was screaming at me?"

And so, I like those personal examples too because it kind of shows how that stuff can happen. And then, since we were there, obviously, we can break everything down because you're the ones involved in the incident. So, that's a little intro for today, Greg, and I'll let you jump into it.

I appreciate that, Brian. Good morning, everybody. We're going to talk about Volume 25 of "Lessons Learned." It's all about Allison Rainy's Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. And the section that Brian had highlighted is called, "The Right Place at the Right Time."

Sometimes the crime scene you're approaching stuns you. Sometimes it's events leading up to your arrival. Generally, Hollywood has no idea how strange it is working the streets, catching the bad guys, and then trying to connect the dots on human behavior pattern recognition analysis.

I'll give you a couple of personal examples. On a rainy night after midnight, in the suburban Metropolitan Detroit industrial area, a uniform street cop called out a license plate of his suspicious vehicle. The road where the copper (police officer) found this sled (vehicle) – in street terminology – didn't have an access ramp to the I-696 freeway. So, often, midnight shift robbery suspects would take this particular street, accidentally thinking they could wind through the sparsely occupied factories without being seen by coppers, and then access I-696 quickly and then be on their way south into Detroit, Scott-free. So, any night, especially a rainy night, meant that traffic in this region would be suspicious and needed to be checked.

Many times, police checked the vehicles in this area because there were lazy cops who chose to park here and catch a couple hours of shut-eye, and they didn't want to surprise a burglary boy or get victimized while they slept. And this is one such story. The copper first drove by the vehicle, noticed it was running, headlights on, stuck in the mud off of a 'tour,' and that 'tour' is a triangular-shaped corner where two streets meet, and the driver's door was open. The personal account of this copper was that he first shouted down the plate and then went to take a piss and get some sleep behind a neighborhood closed factory. And when he emerged sometime later, he noted the vehicle was still there, still running, headlights on, door open, and still stuck in the mud. The rain's pouring down relentlessly. And at this point, the officer runs the plate and calls for a wrecker.

Now, as the officer was alone and he hadn't called out a traffic stop, just a suspicious vehicle running unoccupied, I drove up from the south end of the city to see if he needed any help. When I arrived, he told me what he observed, and I asked him if he'd searched the area for a suspect, presumably the driver on foot. And he told me he had not. And based on my personal experiences, calls I had investigated myself, I advised the veteran officer to make sure he checked under the vehicle when the wrecker arrives, as I found a couple of people who had lived or died after running themselves over with their own vehicle. And while I was checking the rainy, dark recess of the abandoned businesses, I heard the officer with an excited voice call for a coroner and a traffic unit. When the wrecker lifted the vehicle out of the mud, the missing driver was discovered under the vehicle, deceased. It's actually simpler to die in this manner than you think. When you're trying to get your vehicle unstuck, you sometimes put your vehicle in reverse and then open the driver's door and watch the rear left driver-side tire to see if it's spinning. Now, if the vehicle should suddenly lurch, the open door strikes you, pushing you under the front left driver-side tire, and voila, the car is now stopped because you're no longer there to press the accelerator, and positioned directly on top of you.

This veteran copper was a bit of a bad luck or good luck magnet. Each caper I was in with him was more bizarre than the last. And one night in that same general area, a uniformed officer, heading west on the freeway that bisects Detroit from the suburbs from each other, in a dark early morning, he called out a vehicle 'hauling the mail' – his vernacular for speeding. And when he became annoyed by the other vehicle, one traveling faster than he was, he finally stopped it, intending to give the driver a good tongue-lashing. He told me it was immediately impeded by a language barrier and that there was difficulty in communication. So, I stopped by to check on the solo veteran copper stopping a car on midnight shift. And upon arrival, he mentioned that both drivers in the front seat passenger were soak and wet. On this specific night, there was no rain. And sometimes when burglary suspects pull commercial jobs, they accidentally hit the sprinkler system getting in or out of the building and become soaked. So, I decided to take a look for myself – again, a personal experience.

So, both men were covered head to toe with blood and human particulates – the kind of junk you get on yourself when you're carving up a side of beef with a hatchet in the dark. And sure enough, moments into the stop, another unit, a very recent homicide, was on the radio stating they had multiple victims at their scene. A couple of the decedents had been virtually beheaded, and the detective mentioned that whoever the fleeing suspects were, they'd likely be covered in blood. The suspects were arrested in short order after it was determined that the victims and the suspects both spoke the same language and were from the same Eastern European region.

And even a broken clock tells the right time twice a day. So, from the "Unbelievable But True" file, I'll add one more incident from that same city. Two average, very average, police officers were headed to breakfast instead of checking their assigned area after on-duty roll call. And fate had them 'sub-cutting' – that's when a driver takes a shortcut through a residential subdivision to avoid heavy traffic posed by drivers headed to work or back home on the major surface streets. So, while on some non-distinct side street that goes from here to there, just after 8:00 in the morning, they encounter a man running out of a residential driveway into the street directly in front of them. They stopped short, primarily because they almost hit him, and additionally because they noticed he's covered from blood from his waist to his shoulders. So, these coppers called it into dispatch as a medical run, advising they were going to be taking this victim of a lawnmower accident to the closest hospital. The bloody subject advised the officers that he'd cut his hands dislodging some trash from the lawnmower, and now he needed emergency medical service as he had cut his hands.

The officers had the suspect jump in the back, and they drove him a few miles away to Macomb Hospital Center. They never got out of their patrol car – not to search him, identify him, get his name, nothing – not even open the door for him when he got in. After pulling up at the emergency entrance, the passenger officer gets out of the vehicle and lets the subject out of the back seat because police vehicles don't allow the back-seat passenger the luxury of opening the doors on their own. And moments later, after arriving at their favorite breakfast location, the officers learned that the suspect that they just dropped off at the hospital had no injuries. The blood was donated from the homicide victim he had just murdered. When he was escaping the crime scene, he fled through the backyards, hopped the fences, and onto the next street where he ran right in front of a marked police unit. The morning shift officers had driven the suspect away from the scene into a local ER where he was apprehended after cleaning up in the restroom and attempting to hitch a ride back to the scene to recover a suspect vehicle.

Apathy can get you killed, and it happens to the best of us. I made a stop on a suspicious vehicle in the North End while I was headed for a late off-duty roll call. Sun's already up. I had a long night of chasing bad guys, and I was extremely tired. Remember, you're most susceptible to danger when you're mentally tired, bored out of your mind, or completely overwhelmed by events. And I was mentally tired. I noticed the vehicle doing a slow roll through the sub (subdivision), and it was occupied by four people. It rolled through a stop sign like it was free. And immediately upon stopping them, I'm getting a bad rendition of "Who's on First?" from the occupants – an important clue we call verbal diarrhea. And I knew right then I was in the trick bag.

I made an interesting observation: the passengers were wearing three or four jackets each, and nice ones, like leather, faux fur. And it didn't fit the morning I was in, and especially since they were all methy, McCrackheads. I also noted that some of them had two or three watches on their wrist and an assortment of what appeared to be fake or real jewelry on their fingers, around their necks, on their ears. Perhaps if I had been more well-rested, I would have added up these anomalies quickly. And thank God the street gods were looking out for me. I called for a cover car. As soon as the cover car rolls up, we're off to the races. Each suspect flees in a different direction. And thankfully, we were able to round them up in short order. And soon the day shift was taking multiple locations where burglaries had occurred. I found out later that the driver was dangerous and wanted. And the booking officer located the knives that were pictured below in the driver's front pockets – a gravity knife and a switchblade. And it was quite big as I remember. I started to shake. I was guilty of DWU (driving while head up ass). And I had the 'happy head.' I knew I was almost at the police station. And from riding horses for a long time, it's like a horse heading back to the barn. The hardest time to control your horse and get them to pay attention is when they're headed back to the barn. That's why most accidents occur within just a few blocks of your home. You think, "I got this," yet your mind is already checked out.

So, those are obviously some pretty good stories, and there's more in there, folks. And like I said, if the Patreon subscribers, you can read the whole thing, see the photos and stuff that go along with it because it obviously adds a lot to the story. But, you know, they're just great. I wanted you to go over those because they're just such great examples of all these little things adding up. And you're sitting here in the clear light of day going, "How did you not see this happening?" It's like, "Well, I'll tell you why you didn't see this happening."

So, again, like on the, because you brought up some, you brought up a few cognitive performance factors, and then you just talked about apathy, and then, "Hey, being tired," and then, "Now you're heading back to the barn," so to speak, of why you sort of miss this stuff. And it just goes to things we've talked about in different episodes where you cannot be 100% all the time. You just can't have this heightened level of awareness all the time. It's not how it really works. You'll either get burnt out that way, or you'll just create really bad corrupt file folders and non-event feedback loops. And then your brain just figures, "If I just stay in this state, then I don't have to worry about anything," because you won't actually see anything.

So, I guess we'd start it with sort of like anomaly detection and then what we would call pattern recognition, and connecting the dots because that's what pattern recognition is: really just connecting dots for the purpose of using information, right? Each one of those things, if I'm just looking at things in my environment just for the hell of it, okay, it might be a great observation exercise for fun. But the "so what" is what is the "so what"? How are you using this information in some helpful manner? So, I just wanted to start it and frame it there, Greg.

No, no, it's wonderful. And there are one, two, three things that you brought up that I wrote down while you were talking that are very important. Number one, humans don't attend to their surroundings. Humans go day-to-day to take a poop, to get something to eat, to make love, to watch a TV show, to work, to make money, to make love, take a poop, and watch TV. What they're not doing is processing the information that's around them. They're not. And that is the essence of situation awareness – is being aware that you're in a situation. And if you don't attend to it, you might get in a traffic crash or get kidnapped or robbed or anything else. So, the very first thing is you can't attend to a bunch of stuff. You can attend to one, and you can only give 100% of your focus, your attention, to that thing. So, when you're driving back from a busy night on the road, the last thing you think that you're going to encounter is a carload of felons. And that's the first thing that you should think you're going to encounter. And that should tighten your shot group. So, when you're driving, you go, "Hey, I need to be a little more alert and aware than I am right now. I'm going to be in the trick bag if I don't."

Now, second thing, non-event feedback loop. The problem is if we're not pinging our environment, if we're not throwing a rock into the pond, the pond gives us no ripples. So, even though those events are happening around us in real time, Brian, we don't see them, smell them, taste them, or feel them. Why? Because we're not looking for them. So, that's why we say things come out of nowhere. The nowhere they come out of is that vacuous space between our ears that is seeing the monkey play in the ukulele rather than going, "Holy crap, this guy's changing lanes very fast. I wonder what he's up to."

And that's why I use "interesting," not "suspicious," right? Everything in life is suspicious, right? You can, you want, right? But you know what I'm trying to say, people when they write and when they make movies and they do all the things that we normally see, they have to go, "The 'D'!" So, we tune in that there's something suspicious. But that's not how life works. Life should work on your interest level. "This is more interesting than that. So, therefore, I'm going to give it more of my attention."

And the third thing you said that really ties these together for me, and don't let me forget the breadcrumbs, right? You made a point at the very beginning of the podcast about noise, and I would tell everybody that noise is another good meter to think about how your brain processes information. We're like the Three Bears: not enough noise, I can't sleep. I mean, I can't hear a thing. It's absolutely antiseptic in my environment. So, what do I do? I turn on the TV as background noise or the radio or I get one of them white noise things, right? Why? Because I can't relax because my brain is too busy and it's listening for that silence, right? Then the second thing is the clinically "just right." "Hey, I lay down, I fall asleep almost immediately, I don't hear anything. Oh, wait a minute, what was that downstairs?" Okay, so now I hear that aberrant noise, something that I didn't expect, and now I'm going to tune into it. And then the fourth level would be too much noise, like you and I both suffer from tinnitus, or tentis, depending on what doctor you go to. And with me, I've got my own permanent. Yeah, I have that. Otherwise, my brain provides the noise with the tinnitus, you know.

So, I would say that that's how you learn to reckon with your environment. Look, I almost got killed because it was four-to-one odds in broad daylight, and I got my head squarely right up my ass. And these guys had just come from a burglary. I learned later how they did the burglary and that they're taking everything from the scene. And the guy with the knives on him, he was the one that always fought himself out with the cops. They're some Sterling Heights coppers, and we're going to be training in Sterling Heights, had recently had this guy flee from them and stole cars and fought with the officers. So, look, I'm in the frame of mind, "Look, you guys lost, I'll get you back to the freeway." I'm in the frame of mind as, "You guys don't belong here, head back down south," or, "You know, I'll get serious." I'm so focused on other things that these cues, like, "Why would they have three or four different watches on the wrist?" Clearly, they're going through drawers, and as soon as they find something, they've done it before, it's not their first rodeo, they're sliding them up there because it's easier to carry. "Why did they have their pockets filled with jewelry and knives and stuff?" Because as they're finding stuff, they're throwing it out. "Why the extra jackets?" When you're looking through, you go, "Nice, nice, nice, nice." What do you do? You're only 100 pounds because you're smoking the crack, so you're throwing those jackets on top of each other. So, even if you have to flee from the suspect vehicle, Brian, you've got something to take to the pawn shop. You've got something to sell or trade for that dope. And so, all those cues, and I'd seen this before, that's the problem. And none of it's making sense because I didn't engage in sense-making. Sense-making is a process. It's a thing you must engage in. It does not happen naturally.

Now, your brain does have left and right lateral limits. My favorite song growing up from The Who was the rock opera Tommy, the Pinball Wizard, where they said, "A deaf, dumb, and blind kid sure plays a mean pinball." Why? Because I knew I was tuned into a frequency, Brian, that not all of my neighbors had, that nobody in my family seemed to have. My dad was the closest to me because I was this empath, I'm reading things in the environment. So, I knew I had that ability. But guess when that ability went away? When I was drinking, okay? When I was tired, when I just got up in the morning and I didn't have a clear head. And so, we're most vulnerable to missing the breadcrumbs when we have moments of sheer boredom and moments of sheer, uncanny stress.

And the certainty types of jobs that, "How do how does an industrial accident occur?" Many times the industrial accident occurs because I'm not tuned in exactly to what I'm doing and I say, "Well, I'll hold that with my foot for just a second," and something spins off the lathe, and then, you know, I've got a catastrophe.

That's a great example too with the industrial stuff, but that's why even, you know, every pilot has a checklist that they go down, no matter how many times they've flown that plane, how many hours. You still have a checklist. Why? So you don't miss anything. But the problem is, especially with the situations you brought up in your everyday life, there is no checklist. You can't go down through those things in a sense, even though you kind of already did because I'm listening to you tell the story and you're setting it up for the purposes of telling the story. But you're, it's actually how you sense make. It's like, "Well, they're cutting through this neighborhood." Well, a lot of people do that so they can avoid this busy street, especially if it's rush hour. You know, I've seen that. Everyone's seen that who lives in a residential neighborhood. I've got it right here out front of my house where especially during the morning rush, people going to work and then kids going to school. There's this road out here, they even put the big speed bumps in because people drive 50 miles an hour, you know, when it's like 30, with the little orange guy with the finger and a little flag, right? It's going downhill too, so that's the problem is that people aren't even realizing that it's like, "Dude, you're doing 40 and there's kids going to school on the sidewalk next to you."

But so, that's part of it. So you're actually laying it all out. Those, you're connecting, you're not connecting the dots even though the breadcrumbs are all there, right? So, it's all there. You're going, "Well, he's sub-cutting here." "Well, that's odd." "He's got an extra watch on." "He's got this." And it's like that denial is still so strong sometimes, you know, because your brain is always telling you, "Look, man, just you're almost off shift," or "You're going home," or, "It's probably nothing," because 99 out of 100 times it is exactly what you think it what it typically is, or nothing, you know what I'm saying? And that's, and if you're just a normal person going through your life, I would say that number increases to 99.9999, you know, I mean, because you don't encounter that, you know, you're telling this from the perspective of a police officer where you are seeing those things more often. You are involved in these situations more often. But, you know, the average person, that's why it's like we always talk about, I always do the gas stations and parking lots, it's like, "Look, you go fill up your car with gas all the freaking time." Everything you see on TV is a gas station being robbed or shooting at a gas station or a drug deal gone wrong at a gas station, yet you just go in there blindly. I'm like, "These are those points." So, it's still so powerful when it comes to things like denial and not putting that together. So, you can talk about those breadcrumbs and why we don't always connect the dots even when they're apparent, even when I'm going, "Well, I saw this, then I saw this and thought that was odd."

And I appreciate you explaining, sort of, you call that, "These are things I find interesting, not suspicious." I think people get that wrong or misunderstand some of our points we make sometimes, especially on the social media, even though you say, like, you'll be a video, it's like, "Well, that's interesting to me," and people like, "Hey, there's nothing suspicious about what we're doing." I have to go back and look through the videos like, "He never said the word suspicious the entire time." They filled that in with their own brain because they're looking, they're priming themselves by using an inner dialogue that doesn't fit the scenario.

Because we're primed, we're programmed that when we see a video, like a dear friend of us sent that video this morning, and I'm going, "Okay, why would this camera be set up at this intersection? Why would this behavior be being tracked?" And that's why when I started that, rather than saying, "This is bogus," I started by saying, "This leaves me conflicted because these things are interesting, but I can't account for them." That's how you should go through life because now you're not, and of course, make a decision. You said, "I want to hear Brian's opinions," and I was like, "Yeah, this video is junk." Yeah. "Here's a better one," three words, blows, you know exactly. So, the idea is when we make checklists, and everybody makes checklists, everybody says, "We are not going to have check-in-the-box training," and then they bring out the checklist of the things that you're going to do during the training. Am I lying? Okay, so the idea is, stop, first of all, stop lying to yourselves and everybody around you. We all know it. But what makes a list? So, everything makes a list. So, first of all, we go, "Okay, well, we're only going to make these three essential things." But then the guy could be walking or running it, so that means five essential things. But if he has a car, well, a car is different than a truck. And then, now the next thing we know, we have 72 pages, Brian, and we have two blank pages at the end for our marker that we can add those things onto. That's not how life works. Life works that you have to look at the level of interest of a thing in its environment and anticipate likely spirals. And I'll give you why we missed that in a second.

So, I'm driving northbound on Waltham from Eight Mile, headed back. I was always late for roll call. I was always, "See me after roll call," getting yelled at by the supervisor. Why? Because I gave my exact shift, and when my shift ended, then I went to the station and checked out on my vehicle and went up, and roll call's over. Why? Because folks would head in 30 minutes early for off-duty roll call just to sign out, and half of them were asleep in the off-duty roll call room. I didn't like that. I like to work right up to the wire. And you know who else knew the cops went in 30 minutes early? All the bad guys. Yeah, so all the bad guys were hitting places out there, and I was always getting these incredible felonies at dawn from midnight shift.

So, I'm going northbound, and this Vic (vehicle) is cooking southbound. I mean, he's, you know, really hauling the mail, used the story earlier. So, I pull over to just get a look at what's going on inside the vehicle, and I see four of the nicest tires and rims, Brian. I want you to imagine a standard car, a Camaro, you know, a Nova, you know, from the old days, the car that you drive today, right? I want you to imagine that with four tires and rims perfectly put together right inside the vehicle with you. It would be a little cramped, okay? So, the back seat's loaded, the front passenger seat's loaded. And this kid that I go by, he looks at me like, "Holy crap, what's going on?" So, really quickly, I go down to the checklist, "Well, he's taking those tires to a vehicle that's broken down," and "He bought them in Warren." Warren's an automotive center. It's like four minutes after seven, you know what I'm saying? Nothing's open this early. Take a look, he's clipping, he's on the back street. So, all I do is hit the wigwags and flip a U, and we're off to the races, right?

So, the idea is that things present themselves to you all day long. The breadcrumbs are on the ground. And when we step over the breadcrumbs, we go, "Somebody should sweep that up," or, "We're going to get in." We never ever assume that there are other likelihoods. So, the range of likelihoods can't go on forever. I used to argue with the Marines about that all the time because there was a difference between East Coast Marines and West Coast Marines at different points in their careers. And they would go, "More information necessary." No, no, Gary Klein, you don't need more information necessary, you need to make a choice now. I'm not bagging on Klein. Klein's a genius, and the stuff that he does is well-thought-out, and I would suggest them reading that after they bought our gosh-darn textbook first. But the idea is that we are in positions, Brian, you as a scout sniper and me as a copper, where we had to make the call based on the best information in that time, at that place, now. So, if you want to make a good decision, what you got to do is you got to sense make the crap out of it fast. And the idea was that I had to plug different holes and go, "Okay, guy's coming from this now. It's not open. Guy's going fast, well, he just wants to make the light. The guy's got the tires, he's helping a buddy out." And you know what? None of them passed the smell test. So, I give myself a rule of three, and in those three, if I can't get that, then immediately I have to say, "Something else is going on. I'm the problem. I'm just not tuned into that radio frequency." That makes sense?

Yeah. And you're, you know, you're going down those, sort of, "Well, what could this likely be?" And you're playing out those explanatory storylines, and then you're trying to gather artifacts and support those claims. And if there's nothing there, then it has to be something else. And this kind of goes back to, you know, what you're doing was sort of my question too, is, you know, how can I prime myself to not only spot those but, but more importantly, sort of put them together and derive some sort of meaning from it, right?

You gave those examples of the tire one's great because it's like, "Well, why would he have four tires if he's going to replace one tire?" Or, "Why would he have this at this time?" And those simple questions actually typically answer most things because most things only fit, you know, most things only fit a certain story or a certain pattern or a certain likelihood level, right? And it's not about what I see. Almost people trying to do, especially with different experiments that I've seen, which are not very well done, but, you know, it's like you're trying to use some sort of statistical model of inference to determine some percentage of likelihood. And it's like, "Well, no, it's not. It's not like that. You don't need to do that because there's each one of those events are different in a sense because there's so many different factors involved that are that are different. But what it is is what is it which is it more likely the guy's going to change a tire for his buddy who just got a flat or he just ripped those from somewhere because you don't need four new ones if you're going to fix a flat and nothing's open at that time." And so you can kind of run down that check. But again, it's just, "How do I prime myself to do that?"

I mean, we give some examples, like of the, that's why we tell people, you know, that find the look for the feral cats in your neighborhood because it's an observation game, right? And feral cats hide in negative space, they hide underneath cars, in between buildings, so exactly you're going to see them. So, you're going to get some, forces you to tune in. Yeah, and you're going to get a little reward, you're going to get that dopamine because you will start seeing more cats than you ever, you ever, you ever thought that were out there. So, it's in a sense it's a game, but it's a, it's, it's a reward-based game that also forces you to look into negative space, to slow down and go into those little areas, that seams in gaps, because that's where literally, that's where feral cats hide out. They don't just strut down the middle of the damn street, you know. So, it's like, you know, we give those examples, but how do I do that? How do I prime myself for that?

No, it's such a great question, Brian. And again, you got me writing, stop. It's 2:00 in the morning, and I'm feeling a little dicey from staying at that hotel in Houston. Yeah, those guys can bite me. I do not feel well. So, here's the thing, Brian, heuristics are with us and they surround us always. And those are template and prototypical matches of what we know in our internal baseline – my experiences, my external baseline, things I've seen in life, right? And so, everybody goes, "Those are your personal experiences." No, I see things when I drive to work, and I will notice if the billboard has changed or I will notice if that place is torn down overnight. Those are different experiential comparisons than my internal baseline. "Look, I've made an arrest 75 times at this same street corner. Each time the person had a gun. So, on the 76th, I'm going to be patting you out." Those are two different standards. So, those are my heuristics, right?

Then the next one that I use generally is Geo. The first couple of examples I gave you were geographics. For example, the area of the freeway where all the factories were closed, but still we have vehicles back there idling. So, a lot of people make love, but people don't pull over to try to make love in an area of haunted houses, decapitations. So, this area was one of those where you had to really know where this area dead-ended, right, to get back there. And it was creepy. So, somebody back there is up to no good, or they're lost, and you got to get them out of there. So, that's a Geo. Seeing that sub-cutting Vic (vehicle) and, you know, doing the slow roll, that was a Geo. And then guess what? As you start going, "Well, that's interesting," you pull up your atmo file (atmospheric file), and all of a sudden the atmospherics start to change, right? The vehicle starts accelerating away from you, or you notice the driver adjusting the rearview mirror to get a better look at who's behind him. And now the people start chattering, and you see some movement inside the Vic as if they were going to try to conceal something. All of those things happen, but they happen right in front of you, and if you're not tuned in, that movie's still playing, you just missed it. You missed all those cues, right? The cues were never not present. There's no way to conceal them.

And then what do I do? Well, all of a sudden, now I'm on the traffic stop, and I see the bio. You know, your catecholamine group is up, your nostrils are flared, you're sweating, and you know, it's not an area where you should be sweating. And that's where the kinesics, the icing, the frosting, the sparkles on the cake come in. And I notice that the person is nodding yes for no, or I see that the person continues to take a look at the person in the back seat before they answer me. Why would you do that? And then you tell me you don't know the person, and, "Oh, it's my grandma's car." So, the idea is, I give you this rich volume, I give you a palette – that's the word I'm looking for. You ever see a thing that the guy sticks his thumb through and it's got all the different colors on it? Remember, I think it was Bob Ross or whatever his name was, that, yeah, okay. So, think of that color palette for a minute. And then we give you a semi. Human Behavior Pattern Recognition Analysis gives you a semi that's wrapped in Bo-Peep, and it's white, and it's perfect. You paint the story now. Now you know how that book, you know, Peter Griffin, "Ah, Lois, I had my thumb there, Lois." You know the where he's reading the book and he knows what the adventure is, and then he doesn't want that adventure, so he has to go back and change the adventure, right? That's our life, right?

Okay, there are adventures happening all around us that we're not clued into because we unwisely think that it's our story that's the most important story that's in the book. If we start to try to tune into the surrounding stories, then we'll hear a little bit and piece of each one of them. And then we take a look at the artifacts and evidence and what they're telling us. In other words, lead where the story is taking us. Don't, don't, don't sit there and go, "Well, I must force this." You don't force a river. The Colorado River Gorge wasn't forced, you know, it happened naturally. So, when a person is talking to you, what are they going to let in on? They're going to let on and, "Hey, I really need to go home." Hey, I, I had a traffic stop once where the guy was in a stolen. I didn't know it was a stolen at this point, and the guy goes, "Look, I, I don't want to be a dick, but I really got to take a poop. I got to poop." Yeah, of course you got to poop because your catecholamine group is going, "Should I stay or should I go?" And that's one of the things that you're going to do. Now, could it have been another thing? Yeah, but I have to account for the things that are occurring right in front of me. And those stories led nowhere, Brian. I was spinning. I was on a unicycle juggling, and it didn't go anywhere. And just like I said that "Who's on First?" Everybody knows that "Who's on First, Second Base" right, that story with Lou Costello and Abbott and Costello, right? Why, why does that story make us laugh? Because it goes nowhere. And that's what you're going to get on the traffic stop where you're going, "Hey, where you headed?" "Sky is blue." "Well, where you coming from?" "I need an orange." You know, and you're going, "Wait a minute, this discordant answer is not what I would normally expect." Then I start looking. I go, "Well, the person doesn't smell like alcohol or look like he's on drugs, and I didn't stop them because their driving was such that I would believe they're impaired. So, what's this person trying to hide from me?" And you know what? It could be a significant other. It could be your kid. It could be a student in your class. You could be HR and wondering why that person's coming in late every day. And they're coming in late because they have to go to the food bank to get food for their kids.

So, that's where when you're posting stuff on social media, none of which I see, and I know you get sniped a lot, and I don't mean a lot, I mean I know you get sniped more than one per posting, right? Which is a lot to me. Because what people want to do, Brian, they don't want to look at the post and learn from it. They want to look at the post and tell their story. LinkedIn is full of people that want to read the story and it says, "Hey, we've done this and veterans for that and the other," and a guy writes in there, "Hey, I've been to Hong Kong." What? And you know me, I walk around the room throwing stuff going, "That was not the point of the story." So, I would ask everybody listening to the sound of my voice today, ask yourself when you drive by something interesting, ask yourself, "What's the point of this story? I wonder where this story is going next. What should I see next if my conclusions that I'm making in my head are right? What should I see, smell, and taste, and feel next?" And then pull over and watch it transpire. You know, one of the greatest things that we do is work away from our families to do in-person training because it allows us to be in an Uber, in a cab, in an area that we're not familiar with, in an airport with people we're not familiar with. And Brian, that's why we stay sharp because we're constantly tuned in to those stories that are around us.

Yeah. And you know, you, it's the "what should I expect to see next? Where is this likely headed?" And that's with everything. You know, I do that at home especially to stay, you know, even a step ahead of the insurgent because she's getting, she's getting so smart. And she's always trying to pull something over or do whatever, make a couple bucks to go do this because she wants to buy something or this. And it's, it's all good. I'm, I'm, you know, but, but because she's always got something going on, and I'm like, "Alright, well, she..." And so now, of course, you'll appreciate this because it just, you just reminded me of it, but she's, she's like, um, you know, she's really down and in on her computer, like, you know, it's only school stuff on there, you know, I mean, it's not like a, it's like a school computer, there's no. And I'm like, "What are you, what are you working on? Do you need some help with homework? What's up?" She's, "No, no, no, leave, I want to show you something later. I have something." And I'm like, "Okay, where the heck is she going with this?" And so she goes, gets her computer later on after dinner, and she's like, "Alright," and even tries to hook it up to the TV because she wants to give a presentation. And I'm going like, "Alright, what is this? So this is going somewhere." And it was all about how she, she wants to, uh, she wants to go to online school now. Not like for like college later in life or something like that. Now, in sixth grade, she wants to go through. So she actually put a presentation together with ten reasons why. It's an incredible presentation. And I'm going like, "What is going like?" The level of effort is amazing. And so she went through and did all stuff. And so I said, "Alright, first of all, let me just upfront, like, that was an incredible presentation. I appreciate how you laid out the artifacts and evidence, the reasons why." I even asked her some questions. She had answers for my rebuttal, even to the point where she's like, "Okay, I figured you'd ask that, and that brings me to my next point." And I'm like, "Okay." But the whole time I'm like, "Where, where is this coming from?" Right? And so I find out, you know, that she's, there's different stuff going on at school, nothing serious or involving her. But then one of her good friends from school last year, I didn't know this, is doing like the half home school online. You can do it through a school and like go like once a week and you get a lesson plan and all. So I'm finding out like, "Oh, her, like, one of her best friends is doing that." And that's why she has such compelling arguments that she looked up why she did this. But it came from that. So the whole time I'm sitting here like, "What?" Because, you know, my wife is, you know, she's doing the, "Are you being bullied at school? Is there a teacher doing something? Like, what is going on?" You know, because obviously the school is the problem, right? And I'm like, "No, the, the issue is she got an idea from her friend, and she wants to be at home to do stuff and not have to go to school all day." I was like, "Well, who, what kid doesn't want to, you know, not go to school all day?" But it was just those...

The insurgent, you exactly. The only thing the insurgent heard was the benefits of this program, and she wanted to enlighten you and the wifey to, "Hey, look how good this." Now, she's not bringing up any of the other that went along with that. So what, here's two things, though, that made it interesting from what you said, Brian. This shows that you're a behavior profiler, okay? You said when you saw some cues early on and upfront, "Well, this is going somewhere." Yeah, okay. And then you made the comment later on, you said, "Where is this coming from?" So it's beautiful because what you're doing is you're conducting a test on the environment. You're throwing the rock in the pond and seeing where the ripples going. And folks, this analogy is very simple. You drop a rock in the pond, the ripples go out from the pond. All ponds have ripples. Now, most of those ripples just go to the shore, they come back, and then they balance out, meaning they go back to sedentary. Now what happens most ponds, though, is you have other things that are going on like life. So now the ripples go out, and they hit a lily pad, and when they hit the lily pad, a frog jumped because it was surprised by it. And when that frog jumped, that surprised the bird, and the bird flew. Now, 99% of humanity goes, "Oh, pretty bird." You need to roll the tape back, and you need to go, "What created the event that I'm in now?" And you have to do this quickly. In our world, you have to do it quickly or you get squashed like a bug on a windshield. And then once you do it, you got to latch onto a few artifacts that are in that surrounding and go, "Okay, this is about school." And the great thing is, both you and your wife got it immediately, it's about school. But then once you looked at the usual suspect teachers, other kid bullying this, okay, and it fell drastically short, did it not? And so, okay, well, the issue is, who's she palling with, and what seed did they plant?

What I love is that the explanatory storyline here fit. And we jokingly, Brian and I have a bunch of things like calling a car a Vic, and then calling a suspect vehicle a sled. Those are things that are colloquialisms that we get used to. And here, one of the things that I would say is, "All roads lead to Rome." What does that mean? That means no matter who questioned this person and what op that I asked, "Can you tell me what you're seeing?" All the artifacts and evidence tended to point in the same direction. Now, Brian, that's not groupthink. What I did is I enlisted the aid of others. I enlisted the aid of trusted people in that environment to say, "Hey, this is what my daughter presented. What are the things that you can glean from it?" And then when I'm given all that big ball of 360 evidence, Brian, now I have a better picture. Now I can draw a more reasonable conclusion. So, instead of ready, fire, aim, which most people do, and then they come to the wrong or a conclusion that seldomly, like I hear cops to this day testify because there's no shortage of those crappy, shitty TV shows. And when you get up at 4:00 in the morning, you're trying to run and, you know, get your metabolism going and stuff, the only thing that's on is "For Sale" stuff and then these crappy crime dramas. And you still hear the cop, you know, go, "Well, you know, hackles were raised when I heard that, and then, you know, that my hear in the back of my neck..." Shut up with the hunch and give us the clue because sometimes, Brian, the clue is so overwhelming that you can't see it in the moment. It's like trying to look straight up at night and see one star until you start turning your head and doing the figure eight. You're not going to see that star because you can't.

And so what happens when I'm so close to that car, and all of a sudden I'm going, "Hey, five jackets, that's unusual." "Hey, this guy's got nine rings on his left hand and four watches. Hey, that's unusual." Those type of things didn't give me the slap of reality that I needed. Why? Because something else was going on. And that's life that's going on, that's my stomach is hurting from dicey food at that crappy restaurant where I was 36 hours late for a flight, right, Brian? All of those things are as vivid as the play acting out on the stage in front of me. And if I don't tune in, if I don't look, look, remember when we were with Ker, the shaved ape, and we were trying to train that team for the Colombian Royal Marines? And I took the map out, and I took a paper plate that was in the hotel room, and I cut the inside of the paper plate out so we just had the big ring. Everybody knows what I'm talking about: white paper plate, cut the inside circle, you're left with a ring, but no plate. And then we took the Styrofoam cups, and I cut out the bottom of them. And what I was trying to display on the map where the lens is, Brian, right? We have the big wide lens of the whole area. And then with the cup, we have a smaller lens, a much smaller lens. And then with the point of the pencil, this is where we are now. So, to consider everything in motion, I have to consider more than the things that are right in front of me that I'm seeing. I have to anticipate what else might be going on. And if I don't scratch the surface, then it's just going to be, "Hey, get the dustpan and the broom, there's breadcrumbs on the floor." And that's where most people are, Brian. That's where they stop. They step over the breadcrumbs and never consider that it may lead somewhere.

No, that, and you brought up right there, the sort of concentric rings there, but what you were seeing, if I'm only, right, if I, if I'm using just the Styrofoam cup, right, that's a small circle, so that's all I'm seeing. Well, there's a bigger circle, and then the circle goes out from there, and it continues on and on and on throughout the entire world, right? Eventually, you can get that plate big enough, holding from outer space, and put the entire globe, you know, inside of it, and you don't have to touch a thing, it's all going to fit, right? So, so that, that's the point is that, you know, and you bring it up is, is one, because we ask to, we, we, we walk through it about how I can, you know, prime myself for, for those kind of things, is that, you know, in those moments when you're looking at those breadcrumbs, you're only seeing it right there in front of you, and you're not taking that step back, that 30,000-foot view and go, "How does this play out or how does this, um, you know, how does this affect or how is this involved with literally the rest of the environment, the rest of the scene, the rest of the world, the rest of everything that's going on?" Because that's when those, you got to go up and down, you got to focus pull, you're exactly right. And then, you know, you can theoretically wind the tape back, "How do I hit rewind real quick and determine where this likely came from?" Because that trajectory will tell me where this is likely going next. And that's, that's, you know, being able to go forward and back in time, obviously, you can't literally do that, but you can figuratively, and you can with hypothesis testing and going, "Who, asking, asking those questions." But, you know, "How did this end up right here?" is always the most important thing. You know, it's like anytime I see a piece of trash on our front lawn because of where it's at, it's like, "Well, wait a minute, how did this end up here?" "Okay, it's a can of Modelo. Sure, I drink Modelos, but one, there's a little bit left in the bottom, so I know it's not from me." Two, "It's not ringed with me for that Modelo Margarita," as you call. So it's, no, no. But, but, but every one of those things, it's like it, it ended up in this, this place in, in some, some for some reason. So, so being able to wind the tape forward and back in real time is, is actually it is, is sort of priming yourself is, and it's the same why I brought up the story of the insurgent, you know, to fit in here and I just thought of it because it happened the other night is, "Okay, where did this come from? Where is this going?" And then now because she's a kid, it's like, "Alright, who did she hear this from? Or, or is this, is there something actually going on? Or she just had some time and said, 'I'm going to put something together,' because she knows I make her, 'Well, tell me, prove it. You know, show, show me the story. Prove what you want to do. Lay it out for me in a logical manner,' because I've been teaching that forever because that's how you win that." Because it was a compelling story and it was great. Now this is a different situation where, you know, we're parents, so it's like, "Yeah, no, you're not doing that." But, but, but the idea was...

Demonstrated her thought process too, right? She's demonstrated to you her analysis. And why is that important? Because post-blast analysis, battle damage assessment, all those words come from a place of after-action review. Where do we learn from the last experience so we can pay it forward? That's one thing. So, time is irrelevant. Time is the most important thing and the least important thing in everything you do. Why do I mean that? Because somebody right now is going, "Well, I don't have the luxury of time when I get a call about a guy shooting." Well, you have all the luxury of time because it's going to end like this: you're going to run, you're going to be out of breath, you're going to scream, and then it's going to be bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. And then one of you or the other person is going to be dead. Every single video is the same. So, if you don't slow time down, that's the inevitability of what you're about to get into. And every single gunfight, if you're only seeing the entire incident from your front sight post, then you're holding that, that, that very small lens up to a huge map. "Where am I involved in this? Are there multiple shooters? Is this just a grievance shooting, and the person is done? And maybe I can save a life, and maybe it's the shooter's life." And all of those considerations, Brian, that's where we should be training, but we're not. We're flipping the tires, climbing the rope, and we're just pushing rounds down range. So, you're going to be an efficient killer, unless the video I sent you this weekend where, "Oh my gosh, how many rounds you got to fire to kill just one guy?" But the idea is that that's the end of everything. I don't care about the end of everything. I care about all that stuff that happens in the middle. And if you're in the middle, which you are, you're always parachuting right into the middle of your own life, then do I have the ability to use a continuum to play it backwards a few seconds and to play it forwards a few seconds? That's what we teach. We give the gift of time and distance. How many times have I harped on it as long as I've known you that the T is capitalized? And I know you hate it every time that I say that, but you know why? Because it is the gift, and it is time and distance. And if we can master that part of physics, we're going to have an incredible life. I've had 40 plus years of danger, and I'm still here. And people still sometimes listen to me, I don't know, you know, after the podcast switch, I hope it's still a big number. But the idea is, Brian, that we learned from our mistakes. We learned that you're never stationary. Neutral gets you nowhere. You're always in motion, and that the things around you are in motion too. And so, if you can't put your thumb on the globe to stop it from spinning, then you have to move with it and be able to move your timeline backwards and forwards. How many times do I give that gosh-darn Wonka-vator, you know, it's not an elevator, it's a Wonka-vator. It goes sideways and upwards and downwards and backwards. That's life. If you get the Wonka-vator in your head, you're going to be safer, smarter, and harder to kill tomorrow because you're going to play those "what ifs."

And Brian, the "what if" that you gave, "Hey, this is going somewhere," that means that you now acknowledge the fact that you're in something. And then the second thing was that, "Hey, look, where's this coming from?" The same thing when the guys were giving me the diarrhea of the mouth on the traffic stop, "Where's this coming from?" "It's, I'm lost." "I'm headed to work." "Hey, I hate cops." I mean, there's like four responses I was anticipating, and I got the other one. I got the, "Did you know that deciduous trees like the elm?" "What? What? Where did this come from?" So, any time that you get a non-standard observation, any time, you have to categorize that based on the baseline. You have to do it quickly. Internal, external baseline. I've seen this before, and it turned into a crap sandwich. Boy, I'm in an area where there's a high crime, and these people aren't following, they're unorthodox, and the moves that I'm seeing here are anomalous in anybody's book. Once you're there, you know you're in the trick bag. Now it's, "How do I get out? How I've painted myself into a corner, okay, how do I step out of the kitchen? Is there a window? Is there an ironing board that I can stand on and get me to that chair?" That's what we have to do. So guess what the gift of time and distance does? The time and distance means I don't race into the situation so I have more time to make the decision before I paint myself into the corner. And still, we get people that are on the cusp of understanding that, but they haven't fully invested in it because police cars have sirens on them, and because you think you have to run and get involved in that fist fight right away, or when somebody's going, "Hey, my fries are cold," you want to step in and intercede and be the good friend. And Brian, you don't see the whole picture. And that's where the evidence tape comes in. That's where the homicide unit is on the way. And so we can avoid that by giving yourself just nanoseconds. We're not talking about taking 30 minutes out of your day. We're talking about a few extra well-placed seconds during every 24 hours. And everybody's got that time.

No, and you, you brought it, yeah, I mean, you, you, you brought up with the, the sort of your parachuting into the middle of a situation. I mean, but that's every situation you're in in life. You know, when I walk into the house and my wife is talking to the insurgent, I, I walked, I just parachuted into something, which means there was something going on before, and there will be something after when I leave, and will be one.

You're exactly, that's brilliant. That's a brilliant analogy.

And the, and the, and that's how I, I handle it. I'm not going to come in off the top rope and go, "Are you guys arguing about this again?" Or, "What's," because one, that's not certainly not going to make the situation any better, but two, developing that, you know, the, the, the, the operational picture for what I'm actually walking into allows me for a better intervention strategy, you know what I mean? And that's, I use the stuff here at home because it's, you know, if you can do it in your house, you can do it anywhere. I mean, that, that's my thing is, is, is focusing on, and that's why we even talked about last week, is that focusing on the background noise of vanilla, everything that's laying around, like my place is chaos right now because we're getting a little bit of work done, but it's like the rain keeps coming, so things get delayed, and there's stuff laying out. So, I have to sit here and go, "I have to accept the fact that I can't start on this next part of the yard project I want to do until this part's done," and it's chaos. And there's, and there was a tree, we had this big beautiful tree back here that because of the all the rain, the wind, it's smashed and it, it broke down on top of it. It like, and it looked like it was just one branch. I tried to clean it out and it wasn't. So I was like, "Alright, to me it's all chaos." So I have to then reset sort of my baseline to be like, "It's going to be chaos for the next three weeks, and then I can, can start on these things." So now it's like, it's like a way to to deal with it right here at home. But then that helps me every time I leave my house, that helps me everywhere I go. I mean, that, that's the point.

Use that. Pay that forward because it is the point. It's exactly the point. Brian just used the term, because he's thinking in the moment, he used the term "intervention strategy" because he wanted to describe what he was doing. And intervention strategy is de-escalation. It's baselining the environment, understanding what elements are within my control and which are not, and which key points are ripe for failure. Which, which pinch points, if I don't do something right now, it'll turn into something much worse. "I better sandbag that door, or the water will come in. I better move the tree, or it'll take down the electric line." Look, that's life. That's the essence of life. And what I mean by de-escalation isn't this clinical term of de-escalation that police officers have adopted. De-escalation is, "How can I smooth corners for the rest of my life to make things easier?" And Maslow had it right at the very beginning because Maslow said, "Man, wouldn't it be great if there was a key to this stuff, and these things are important?" But what Maslow relegated that to is a checklist, and it was too rigid, and it was too small, and we can go on and on. But the idea is your goal by saying, "I'd like to create an intervention strategy," is attainable for everybody on this call today. "My intervention strategy is going to be this: I'm going to talk to my wife, significant other, or father. I'm going to take my car for the lube, oil, and filter." Now, those are the intervention strategies. To what end? To what end? "So our marriage is better." "So I'm not fighting with my kids all the time." "So my engine's not grinding and the light's not coming on."

And they're giving you, and they're giving you, um, they're giving you options, right? So you're creating options, you know, that you have, and they, they, depending on the situation, they might, they might not be great options. But having options is better than just responding to what's happening, right? It might not be the best thing, but you at least, it's, it's your plan now and not the other person's plan.

You're exactly right. So, sadly, I have to have noise in the back, big wonderful house. I got the jobs. The jobs, you know, is absolutely silent. Java makes no noise, doesn't bark, doesn't do anything. It's just such a loving, wonderful dog. God, I don't know what her history is. I just hope she's better now. But then, as I've got the shows on in the background, I always watch like cooking shows or how to self-improve. I like that kind of stuff. I don't like the angry cook-off, and I don't like the people, you know, fighting to win a prize, it's not for me. But the commercials always go back to a Cops-style show that's coming up about something, and then they show a vehicle fleeing, and a vehicle spins out of control. Then they show the cop, and the cop goes, "During those moments, you just, you're just not thinking." And then the next thing they show this and that and the other in the shootout. "Well, it's impossible to be thinking during a situation like this." Why do they show the worst, Brian? Why do they show, if you're sitting there telling me that you're not thinking when you're involved in these critical incidents, then you need to go back to training. You need to slow your roll because you are headed for a collision. As a cowboy, we used to call that riding for a fall. And Brian, you know what I'm talking about. You're out there skating on thin ice, and you're riding for a fall, and when you do fall, somebody is going to get hurt because you're telling me right now, "I went through the entire situation and I didn't think." Now, that's not it at all. All of life is a participant's game, and either get on or be a number, you know, be a victim.

Yeah, no, I, I, that's another, another great way to to look at it is, um, you know, you, you can, can, "How do I think my way out of the situation and in every situation that I'm in for for for my advantage or for for a better outcome?" Um, and, and that's sort of, or a different outcome. It doesn't even have to be a better outcome when when the chips are down and you're at that inevitable shoot, don't shoot, all that other stuff. I, I agree. I just want to make that the options might not be great, but if you're getting them faster and you're, you're getting to apply your options and you're controlling the situation as well. I mean, it's not there, it's not always going to be good options for sure, depending on, depending on what you have to do or what the situation is.

John John Wayne in, in, uh, was John Wayne the one-eyed Rooster Cogburn in, in the film, the True Grit? So, the original John Wayne True Grit I saw every Sunday night for 13 years because that was the incoming film, because a lot of that was shot around the ranch, right? And, and so everybody wanted to see that film because it wasn't at nauseam on television. And that during one part he tells the person, "I don't want to shoot you, and you don't want to be dead." And that was the greatest form of intervention, right? That was an intervention strategy and a de-escalation thing. Now, that might not work for everywhere, but what he was trying to say is, "I've seen what might happen next, and if we reign it in right now with the gift of time and distance, it's a different option."

Well, and and beautiful. And you both, it's showing that you, you, "Hey, this is where it's headed, and neither of us want to go there. So, why don't we work together and and create something better? There's some way out of this other than..."

Exactly. I'm totally in agreement with you.

Yeah, yeah. Um, okay, well, we, we, we, we covered a lot on here and, and, you know, kind of operationalizing information is what we're talking about again. But I, I definitely want to get into this and have some of your stories, and I appreciate you sharing those. And, and I know folks, you guys can, can, the full story, there's a, because there's some great sort of case studies in there and examples that you talk about, um, in that from the news. And, and so there's some really, really good cases in there that people can read about and see exactly what you were talking about within the context of that story. I just wanted to bring it out and show this is a perfect example of, you know, of, of, you know, connecting the dots and, and how it, it can be difficult, absolutely, given the limits of cognitive performance and attention, and given time and distance, and given just how we prime ourselves to think. And so that was the big thing, which is why we kind of got into the last part of the discussion was what I wanted was that, "Well, how do I prime myself to think differently to, to create different outcomes?" And that's, that's the whole, that's the whole point of it, right? And that's how we, we, that's the big application of us with, with HBPRNA (Human Behavior Pattern Recognition Analysis) and what we do. Yeah, we get into a lot of areas, and we do consulting with it, with different firms on all kinds of different topics. But the, the whole either way out of all of them, one, our process is similar because we look at demonstrations of intent and everything behind HBPRNA. But the, the whole point is driving to a better decision faster. A, a more, uh, beneficial outcome for whoever our client is, obviously, or whoever is listening to this podcast, even, you know, what's, what's the best outcome for all, and, or for you, I mean, depending on what, what it is. But that's the whole point about connecting those dots and, and taking that time to realize you're, you're in a fluid, dynamic world all the time. Even if you're sitting at that lake all alone where those ripples are going out, it doesn't, doesn't matter. There's things that happened before you, and there are things that are going to happen after you. And it's constantly, constantly in a state of flux. So, being able to connect those dots, like you said, with that, that constellation in the sky, looking up and go, "Wow, that's chaos up there." "Well, no, there's the Big Dipper, there's this, this is how that's, that's how you make we know that's East and that helps me find North."

Exactly, Brian. Spot on.

So, um, any, any other final, yeah, clarity is good with any final words.

One quick thing, we talk about on-duty roll call a lot. Don't get mesmerized by what we're talking about and lose focus. I don't care what you do. If you're working at an automotive store or if you're working at City Market or if you're working as a part of the crew that's going to go roofing, take a look at this morning, talk about it. "Hey, remember, sawdust on the roof plus an extension cord equals falling to your death. Let's not do that." "Hey, good morning. Remember the doors in the back are locked, so if we get a fire alarm, everybody's got to go out this way." Whatever the news is right there, a little bit of a pep talk, a little bit of a, "Hey, remember when," and Brian, you know that we wrote a hundred "Lessons Learned" for exactly that. "Okay, if you find yourself in a similar situation, you know this is how I got out of it." And guess what? In that one thing that they're going to read if they get on Patreon, there's probably 10 or 12 different instances that you could use for that good on-duty roll call. And they're free, okay? So, if, if you want to use them, use them. Just go out there and make sure that at the beginning of whatever event that you're about to do, whether it's a run, whether it's your workout, whether it's kissing the family goodbye before you go to work, have that little moment of clarity in on-duty roll call where you bring up just something. Can you imagine, Brian, if you got an inch better every day, where you a year, that's the...

That's the priming, that's the cognitive warm-up. I mean, it just thought of the, even in, uh, because you brought the the roofing example, in Japan on construction sites, they have people come in and, and so for the first 15 or 20 minutes, they do these like almost little calisthenic light warm-ups where they're moving their arms and their legs and there, and it's like, "Okay, yeah, that's good for health reasons, but it's like, no, but that's also really good psychologically to say you are now at work on a construction site where there's danger. You have to be prepared physically, mentally, emotionally for what you're going to do." And it's a, it's, it's, it's another analogy we could spend a whole podcast episode on. But, but, you know, that that cognitive warm-up, that priming is exactly, you know, that's how you do it before, before you leave the house, you know, every day. But, um, yeah. And, and when the stakes are higher...

Guess what? Spend a few more minutes.

Yeah, exactly. When it's, when it is something that's going to be, you, you know, there's that heightened chance of something going wrong, then, yeah, that is when you especially take those extra few, few moments. And and that, those alone are what that mitigates so many, so many potential problems, and it's so simple to do. So, um, just want to reiterate that, I guess.

Well, we appreciate everyone for tuning in. Thanks, Greg, for sharing those stories. And, and again, head to the Patreon. You can find the links in the episode details. We've got so much more on there. We've got the new tier that started, and so we've got all kinds of different behavior breakdowns and the Instagram explanation stuff and and different cases and the "Lessons Learned" and even more coming up, and we're just going to keep adding to that. So, um, I think everyone will enjoy it quite a bit. And thank you, everyone, so, so much for tuning in. Please, please share an episode with your friends if you enjoyed it, um, and, you know, leave us a review or rating, that, that helps out a lot. And don't forget that training changes behavior.