L.O.G. 182 Listen and Learn

All right, well, good morning, everyone. Good morning, Greg. Good morning, Austin Soar, our guest today. Thank you so much for coming on, man.

Absolutely, thanks for having me.

So, I want to start off. I know everyone got a little intro – a quick one – of you, but I kind of want to throw to you. Or, first of all, explain how we met you. You were at one of our courses that we do at Liberty University for the Criminal Justice Department. We do one every semester there; we have been for the last couple years. And you were a course attendee. You showed up one day, you were an awesome participant, we loved talking to you. You had sort of this amazing story, and you had a unique—I would say unique—perspective that you've learned throughout your life about human behavior in general. So we kind of gave you some words, and you went through our course.

But one of the things you did—I'll start everyone off with this quick story—is that, since it was in the Criminal Justice Department, there are both students and active law enforcement officers there. And we had two guys that had come from another part of Virginia, I believe, to come to the course. And they were like, sort of these bigger, jacked, kind of SWAT guys, law enforcement, bigger, intimidating guys. And they were sitting at their table. Obviously, they came together, they sat together. And you were in the room. You guys were like the first three in the room.

And then I said, "Hey, we're going to get started a little bit. You guys go ahead and talk." And then you just got up, you walked right over, and plopped right down in front of them. And I'm like, "Oh, this is going to be good," because they were both kind of like that morning, just waking up, getting the coffee. And they're doing the, "Hey, how's it going?" You could tell they instantly put on that professional smile, like not really interested in talking to you, but here you are, let's go. And you just jumped right in.

So I thought it was really interesting. And then when you talked to us more about your past and everything, I totally understood why you did that. But you're, as you call yourself, a professional eavesdropper, starting out—well, not starting out, but one of the things you did in the Air Force—listening to ISIS as a linguist. So, you got a lot of street cred, you got the bona fides. I just wanted to get in there, that sort of personal connection and how we met. So, I'll kind of throw to you just to start, and tell us a little bit about where you sort of came from with all this.

Pretty much, starting out, going into the military, I was anti-social, social anxiety. I was pretty much dying inside all the time. No social relationships. An odd facet of my life is that the vast majority of my family has actually died already, so I only have a few left in the Soar line. So, I basically started at ground zero with a very poor footing in social relationships.

I got to my first duty station in Davis-Monthan, Arizona, and when I got there, I was literally the stereotypical "Secret Squirrel," like sadly, even an anime dweeb at that point. I recognized my life wasn't going to get any better by doing nothing, and so I had to do something. So what I did in Arizona is I literally just went to the mall, walked up to the frailest, kindest-looking grandma I could find, and just started talking to her. From there, I went to the old grandpa with the World War II hat on. From there, I went to the Vietnam vet, down to people my age. Still working on approaching women, but it is what it is.

Yeah, I am—no, that's kind of incredible, because a lot of folks, especially in that sort of skill set, with that background and that world of especially like an Intel analyst or a linguist—I've met so many in my life, and the really good ones are sort of like that, right? They're just almost this hermit in the back room, there 20 hours a day, and you poke in, and they're like, "Yes?" And you're like, "What is wrong with this dude?" But they're really just kind of socially awkward but so good at what they do. And you're just like, "Well, I'm going to let them do their thing because they're really producing here."

But then, you kind of took it upon yourself, which is why I love this story, is to kind of just throw yourself out there and go, "All right, I want to change this part of my life." You have the skills of listening. Typically, people who are more introverted or a little bit socially awkward are actually really, really good at picking up on things in the environment, sometimes because they don't actively participate, they sort of sit back and watch, right? So they're good at listening. So you kind of had that, and then you started to step out.

And it's actually funny how you, in a sense, targeted people, right? You said, "Well, I'm going to pick the most approachable-looking person I can, who's likely I'm going to have success with." And that's the sweet old woman who's always got the smile on her face. And then you said from there, you sort of like, "All right, now I'm going to ramp it up. Now I'm going to increase my level of difficulty."

Then I'm going to run away. (Laughter)

Yes, exactly. So, I just love your approach to how you do that and kind of getting out of your shell, so to speak. So it was an interesting story. And I know Greg, you probably have—

I have nothing to say. This is so interesting with you guys. No, the base that you went to is funny because Brian and I spent a lot of time—Brian Shelley and I—training out there at the airplane graveyard. Their ranges were just open, vast expanses of cactus and Gila monsters. And I remember going into town, the two places were that Greek restaurant—I'm sorry, I don't remember the name—and then Nico's Tacos, which I thought was an amazing respite.

But as far as being thrust into a place that was surrounded by nothing in all directions, and you having no familiarity with the area, how did you choose your targets? Because I want you to kind of parallel that with choosing ISIS targets. You know what I mean? How did you choose—and when I say "targeting," that's basically what you were doing—to pick out softer targets that would allow you to ease into those conversations? Or am I way off?

I've never really made that connection before, but it is to the point. Like, yeah, we did target the easier people and the easier—the softer targets, as you say. Ones that were more recognizably ISIS. Because I know a couple of times, I was like, "This is really hard." Turns out it was actually the Iraqi police.

Well, vulnerability has a wavelength, Austin. And that's the thing you pick up on. Clearly, Brian and I have the benefit of knowing you and seeing you in action. But help our viewers, help our listeners understand how you did that. You know, we're not going to violate any codes of secrecy. I mean, how do you find the appropriate signal-to-noise ratio and zoom in? Because you did it at the mall with the old ladies, you did it with the guy with the World War II hat. How does that work for you?

I know it's not politically correct to say "stereotyping," but that's absolutely what I do. I take the stereotype, I grab the stereotype, I say, "This is someone I can interact with or understand, and I can interact with this person in a way that is deeper and more open simply because there's that rapport." Because I can say, "Like, I've been here, and you're there right now, and so we can go from there."

That's great. In terms of like, seeing that from a visual perspective—again, it literally just goes back to you usually figure out whether you like someone or not in the first five to ten seconds of seeing them from across the room. And so, yeah, first impressions. Walking around, say, "Hey, that person looks interesting," and they're sitting there by themselves.

And you bring up a good point with stereotypes, right? Because everyone's like, "Well, don't stereotype." Well, stereotypes are real, they're scientific, there's plenty of study behind stereotypes. And it doesn't—it's not meant to jam someone or jam a square peg into a round hole or stick someone in a specific bracket. It's just things that you can tell.

Perfect example, I was just telling Greg, I recently sold my 4Runner truck earlier in the year and just bought a Toyota Tundra. That's my fourth Toyota truck. I've had two Tacomas, then a 4Runner, then a Tundra. Dude, I am a walking stereotype for those things. And if you walked up to me and saw it, you would say, "This person likely is engaged in these activities and knows about this," just based on something that I own and that I take care of and that you can witness. Now, you're not going to get everything right, but just like you said, it gets in the ballpark, right? It gets you in the arena, it gets you in the right sport, in the right area. From there, you can then refine your observation.

So, when you talk about those stereotypes, yeah, they exist. There's nothing wrong with it, right? If you're using it incorrectly or using it to your advantage for various purposes or something illegal, then yeah. But the idea is, we fall into those buckets or categories. And I love hearing you talk about it because you're like, even just now, you're like, "I never really made the connection to targeting ISIS and targeting people." It's like, yeah, but it's the same process.

And this is why we keep things so general in how we teach, and you see it. We keep it vanilla because it doesn't matter what you use it for. So now you're using all this stuff for—and this is part of the reason why I wanted to have you on, too—just for social interaction, for getting outside of your shell, for learning about people. Because you conduct little sort of social experiments, I would call them limited objective experiments about information gathering and what you can do. Now, you're doing it because you love doing it and you find it interesting and it's fun. But at the same time, what if you were someone who were up to something no good? You could utilize those same skills against people and to do them great harm, or to co-opt them, or to whatever.

So, we want to keep it to what you talk about, what you do. We don't want to use how we use that information, because the criminals, terrorists, insurgents do the same thing, but the process is almost the same. So I know you've got all kinds of little examples of stuff that you do, and I know our listeners kind of like doing—they do that stuff automatically on their own. Most people listen to this podcast are interested about human behavior, observe human behavior, right, and can put up with me and Greg. So that's a lot, right? To handle three big things right there. (Laughter) I think so.

So, tell us kind of how you do this stuff, and you use this in your daily life, and some examples that you have.

Well, oftentimes, what it looks like is I'll learn some interesting tidbit, maybe from modern psychological research, or maybe I'll be reading a book and have a wild idea out of that. I—when I first learned about proprioception, right, not the awareness of the space around you, like it's the underlying sensation that drives the personal bubble, right? When I first learned about that as a cultural norm, I had this friend who is of Hispanic descent, and I recognize that people with Hispanic descent generally have a smaller personal bubble than us, you know, Americans, with our 20-foot-wide personal bubbles. Like, "Why are you in my space?" Yeah, yeah.

So he and I were invited to essentially a Bible study, and it was our first time there, we didn't know the people, it was our first time in the house. And it was just him and I, we were the only two people who knew each other versus all the other people at the Bible study who knew each other separately. So him and I were talking, and I just thought, maybe I should try this proprioception thing. I took a step back away from him, nonchalant, just like, "Huh, tell me about that." And he took a step forward. And I took a step back, and he took a step forward. And every time that we did that, I sort of shifted over to this side of the room, moved to this hallway, went to the bathroom, ended up in the other person's bedroom for some reason, took him outside, did a round around the backyard, took him back inside, right back to the kitchen where we started. This took about an hour.

That's great. In that hour afterwards, I told him, "Guess what? You just went on a tour of the building, and you had no idea." And he stopped, and he's like, "Wait, what?" He looked around, he's like, "No!" And I literally took him to each room. I was like, "Have you been here?" He's like, "How?"

Yep. What our unconscious mind is constantly doing is it's searching for normalcy and a baseline in every environment, because we need to know immediately, or at least very quickly, if we have to kill or make love to or fight and eat the people that are around us, right? And what you did—we talk about sometimes in class, because each class is different what we're trying to convey, of course—but I narrated a story about talking to somebody in Detroit during an interview, and then talking to somebody in Powderhorn, Colorado. And when you go up to a rancher or a farmer in Colorado, you're talking across the hood of the pickup truck, and that's plenty close. You certainly don't go over and stand virtually toe-to-toe with them, because you'll turn them off and shut them up very quickly.

And so if you master that, we call it "the dance." Because if somebody was watching you with a drone while you were talking to your friend, they would have seen that it's almost like a waltz. You're waltzing around, using your force to project or to push or pull a person proximally. See, that's amazing to me because you find a concept and then you immediately test the concept. And that's what you did in the classroom. Look, it's no secret. It's probably at a hundred thousand now, but I know that I've personally taught tens of thousands of people over the years different skills. And so in those classes that are 30 or 50 or 100 people, there are very few immediate linkages with personalities. But every once in a while, you have one. And that lasts, like, a person could call me out of the blue and go, "Hey, I was in your class in '97, and you did..." And I'll remember that person because of something unique. You were unique to that entire class. And we were spending more time watching you because what you did is you broke down people psychologically and physiologically and sociologically. And that's what we're all about.

And what I mean by that is, you did it so unassumingly, you did it in a manner that wasn't applying pressure like a cop gets in for the interview, you know what I'm saying? Where I put you in reference to the door, how I sit, how I stand, how I phrase the question—that all has something. Well, you did is you plopped down and then you waited, and then you oriented, and then you broke the ice. And it was amazing because the same process seemed to work on everyone, it just took a little longer on some.

Now, I have a policy, and I'd like to see yours. I have a policy: I can tell right away if I'm getting somewhere, and if I don't, I back out immediately and go to another target. So like when Brian and I are doing street interviews, I immediately pick the kind of people—Brian sees me pick those people. I'll go in, and then Brian kind of comes on the periphery so he can videotape it or audiotape it. And so he'll see right away that I'll break contact early if I don't think I'm going to get somewhere with the person. How do you do that? How many questions did it take or how many minutes or what distance before—because I'm sure that you've had times where you had to break contact, and not only with terrorists, ISIS members, but with just the people in the mall that you knew almost intuitively immediately you weren't going to get where you needed to be? How does that work for Austin Soar?

I think there are two interactions that I recall. One happened like instantaneously, and I know exactly why. I have this process that I've sort of adapted from both the mall and college now, where I pull out the chair, I sit down, and then ask, "Do you mind if I sit here?" There are only two answers.

Yeah, exactly.

Right? And in about 98% of the time, I get a yes. I don't know why, but people are just inclined to say yes. The only time I hear a no is, "No, and here's why." "I'm off to a class," or "I have work in an hour," or they explain why they're going to go to the next place. So now I have sort of, even in the rejection, I have a data point to start from.

Exactly.

There's only one instance that I'm aware of where I pulled out the chair and that itself was the turn-off for that individual. The chair squeaked on the floor, and it made a horrendous noise, and it scared them. Being scared was what turned them off.

And then there's the second time that I am recognizing as I sat down with the lady who was probably the shyest, most reserved, most closed individual I've ever met. And no joke, I sat there with this individual playing 20 questions, getting yes or no—that's it, yes or no—to open-ended questions for an hour.

How tedious!

Yeah.

I know, but you stuck in it. You stuck in it for an hour. Why? Because there was something you needed. What did you need? I mean, you don't do it to be grueling, you're not doing it research for a novel. What is it about Austin Soar that says, "This person deserves that hour because I need to crack that veneer and get to that story?"

I just wanted to learn about them, learn about people. The more people you learn about, and the more you know them, the more you can interact with anyone else. One of the ideas I have is that pretty much the only skill you ever need in business is interacting with others, right? Just general social skills. Anything else can be trained. If you don't have social skills, you are untrainable in anything else because you won't have the social skills to get the job in the first place.

So knowing that, though, your social skills early on were—now we don't know why, okay, but just like an engine that's not running efficiently, you figured out that yours wasn't. And you did it at an early enough age that you said, "I need to adopt a different way, or I'm destined to be this way." What about our listeners that want to take that step? What would you tell them? Because there's a lot of people that listen to our show that have good advice already, but there's some that listen in because they need good advice. How do you—how do you build an Austin Soar?

Through being beat down, destroyed, distraught, having everything destroyed in your life, and having everything taken from you. And there's only one way up. For me, I had nothing else to go to. Like, I could not go to anyone else because I had no one else in many respects. And so, from there, it was literally just to pick the easiest target and go. You know, was it the crawl, walk, run?

Yes, that's it. Exactly, exactly. But now that—go ahead, Brian.

I'm just saying, Brian, that you're Austin, you're the epitome of resilience. We know you, and we're trying to get other people to know you because very impressed with you. Your young, smart guy that's been into so many different situations. And by your own admission, you've been beat down, you've been kicked down. All of us share that origin story. I think everybody that's we've ever had on The Human Behavior Podcast, and everybody that watches or listens to our podcast, started that way. You know, we didn't start with the platinum spoon in our mouth. We learned—I learned from the street, Brian learned from the street. We learned from our scar tissue and our mistakes.

But what we want to show—September is Suicide Awareness Month—what we want to show is that, look, there is an avenue outside of cashing in your chips early and just saying, "Effort, this isn't for me." And what you did is exactly that. You looked around and you go, "Okay, I'm circling the drain," (paraphrase, of course) "but I'm looking up, and I'm looking down, and I'm looking up, and I'm saying, 'Well, that's the way out.'" That's such an astute observation for somebody that was as young as you were.

And then going into the military, what a huge challenge. Because people don't understand what it's like going into the military once you're on as a Marine, the yellow boot prints, or once you're getting, you know, jacked in line at a place like Fort Knox or Fort Benning with a DI up in your face. Your whole world changes, and it's never the same. It modifies your DNA. How did they—or did you offer yourself? Like, did the military come and pick you for that MOS, or did you step in and go, "Hey, I think I would be good at this?" How did that transition occur?

So, the origin story of joining the military is, I am a third-generation Air Force. So with a name like Soar, I can't get away from it.

Never thought of that. There you go.

That, or a massage therapist, I guess. I'm just saying professional bodybuilders.

There you go.

But yeah, no, I was—so at 19, my mother died, and I was depressed for about that whole year. And eventually my dad was like, "Well, you know, can't have you just sitting here doing absolutely bumpkis. So join the military or join Walmart. Like, those are your options in this town. That's where the jobs are." So, I joined the family business.

And when I went into the recruiter, took the ASVAB or whatever, and got a pretty high mark. And they were like, "Wow, this is the best we've seen out of our office in a while." They're like, "Here, take this other test." And it's like, "Why am I randomly clicking moving dots on a computer screen? Why am I trying to make up a fake language? This is confusing to me. I don't know what this test is about." It comes back, it's the DLAB, right? Defense Language Aptitude Battery.

Yeah.

Take it. I am one point below necessary for Arabic. So they threw in a waiver, got Arabic. But the recruiter literally bringing back the efficacy and said, "Would you like this one because it's the only one that came up?" So obviously I was lied to.

All right, wait a minute, it's every single person that went into the military went in with one notion of how things were going to go, and recruiters are perfectly skilled and adapted to put you where the need is, right? I mean, so, but you don't look back. I mean, you have to—you have to love the opportunities you were given, because you were eavesdropping long before you were getting paid to do it.

Yeah.

Right? And that's in any language, Brian. One of the things that amazed me is, Austin is that I'm such a visual learner, and I created my entire program about baselines and anomalies from the visual perspective, right? And we talk about sociological and physiological and environmental. But one of the things that Austin does completely different is auditory. Yeah, he's almost all listening.

And that's what I kind of want to get into is, you talk about how you've developed this almost out of necessity. So literally, sort of out of survival, you feel basically like, "I need to survive. I need to develop myself in this way," which also works very well in a number of situations, not just with your role, what you did in the Air Force, but just in general in life.

And so I'm curious, because you are very, very focused on sort of hearing and listening and picking up on things. So one, how did you figure that's the best way into what is it—when you put yourself in a coffee shop, restaurant, wherever location, mall—what is something that immediately sort of piques your interest? What is something that you hear that you go, "Okay, that's a thread I can pull," or, "That's interesting to me." So give us sort of an example if you can think of one.

Well, normally, what I do is I try to pick the same spot. Much like you say, Greg, is establishing a baseline, right? Go to the same place over and over and over. Learn what its peak times are, learn what its general noise is, what it generally sounds like. Like, a shop I normally go to doesn't normally have country music on, but it did yesterday, which means the owner isn't there, that kind of thing you can sort of eventually pick up on. Whereas if the other baristas are there, he tends to go for the classic rock. And since each of them has their own flavor and style, you can tell who is actually the barista on call based on the music as soon as you walk in.

And that's that. If you go to the same place over and over again, you can sort of establish baselines like that. Because if the owner's in, that'll change the dynamic of the room. If it's just a regular employee, that'll change the dynamic of the room. And then from there, I usually pick a spot, a place that's—I try not to be centrally located, but sort of back from the main door. So—

So that I can—

Yes, visually see the room, giving myself the gift of time and distance, as I was once told. But—

Great shout-out, by the way.

Also, from there, being somewhat central but back a little bit gives you the 360 auditory environment. So it's not the exact corner, which I know is great for the visual individuals. But for being auditory, I actually can pick up on the conversations around me. One of the skills I developed, especially as a linguist, was having like six or seven radios pulled at the same time, which other people on the plane sometimes thought I was insane for doing that, but, you know.

Wow.

So I'll literally listen to multiple conversations. What I'm generally listening for is keywords, like topics of interest, things that'll be maybe good information for the future, too. I know I provided notes to you, one of the things I listen for is like, if I see an interesting group where it's like, "Those people seem like my people," I will sit there and listen to them for 10, 15, 20 minutes, however long it takes. I'll be listening for names, I'll be listening for occupations. If there's any social clues I can pick up, which usually there are thousands of those—it's hard to maybe list those off—but verbal tics, things like that, I'll try to pick up on any little interesting note I can.

Names especially, I like, because names almost always invariably relate to the deeper meaning within the person. So, for example, I provided those notes to you, Greg is Gregory from Gregorios, which is Greek for "watchful."

Very Greek and very fat. I love it.

So that's, for example, it literally hits at who you are in many respects. Whereas Brian Marren, Marren is—I think it was Danish for "mariner," "marine," which again, it's at something you are or have been.

That which comes from the water. That's right. Exactly.

So Soar, as far as my etymological understanding goes, is a Germanic representation of Hebrew, right? So Hebrew for "prince."

Okay, well, that's a conversation starter right there.

There you go. Yeah, yeah.

And so I—I love hearing how you do this, in your head, how this works for you. For literally you, for us, this is what Austin does. This is what—I have certain capabilities, like you're more—it's easier for you to listen to multiple conversations because of past experience and because that's what you had to do. When you're listening, you're a linguist, or you're listening in a conversation, all of your attention has to go to your ears to figure out what's going on. So you sort of developed that skill, which you already sort of had, right? So not only did you sort of naturally have it, but you started to develop that through use. And that's your tool, that's your way.

Now, me, I've got horrible hearing, and if there's any sort of low background noise, if I'm not right in front of you and you're not speaking loud, there's a good chance I'm not going to hear what you say, or I'm going to have to string it together based on reading your lips and listening for the context of the conversation. So it's my downside, right? Because I have that—I have hearing issues from repeated loud exposure to it, but which a lot of people have. So it's just kind of interesting how everyone's senses sort of act in a different way, and there's different meaning to different—we attribute value to different observations, whether that's an auditory observation or something you saw with your vision. And that comes from what we do.

And what yours is, is what's always interesting to us is what we saw immediately when we first met you the first day, and you're going around, was what your intent was. Like, because sometimes it can be off-putting if someone comes up to you or they are a little socially awkward, you're going to act a little awkward. Like, I do that too in some certain social situations where I'm like, I don't know what to do with my hands, I'm just going to hold them right here. You know what I mean? Like, where you don't—so that comes across. So then what happens? That can make the other person a little awkward. But we watched you, and it was like, "Hey, man, his intent is pure. Like, you're literally just trying to have a conversation, right? Find out what's going on." There's no nefarious intent behind it. It's—and so I think the reason why you likely have a lot of success in doing this stuff is that you're a gen—you come across as a genuine person. So if you come across as a genuine person, it's easier for that person, even if they can't really put their words to it, they're not really sure, they feel that, right? You get what I'm saying?

No, no, you're spot on it. And I think the important thing to declare early on is you popped hot with us when we first saw you in the library, because we were doing it at the Falwell Library. And you came in, and you circled the landing before you put down the—you know, the wheels, you know, the landing gear.

We're doing all our first references.

Well, I'm trying to—I'm trying to talk his language.

Didn't come down. Exactly.

But then you sat in the very front row of the room. Then when other people got up, you went over and immediately engaged them. You did everything right slash wrong. What we had to figure out is which it was. And then the demonstration of intent, because you did everything that a predator would have done sizing up prey. But there was never the feeling that you were attempting to corral a victim. So then it became interesting to us, "Okay, where on what level of the spectrum is this guy operating?" Because clearly you had your own agenda.

Those are all things that are important to us, what folks that are listening or if you're watching would perfectly describe is sort of the fly on the wall, and then narrowing it down to the specific target. So you're going broad target selection down to specific. And we do that. Brian and I, when we're conducting surveillance operations, we're a thousand meters away. We can't hear a thing. We've got to take a look, and we start compartmentalizing our observations: "Who tends to show us things?" Then we have to move closer, then we have to get evidence. Then, sometimes we're lucky enough to get a shred of hearing something or some innuendo from somewhere else that we put together and go, "Wow, that's probably Redbeard. That's the guy we're talking about."

But you had the benefit of approaching it from the completely other end of it, where you got to hear everything, and now you had to invent those characters. So, so flying on the wall is wonderful because you catch people unaware that they're being sampled. And then you conduct not a random sample, because you weren't randomly fishing. What you were doing is you were scooping a little bit, and you were taste testing it, with your ears, right, to determine, "Okay, higher likelihood this batch is going to produce." I think that's amazing. You're speaking my language—and pun intended, both—because it's not how I do things, but it works perfectly. And that's why when Brian and I talked about this, and you reconnected after the class, we were like, "We've got to get them on the show!" Why? Because our program is right more than it's wrong, but it's not the only program out there. All you did is modify your system to include auditory baselines and then fill in visual acuity where you can, but it wasn't necessary for you to draw reasonable conclusions. Now you've modified it so you can do it in public, but you're much closer in than we have to be to make our assumptions. But you're almost like the other half of the same coin. Do you get where I'm going, Austin? You're like mining in the same minefield or in the same oil field that we are, but you're using a vastly different approach. Help me reconcile that. Help me, what did you—how did you feel after meeting Brian and I in the class? Or had you attended a bunch of classes that had that similar "aha" moment?

So I was actually part of the Resiliency Program in the Air Force. And as part of that, actually teaching it, it sort of gave me an opportunity to sort of round the room and interact with people as almost an instructor. And so, the—I guess the having the opposite side of the coin, being more auditory and more social with my interactions as opposed to say, needing to get a target or getting a piece of information out of someone to make a prosecution or something like that, is the end goal was to get close to the person. And most people want to be close. It's a—we're herd animals in many respects, right? We need each other, we cannot survive alone. And so, I guess just driving into that, that fundamental need of social engagement and social relationship, it really just—most people just open up.

And strangely enough, it is just opening up. Like, there are some YouTube videos, for example, where a guy walks up, asks questions like, "Hey, where's the local coffee shop?" And the people go, "Yeah, okay, it's right over there." But as they're answering the question, the guy randomly hands them an apple, right? So here's this person answering a question, having no idea there's an apple in their hands. He walks away, and they look down, it's like, "Apple? What? Where'd this come from?" But it's because there is that fundamental need to relate, and people are so, so, so, so willing to open up and trust others just because of that need to relate.

And so, in many respects, I feel like the relationship aspect of social behavior is pretty much the driving force behind most of people's actions. It's either the need to be respected, the need to be desired, the need to be loved. And so they will act in that response, right? Even the desire for like, money or wealth, is generally related to respect or just having the social resources, right? Why do people who are wealthy generally go for huge parties? They want to be loved, and it's worth more to them than the money.

And what you're talking about is, those relationships, those social behaviors—those are sociological imperatives that have kept—that's the reason why the human race is alive today. If we didn't have those, we would have died off a long time ago, right? And so, and it goes back to what we always say, like, most people are honest, most people are good, most people want to do good. If it were the other way around, we'd be dead. The human race wouldn't survive, right? It'd only take a couple generations, and then everyone would kill each other, right?

So I—and I love how you kind of hit up on these deep-rooted things and then you tie it back to—you even said at the beginning like, "Success in business or your career or your life." And you even alluded to it like, "Yeah, I started here, then I started talking to this, still working on talking to women." You know, and it's funny because you're tying that to like, you can tell like, "Look, I want to meet a girl, I want to do this, I want to have maybe a relationship and get married and have kids." Like, those are the different biological and imperatives that have kept the human race alive.

And so you're kind of going through this, figuring out how to do it in all of these different domains, which is why we love talking to you as well. Because it's like, yeah, "I've got the combat experience, Air Force training, ISIS hunting, this Intel stuff, but like, hey, I do it at the coffee shop to maybe make a friend, or say hello to someone, or I'd like to meet someone, or, you know, hey, I've got this professor I'm trying to get on my side because I'm struggling in his class." Or something. That's the idea behind it is you're sticking to this universal bandwidth, right? And that universal bandwidth can be used for whatever situation. And it can be used in terms of good, which is what you're doing, or it can be used in terms of bad. Is part of the reason why I want to have you on, just to show how easy it is to sort of co-opt someone into going along with what you want. I mean, it's—we always hear different crimes that happen or different situations, and we're going like, "How did they even get themselves into that situation?" It's like, "You would have too, if you were there, given the set of circumstances and these unconscious biases and unconscious reasons why you act a certain way in social settings," right? That's why it happens. That's why we go along, that's the crowd behavior.

I always say it when we talk about that stuff is that most people one-on-one can be reasoned with. Even unreasonable people, even people with different mental health issues or different drug problems or something, at an individual level, you can really kind of talk someone off a ledge, you can relate to someone. But the larger that group gets, it's like the dumber we get as humans, right? So if I've got a few friends with me, now I'm going to kind of be more into that pack mentality. Now you increase that number, now there's a hundred, now there's a thousand. Now I'm at a football stadium with 75,000 people and we're rioting, tearing down the fences, and you're doing—"Well, that escalated quickly." It's like, yeah, you just went along. You just completely immersed yourself and assumed this role of the of this group, and you almost gave up your own individual agency in a sense. And that's normal, that can happen. So I love how you're doing this in all these sort of different domains.

And one of the things you did—I want to hit on specifically—is because all these little things I like picking apart about what piques your interest, right? And one you said is like, "Listen for the future." Like you're listening to a conversation or you're in a setting, you're saying, "Listen for the future." What do you mean by that?

So, the example I had is that one time I was at actually a different coffee shop, which has since closed down unfortunately. It was my favorite hangout until it closed. But I was at this coffee shop, and there was a barista. So my dad was in town at the time, he actually thought she was cute for me, which is, you know, it's nice, not embarrassing at all. But yeah.

But he wanted me to go basically interact with her, hoping to see what happens. So I go up and ask, "Name?" You know, "What do you do? You're in college, obviously, in a college town. What do you do?" Right? And so from there, I got the name, age, what school she's at, what degree program, what she hopes to do for the future, right? And also, after that conversation, I sat down with my coffee, and the person behind me in line starts talking to her. It's obviously a friend. So I'm sitting there listening, and what did they start talking about except the future? And what they end up talking about is an upcoming family gathering. And of course, I listen for key data, right? Location, time, place, who all is going to be there. Like her uncle who's a security attaché at the Pentagon.

Wow. Because I know that from her social media, which I have surreptitiously started looking at in the background. Sorry, Intel field, Secret Squirrel. But it's heavy on the stalker. You get what I'm trying to say. But people don't understand that you're not going to do that to forge your credit card or to get her in a compromising situation. The idea is that you are such a smart, wholesome kid that loves the 360 of the situation. You need to know those things, and that's what makes you so perfect in that.

So to use that, which is great, Brian, that's a great question, by the way. Austin, what do people accidentally divulge waiting for an elevator or on an elevator or in a line to buy their Starbucks that you could pick up on that you might be able to turn against them, that we don't think we're kicking out? Is that an angle that you might be able to talk about?

One time, I was sitting in—I think it was—I don't know if you know the Church's Chicken in Tucson, Arizona, but—

I appreciate it. I know me some Church's Chicken, my friend. I've been there at 2 AM one morning. Tucson's a great town. Shout-out to everyone for listening!

Exactly. I love that city. So anyway, and I was sitting there, I think it was like a young adult group kind of thing, and there was a guy—I'd only—I'd never seen him before, he was brand new to the group. And so, I sat down at a table, and I tried to do the first—be the first one at a table so that others join me. Again, another psychological trick, just be like, "Ah, I chose him," not the other way around.

And so the next person sits down is this individual I've never met before. He doesn't really say anything, he doesn't even say "Hi" as far as I recall. Two other people sit down, they're yakking it up, who cares, they're talking about cheeseburgers or whatever. I don't—I don't—boring. The one that's not talking is a more interesting one. And so as he's sitting there not talking, the other two get up, and I say, "Hi." And it's like literally as simple as "Hi." Within five minutes of that conversation starting, "Hi, how are you? Are you from? What are you doing? What do you do for work?" "How are you?" "I've been having a rough time, actually," right? So he opens up just a little bit, and just something like that, and it's like, "Okay, finally, someone who didn't answer, 'I'm fine.'" Right?

And within that five minutes, I had him open up about how he was feeling suicidal at the time, how he was going through a really rough patch, and how—I think it was related to a certain shameful act that he felt a lot of shame about. And so I will obviously divulge, but the fact that he opened up instantaneously like that was something I had to train for a couple of years to get, which is an openness of myself, right? I have literally shared my deepest, darkest secrets in front of a crowd of a hundred people, right? Literally with the Grand Canyon as my backdrop, a hundred strangers in front of me, open up and be like, "Hey, this is the most shameful thing I've ever done."

Yeah, and you know, the only downside of that, Austin, was none of those people were there to hear you.

Yeah, they were just on their vacation, right? So that was very awful. Exact—

At the same time it would have been nice if you had pants on, Austin.

No, they actually—they actually were, because it was one of those like religious retreats kind of thing. Yeah, exactly.

No, listen, what you're talking about is you're reconciling, you're fixing you, so you can go and be a receiver to others. That's such an essential part. Look, every situation that happens is human-to-human. Everybody that thinks tech is going to solve something or computers, or "I have this ability to do that," it's going to come down to human-to-human conversation or lack thereof. As a matter of fact, lack thereof or failure to orient towards something is one of the things that Brian and I pick up on most quickly, because that means that you're mission-focused and therefore have a different agenda.

So you're doing the self-same thing, but you're doing it by saying, "Hey, listen, this is me, this is who I am. Where are you at right now?" The worst thing—when I have two friends that call me and they go, "What are you doing?" Every time I answer the phone, I hate that, and I tell them right away, "I hate that. That's not how you start a conversation." How do you start a conversation? "Hey, what's on your heart?" "What do you mean, 'What's on my heart?'" Yeah, "You know what's on my heart today?" And then all of a sudden you're talking. And you know what, it's a hostage negotiator—you certainly have to talk, you got to get people talking because the more they're talking, the less they're shooting and killing, right?

So, so I applaud you for doing that. You know, we're making fun of it because we know you and we love you, but how did that help you? When was the first time you had the epiphany that you had to be that open, that you couldn't be a good receiver if you weren't that open with potential people that you're going to meet? That's a good question.

Yeah, it's a hard question. He didn't know he was going to be grilled. He thought it was going to be awesome.

Remember when that happened?

It was somewhere between Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and How to Screw Friends and Manipulate People. I actually really don't like that book.

Oh, there you go. That's fine. It's good and evil. You had Harry Potter's wand, what are you going to do with it? If you had it for an hour, what would you do with it? And if you had nefarious intent, then you got to back up. And that's a shameful act. You were just talking about that a minute ago. If that's in your closet, you have to fix you before you go out and start to try to fix others, right? I mean, that's a great—what a great analogy. And folks, if you know Austin, he read both books.

Yeah, yeah. Well, I've read quite a few others. Exactly, of course. No, and that's what we were kind of talking about earlier is like, I love how you'll read that and then you'll kind of go test it out. Like, "Well, how can I use this right now?" Because it's the whole point of any of those things. Like, most of them people read and they just post quotes on LinkedIn or something about it, or like, "Yeah, this is what everything—" They think it's like some—they read one book about something, "This is the answer to everything." It's like, no, it's an answer and an explanation, and can you use it? That's the most important thing.

But I'm curious too, do you think—and I guess, thinking about different interactions and good or bad with people, or just general everyday stuff—do you think the way you approach things or the way you look at things does it help you kind of determine levels or any deception from someone? And deception, I mean, in the most broad, general sense, right? Like all humans lie about things every day. It doesn't necessarily mean it's something serious. It's even—you just said, "Hey, how you doing?" "Oh, I'm fine, man, how are you doing?" It's like, sometimes that person's not fine. But can—does it help you kind of—do you think it helps detect that deception?

I think I am less of a lie detector because I never really needed that for my particular skill set. But in terms of like, reading people, there was a time I sat down with a lady, and she was like, "Oh, it's just such a dreary day. I feel so sad because it's raining." I was like, "You are an empath." And she was like, "How did you know?" So yeah, yeah. But then—so sometimes the answer is that obvious. I love it, right? Actually, a lot of times it is. And when it comes to things like, "How are you?" "I'm fine." Yeah, you're a liar, I got it. I know it's just—it's not "I'm fine," it's literally, "I don't want to talk about it." Right? Like, there's never a time that you're fine. I've never met a person who is fine.

That's it. That's it, yeah. And those conversation enders are for the people that are more mission-focused where they—we were doing a series of experiments, and I said, "If you walk through briskly, and when you see somebody, you say 'zigzag,' they'll say 'zigzag' right back to you instead of 'Good morning.'" And we were coming up with the wildest terms and going around doing it, and everybody answered whatever you said. "Stomachache." And they would "stomachache" to you, buddy. And then we would joke and stuff. And why is that? Because people are prompted for social interaction, right? And all you have to do is manipulate it a little bit. And we have fun with those things. That's why we do those experiments.

If you have—I think the gating mechanism is if you have an ulterior motive, and you want to use that intimacy or social intercourse or line of questioning to gain an advantage, I think that's when it becomes a moral, specifically, and sometimes illegal. So, so the difference is what you do, you do because you're a wonderful human. You want to understand other humans, and you want to interact, you want to—you want to have a friend everywhere that you go. And I really feel that same way. Not so much Brian the angry gnome, but he's getting a soul. I think you ordered it on Amazon.

Yeah, exactly. Like the—what is it? A character that has to sew his shadow back on? But the idea is that I can spot a me in a crowd and know whether they're good and evil much more quickly than anybody else. Do you find that you have that as well, where you can take a look and see when a person's being genuine and when a person's being disingenuous? Because to me, that's better. I think that's a more pointed, a more laser-focused question than lie detection, because everybody lies, and there's so many ridiculous standards that people hold to, and there's no way to prove any of that that's out there. Pardon my language, but what about genuineness, Austin? How do you feel that? Because that—we're back to emotion and human interaction again, right?

So when I was my first time being a supervisor in the Air Force, I told my airmen, the Air Force slang or motto is "Integrity First." Well, we're linguists, what do we do? We look up words. What is integrity? Well, it comes from integer, meaning one whole cohesive unit. Oneness, unity. We are a unit, and if we are not one, we do not have integrity. We have to work together. We do have to be whole, which means that you yourself have to be whole, because if you are not whole, if you are not wholesome, if you are not cohesive within yourself, you're going to crumble and fall, and everyone else is going to fall with you. Right? Which is probably an unlikely thing for most people to hear from a first-line supervisor who's never had a supervisee before. Right?

Right. No, but that—that demonstrates again the level—for example, side note: Brian's kind of a whole. But look, what that just shows is how deep you are when you go into something. For example, you know, integer. Okay, who would go there? You go there. You like to hear the piano playing while you're reading the menu and smell the steak Diane cooking at the next table, and getting the full effect of life. I think that's so key to our listeners and our viewers. Yeah, that's what Brian and I do. This isn't grueling, we love it. We love going to new places, we love the new rental desk person and the new car and the new hotel person because it's a rich tapestry, life, and we're filling in those new threads everywhere you go. You're that guy, right? I mean, you're a generally happy person that hopefully this podcast will get a date for you, because you don't want to—you don't want to go to where Brian gets his dates. No.

No, no, we should—no one ever should have to go. That's a deep place.

You can feel that, right? I mean, you're looking forward to every new encounter.

Yeah, am I reading that right?

I'm looking forward to a longer life than most. I've already had the hit bottom, you know, Suicide Awareness Month. So I've been through that, right? My weapon of choice was a red Z06, so thankfully I didn't ruin that beautiful car. But yeah, in the end, here I am, and I look forward, as you say, to the rest of life.

And I guess part of the fact that I do look for so much more—originally you were asking about lies and deception. I found that deception and lies are usually the most commonly repeated thing, the thing you hear the most, and probably the things you most believe. So it's not so much that people lie as it is they truly honestly believe things that are untrue. That's what I've genuinely discovered. And so I try to expose and find those those understandings that aren't necessarily true. And obviously, I can go into that in future podcasts or whatever.

Oh, yeah, we need to, because the idea is the disappointment that's associated with that. Brian and I get that every day as well. See, that's the hard part is people think that we're just always on and happy in this—listen, because we're motors, we feel both spectrums. So we feel from one extreme to the other. And that extreme sadness, I'm glad that you were able to talk about the manner of death and talk about your future. And the same thing, the difference would be that if you were talking about a manner of death and associating with how you felt and how disappointed you were and you didn't have it tomorrow, then we would need to talk. You get what I'm trying to say?

And Austin, I know you, I'm preaching to the choir here, but folks, if you're dealing with a sister or a brother or a kid that doesn't understand those, it's okay to get knocked down and get back up. We do that every time we go somewhere. It's hard for us to get a—you know how hard it is to walk into a room and say, "Hey, we're here to teach you a new thing," and everybody in the room is a skeptic. So it's not all easy and fun and happy, right, Brian? I mean—

Yeah, and what—what your kind of story, two highlights, Austin, for me is what I try to tell people is like, everyone you meet, every interaction, there's so much more to everything in life than we ever realize. I mean, you just brought up some great examples, but you're talking about the etymology of words, where they come from, this meaning. All that stuff has so much meaning behind it, and we all take it for granted or we don't know. That could be certain measurements and lengths and why something's cut a certain way is because it has a meaning and this is the purpose for it. And when you find that stuff out, it's like you feel like you're kind of getting behind the velvet rope, and you're going like, "Wow, there's an order to things that I had no idea!" That's why always my biggest thing is everyone's like, "Well, yeah, you study human behavior." I'm like, "Well, technically, it all comes down to math." Maybe I'll get to that level, when I'm like Greg's age or older, you know what I'm saying? Like, I'll understand it at that level.

But everything can be sort of boiled down to this. And the other thing is, every person has some story or thing or unique experience, right? So not everyone does something maybe great or has a ton of value, but everyone's got some story of some odd thing or unique thing about them or something that happened to them that like, you can learn so much from. And that's why I always keep that sort of open mind with people or talking to them or going, "What's going on behind you? There's something else, there's another story happening here." And when you can pick up on that, things—it just gives you a better understanding of where things are at in that situation that you're in, which means you can predict where they're likely going. And that's why we always tie everything back to danger or opportunity, because they can look the same. You know what I mean?

So the same thing you're doing because you want to get better in social situations is the same thing a predator does to find the right prey. Now, what's the difference? Well, the difference is intent. And that's what it comes down to, right? The intent is what matters. I don't care about your beliefs, your background, your skin color, your political, religious, social, or cultural identity, right? I don't care about what your ideology is, I care about your intent. And so you have such a great story that highlights all of these different areas, which is why I wanted to have you come on and talk about it. And, you know, maybe we could get into depth on some of them in a future episode. I just—I really appreciate you sharing this stuff because it's just, seeing that like, seeing a progression in a human is so cool to see. And especially when they're their own catalyst, when you made the decision because one, it's always going to be more powerful, more effective, right? And longer lasting versus me telling you what to do. So me saying, "Hey, you got to do this with your life, and you got to do that." That's great, maybe it'll help you a little bit, or maybe you'll realize it, but until you are the one that says, "Ah, I want to get better at this," and then start building towards it. I mean, I—I love it.

I think you're spot on it, and Austin, one of the things that invigorates me every time we talk is that you're in it for the long haul. And when you said give the time and distance—look, most people want their say, not their way. The idea is if you let them, they'll tell you their story. But the problem is we build in the speed bumps. We're the ones going, "Yeah, come on, come on." I tell cops that all the time, "What's your hurry? You've got the time, slow down for a minute and find out what's going on here." But the idea is that we create our own agenda and we think we're going to invest just as much, and then we're going to come—and we talked about that a little bit because listen, if I'm going to find out about an unfolding situation, it's rapidly unfolding and there may be an ambush coming up, I've got to work a little more quickly. But almost nothing in the normal human's life has to be resolved that quickly. So with you being smart enough to say, "Hey, I'm going to step back and smell and feel and taste and touch and learn more," that's great. If we get one listener today, one viewer that adopts what you've adopted in your life, we could have saved a life, and that's amazing. You're a resilience teacher, an instructor, it doesn't matter what any certificate says, just by virtue of how you grasp and embrace and chase life. So Brian, I feel that that's a huge plus. And to you, Austin, we want to see when we're back in Liberty, of course, but also we'd like to dissect you a little more on a future pod. All right. And I hear you're going to be back here pretty soon, so—

Yeah, pretty soon. And remember, I wear five X, if you're going to buy me something. This will actually probably—this will release the week we're there next week, so—

So, hey Brian, real quick though, I mean, because we're never on a time hack either, Austin, what led you to come to the first class? I just got to know. And were your expectations met or not? I mean, very briefly, because we want to give you the last word as well, but that interests me, too.

I saw the flyer. I forget where it was posted, I think it was literally just a flyer on one of the bulletin boards at Liberty. And being in more of the Intel space, it obviously piqued my interest because everything else on the board was boring. So, I guess honestly it's just curiosity. And I thank you to Liberty for paying the way for that one. So, but I don't know that that's necessarily the case for the rest of your viewers here. I was lucky in that case. So.

Right. Were you glad you went after you went? Because there's still some people that are wondering, "Yeah, three days, that's a long investment."

I wish it had been more like three weeks, but yeah.

Appreciate that. That's great.

Yeah, that's great. Any kind of, you know, I'll give you sort of any last imparting words from your unique life experience and anything that—I'll just let you say or have the last words here on The Human Behavior Podcast.

I don't know if I told you during that week last year, but literally during the class, as I was like one of the days where I was driving to the class—it was like probably the second or third day, you'd already talked for one or two days, I think, it's hard to remember a year ago. But I was driving along, and so there are two roads side by side, both are turn lanes to the left. And I look over to the right, and I observe—pay attention—there's a car, it is dirty as heck, it's like a Subaru or something like that. There's a stick family. Normally I would recommend ripping all of those off, right? This particular individual had only ripped one off, very intentionally, because it was the only clean spot on the car. It was where the male of the stick family would have been. And I'm like, "That is a clean spot on the car, and that's the woman driving. She is not going to be in a good state of mind." Green light goes. I keep on the brake. She swerves all the way into my lane, swerves all the way back off into her lane. And I'm sitting there like, "Wow, just paying attention just saved me a car."

That's it. That's like—what a great, perfect story. I mean that—that nails exactly what we're talking about and how to use that information and drawing likely and reasonable conclusions based off of it. I mean, there's some—we could go—we could do an entire—that's an episode, that's an hour and a half segment in class, Greg. I mean, honestly, just on that. I—I love hearing that. So that's—that's so cool that you picked up on that. So—

And we want to—we want at least an honorable mention in the first book that you write, because you've got great things ahead of you.

Yeah, I tell you what. I—I'd be in line to buy that book. Austin, you've got so much to share.

Yeah, we've talked about three of them.

It'll be like an asterisk, Greg, and then like tiny, tiny, tiny print at the bottom. It'll be something like that. But that—that works for us. Me too.

Well, thanks, man. We really appreciate you having on—for coming on, sharing your story. I'll—I'll, you know, I'm excited to get this one out there and see what people say. And then hopefully, maybe sometime in the future, we'll have you back on and jump into something in detail. But we appreciate it, man, and we appreciate everyone listening. Thank you so much. You can always find more at the Patreon site. Please, if you enjoyed the episode, share it with your friends, get the word out there. Follow us on social media, and don't forget that training changes behavior.