The Human Behavior Podcast

Send us Fan Mail 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 tra...

Send us Fan Mail 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...

Send us Fan Mail 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...

Send us Fan Mail 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 enou...

Send us Fan Mail 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 a...

Send us Fan Mail 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, t...

Send us Fan Mail 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 link...

Send us Fan Mail 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, a...

Send us Fan Mail 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 ne...

Send us Fan Mail 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 th...

Send us Fan Mail 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 t...

Send us Fan Mail 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 pod...

Send us Fan Mail 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 que...

Send us Fan Mail 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...

Send us Fan Mail 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...

Send us Fan Mail 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 ramifica...

Send us Fan Mail 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 t...

Send us Fan Mail 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 an...

Send us Fan Mail 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 in...

Send us Fan Mail 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 fo...

Send us Fan Mail 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 h...

Send us Fan Mail 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 expe...

Send us Fan Mail 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...

Send us Fan Mail 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...

Send us Fan Mail 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...