The Human Behavior Podcast

Send us a Text Message.This week we are unpacking the mysterious forces of instinct and intuition and explaining how these twin navigators steer our survival strategies as well as our everyday choices. During the episode we reveal how primal behaviors and nuanced judgments not only coexist but often compete for the driver's seat in high-stakes scenarios.In order to explain how this complex interaction between instinct and intuition, we share some compelling stories of heroism and survival tha...

Send us a Text Message.Today we are discussing some of the psychological reasons behind why we are all prone to getting scammed! For the show we answered three main questions: Why do scams work?What is the psychology behind scams? And,Who is prone to falling for scams?During the episode we explain how our brain gets hijacked by a good story which causes us to lose our ability to think critically and rationally.Thank you so much for tuning in, we hope you enjoy the episode and please...

Send us a Text Message.Today we are talking about the capabilities and limitations of our Memory and how it can be affected by a number of different external and internal influences. During the episode we explain how and why our brain creates false memories, how memory-emotion links are formed, the difference between memory and recall, and we explain how to create accurate memories and correct memory distortions so you can use your own experiences for predictive analysis. Thank you ...

Send us a Text Message.Today we are talking about something that affects our perception and our cognitive performance, even before we realize it’s an issue! It’s something we call “O.B.E.” which stands for Overcome By Emotion or Overwhelmed By Events. During the episode we define in great detail what we mean by these terms and how they affect our ability to sense make and problem solve but the reason we are talking about OBE is because it comes on much faster than we think and is often t...

Send us a Text Message.Hello everyone and welcome to this week’s episode of the Human Behavior Podcast. For this episode we are defining a term that you’ve likely heard before called Complacency. We’ve all heard the saying that “complacency kills” or had someone tell us not to get complacent but I don’t ever hear anyone defining what complacency actually is! So, for this episode, we are defining complacency using four powerful cognitive processes that affect all humans which are Adaptati...

Send us a Text Message.Today we are talking about culture and why it matters less than what people think, especially when it comes to reading human behavior. Understanding culture is laboriously slow, heavily nuanced, and in today’s world of mass communication and global connectivity humans have the ability to choose what culture they belong to. The human behavior principles that we discuss rely on human behavior characteristics which demonstrate intent. Culture can create idiosyncratic ...

Send us a Text Message.Hello everyone and welcome to this week’s episode of the Human Behavior Podcast. Today’s episode is sort of the next step after last week’s episode where we discussed how important it is to focus on the background action or the context or “scene” that you are observing because the seemingly mundane environmental signals are actually the foundation for observing human behavior. So for this episode we are talking about anomaly detection, putting together the breadcru...

Send us a Text Message.Hello everyone and welcome to this installment of the Human Behavior Podcast. Today we are talking about the most important element of understanding, or “reading,” human behavior, which is the background action, the context, the setting of the scene that provides the relevance for what you see.Think about this for a second…Every time you drive, bike, or walk – you pass by signs, signals, plaques, icons, or graffiti without every fully realizing the significance of those...

Send us a Text Message.This week we are talking about intuition and what it really means to “trust your gut.” Just like our previous episodes we are going to start out by reading an article that Greg wrote where he highlights several examples of people who DIDN’T “trust their gut” and it lead to some pretty catastrophic situations. For this episode we are talking about intuition from two perspectives. The first being the “gut feeling” that you’ve likely experienced when something feels “...

Send us a Text Message.Hello everyone and thanks for tuning in this week and I apologize for not getting the episode out on time but since we record the podcast when we are on the road there can be a delay in when I get access to the recording files which can cause a slight delay uploading the episode. So although todays episode is a day late it is by no means a dollar short!This week we are talking about two major topics that often intersect with one another in real life settings. Those two ...

Send us a Text Message.Hello everyone and thanks for tuning back in, this week we are super excited to bring you the very first episode of the human behavior podcast! For those of you have been listening to the Left Of Greg podcast we think you’re going to really enjoy the new format as well as the additional content on Patreon.At Arcadia Cognerati we train people how to conduct predictive analysis and “read” a situation, event, or person more accurately because if you can do that, you can ma...

Send us a Text Message.Today we are talking about how and why humans naturally fear change, even when it will ultimately benefit us. We explain how even though change is a fundamental part of our lives, our intuition can be counterproductive when it comes to things like adaptation and evolution because we will always seek out familiarity.We are having this discussion because we have some major changes coming up and we wanted to explain to all of you what our reasons were for making the change...

Send us a Text Message.Today we are giving a detailed explanation of what we mean when we say that “all humans are constantly on transmit.” You may have heard us make that reference on previous episodes so we decided to explain the psychological and sociological imperatives that contribute to the innate human need to be seen and heard.In order to explain WHY all humans are on transmit we go all the way back to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave and then we give some recent examples of how hard it i...

Send us a Text Message.Today we are expanding on some of the same themes we discussed in our last episode but rather than talking about music, we are talking about movies and TV shows and how you can use your favorite shows to better understand human behavior in general.During the episode we give a number of examples of how movies and tv shows have to follow a certain algorithm in order for us to suspend disbelief and we point out how certain storylines will continue to repeat over and over j...

Send us a Text Message.Today we are talking about how music is inextricably linked to human behavior even at a very primal level. During the episode we talk about many of the parallels between music and human behavior and we explain why music has played such a powerful role in the human experience.We cover a number of topics and songs during the episode, and we explain how music affects your limbic system and how you can use music to create meaningful memory emotion links.Please don’t forget ...

Send us a Text Message.Today we are talking about some of the different type of prank videos that you often see on social media including a recent one in Virginia where a youtuber was shot by someone who he was trying to prank. Although these types of prank shows are very popular and have been around for a long time, things don’t always go as planned.During the show we explain the different autonomic reactions that can occur during these situations, and we get into the nuances of each example...

Send us a Text Message.On today’s episode we are explaining how we distinguish between something that is “normal” versus something that is “novel” when it comes to making observations about human behavior. We often see people attribute more value or significance to observations that really don’t matter which can lead to serious errors in sense making. This often occurs because they are using their own internal baseline to establish the context of their observations, rather than using the envi...

Send us a Text Message.Today we are discussing the importance of naming conventions, taxonomy, the lexicon you use, and the priming effect that words can have on others. Since language is extremely adaptive and the meanings behind words can change over time, unintended consequences will arise from the words you use. The name you give to something will illicit responses and influence how a person processes what you are saying which means the outcome of your message may not match its original i...

Send us a Text Message.Today we are talking about one of the human behavior domains that we teach in our training courses called Heuristics. Now there are a number of different types of heuristics as well as various mental models that people like to use or discuss so we wanted to talk about how we use heuristics in the most functional manner possible.During the discussion we define some of the terms we use in different episodes including what we mean by “file folders” and we give several diff...

Send us a Text Message.Today we are talking about a poker game that spun wildly out of control and turned into a robbery and shooting, and that was just the start of this case!The reason we are discussing this case is because during the investigation the defendants iPhone was searched and during that search the investigator found evidence of another crime that he was subsequently charged with. The defendants lawyer tried to argue that the search warrant that was used was too broad and therefo...

Send us a Text Message.Today we are talking to Ivan Ivanovich, a global leader in the Executive Protection industry who has started, and ran, several highly successful multinational security companies. He has an impressive background and extensive experience operating in some of the most complex security environments in the world. We first met Ivan two years ago when we spoke at the Executive Protection Summit in Mexico City and we have been huge supporters of him ever since. He recently...

Send us a Text Message.Today we are discussing our thoughts on the use of personality tests, especially when it comes to the hiring process and the general use of them in the workplace.During the episode we talk about the limitations and flaws of personality testing, how they oversimplify complex human behavior, and how they lack reliability. We also discuss the importance of contextual factors and individual differences, and how these tests should be used cautiously and not as a sole determi...

Send us a Text Message.Today we are responding to some of the questions we received regarding our statement that “most people want their say, not their way.” During the episode we explain what we mean by this statement, why it is significant, and we give a number of examples of how to identify the difference between these types of people. We also talk about the difference between someone who is “acting up” versus “acting out” and why it is an important distinction.Please don’t forge...

Send us a Text Message.Today we have a special guest on the show by the name of Charlie Harr. Charlie is the Operations Coordinator for the annual Marine Corps Marathon that is coming up on October 29th in Arlington, Virginia and he is tasked with coordinating security for the event as well as implementing the Anti-Terrorism Force Protection measures.Charlie is a long-time listener of the show and has attended our in-person training in the past and since Greg and I are helping out with some o...

Send us a Text Message.Today we are going a little deeper into one of our first principles that we talked about on a previous podcast. Some of you reached out with some questions regarding what we meant by “demonstrations of intent are more important than motive” so we decided to explain what we mean by demonstrations of intent. During the episode we talk about how all humans will consciously or unconsciously telegraph their actions and if you can learn to identify those indicators soone...

Send us a Text Message.Today we are defining something that a lot of people talk about called “Situational Awareness.” We start off by giving some historical context to the term and we explain the standard definition of what situational awareness is, as well as what it isn’t. During the episode we talk about how the main elements of situational awareness (which is perception, recognition, and understanding) is missing a key component that will help you conduct predictive analysis. That ...

Send us a Text Message.Today we are joined by author, trainer, and former police officer Dr. John Peters. John is a highly experienced practitioner and expert witness with over 40 years of training and operational experience. We asked John to come on the show to not only talk about his experience in training but also tell some stories about when he first met Greg back in the 80’s.During the episode John talks about how policies and procedures have changed over his career but that there are st...

Send us a Text Message.Today we are talking about the basic principles that create the foundation for HOW we articulate human behavior. Normally this is something we reserve for our in-person training courses and they are typically discussed in a very deliberate manner but we thought it would be good to share this with all of you.The 4 main principle beliefs that we talk about today are: -People are the same all over the world-People “teach” you how to treat them-Most people want their ...

Send us a Text Message.Today we are joined by special guest Dr. Jason Piccolo. Jason is a former Army Captain and career federal agent who became a whistleblower during the Obama administration. During the episode Jason discussed his career trajectory, from enlisting in the military to working in law enforcement, and ultimately exposing disturbing data related to immigration and human trafficking while working for the Department of Homeland Security.If you want to learn more about Jason ...

Send us a Text Message.Today we are talking about some recent tragedies that all involve the same type of crime where a person murdered their own family members and then killed themselves. We are discussing these cases in order to shed some light on how we can get better at identifying pre-event indicators of violence in all humans. One of the ways we can do this is by shifting our perspective and trying to see a problem or situation from the perspective of the person who is experiencing...

Send us a Text Message.Today we are joined by Chip Huth, a highly respected figure in the law enforcement community who has over 30 years of operational experience. During his career Chip led an internationally recognized tactical team where he planned, coordinated, and executed over 2500 high risk tactical operations.We brought Chip on the show to talk about the transformational changes he brought to his agency through a process created by the Arbinger Institute that focuses on developing an...

Send us a Text Message.Today we are joined by an incredibly insightful and highly experienced subject matter expert by the name of Dr. John Black to talk about complexity and decision-making. Dr. Black has an impressive career that includes several decades in both law enforcement and military special operations, and he is a subject matter expert in a number of areas including training, decision-making, data visualization, information processing and he is a nationally recognized expert witness...

Send us a Text Message.Today we are talking about the differences between anger, aggression, and violence and why it’s important to distinguish the difference between them. During the episode we get into a few examples of what we mean by anger and aggression, and we explain how recognizing the difference between them will help you determine whether a person is going to escalate a situation to the level of violence or if they are simply “having their say.”Please don’t forget to follow us on so...

Send us a Text Message.Today we are joined by special guest Scott Kirshner who has decades of experience in the criminal justice field with experiences ranging from Parole administrator to correction officer. Scott is an accomplished trainer with extensive experience in officer safety and violence mitigation strategies, he’s the CEO of Dedicated Threat Solutions and we brought him on the show to talk about a statement that he has heard a lot throughout his career as a trainer where someone wi...

Send us a Text Message.Today we are talking about Access and Boundaries which are two important concepts that are inextricably linked to one another. All criminals, terrorists, insurgents, or even people just trying to sell you something need to have access to you whether they intend to victimize you or get you to buy something. So if we look at different types of crimes through the lens of ACCESS, it makes it easier to understand HOW people commit illegal acts versus looking at all of t...

Send us a Text Message.Today we are talking about some of the basic rules of cognition that affect our ability to sense and make and problem solve which can cause us to make bad decisions.We recently delivered a webinar where we talked about cognitive training and how to build a “cognitive gym” and we decided to share the information that we talked about in that webinar on today’s podcast. During the episode we go over three basic rules of cognition that affect everyone, even highly trai...

Send us a Text Message.Today we are talking about the psychological concept of “priming” and how it plays a significant role in your behavior. We start the episode by explaining some of the different types of priming and how they affect your perception and memory recall. Then we give some real-world examples of how you can use the concept of priming to your advantage, especially when it comes to knowledge and skill transfer. Towards the end of the episode, we explain some of th...

Send us a Text Message.Today we are talking about a term called “duty to intervene.” Although this concept is typically discussed in a law enforcement setting it applies at a much larger scale than most people realize and applies in every social setting that you are in.Rather than doing the typical “Monday Morning Quarterback” commentary that you see after a story or video hits the news, we chose to focus on the sociological and psychological reasons why humans are prone to “color outside the...

Send us a Text Message.Today we are talking about a recent supreme court case involving a man who was convicted of stalking and making true threats against a woman. Our discussion for today revolves around the question “what defines a true threat?”For this discussion we bring up a number of legal and behavior related issues including perception, Mens Rea, the subjectiveness of our experiences, intent, mental health, the 1st amendment and most importantly… is something considered a threat base...

Send us a Text Message.Today we are talking about manifestos, social leakage, injustice collectors, and how you can determine someone’s intent before, during, and after they commit acts of violence. During the episode we give several examples of people who went on a killing spree for very different reasons to illustrate how the current analysis of these events don’t always provide a clear understanding of what really happened.Rather than talking about the ideological reasons behind someo...

Send us a Text Message.Today we are talking about diminishing returns in the context of how we respond to novel situations in our environment. For the discussion we used a few recent law enforcement examples to highlight the fact that simply sending more people or spending more money not only doesn’t solve the problem but can actually make the situation worse.During the episode we bring up a few scientific principles from the software development and computer industry to explain how there are...

Send us a Text Message.Today we are talking about the importance of language and the innate human desire to rename things that already exist. During the episode we define terms like situational awareness, situation understanding, attention, cognitive load and we explain what they mean in the context of human behavior, predictive analysis, and decision-making.We give a number of examples that highlight how your brain processes danger or opportunity in any environment, and we also discuss how t...

Send us a Text Message.Today we are talking about what is commonly referred to as Stress Inoculation training. We start the discussion with an explanation of where this term came from and then we get into the different problems that arise when you take something from a clinical setting to a training environment. During the episode we talk about the essential elements that are necessary to conduct effective cognitive training and we also mention some of the things that are either unneces...

Send us a Text Message.Today we are talking about the recent shooting in Texas that left 5 family members dead after they asked their neighbor to stop firing his weapon because their baby was trying to sleep. We are discussing this case because it’s a great example of how society focuses on completely irrelevant details instead of focusing on the root causes of the incidents. During the episode we talk about the difference between anger and rage, the unpredictable nature of rage, and how...

Send us a Text Message.This week we are joined by a very special guest by the name of Todd Fox. Todd has an impressive career in the executive protection industry and has an extensive military, law enforcement, and martial arts background. We brought Todd on the show to share some of his experiences and to get a sneak peek behind the curtain of an international executive protection agent. During the episode, Todd was able to share a lot of the details about what it takes to conduct a su...

Send us a Text Message.This week we are talking about the overuse of “culture” as a lens with which to view a person, place, group, or event. As we often say in our training courses, “culture is merely context” and although it may help to understand certain cultural differences, we don’t feel that it’s as important as people make it out to be.During the episode we define what we mean by culture, and we discuss the different ways people choose to be a part of or adopt cultural norms and belief...

Send us a Text Message.Today we are joined by our friend and former guest on the show, Steve Drum. We asked Steve to come back on the show to talk about his new book called “Life On The X: A Navy SEAL’s Guide to Meeting Any Challenge with Courage, Confidence, and Readiness.”During the episode Steve shares a few stories from his time in the SEAL Teams and being “on the x” but what he is really talking about is how all of us experience “life on the x” to some degree. We really enjoyed reading S...

Send us a Text Message.Today we are very excited to bring on the show a brilliant cognitive psychologist by the name of Dr. Lia DiBello. Dr. DiBello is the Chief Science Officer for ACSI Labs, she is a leading expert in the world of accelerated learning and a pioneer in the field of what she calls “strategic rehearsal.” If you are involved in training and education then you are going to love this episode because Lia does an amazing job of defining what it means to be a subject matt...

Send us a Text Message.Today we are tying together some of the cases we discussed in the last two episodes by explaining how to plan, prepare, and avoid the catastrophic failures in response that we often see during major events. During the episode we use a parking lot as both a literal and metaphorical low-calorie, high-fidelity example of “training for the real event”. We explain how many of the problems that cause things to go wrong are completely avoidable with simple, cost effective...

Send us a Text Message.Today’s episode is the second episode in a three-part series where we are explaining how historical events and stories sometimes get “hijacked by history” which results in people changing the significance of the past in order to suit the needs of the present. In this episode we are talking about how the process in which our memory works will cause us to string together different events in order to fit a pattern that may not actually be there. We are centering the d...

Send us a Text Message.This episode is the first of a three-part series where we are explaining how historical events and stories sometimes get “hijacked by history,” which results in people changing the significance of the past in order to suit the needs of the present. In this first episode we dive into the history behind the phrase “Beware the Ides of March,” and we talk about how stories from the past affect our perception and our behavior in the present. We start by discussing ...

Send us a Text Message.On today’s episode we are talking about HOW and WHY certain geographic anchor points (like your home) will have a higher likelihood of potentially violent encounters taking place at them. We explain what we mean by a person’s “home” from the psychological and sociological standpoint and why it can be such an emotionally charged location. We also give some considerations to think about if you have a job where you often go to other peoples homes.Please don’t forget to fol...

Send us a Text Message.Today we decided to answer a question that we know a lot of you have been thinking about. That question is: what does Bob Seger, Ethylene Glycol, Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, and the Columbine High School shooting have to do with one another? Ok, so maybe you’ve never asked that question, but the short answer is either misinformation or disinformation! On today’s episode we are talking about how humans process information, communicate that information, and th...

Send us a Text Message.Today is our follow up conversation with Arcadia Cognerati Advisory Board member and previous guest Clark Dever. Clark is an entrepreneur with over 15 years of experience in emerging technology and he is an expert at building products, teams, and successful businesses. We brought Clark back on the show to discuss how he optimizes the performance of people, and therefore companies, through a better understanding of human performance and human behavior. During the di...

Send us a Text Message.Today we are talking about the over reliance of training on Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures, or “TTP’s.” Since the primary focus of TTP’s is HOW to do something, what is often not addressed is WHY you are doing it. This type of thinking and training can lead to a number of issues that may outweigh the initial problem you were trying to solve with new TTP’s.We start the show by discussing the seemingly logical process of how people analyze different scenarios and we ...

Send us a Text Message.On today’s episode we are joined by our good friend and Arcadia Cognerati advisory board member, Clark Dever. Clark is an entrepreneur with over 15 years of experience in emerging technology and he is an expert at building products, teams, and successful businesses. We brought Clark on the show today because he wanted to explore human behavior and human performance from a business angle using his past experiences. We get into a number of different topics duri...

Send us a Text Message.On today’s episode we are answering a couple of questions that one of our listeners sent us regarding interviews and interrogations. In the specific case we talk about, the suspect called 911 after committing a violent crime, he was then interviewed by investigators but was subsequently released because at the time they felt they did not have enough evidence to detain the individual.During the episode we talk about why the perpetrator of a crime would call 911, how to s...

Send us a Text Message.On today’s episode we are talking about the recent charges filed against Alec Baldwin for the shooting death of Halyna Hutchins on the set of the movie “Rust.” We are using this case to have a broader discussion on the meaning and the difference between terms like “duty” and “responsibility.” During the episode we talk about the contributing factors in this specific case as well as other cases including the recent death of a hunter who was shot by his own dog. Greg...

Send us a Text Message.On today’s episode we are talking about the psychological and sociological attraction that humans have for high profile crimes and we discuss why we think the analysis of those cases don’t really help us to understand them. Some of the examples we use to highlight our explanation include the recent University of Idaho murders as well as two popular Netflix documentaries called The Hatchet Wielding Hitchhiker and Madoff: The Monster of Wall Street. Durin...

Send us a Text Message.On today’s episode we are having a discussion centered around three questions that have been asked by some of our listeners. Those questions are:What drives human behavior and decision-making?How do our past experiences shape our current behavior? AndHow do social influences shape our behavior?Although you can go into a lot more detail on each of these questions, we chose to discuss all three on one episode because they are all deeply related to one another in some mann...

Send us a Text Message.On today’s episode we welcome back our previous guest, Bill Edwards, to talk about the rise of commercial drone use and the different security challenges that it creates.We asked Bill to come on the show and discuss this topic because has extensive experience in security design and consulting and has become a leading expert and advocate in the growing security threat that is posed by the widespread drone use we see today. If you want to connect with Bill and learn more,...

Send us a Text Message.On today’s episode we are talking about how our own statements can be used against us and how truth is often stranger than fiction. For this episode we bring up two major examples; one involves comedian Jeff Ross, a death row inmate, and the Supreme Court and the other example is from the trial of NFL football player Aaron Hernandez. During the show we discuss some of the misunderstandings we’ve seen regarding the 1st and 5th amendment and how freedom of speech doe...

Send us a Text Message.On today’s episode we are talking about two legal cases that stem from two separate mass shooting events. One case involves the parents of the Oxford School shooter and the other involves the father of the shooter who carried out the attack in Highland Park, IL last 4th of July. We are using these cases to demonstrate how and where society chooses to place the blame for these tragic events. We also discuss how changing popular opinion influences legal precedent. &n...

Send us a Text Message.Today we are talking about the cognitive process of fitting new information into your existing understanding of the world, otherwise known as assimilation. During the episode we describe how humans use assimilation to understand their environment and how it compares to various machine learning models that are being used to develop artificial intelligence. We compare them by using an example of a mass shooter who defended himself in court to the recent AI model called Ch...

Send us a Text Message.Today we are talking about how we respond to different triggers in our environment and how cognitive flexibility should be the ultimate goal of any training program. During the episode we give some examples from both humans and animals and we explain the different reactions in a provoked versus unprovoked attack. Later in the episode we also discuss what we mean when we talk about “profiling an anomaly.”Please don’t forget to follow us on social media, you can find the ...

Send us a Text Message.Today we are talking about how our perception of the world and the perception of our own reality is directly tied to our brains primitive survival systems. Because of the way we are “wired,” we often jump to unreasonable conclusions about the observations we make. During the episode we give a number of examples of how our brain is fooled by things that are “cognitively close enough” which directly affects how we interpret information, especially when it comes to vi...

Send us a Text Message.Today Greg and I are explaining what we mean when we say, “it’s the little things that matter.” We start the episode by defining what we mean when WE use that phrase, and we also explain why humans are so susceptible to missing the “little things” in their environment. During the episode we give some street definitions to the limitations in cognitive performance that affect our attention including things like adaptation, change blindness, channel capacity, and sequ...

Send us a Text Message.Today we are joined by our friend retired US Army Colonel Bill Edwards who has over 35 years of expertise in operational/technical security, counterterrorism, counterintelligence, surveillance, and counter-surveillance. Bill also has extensive experience in private sector security design and consulting and his work spans a myriad of market sectors, including professional sports, transportation, commercial, healthcare, cultural institutions, religious institutions, and c...

Send us a Text Message.Today we are talking about why it is so easy for people to fall for ambush style attacks and how our own brain can work against us sometimes. During the episode we cover a number of topics including things like recognition, conserving calories, and how to look for danger and opportunity in every environment. Please don’t forget to follow us on social media, you can find the links in the episode details and if you enjoyed the podcast, please tell your friends about...

Send us a Text Message.On today’s episode we are talking to a former student of ours, Austin Sohr. We invited Austin onto the show because he has a very unique story of how he took the same skills that he was using to target ISIS terrorist cells, and used them to become a more social, outgoing person. In the episode we touch on a number of topics including proprioception, cultural norms, stereotypes, and sociological imperatives that explain why people do the things they do.Please don’t ...

Send us a Text Message.On today’s episode we are talking about a number of recent incidents that have occurred at various fast food drive through windows where either the customer shoots at the employees, or the employees shoot at the customers because there was some type of a problem with their food order. During the episode we explain how different societal issues help create the conditions that negatively affect individual behavior and lead to a lack of critical thinking and po...

Send us a Text Message.On todays episode we are talking about a topic that many of you are familiar with and is often called “check in the box training.” This conversation centers around a recent Army Times article where the Sergeant Major of the Army as well as the Army Chief of Staff talked about how much time is wasted doing online training and they even went as far as to say not to do it! During the episode we get into a number of areas including the difference between training and e...

Send us a Text Message.In this weeks episode we are talking about a recent high profile case from Memphis where a woman was killed while she was going for an early morning run. In the episode, we talk about out how things like denial can cause us to miss important cues in our environment and how in this case the offender targeted the victim, but not in the way that you might think.Please don’t forget to follow us on social media, you can find the links in the episode details and if you enjoye...

Send us a Text Message.On todays episode we are taking some of the issues that we’ve discussed in the past regarding the sociological implications of major social events and bringing them down to the street level to show how a poor decision made by someone you’ve never met before can have a major impact on your life. For this discussion we brought on Police Officer, CEO, and host of the 3 cops talk podcast, Chris Sherwin. After serving for 20 years on a police department in a major metro...

Send us a Text Message.Today we are talking to Tori, Emmily, and Chelsea from an amazing company called Braid Babes. We brought them on the show because they have an in-home service business where they send women to your house to braid your hair and they wanted to know what they could do to help keep their employees safe. So for this episode we had the Braid Babes be the hosts and ask us a number of questions based on the concerns that they have so that Greg and I could give them some free ad...

Send us a Text Message.Today we are teaching you how to hunt the elusive “killer bigfoot.” The method we are using to hunt this creature is of course, our own selective reality!So, for todays show we are talking about the different cognition biases that affect our ability to evaluate information and why those biases occur. Later in the episode we discuss a number of ways to help combat the unconscious effects of the different mental processes that we cannot control.Please don’t forget to foll...

Send us a Text Message.This week we are releasing a podcast we did with Christopher Ponce, Brook Roberts and Dr Rachel Team from the Texas Association of School Psychologists, who have their own podcast called TASP Talks. We recorded this episode back in April and they released it on their show back in June and due to the overwhelming amount of feedback we received, we wanted to release it as a Left Of Greg episode as well. This was originally released as two separate episodes so there’s...

Send us a Text Message.Today we are talking about a recent trend that we’ve noticed where armed civilians are intervening in situations that would normally be handled by the police. In the episode we bring up examples that show the benefit of this type of intervention as well as examples that demonstrate how it can go catastrophically wrong. During the discussion we talk about some of the legal ramifications of these types of interventions and we get into topics like liability, preclusion, an...

Send us a Text Message.Today we are talking to our friends and former guests on the show, Andy Riise and Jon Macaskill. Both of these gentlemen, which is a term I use lightly in this case, bring a wealth of knowledge and experience they have gained as graduates of rival service academies and members of the Special Operations community. We invited Andy and Jon to come back on the show together because they are in the middle of training for a half ironman competition. One of the reasons th...

Send us a Text Message.Today we are talking about a problem that we have noticed in several different industries that involve an over reliance on certification to the point where certificates have more to do with comfort than they do with compliance. In the episode we give several examples of what we’ve seen in the past and we talk about how not to fall into the trap of just relying on certifications and to look beyond the piece of paper that they are printed on!Episode Links:Tommy Boy Scene:...

Send us a Text Message.Today we are talking to RaSheed Lemon. RaSheed has an incredible amount of experience as a Marine, Soldier, State Trooper and now as a supervisor at a federal law enforcement agency. RaSheed first met Greg in Afghanistan when Greg was implementing the Insider Threat program for coalition forces. RaSheed was then tasked by the U.S. Army to continue that program and to build more insider threat programs for the Army. During the episode RaSheed shares with us how a be...

Send us a Text Message.Today we are talking about different locations that people frequently travel to that don’t seem like they could be dangerous, even though they often attract criminal activity. The main location we focus on in this episode is nail salons, which, although is not a location that we typically frequent, it is a location that can become a target for criminals. Please don’t forget to follow us on social media, you can find the links in the episode details and if you enjoy...

Send us a Text Message.This week we are publishing an episode that we originally recorded for the Excellence in Training Podcast that our friend and colleague Brian Willis hosts as part of his Excellence in Training Academy. Brian originally reached out to us to talk about how to build decision-making into training scenarios so we recorded an episode talking about sense making and problem solving, and how to implement decision points into current training scenarios.If you have a minute, check...

Send us a Text Message.Today we are going to be talking about mass shooting events, and specifically school shootings, through the lenses of HBPR&A. We are doing this in order to explain, as best as we can, how and why these events occur in the first place, how and why we react the way that we do, and how and why we think the right training can PREVENT the next school attack.Greg and Brian are experts on human behavior, not on school shootings. Greg and Brian are experts in pattern recogn...

Send us a Text Message.This week we are discussing the concept of Cognitive Dissonance and how it affects our perception of events. During the conversation we talk about things like perception, orientation, stereotypes, and how individual expression can shape someone else’s view of us. We also get into the concept of “tabula rasa” or “clean slate” and we explain how the most important flavor in Ben and Jerry’s ice cream is actually vanilla!Please don’t forget to follow us on social media, you...

Send us a Text Message.This week we are talking about perception, second and third order effects, and how ideological analysis causes us to misinterpret events. We explain these concepts by using two recent police officer involved shootings that have a lot more to the story than most people realize.During the episode we also give a general statement on the recent Buffalo supermarket shooting and I try my best to explain why these mass shootings continue to happen even though the pre- event in...

Send us a Text Message.This week we are talking to Joseph Reid who is the founder and executive director for an international mental health support group called Broken People. Joseph is also the best selling author of Broken Like Me; an Insiders toolkit for mending broken people and he is an industry leader when it comes to mental health.During the conversation Joseph shared a ton of great insight into how he approaches mental health and resilience and why his approach resonates so well with ...

Send us a Text Message.This week we are talking about how words can influence your behavior. Now, most of you know that we typically care more about what someone DOES, rather than what someone SAYS but obviously, the words that people choose to use can heavily influence someone’s behavior. In our discussion we talk about some recent high-profile events to demonstrate that the same words used at a different location with a different intent can completely change the meaning behind the...

Send us a Text Message.This week we are joined by long time listener and friend Adam Blanton to talk about the work he has been doing to combat school violence and he explains how violence prevention works at the community level.Adam is a ten-year veteran of law enforcement in Eastern Indiana and currently is a patrol supervisor and Dual-Purpose K9 Handler. He serves as an FBI Task Force Officer Liaison with the Behavioral Analysis Unit and Behavioral Threat Assessment Center. Adam is a...

Send us a Text Message.This week we are joined by Gabrielle and Whitney from Lantern Rescue who we had the pleasure of meeting when they attended one of our in-person training courses not long ago.Lantern Rescue is a US based, non-profit that fights against Human Trafficking Internationally. Through previous military and law enforcement experience, Lantern’s Rescue Team trains units that combat Human Trafficking in their country. Through a network of advisement, training, rescuing, prosecutio...

Send us a Text Message.For this weeks episode we decided to release a conversation that we had with police trainer and former Left of Greg podcast guest, Brian Willis. This conversation was originally recorded last year for Brian’s Excellence in Training Academy so if you’re not a Patreon subscriber, this is the first time you have heard the conversation.In this episode we talk specifically about police pursuits and the use of “stop sticks” but the conversation really revolves around human pe...

Send us a Text Message.In this weeks episode we are talking about Adaptability and Resilience within the context of learning, survival, and training for the real event. In our discussion, we give our definitions of these terms and we talk about how we use them during our training courses. We also bring up some of the notable figures in this area of study including Donald Meichenbaum, Marty Seligman, and Dave Grossman, and we give our explanation of where WE think they went wrong. Please ...

Send us a Text Message.In this weeks episode we are once again talking about the importance of understanding a persons INTENT rather than focusing on their motive. For this episode we are talking about how the difference between a weapon and a tool is not necessarily determined by the object itself, but by the behavior and the intent of the person wielding the object. Please don’t forget to follow us on social media, you can find the links in the episode details and if you enjoyed the po...

Send us a Text Message.In this weeks episode we are talking about the legal rights and responsibilities that schools have when it comes to the safety and security of the children who attend those schools. Although we start the discussion talking about school shootings, we also bring up cases that are much more common to what happens in schools on a daily basis. The point of the discussion is to show how we can make schools safer and more secure by having a better understanding of HOW and...

Send us a Text Message.In this weeks episode we are answering a question that was sent in by one of our listeners. Since the question deals directly with law enforcement training we decided to bring on a very special guest and friend, Brian Willis. Brian Willis is recognized throughout North America as a catalyst for change in the law enforcement profession and as a man with many questions. Brian operates Winning Mind Training, a company dedicated to serving the heroic men and women of l...

Send us a Text Message. In this weeks episode we are talking about challenging our assumptions, specifically when it comes training and education. Due to the fact that we all fall victim to confirmation bias, we tend to assume that some events or outcomes are inevitable when in fact we have the ability to influence a situation far more than we realize. We discuss three different cases in the episode that we us as examples of how our own habits of thought and action can lead to poor ...

Send us a Text Message.In this weeks episode we are diving deep into a descriptive term we use all the time on this show that many of you are probably familiar with called “People want their say, not their way.” At the beginning of the episode Greg and I define what we mean when we use that saying and we also talk about HOW to use the lesson but more importantly we talk about the distinction between someone who just wants to have their “say” versus someone who wants to have their say AND thei...

Send us a Text Message.In this weeks episode we are talking about inevitability, and how our own perspective and biases can become a contributing factor to the outcome of a situation. During the episode we talk about how personal attitudes combined with the fear of the unknown can needlessly escalate situations and how a minor change in perspective can give you a better understanding of your environment. We also talk about how social media can be one big example of confirmation bias!Ple...