L.O.G. 235 Novelty vs Normalcy

Brian Marren, Greg Williams

Alright, well, good morning, Greg, and hello to everyone listening today. We do appreciate all of our listeners out there. We've got a lot of stuff lined up for you next year that we're super excited about, but we're still in this year, in 2023, so we'll stick with what we've got for now. And we thank everyone for reaching out. It's been a great year for the podcast, and so I just want to right up front say thank you to all of you who are listening right now because I often forget to do that during the episode.

So, now, I guess then to start today's episode, Greg, which I should preface by, Micha (Brian's wife) had a horrible flu the last couple days, and then Max (Brian's son) wasn't doing well. So, I was up with the baby several times to feed him, which is not, you know, him really. He's been sleeping through the night, which is why we're starting early again today. So, just so you know, you're going to be carrying the show today because I've got one piston firing.

That's great! Folks, what Brian's saying is this is going to be a mega episode.

No, it's just, you know, if you could lower your expectations of me, which I don't know if that's possible to lower, by the way, but that would be it.

So, for today's episode, you know, we're talking about normalcy versus novelty, right? Just to kind of give everyone a brief overview of what I mean by this is, you know, we talk a lot about reading things in your environment, to include the behavior, but include everything that's going on, right? And, you know, what everyone wants is always that list of things to go look out for, right? "Alright, how do we find the school shooter? Give me the things I need to look for. How do I find the person stealing from my business? Who's the person on the street that's going to stab me or rob me, or who's that...?" It's always that, "How do I get that pure signal?"

Everyone looks at what to look for, where obviously our approach is, "Here's how to look for things in your environment." Now, when it gets into this, the biggest thing is always, "How do I tell the difference between the person who's just, you know, an odd fellow, someone who is just being a human being or quirky person, to the person who's going to do something illegal or do me harm or attack me, whatever the situation is?" Like, that's always the difficult part, right? That's the complex part, that's the part that's hard, but that's what we sort of specialize in.

So, I kind of threw it to you to talk about what's normal versus what's novel in our environment. Meaning, what normal encompasses a lot when it comes to human behavior. We've got a big, wide sort of breadth, left and right, lateral limit for what is considered normal. Meaning, something might be kind of out of place or maybe inappropriate in a context, but it's still sort of normal behavior in a sense of what a person's doing. And we mean that in a clinical sense. So, just normal, meaning, okay, like you're not on some sort of drugs, or you don't have some sort of, you know, mental health issue or something where there's some cognitive impairment. Like, just normal in the broadest sense of normal. And that's always defined within a context, within a baseline for what the environment is, and that's where our comparison is. So, from that, I want to throw to you.

But honestly, Brian, look what you just thumbnailed. The essence of human behavior profiling is normalcy for the environment, which means if I'm baselining a human, it's your normal, not my normal. If I continue to measure you against societal norms, then I could fall short when I come up to detecting anomalies. So, what I have to know is, I have to know more about you. I have to know more about Brian Marren and Max and Micha. Okay, you used all those names and attributed them. So now, on the yellow pad, I have columns, because if I go with the human normal, well, you're not Chinese, and there's a lot of them. So, where's the percentage of that? And what you ate this morning for breakfast compared to Paraguay and Argentina's economy is low. No, that's not the way this goes. This is Tower of Babel speak.

What I'm talking about is, rewind that a little bit to where you said, "Folks, listen to what Brian is saying." He's saying that we have to create a baseline, and then the fidelity-filled baseline is what we use for comparison. But it can't be for all humans; that's where we go wrong. And so, when we look at somebody that has purple and blue hair and they walk by, we immediately make a value judgment because we don't have purple and blue hair. Not that it's the first person with purple and blue hair we saw today. The next thing is, we start going through a litany, Brian, a litany of different possible causes because it's different from our reality.

"Well, you know, I saw one person one time that did that because they were a cancer survivor." "Well, I saw that with breast cancer survivors, and everybody got their head shaved, and then they got it purple when it came back." "Maybe that is, you know, Johnny Rotten channeling Neil Young this morning." But, there's some sort of punk attributable. Listen, those aren't the people that you're looking for.

No, no, no, real quick on that, and you know, that's how you kind of can fall into that what you're talking about, sort of that fundamental attribution error where you see this, it means one thing to you, but it can mean something completely different to that person. So, you're already misrepresenting them, you're already categorizing them incorrectly, and you're not taking it within sort of the contextual baseline for what you're at.

You also already kind of started talking about, like, there's a time element in all this. So, you know, when we do this, and even I think it's good, important, because we do some of it on our social media, but like when we're talking about something, it's almost like, "Alright, stop. Let's discuss what we can prove and show right now." Now, in real life, it keeps happening, it keeps going, right? You can't pause, or you can't stop the rotation of the Earth, but, meaning, it's a snapshot in time with some of this, and so time is an important element because that will either confirm or deny, it will, you know, add to my hypothesis. So, there's, I just want to add those.

But the gift of time and distance is relative. So, all time is relative. That's why I don't wear a watch, that's why I've never worn a watch, because time is different on Pluto than it is on Mars.

I've got a clock on my cell phone, so I don't...

There you go, exactly. We don't need that. So, but the idea there is that, yes, I get it temporally, but temporally to you or to the situation, that changes everything. So, we see that person with the purple hair, okay, and we immediately say, "There is an anomaly." Well, it's not an anomaly unless we know that person, and we've categorized them, and in prior lunches over seven years, they said, "Well, I'll tell you what I'll never do: I'm never cutting my hair, and I'm certainly never going to go purple." Right. Now, all of a sudden, they're late for work, their car is parked on a different street, they come in wearing a white beater T-shirt, and there's purple hair. Well, now, Houston, we have a problem. We have an anomaly that we have to inspect from the perspective of that person in their environment, not me and mine. Because if I keep going, if my default is always my personal profile on my computer, I'm going to miss out a lot of potential opportunities before I ever consider them, and that's wrong.

Heuristic template matching is a very good thing, but I've got to consider the prototypes too. What am I saying? I'm saying that external arousal is what allows a human to attend to a situation. What does that mean? That's exactly what you were talking about: normal versus novelty. I'm now orienting on this because it's novel to who? It's novel to me today, at this time, in this environment. Okay? So, if I categorize that, and this is what, look, cops, cops, if you're a cop and you're listening to this podcast, stop Police One sending me all these videos of cops getting shot where they're responding to a call with a man with a gun, and they pull up, and they get out, and certainly the man does have a gun, and they go, "Oh [expletive]!" on the video, and then they shoot it out, and many times the cop lives and the suspect dies, but an equal number of times it seems that the cop is shot or injured, and sometimes the cop is killed outright.

What am I talking about? Your brain understands that the dispatcher and some witness have already said, "Look, there's likely a gun at the scene." Yet we still think the red and blues and the siren mean we have to get there first. Well, you have to get there first, and the first rule of life is to protect your own. So, protecting your own isn't throwing the other guy a gun and going, "Let's go! Let's draw! Let's battle it out!" So, when you show up, and you're not giving yourself the gift of time and distance in this novel environment, now, what do I mean by that? You've trained on the range. You've flipped the tires. You climbed the rope at gym class. Now, all of a sudden, here it is, here's that situation, but it's not on the range, Brian, and it's not with simunition (a type of non-lethal training ammunition), and it's not with my duty gun or duty holster. And you're going, "Well, you know, that level of realism..." No. Cognitive realism means that you have a file folder for certain events going on in a certain order. Now, the order has changed, and the context has changed a little bit, and your distance in the day, and the burrito you ate for breakfast, and guess what? That's novelty.

So, now you're starting, not a tabula rasa, you're starting on a timeline at your training. Yeah, we default to training, but the psychological just walked in, and the psychological is going, "[Expletive], that's a gun!" And all of a sudden, in all the other trainings, you knew the guy that was holding the gun because it was one of the people at your unit, or you knew the guy that was holding the gun because it was the trainer from this agency that came in with the red gun. Do you see what I'm saying? Now it's somebody you don't know, Brian, and they mean business, or they certainly look like they mean business. So, each time something like that happens, the calculus changes. So, you still work through the math problem the same way, you get what I'm trying to say, but the outcomes may be drastically different.

So, normalcy means, "This falls into buckets of normalcy." I walked out, and there was gravity today. Normal. I had to open a door to get out of the house. Not all doors and windows were open. Normal. I had to walk downstairs to get to my truck, and my truck was actually parked where I left it last night. You see, those are all normal things. Even if my truck had moved, even if my chair had moved, even if the back door was open when I got up, I'm in a normal baseline. But those become that novelty, that nuance, that now my brain has to categorize and play with. Now, what causes that false start? We're not anticipating it. But in those situations where they already say, "Hey, this guy's likely got a gun, and he's threatening other people," and you come screeching up and run to the scene, what do you expect? Now, what you did is you turned it into a gambling problem. "I'm rolling the dice, and there's a number of outcomes, one of which is I'm going to get shot or have to shoot." Come on.

And so, to kind of, you know, and I think a lot of what contributes to sort of these errors in judgment, failures in sense-making, kind of thing, I mean, you're talking about one with the police example, sort of those are extreme situations because you're at the limits of cognitive performance. It's, you're at the absolute highest level of complexity, you know, within, and on top of that, you're stretching the limits of cognitive performance. So, you're, you're, that's, that's a very volatile situation.

But even what's contributed to sort of, I think, this misunderstanding with a lot of things that people don't get some of the times, it's like we put too much meaning in these observations that we find novel that aren't. So, it's the kid with the nose ring and the hair and this, and everyone wants it, "Well, it could mean..." We're trying to equally weight that with real significant observation. It's like, that, that doesn't necessarily mean anything. That's how that human expresses themself in a certain way. Like, it doesn't, it doesn't define, which is, and what I'm, the point I'm getting at is like, you have, just, if you just go on someone's behavior, that will make more sense. Because if that person walks up and starts, you know, complaining about their fries being too cold and yelling at the poor person that has to deal with this individual, like, you know, getting paid minimum wage, like, they're an [expletive]. But if they go up and they're polite to people and they ask, "Okay, they're, they're, they're nice," like, I don't give an F what they're wearing, right? Doesn't exactly mean, but these, and I'm using that as an example because it's simple, it's observable, we've all seen it. But then when it comes to the situation you're talking about, that's when it affects you, right? Meaning, it gets in the way of our judgment of things, and, and, and we can't do that. And that's, and so we think things are more novel than they are. So, we have to create, which is why we have these big buckets, right? Because you said, exactly right, the bucket has to be big, and it has soft edges.

It has to have soft edges. Why? Because let's put, let's change context. So, you see homeless people, and immediately it affects you. It doesn't affect them, and it doesn't affect their environment as much as it affects you. What do I mean by that? Have we ever met homeless people, you and I, when we were on the road, that were very articulate and intelligent, and just the situation put them there? Yep. Have we met the raving lunatic [expletive] in your hand and throw it at the passing car? Yeah.

Now, if you go by just one bucket for homeless, which do you choose? Well, you can't, because there's novelty, there's nuance, there's external arousal. The reason we call it arousal is because it changes our chemistry, because if it was nominal or normal, Brian, it wouldn't. And that's how we save calories, because when we go through our environment, our eyes are scanning. Our ears are listening to our environment. Our nose is smelling our environment. And it's close enough, Brian, our brain says, "Okay, everything's wavy gravy, keep going." If there's a difference there, it's got to be significant to arouse us, to orient to it. So, we get fooled because we see the nose ring, and Brian, you got a great comment on nose rings. Would you mind adding it here so I can go off?

It was a meme I saw. It was the, "Does it hurt?" There was the septum one, the one in the middle, and it said, "Does it hurt to get, you know, a nose ring?" It says, "It only hurts the people that love you."

Exactly. So, think about that. You know, and I feel the same way about tattoos. When I was growing up, and let me get to that tattoo by going outside and coming back in. So, have you ever seen an episode of The Andy Griffith Show?

Yes.

Next time that you watch Andy Griffith, alert yourself to paying attention to Andy and how he wears his pant leg outside of his boot because that's a sign from where he grew up. And my dad had the same sign, and he used to... my dad grew up with a guy from Hee Haw (the American country variety show), and they went to school together, and they were both Tennessee Volunteers. And this famous actor that nobody ever heard of by my dad, they shared how they wore their pant leg outside of their boot too. And it was a sign, and Brian, just like you have Bloods and Crips (gang names) and everything else, this was a sign of where you stood in the socioeconomic area of Sedgefield, Tennessee. And I thought, "No way!" And Dad goes, "Yeah, look, Andy Griffith is from here, and he knew that guy from the show Hee Haw that was on TV." And he made a big deal about it. And I looked at that and I said, "I would have just said, 'Hey, your boot's untucked,' or, 'Your, you know, pant leg caught on your boot.'" I would have never thought that that was a sign.

And remember, most of what I learned about human behavior I learned from my dad when I was growing up because he saw all of that, and everything meant something, right? So, if I categorize that as, "Look at this slack-jawed yokel (derogatory term for a foolish person) that doesn't even know how to untuck his pants when he stands up," I missed a very valuable cue, and therefore I didn't accept it and weight it so I could use it going forward. And weight is important to me, we talk about that all the time. Certain cues are weighted more than others, like being belt-aware. If you're being belt-aware when I see you walking around, you might have a gun.

Waist-aware, right?

Okay. If I see that you're waist-aware or evidence-aware, like you're wearing, yeah, you're wearing gloves when you don't need to. A person that strips their cigarette down in a filter and then puts a filter in their pocket, do you get what I'm trying to say? They're done with the Styrofoam cup, and they take it with them. Yeah, okay, those kind of things are interesting to me there. You know, 007, what are we into? So, those are cues that I pay attention to. But that you have a rainbow-colored afro today, unless like, look, I'll give you a quick one: folks that are listening, go rent Taxi Driver (1976 American film). Take a look at the difference between Travis Bickle (main character from Taxi Driver) at the beginning of the movie and at the end of the movie. And the idea is, anytime that you change to an M65 jacket (a field jacket) and you shave your head to a mohawk, and you start tatting your face, you know, the idea is, Brian, those sudden, uncalled-for changes are very important to me. Okay? And those ones where temporally I never expected that, and it shocked me, they aroused me, they alerted me that something might be different.

It's just the color of your skin, or who you're praying to, or that you're carrying a yoga mat that [expletive]... Look, you're carrying a yoga mat, and it's got a center that is a little bulkier than normal, there might be a gun in there. That kid the other day, I sent you the article, sent to school in her science project, and that tube that was supposed to be a poster tube, right? Okay, listen, those are important. "Hey, are we having any presentations in the art room today?" "No, I don't think we are, Jim." Remember when we were at Liberty with the violin cases and the music cases? Come on, Brian, those are the types of things we should alert to because they should be weighted differently for comparison.

But your hair and your ring and your... right back to the tats. When I was growing up, the only people I knew had tats were badasses, and I got introduced to them by my dad, and their names were like Killer or Stompy or Chokey, you get what I'm trying to say? You know, Suicidey was one of them. But I mean, they were all World War II "devil dogs." Think about that for a minute. So, those were the only folks that I saw that had tats. I walked up and down, I went to college, I walked up and down my street, I went to shop with my mom, nobody there had tattoos, right? And only those, you know, so, so in my mind, it created a schism, and that schism became a bias because both of them took me off center and took me away from the answer. And the answer was, "How can I weigh this artifact or evidence against the baseline now in this moment with this person?" Because now, it's like, you know, people, yeah, when you see someone without tattoos, it's odd. Now, Mother Teresa had a tattoo on her left... You know what I'm saying? Praise God, right? So...

No, no, somebody right now just became a non-believer and exited our podcast.

But look, it's a joke.

Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, and these, I get your examples, and it's still, you know, it's sometimes less and sometimes more difficult to do in a situation, right? And you go back to observations being weighted. Without training, trained people are tuned into a frequency. Sure, or more experience. The more things you've seen in life, the more you can categorize things in broader, more general buckets, right? And, and, and that's kind of why it goes back to that. When we categorize this different stuff, like you, you gave the great one, the homeless one. Well, you can't just, just because someone doesn't have a home doesn't, it doesn't tell me anything about them other than "psych..." Oh, that's what I was going to throw that in there, but you earlier, and yeah, that's a new term that I just don't understand. I find it hysterical. But you're going to get me off track here.

No, but the idea is, that alone, or, but, but you can within an environment, you know, if it's a political rally for one candidate and someone shows up wearing the shirt for the other candidate, well, then that is novel, but in such a specific context, because why? Because that's not what you would expect to see here. Maybe this person is, is looking for a fight, or whatever, I don't know anything. Maybe they're going to be disruptive. That doesn't mean they're going to be dangerous in a body bag. Right? So, we can't allow that. Before you even, what I'm saying, before you even get to that part of determining what the situation is, it's just determining, that's why I kind of wanted to get into the novelty versus normalcy, is like, that is that, that's the sort of start of determining what to do next, right?

Yeah, whether to attend to something even, right? Whether it matters, like you said, to weight it. I have to go, "Is this novel for this environment, or is this normal for this environment?" So, you're going to understand something that our viewers won't and our listeners won't, so I'll add something to it. Okay, the entire ton of kaffiyehs (a traditional Middle Eastern headdress) that I have up in my second-floor closet are now useless, and I can't use them for another 15 years. Why? Because the Hamas-Israel war made the kaffiyeh a statement, and it wasn't a statement in all of the scenarios that we used. It was the common headgear of all of the people in the areas that we operated for 18 years. So, the idea is that we had them, we carried them with us, not only for urban masking, but to put a person in a role for that scenario at that time and place because that's what the people they were about to encounter were wearing. But now, if we would wear one, or I would wear one down at Gunnison, I'm making a statement to you. I'm not, I'm not, but I am. Okay? So, that item has taken on a relevance that I never intended or that I discarded when I did put it on.

Anyway, look, there can't be frequently asked questions on a website unless a lot of people ask those questions. Yeah. So, the idea is, assume that what you're seeing everybody else does. When you wear that that Butch cut, my brother Jeff (Brian's brother), with his Butch cuts all the way till he was 25, probably, and now even later in life he's got that little, you know, Jack Lord wave in the front. Okay, those were popular, so people adopted that. Now, when you get that nose ring and the eye patch and the gold tooth, you think, "Man, I'm setting myself apart." You're not setting yourself apart for, I don't know, it's an International Talk Like a Pirate Day, but it's not, it's in November, I think. But the idea being that you always think that you're differentiating yourself from everybody else, but you're not.

So, the two things that I would look for in normalcy is novelty, nuance. One of both extremes on the spectrum: one, a person working too hard to blend in, or two, a person working really hard to stand out. So, I want to take a look at those quickly, and I want to assess, "Does this have meaning?" So, if you're on your way home from the VFW dance, and you're driving exactly the speed limit with your hands at two and ten, you get what I'm trying to say, and adjusting your mirror, you're a DUI. I'm going to keep an eye on you for a minute, trying too hard. You're doing everything right, you're trying too hard. Yeah, and people don't do that. So, the same thing with the kid going to school. "I'm not going to make eye contact, my head's going to be down, I'm carrying that backpack, I just got to get into the gym." You see what I'm trying to say, Brian, is those things aren't how the ant colony flows. Humans are like the ant colony, we're all going in or coming out, we're grabbing stuff, or we're taking it somewhere else. And then all of a sudden, not to be Gladwellian (referring to Malcolm Gladwell's style of analysis), but you have an outlier, and the outlier is the novelty. And so that's the one that I've got to quickly take a look at and go, "Wow, that car doesn't fit this parade." You know, Animal House, which is great. All of my references today will be coming from movies of the '70s and '80s. But the idea, Brian, is that, look, I would be more interested in someone in a seam or a gap than someone standing right in front of me. Okay? And that's a bold statement because standing right in front of me, that means that you've already passed all the checks and balances that Greg has in place in his world. So, for you to get close to me, that's an important facet. But that seam and gap, Brian, that's the key.

That, and that, that, that's a good, that's a good point. So, let's say, let's kind of explain what we mean by seams and gaps. And seams and gaps are things where that's where the bad stuff happens. That's where things, it could just be that's where you forget, you know, something that you were supposed to bring to your kid's recital, or whatever. Doesn't matter, you left the important item at home. That's where bad guys like to operate in. That's where they find terrorist, criminals, insurgents are really good at finding the seams and gaps because they have to be, right? That's where, that's where they operate in, and that's, that's what often goes unnoticed. And that, that's kind of feeds into, in a sense, the, the what we're talking about with normalcy and novelty because, you know, if something, if you're, if you're operating in the seams and gaps, you're, you're that's immediately novel. That's not normal. No one does that. There's only people that do that, whether you're either, you know, committing a crime or, or you're looking for those, that's where you operate in. And that's a, that, but the seams and gaps, so I'll let you explain, but that's a very narrow bandwidth, right? That, that's a, that's when we say, "What's normal in human behavior?" Like, my arms are stretched out from here to here, you know what I mean? But when you get into who operates in the seams and gaps, man, I'm, I'm narrow. It's like my hands are right here, almost together. It's a small bandwidth.

So, so, let me throw some seams and gaps at you. So, here's the thing. You're getting on an airplane, and you've just had your ticket scanned because you're in, remember, it says you're in Group Two, but Group Two is actually Group Twelve because, you know, one-eyed, one-legged, flying purple people eater, anybody with a baby between this age, and then anybody with a baby that age, but between these weights. I mean, they've got competitive figure skaters, like, I don't know what's the next. Buy you old fans, right? So, the idea is that anybody that does it. So, now, a drunk is a skunk. So, we just scan our ticket, and then what do we do? We go on that long causeway, breezeway, jetway, whatever they call that thing that's going to take us to the open door of the plane, right? Everybody got where I'm talking about, whatever that gosh-darn thing is.

Alright, well, at the end of that thing, there's a place that you can put luggage, and there's a little keypad and a door. And so, not only the person that's riding it and the person that just scanned your ticket, but the guy that's handling those bags that's going to take the carry-on. And guess what? The first person that you see is always busy because the plane's always full, and they're like, "Hi!" But they're supposed to be turned and facing you, but they're not, and they're looking for the cotton swab or the alcohol swab, and the flight deck door is open. So, you've just created a seam in a gap. That's the one place that all security doesn't account for, and the most volatile place before you board a plane that something could happen between that door and the open plane door and that long tube that nobody's watching, right? There's no guard standing there, no camera, and the open flight deck door. So, if you were a flip, and you wanted to do something flippy, there's a good place for it that you're going to have a few seconds to yourself before somebody's going to catch on to what's going on.

Seam and gap: your husband and significant other or wife and significant other. You're going through a highly contested divorce, or just went through one, and now you've got to hand off the kids. Where do they do that, Brian? Yeah. Okay, they pick a spot. Yes, that spot becomes the seam and gap. Why? Because it's a novelty to you and to the other. Yes. And all of a sudden, the tensions and anxiety rise high because here I'm in this novel place, and sometimes they have him guarded or with a camera or something. And now you feel perhaps humiliated, and I want to act up, not just act up, I want to act out today. Where am I going to do it, Brian? Okay, the sentencing day in a courtroom, in the gallery. Yeah. Okay, all of a sudden, that becomes a seam and a gap because not just the prisoner, there's other prisoners waiting for their case to be called. And if this guy's a child molester, maybe he gets beat down on the way back, or one of those other people says, "Hey, in this scrum, I'm going to try to escape," or they go, "Hey, you can't do that to my buddy," and I'm going to jump the bench. So, these seams and gaps are the places between or before or just after, like just after sentencing, and we're going to walk down the long hallway, and it's the last time I'm going to see the light of day, do you get what I'm trying to say? And I go, "Screw it, you know what I'm saying, this is the time I'm going to kick the [expletive] out of this jail deputy!"

We don't anticipate seams in gaps because they're just connective fiber. It's the stream between the forest and the car. I remember going hunting up outside of a little place called Daggett, Brian, and I only had one day to hunt. I had my rifle sighted in, had everything else. I was going to bow hunt the early season, couldn't do it because of college. Drove down, had my rifle, and I knew exactly where my stand was. So, I got my rifle, got my orange on, silently closed the door, stepped away, and there's the biggest mule deer buck that I've ever seen staring at me at the front of my car. And because I had no [expletive] yet, I hadn't played cards, I hadn't played euchre and drank a bottle of Jack, no, but because that seam and gap between my car and my hunting spot, Brian, I had never encountered that before, and therefore I wasn't prepared for it. It became a novelty. And novelty means time. Novelty means that your brain needs time to recalibrate and go, "Oh, that's different. Oh, what's this?"

Like Nico (Greg's son). Nico was not a normal human child. Both Nico and Andrea (Greg's daughter) were born on some different planet and transplanted in Shelli's (Greg's wife) womb. So, Nico was the most polite kid at like three and four and five, and he had all of his own quirks, right? So, we'd go to a restaurant and we'd talk to our kids like adults from the uterus, right? And we'd go to a restaurant, and somebody would come up and go, "Hey, little fella, can I get you the kids' menu?" And Nico would go, "No, thanks, I would like oysters Rockefeller." Whatever, you know, he doesn't like oysters, but you get what I'm trying to say. He would say, like, "I would like one." Most want the tendies, the dino nuggets, you want... So, where do you think we start? And that, okay, well, that was novel to both the waiter...

Yeah.

...and Nico. So, that's what we have to do. We have to understand that for every time we walk into an environment, we change the math. We create a ripple in that environment. What we want to do is, when that ripple hits something, we want to measure that with our echolocation. What we have to do is, we have to measure it with theirs, right? Come up, you start controlling [expletive].

Exactly.

You're going to piss me off immediately because who do I think I am? I think I'm in charge. I'm in charge of my reality, and you come up in a uniform and go, "Hey, shut up for a minute! Let me talk to you, [expletive]!" No, not today. You know, that stuff might have worked in the academy, pal, I'm going to make you earn it today. You see what I'm trying to say? That flash of reality even momentarily changes the dynamic of the entire situation, and if you change the situation, you may alter the outcome. That doesn't happen every day.

And there's, there's a, there's a, there's a lot we can, can sort of unpack with that. And, and you know, when, when you get into just learning to identify what the seams and gaps are, it, it actually gets you better at understanding that, that normalcy, right? To get to categorize it better. Because you go, "Okay, wait a minute, I, I get it, we're just in Walmart." You know, I mean, so there's a whole social media account called "The People of Walmart," and it's the craziest photos of stuff you've ever seen before, but that's normal there. Like, I'm not going to see that at the, you know, at, at, you know, some, some high-end place.

Gap, cab, normal taxi, normal. Yeah. You and I have had to take taxis in some of the sketchiest areas in...

Yeah, yeah.

Okay, Columbus, Georgia. One was the best cab driver we've ever had. I wasn't sure if that vehicle was going to make it all the way to destination. We were doing the Fred Flintstone (driving with feet on the ground) on the...

Exactly.

...and we could see the cement under it. Nicest driver we ever had, world. And he knew that, he knew that area like the back of his hand. Guess what? That, that was novelty the first couple of times you and I traveled together in these areas. That was novel. I remember the first time you and I flying out of Riyadh (Saudi Arabia), and it was just different. And when we had flown in, it was an international airport, but now we're in a local airport. Everything looked different, it smelled different, it felt different, and the security posture was zero. You know, there was, "Okay, who are these nine folks?" And then I had all the, remember the passports? And some of them were, you know, hand-lettered and crayon, and the picture was a line drawing. And we had to learn that, okay, that novelty was something we had to assimilate over time, and we had to compare it to other experiences because if it remained a novelty, then it's an anomaly. You see what I'm trying to say? If it stood alone and it passed the strength of time and introspection and comparison and all these other facets, then it actually is... What's the difference between information and intelligence? Well, that's it, that's what we're talking about, process.

And that's exactly what we're talking about. It, it remains novel no matter how you analyze it. Like, it remains that, "This is odd." You cannot justify what it is that you're seeing based on...

Still sticks out.

We pounded the nail down, and it popped back up. "Well, maybe it's this, maybe it's this." "Oh, wait, wait, it's really none of those things." That, that has to be, and, and so that, that's, that's a great way to put it because, um, you know, and, and you added that critical element again of, of time in there, of, of how I observe it. But, but when something, when, when you seek to explain something, right? I, I want to, "How does this, how is this normal for what it is right here, and how is it not normal?" And then just artifacts and evidence, and which way does it actually take you, that analysis over time. But, but, and, and, and what you also did there too is, is compared to your life experiences and the context you're in. So, the Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, one is great because everyone's, remember, everyone's from an international airport, all of a sudden you're there. Or it's the same thing, the airport in Cabo (Cabo San Lucas, Mexico), and there's people getting off with like all kinds of stuff and there's animals in there, and I'm like, "Where did I just drop into?" So, but, but that, that was totally normal for that environment. So, it was no longer novel because of that. And, and that's, I, I get that that's what you're talking about, but making those determinations can, can be, can be difficult if I don't have that gift of time and distance, right? If I don't have the ability to, and it is some sort of rapid judgment, but the problem that rapid judgment is, and I fall back on, "It's got this, is it this? This is, this is the, this is the one they were talking about."

Exactly.

But, but that rapid judgment comes from judging too quickly. So, what's the magic of judging?

The magic is very simple: artifacts and evidence in support of a reasonable conclusion. And if it's reasonable, that means that other people would find it reasonable. If you keep coming up with unreasonable, irrational conclusions, you should be pulled with a shepherd's crook. Look, no, one TSA agent created the stereotypical TSA agent, right? It was a number of them over time that we looked and said, "Hey, that guy couldn't chase me down an escalator." Okay, that person's, you know, ass was so big. And then the jokes start and stuff. Nothing against TSA, because cops get the same stuff. 7-Eleven. Yeah, but stereotypes come from somewhere, Brian, and whether you choose to use them or not is different. So, if you allow heuristics (mental shortcuts) to guide rapid decision-making, I'll be in your corner because they're going to be right more than wrong. If you rely on stereotype and social media and memes, then I would say, "Hold on a minute, okay? Are you processing these artifacts and evidence? What are you comparing them against?"

We just talked about a person this morning that was slamming coppers and saying, "Hey, I'm just like you because I did a ride-along." Wait a minute, you love ride-alongs, and ride-alongs are a great way to learn about your community, but a ride-along doesn't make you a cop. You're not a card-carrying member. You know a novel...

What? Yeah, but but again, that novelty...

...that person judged that novelty internally. These cues, look, if you judge yourself internally, I'll give you a great one. There's that acronym for having a stroke. I judge myself constantly. Yeah, you're judging yourself now, aren't you? You're tired, you, you, there's that, that thing about stroke, and there's an acronym, and right now I can't think of it that's like LICK or SWAT or TOE. Okay, somebody knows it, write it so we know what it is. But the idea is, if these three things start happening, you're probably having a stroke, so you pay attention to this because you probably are. The second one is, all of a sudden, I got this pain in my neck, it's radiating down my arm, my chest is tight, I feel like I, you know, am having the Valsalva maneuver (a breathing technique) in my pants. Okay, you might be having a heart attack. What, what are those, Brian? Those are novel when based on my internal baseline. Okay? But if you base a perception or an encounter on the street on your internal baseline, then you're closing the door to all of these perceptions and observations that are weighted differently up and out. So, you have to measure them against the environment, not against your own effing life! Because if I do that, and my normal wife and normal kids (again, we're talking clinical) and normal house and stuff, it's going to skew my results. We can't do that. We have to stick with the science, and if the science tells us, you know, A squared plus B squared, we have to do it. We can't generalize and say, "Well, I found..." Okay, that's a mistake. Don't go internal, go external.

And, and I like how you put that, the internal versus external baseline. But I mean, that literally goes back to why our, like, first of the first principles is people of the same all over the world. I look at that, I go, "Okay, well, well, you ever seen someone where it's like, especially out here in Southern California, where it's a, you have a Mexican restaurant, and like everyone in there is Mexican or Hispanic, and the people working there are, and they're all speaking Spanish in a lot of places? And then you'll see some people come in and they're, you know, 'Oh, we heard about this place, I'm from out of town.' And they almost, like, they don't know how to order. It's like, it's, it's, it's just a restaurant. Like, you've done this a million times before. Walk up here, you order here." Like, looking is all that. But it's not. It's novel to my internal...

That's you. Listen, Brian, you just made a key point. Everybody, data mark this point in time and go back and listen to what Brian just said. You know, my new favorite show is that Andrew Zimmern (American chef, food writer, and television personality) traveling all over the world. I hate the particular piece of [expletive], but the shows are great, and a historical perspective, and he's a great chef, and I really like the guy even though I want to hate him. Okay, but today he was in Florence. So, he's in Florence, Italy, and it's got a guy behind the counter on a food truck on the street. And the guy from Florence, Italy, speaks no English whatsoever. So, they've got the subtitles. And a Japanese family that's vacationing comes up and orders the street food, and they did all pointy-talkie. He holds up the hot sauce, and they shook their head no. He holds up the salt, they shook their head yes. He goes, "Little or big?" and makes a sign with his hands, and they said, "A little." And he goes, "Okay," and he said it in his own language. Brian, the entire conversation was based on context and relevance and pointy-talkie. That's how we are when we're up and out. So, we need to remain there. We can't go down and in and look at our wife and go, "Well, he speaks Italian. We're in Florence, Italy, so none of this [expletive] is going to make sense." We have to look for what connects us rather than what separates us. And that's why when we take a look at the hair, and the hair is a blue color, our instincts are going to tell us that's novel, and that's weighted differently in my environment. And we have to pull back for a minute, and we have to look at it in the context of those observations in, in that moment.

There, there's a great one. I was, I was telling you about the show the other day, and I don't even know what's on, all the reruns are on, on Hulu. You can, it's like a National Geographic one I was talking about where it's like they call, like, To Catch a Smuggler is, I think it's what it's called. It's where they follow around like U.S. Customs and Border Protection folks. And they're at airports. So, they'll go to like the San Ysidro (Port of Entry) here in San Diego, they'll go to like, you know, major U.S. airports like Chicago/Philadelphia at the airports. And they'll show, but it's, it's, it's not, it's a simple show that there's not, there's no like narration, it's just them going, and they, they, you know, you see these little stories, people coming in, how they investigate. And it's such a great example of how these folks, who are obviously subject matter experts at what they do, that's all they do all day long is deal with the same people coming into the country. So, there's certain things that they look for, whether it's narcotics smuggling, people, whatever, human trafficking. There's all these things, but they all fit, and they go, they all start with like, "Alright, well, what they're doing," without like using our lexicon, but they're just doing it on their own naturally. It's, it, they're like, "Well, here's the anomaly I saw. Here's, here's what it was because typically," and they're laying it all out, "we see this. So, so I ask these questions because that will tell me. And then I go, 'Okay, well, let me see your stuff.' And then when I, if it fit," he goes, "if it fits, it's usually good." Now, are they always right? No, I mean, they still bring people in and go, "Okay, this person wasn't, it wasn't anything," or they, I'm sure they missed stuff too. But, but because they do that all the time, they get such that fidelity-filled baseline of what's typical.

Oh, way more.

But it, but it's funny how, how you, you, you can see it laid out and it's just a great show of how you do it because there's no, no one's trying to make it sexy, no one's trying to... And, and it really goes, "Well, this is what you do, and then it goes to here, and we know that because when we see these three things coalesce, then it's different. Now, that doesn't mean they're guilty yet. It doesn't mean there's anything wrong yet, but that's more than enough for us to investigate."

And here's the, this is incredible: where's the seam and gap out of the show that Brian just described? In your ass if I'm going to put something in my prison wallet? Yeah, it clearly is not something I go, "Yeah, that's a Rolex that I brought for my dad's 50th anniversary. I just thought, you know, hell, I, it's extra weight. I just shoved it up my ass." "My suitcase was at 49.5 pounds, so I didn't want to pay the charge." Suitcases don't look like people. So, where do people try to apply the trait of stealing a suitcase? Down in baggage return, baggage claim, before I go out to the curb. Right? People still do that. Why do people put their drugs in the suitcase? "Well, I'm not really holding the suitcase except for this small time to get out of the building."

So, that seam and gap, and I've got one for you, and a good dear friend of ours from Michigan that always watches us on Patreon as well. She gave us a lot of information about school buses. You want to know about the health and safety of a school, Brian? The seam and gap is the school bus from the time the parents leave them till the time the kid makes it to the school on that bus. You have no idea what your kid is facing, and you should. You need to because that is the type of seam and gap that can provide information for stuff that's going to happen later on in life.

And, and the good, the school districts that do it right are the ones that their school bus drivers are just as part of that education process as the teachers. Meaning, they're just as part of that community and learning and responsibility, conflict resolution. Even if they, even if they can't do that, they, the, the good, um, the ones that we've worked with that are really good, they, like, their security folks include bus drivers in what they do. They, the, the school principal talks to the bus driver, "Goes, 'Hey, what, any issues today?'" "Hey, 'What's going...?'" "Oh, yeah, it's Timmy again. Okay, I'll keep an eye on him." You know, "This, yeah, I think something's going on at home with this one because he was crying at the bus stop this morning, and normally he's..." Those are the things that, and that's a great example of, of that gap. I think it's the best example of this episode because people can relate to it if they've ever had kids, immediately that there's a gap. There's a gap from the time you drop them off at the school bus stand till the time they get to school, and it's an important gap, Brian.

Why do drive-throughs become the scene of a carjacking and a robbery for that business? Because what's presumed from the clown's mouth to the open window? You have money. Okay, I pulled into this very special lane because I have money. What's presumed when you're walking into the airport, and you've got your Million Miler's Club patch on your luggage? That you've got some money in your pocket, buddy. You've got a couple of those credit cards that I don't have. So, if I see you in the parking lot, I'm going to take you down. Why? Because in my world, that's novel. So, I compare it against those other people. From the cops and other criminals and and potential victims. I don't measure it against me, because if I measure it against me, I'm only going to get angry, and I'm going to miss those cues. I can't get so emotional. And emotions are huge in comparison, comparing the weight of a cue or a cluster of cues, but I can't use my emotional weight to skew the potential outcome. I have to stick to the science. I have to compare it.

It's like, I don't want to bash on neuro-linguistic programming or any other thing where a warlock is at your graduation ceremony, do you get what I'm trying to say? You get what I'm saying? Okay, but the idea is that you show me the evidence, and look, if I'm wrong, I'll change my view. But if a crystal ball is part of your training, you probably messed something up in your life.

We'll just, I'll say, I, I'll put it in a more vanilla way. Can you, the, the, the supplement and health industry is massive. And it is massive because you know what? There's something called the placebo effect, and I'll just, I'll leave it at that, right? If you think something is going to work, it, it will work for you to a measurable amount. And we know that medicine understands it, doctors know that if I give you something, you're going to feel better because you got something, and you're, whether it actually works or not. Now, that won't solve the problem, like, you can't, can't give you a sugar pill if you've got cancer.

But, but a positive mental attitude can slow that cancer and in many places make it go into remission. So, that's the key. But, but see, that is a perfect example of you going internal. There are times in your life that you need to compare internal you against you. When you get up in the morning and you look in the mirror and go, "Am I ready for these challenges?" That's all internal.

Yeah. Okay, but then once I go outside, I start crying when I see the mirror. But that's why I have mirrors in the house. All my mirrors are covered with butcher paper.

But, but when I go outside, I switch that on. It's, it's Shelli (Greg's wife) with, you know, in the old days, putting on the gloves and putting on the glasses, and, and, you know, doing the French braid on the hair and putting that cigarette in her mouth. I knew she was ready to go to work. I knew that was not Shelli anymore. The shell that, that's off Shelli, you know, the hardened Shelli, and start paying the [expletive] attention because that stuff is going to come fast and furious. So, what we just created is a moment of focus pulling. So, your normalcy versus novelty has to include your ability to pull the focus to say, "Am I measuring these cues against the person in their baseline, or am I biasing potential outcomes by focusing internally and not coming off the gas pedal?" And Brian, that'll skew your results, and skewed results will skew your outcome.

Yeah, certain, certain cues are weighted much more than others. Get used to that. And if you don't know what we're talking about, get to the training. We're always traveling, we're always doing training, or, or, you know, get on a phone call with us and go, "Hey, I've had this situation, I don't understand what's happening here." I'll be glad to answer that for you. So, so in, you know, we, we, we've covered a lot so far, but, but I, I, I think, you know, starting with the normalcy versus novelty and seams and gaps, you know, I, I think the big, um, the big takeaway or the big sort of thing I can use is that, you know, internal versus external baseline, right? It really is because, well, is this, is this odd for me, you know, and in what I think and the way I carry out my life and the way I view the world, my thoughts and beliefs and values, or is it, or is it odd for them or the situation? Because if it's odd for the person, then it is one. I mean, that goes back to the, "Hey, you know what, I don't need this stuff anymore. Do you want anything? I'm giving away all my possessions." Yeah. And now it's pre-suicidal. Yeah, but, but, but or, or, you know, or the context that you're in. It's like, "Wait a minute, you're, no one goes up and around that area over there. You're supposed to get in line here, and everyone knows that."

So, Brian, your daughter at some age climbs out of the second-story window, climbs down the apple tree, goes to the shed in the backyard, and grabs a bag of other clothes and goes away from the house. And, and somehow you catch her or you caught onto it. When you compare those, you don't have to say a word. All you have to do is point to the window, point to the surreptitious way to get to the shed, point to the change of clothes, and give the signal. Yeah, okay? Because what, now you're measuring that against their behavior, against the environment, and you're not using your internal, you're using what's right for this environment. And nobody hides in the seams and gaps when they're doing something normal. They're not running out to buy you a Christmas present. They're not running out to go to church. You get what I'm trying to say? That's not happening. So, yeah, if that makes sense to you, another seam and gap.

Yeah, no, no, and, and there, there's, there's, uh, there's, there's a lot of those, and, and those are even, those are all demonstrations of intent to what, what you kind of talked about. But look, in your house, where are you most likely to slip and fall? That's the novelty of a situation that's compared to a geographic baseline now. But it's an external baseline, that's the key. Okay? So, now, if you add an internal baseline to that, look, I got my suit coat in my hand, I got my luggage in my hand, I'm walking down the stairs from upstairs on a carpeted floor, and my pant legs are a little bit long. You go, "Okay, so, so now, down at the top of the storm..."

Yeah, and the phone's ringing, right? So now we have the perfect storm. So, don't tell me that you can't anticipate environments every time. You can't. It becomes novelty, and novelty challenges normal. That's why I brought up all the stuff at the beginning of the show, because when, when is it all of a sudden Max (Brian's son) is starting to teethe and being fussy and not sleeping well? It's not when everything's going well. Now, what's happening? Micha's (Brian's wife) sick, down hard, bad flu. They have to go days before Christmas, travel this weekend for her and the insurgent. And it's like, yeah, that's, that's, that's when, and that's why I have to go, "Time out, everyone!"

Yep, you're staying in there. You're, you're... I did tell, tell my wife, like, "You're, I'm locking you in the bedroom, you're not going around anyone. You're done. Don't even try to help because I know you're going to be trying to help, change the timeline. You're, you're messing things up. I got this. I know how to operate for a week with little to no sleep. I've done that before. Like, don't worry." You know, I mean, but, but because if now all of a sudden, now I've got to do this, now what about this? Now it becomes overwhelming, and that's, that's when things happen. That's when it...

So, set your life up with the anticipation that that will occur by having some fail-safes. We have a smoke detector that we check once a year on New Year's or Christmas or whatever the date is, but you do it. I know we do it more often than that. I have a fire extinguisher on every floor of my house. Why? Because as cool as I am, and as tough as I am, and as strong as I am, Brian, when it's my house that's on fire, okay, that's going to be novel, and that's going to change the gosh-darn outcomes. It's going to change the math. Yeah. So, I have to rely on things. The airbag in a car. The automotive company knows that no matter how good a driver you are, some other people are shitty drivers, so they want to try to give you that gift of time and distance with that airbag.

And you're talking about the solutions. I was a perfect example too, with the, with the, with the kids and my wife here at home, like, with, with, with Max, with a new baby. Great, we all know how to do CPR on a child. So, I gave, exactly. I, no, but I told Harper (Brian's daughter), "Come here, grab Max, pick him up. Alright, if something's happening." He's sitting there laughing, giggling, like, "What's going on?" I was like, "Stick your finger in his mouth right now." And so, "How, this is how you sweep something out of the mouth. Do it." And it's like, "Well, what, like, now, okay, what does that look like? What does it look? Hold him upside down right now," or, "or on his stomach, and, and, and don't actually hit him, but tap where you would on his back." You did do it with a kid. So, now she's like, "Well, is it going to...?" I was like, "He's fine, he's giggling and laughing, it's all good. Like, you have..." Because why? Because now it's not if something happens, she's done it before on him. Not on the doll, not in the class, not in any of that. Like, it's, it's real, and you could see she was like, "Oh, man, this is tough." And I'm like, "Yes, this is why we're practicing this right now. Grab them, don't worry about hurting him because he's, you're trying to save their life." You know, but, but the idea is, is to take something like that because you talked about the training and how to do that and how to, how to avoid those things. It's like, this is kind of how you do that. And, and so, it can make something other, sort of the other side of the coin of what we've been talking about the whole episode. But, but I just want to throw...

But like when you brought up intent, look, all roads lead to Rome. These are all good ideas. The idea is, what we keep doing is we keep taking the spacecraft out, doing an orbit, and landing in Bosnia, or next week it'll be, like I said earlier, Argentina, and this week it'll be Canada. Why? Because we try to get you 360, and I'm not talking about the countries or the states, I'm talking about your mental state. So, if you're only comparing your life and what you're doing today to you, then you've got a problem. But if you're only up and out all the time, then you're going to let yourself go. So, that 360 approach, look, Hobman (an internal reference) still works, and it's still going to work. It's just we're ahead of our time on this stuff. So, take a couple of notes and try it. You worried about the school bus? Do something about it today. Go ask for a ride or ask what they're doing about it, or ask your kid, "Hey, what's the environment on the school bus?" You ask them how their day was at class, but do you include those? So, Brian, I'm just saying that to counter the fallacy that normalcy and novelty don't create turbidity (state of being cloudy, confused, or disturbed). I say, challenge your assumptions. Go out there and take a look at those seams and gaps because today, if you, if you do just seams and gaps today and measure them around you, you'll be surprised at what you uncover. And you know what? You can fill a couple of them with a hedge, or a light, or a gate, or a first aid kit, or turn left instead of go straight. I mean, seriously, that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to open people's eyes to those new experiences so they don't shock and surprise you when you're walking on them.

Yeah, no, I think that's, those are all great, great takeaways. Again, we went over a lot, we kind of recapped it. And so, you know, if, if, if anyone has any questions about what we talked about, just hit us up at TheHumanBehaviorPodcast@gmail.com. Please, um, you know, get to that. And then of course, we have the, the Patreon site where we do even more, and I put up some of our presentations on there too as well. And so you get to see some other stuff and just from different perspective. And again, that's all going to be even, even better in next year, what we're, what we've got going on. And I'm getting some great feedback from, from those you. So, so those listeners who have reached out about some of the changes I was talking about maybe doing, I appreciate your feedback. It was all super helpful. It was very relevant, and and getting understanding what your takeaways from the show are. And, and, and we, we do appreciate that because we, it's, we want to make sure the message is getting through clearly, and, and you're receiving it, and there's value here. If you're giving up, you know, you're giving up an hour of your time to listen to us, I want it, I want it to be good. That's meaningful. Yeah. Us, it's important. And, and I have a, you know, we, we, we have a level of responsibility with that. Like, I think people should be responsible for, for that stuff that you're putting out because, you know, someone's listening to it and taking the time. Time is the most important thing on the face of the Earth. So, we, we do appreciate it. Anything else to add before we, before we wrap, buddy?

Nothing meaningful. I've got to throw a piss, like a, you know, like, it's, that's not meaningful. Oh, I've got a bio break that I've got to, and my, you know, poor dog is snoring. Maybe we'll talk about psychological homelessness. Oh my gosh. Okay, so two words, like, "down escalator" and "jumbo shrimp" that should never go together. Just, just don't understand these terms, "psychological," make them up asness. What? Like, the one place you can't be homeless is psychologically. It's there. Your thoughts are there. They're living in your head. They're never homeless. They always have a...

Well-meaning, misdirected, mis... and that's why I don't, I try not to bash anything or get into that stuff. I do, I do it for a laugh to you. Everybody else has already shut us off. It's a... I get it. You're well-meaning. Well, if you're listening at this point, then you're, you're, you're on board, and, and we've got a lot for you.

You're laughing now too. Alright, or hating. But, but that's fine. Anger's a good motivator.

Alright, well, thanks. When the horrors come, thanks everyone for tuning in. We do appreciate it, and don't forget that training changes behavior.