How to Read Body Language & Detect Lies with Dr. Abbie Maroño #185

Welcome to the home front, everybody. I'm Jeff Duden. If you grew up as a disruptive teen who was kicked out of school and your mother and father's home, gained acceptance through the use of drugs and alcohol and a little bit of acting out, if you, through the attention of a professor, found psychology and yourself became a professor of psychology by the age of 23 and today provides behavioral analysis training to elite units including the US Secret Service, the FBI, and the Department of Homeland Services. Your name can only be Dr. Abby Morono. Welcome.

Thank you for having me.

Yes. Very excited. I've really enjoyed preparing for this conversation, and it's the perfect way to end a wonderful week here in the U.S. so, opening question. How would you describe your father?

Loving. Loving, but not always knowing how to love.

Okay.

He. He's got the biggest heart of anyone I've ever met. He wants to give and give and give, but he struggles with his own mental health. And my. My father now is a very different father than I grew up with. The way that I would describe my dad now is he's calm and wonderful and self aware and reflective. I would never use a single one of those words to describe the father I grew up with. My dad was very angry and very lost and very hurt and very traumatized from his own upbringing. And he didn't know how to be the dad of a chaotic child that struggled with mental health. So he did the best he could with what he knew. But because he was facing his own mental health struggles, part of that did. Did mean abandoning me when I was very young. And then when I got back to myself, he was able to be the father that I needed.

Both your books, work in progress in the upper hand. You dedicated to your father. So he must have had an amazing recovery and stuck the landing and became a beacon of stability and consistency in your life.

Yes, I. I grew up very lonely when I was younger. As a kid, my mum was very abusive psychologically and verbally, and my dad was very lost and he didn't know how to take care of himself, let alone really take care of three children, all girls. So we ganged up on him and we would bicker and he. He was very angry. He didn't. He didn't have the psychological tools to deal with his own anger. So he acted out in certain ways. And he was also very sick, so he wasn't able to work in the way that he needed. So we did grow up on benefits and we grew up, you know, the lights would turn off and we'd make A game of it. All of us would come into the lounge and put candles on. And at the time, we didn't know that it was because we couldn't pay the bills. It was like, yay, fun time in the lounge, you know, sleepover. So he did the best he could and he got into his own bad relationships after my mum. And my mom was quite a traumatizing woman to be with for him too. So when I struggled with my mental health and I struggled with drugs and was kicked out of school, I really needed support and love. And what I got was a dad that didn't know how to handle it, so told me to leave. And I was also living with my. I then moved into my mum's house and my mum's rule was be seen, not heard. So I kind of had to apologize for my existence in that space, which was something that I carried along with me for the rest of my life, really. But she also kicked me out and I didn't have a home to go to. I was staying with friends and kicked out of college and, you know, they didn't know. But the lessons I learned at that young age, I was 16 years old, they have benefited me throughout my whole life. And there was a turning point where I'd said to my dad, I know you don't like me, but can I please come home? And he didn't know I wasn't living with my mom. And I remember he said it broke his heart because he was like, why don't you think I don't like you? I said, because I can tell. And he was like, you can come home. And it was from that point I had already gotten myself back into sick form, which is what I believe American school, high school. So I was already. I had got myself out of the drug addiction. I was in, I guess, my own form of recovery. And I did that alone. And I got back into college alone and I got rid of all my friends alone, and I studied and got myself back to this space. So when he saw me, I think he realized how desperately alone I was and how I needed him so badly and I needed my whole family and they all left me. So from that point, he made a very, very purposeful effort to be everything that I needed. And from that point, our relationship became so strong because I said to him that I was diagnosed with clinical depression. And I know my dad did too. And I think for the first time he took it seriously and realized how bad it had been for me. And I wasn't just a kid out doing Drugs on the weekend for fun. I was in real danger. And from that moment, my dad has been my rock. He's been everything there isn't. There hasn't been a day that has gone by, even when I've been in South Africa and Thailand, that we haven't called in the morning and the evening and said, I love you and I miss you. And when I moved to America, we had to kind of arrange time zones every morning. I love you and I miss you. Every night. I love you and I miss you. My mornings, his nights. And I know it doesn't matter what I need from him. He's there.

As someone who also grew up in a home that had a lacking of boundaries, supervision, care, affirmation, attention, presence, all of these things. And now as a parent myself, I realize how differently children perceive the relationship with their parents than parents receive the relationship with children. I mean, I look at it and somehow I think that my children, without me communicating it, know how I feel, what I mean, what my intent is. And without intention and over communication and consistency, your kids fill the gaps with all of the things that they feel that they're missing and, you know, but. And then at the end of the day, all children are searching and yearning for belonging.

Yeah.

Being part of something, having a connection that. That makes them feel validated, significant, and all of that. And it's. It is. The parenting of children is. It's difficult without coaching training. I don't know. But it's, you know, observationally, it's done less well more often.

Yeah. And people underestimate, too, how aware children are. They might not comprehend the situation in itself, but if you think that you're hiding stress and you think that you're hiding this negative relationship or these bad feelings, and it's not affecting your children, they respond to it and they internalize it. And children blame themselves because they don't have that same theory of mind. They don't have a fully formed prefrontal cortex where they can think critically of, oh, it's not my fault. Their world revolves around them. Of course it does. Their children. So when mum and dad are in turmoil and when mom and dad are hurting and stressed, it's my fault, because how could it not be my fault? Because the world revolves around me. And. And that's just how kids think. They internalize blame when there is negativity in the environment. And I remember growing up, we had a lot of money struggles and we ended up. My mom took the house from my dad, and my dad was homeless for a Little while after we left for university and getting to that point, there was a lot of bills coming through that weren't being paid and, you know, the lights were going off and we kind of couldn't have food. And I remember, you know, we couldn't have the clothes everybody had in school. Why did we have to get the secondhand school uniforms? Why couldn't I have my own? Why did I always have to get my sisters to. My sisters to me? And, you know, they had the really nice trousers. Why do we have the rubbish ones? And things like that? You don't fully understand. But there were money problems going on, and my dad wouldn't talk about them. He wouldn't say that there's a problem here. He wouldn't say, hey, we have an issue. We need to do this and this is going on. But as we got a little bit older, we all knew and we didn't quite understand it. But I remember I started babysitting when I was 13 years old, and my sister, I'm the youngest, she is a year and a half older than me, she had a job, and my other sister did it too. But me and my middle sister, mostly my middle sister, Lee, she would work and put money in the pocket of my dad's trousers and when he wasn't looking, would take the electricity key and put money on it. And this is a high burden for a very young child. And again, I was young. I didn't fully comprehend the nature of it. But you know that there are serious stresses going on. And if you don't think that that carries into a child's nervous system, then you are very wrong. And it was only about a year ago that I started to realize how traumatic my childhood was when I was struggling with a lot of things I couldn't comprehend. And I did this index of adverse life experiences, and I gave it to my sister. And I said, do this because we both have our own personal health conditions that we've been working with. And we did the criteria and it said, we've both fell into this severely traumatized. And it listed health conditions that are likely to be a result of this childhood. And both of us struggle with them quite seriously. And it was then we put two and two together of maybe things were worse, and we were just very familiar with them. But a lot of those things that were going on were things that weren't spoken about and things that went on quietly. And parents often don't realize that those things have a big unconscious effect on the children, and they carry them in later life.

You found psychology through a professor. And I think I had a similar experience at my third university that I finally made it at, where I scored a 96 on a accounting test. And I said to myself, walking out of there, I'm not a complete idiot. But you scored 100, in a way. Was your interest in psychology, were you so interested in it? Because maybe it was a form of therapy for yourself that you sorely needed and you took an interest in it.

It was when I was 17. I managed to get back into college for me, high School for Americans. And I had actually failed all of my subjects, so I didn't have enough to be able to redo the year. And the head of Sick form at the time didn't want me to redo the eggs. He didn't want me for another, like, another two years. So I had a deal that, what if I do both in one year? And he was like, okay, fine, kind of, that you're not going to be able to do it. But I hated my psychology teacher at the time, and she hated me. Her name was Ms. Moon, and I begged her to let me come back and I do double the amount of work. And I said, I'll write you an essay once every week, every week a new essay. And she was like, fine, okay. And she was not liking any of them. I was failing all the essays for the first month, maybe two months. But I kept doing it and I kept being consistent. And she saw a student that was really trying, and she put a little bit of effort into me. And then she started to become like a mother figure to me. And when she saw that I actually wasn't a bad kid, I was never a bad kid. I was just very lost and very helpless, and I was acting out, and she recognized that. And then she learned that my dad was sick, and she learned about my mum. And from that moment, she kind of mothered me. And she also made me realize I knew I was dyslexic. I had done testing early in my life and they had said I was dyslexic, but I ignored it because people used to make fun of me when I was taken out of class. So I never did anything about it. But Ms. Moon helped me understand it and helped me learn in a way that worked for me. So she helped me understand this system of revision. And then I started to get good grades, and I realized, oh, one, this is the first person in my life that I feel like believes in me. And that was my psychology teacher. And that's why I Say, you can have a huge impact as a teacher. Because she believed in me, and it made me believe in myself, of maybe I could do this. And then I started to get good grades, and I was like, I'm. I'm good at something. And that was psychology for the first time. And then I started to realize, oh, this is really useful information. And then, as you said, I did start to think, well, what if this helps me understand me? And then as that understanding kind of crept in a little bit more and I realized I could do this. I never looked back because it became my lifeline. But everything else in my life was crumbling. It was like, but this one thing, this one thing is working for me. And because I had this one thing, I realized, okay, I need to go to university. I want to do this. I have to make all of my other subjects. I need to put my work into it. I need to put my heart into it. So everything picked up. I got rid of everyone in my life, and it was just about the books. And I had no friends. So I spent my lunch times in Ms. Moon's classroom. And there was one person who stayed my friend, but we didn't speak so much. And his name was Marcus, and he was always there supporting kind of from the sidelines. And that's all I needed. I fell in love with psychology. And from that point, it became more than just subject specific knowledge, because I realized, yes, I could build a career out of this, but I could also build a person in myself that I want to be.

When was it that you created the vision for providing training to the US Secret Service?

It's funny. My goal was to be a professor of behavioral analysis. I watched Lie to Me with Paul Ekman. And I was like, oh, I want to be a lighted detecting machine. So I went to university and I worked with David Keatley, who was a professor at the time, and I gave him an idea. And he said, if you told anyone that. And I said, no. And he said, well, don't, because it's never been done. So if you want to do it, I'll help you. And that was my first year as an undergrad, and we worked on it together and we published the paper. And we reached out to Joe Navarro, who was this big celebrity to me, and I was. He emailed me and said he'd love to meet me, and I never did. At that point, I was too shy, but he loved the idea, and he jumped on the paper and we published the papers. And my goal then I wanted to be an FBI Agent. But when the papers got published, I realized, oh, there's questions about human behavior that we don't know the answers to. And I just became a part of creating knowledge and, and I said, that's it. I'm a professor of behavior analysis. One day, that is what I'm going to be. I want to do this forever. I did my PhD in Behavioral Analysis and I was a professor of behavior analysis before I was a doctor. And it wasn't quite what I thought that it would be academia. It didn't communicate with the outside world in the way that I wanted. I thought we would be more welcoming to practitioners. And I worked with practitioners at the time and I, I felt the community was quite angry and I, I just didn't feel at home as an academic and I couldn't figure out why, because I love science. And Joan of our at the time is that you're too passionate to be doing what you're doing in unis. You need to be doing this in the wider world. And he then introduced me to the CEO of Social Engineer. And we had one meeting and he said that he was curious about me and do you know anyone that does psychology, non verbals and information elicitation? And I said, I have a PhD in information elicitation, psychology and non verbal communication. So if you want someone, you want me. And he offered me the job here working as director of education. So we break into buildings and, and then we train them how or we teach them how they we did it so they can protect against bad actors. And I thought this sounded like a movie, so I accepted the job. And then when I came here and I'm working in this company, I run a podcast called the Doctor is In. And I just, I love psychology and I want to share psychology with everyone because it can be fun and you don't have to be a scientist to understand science. Carl Sagan was one of the biggest inspirations to me because he makes science accessible. And that's why my motto is making science accessible. And I started my podcast and I had a Secret Service agent reach out to me because he listened to my podcast and he used some of the information that I was teaching in one of his interrogations of a child predator. And it led to a confession of a very prolific predator. And then he said to me that he would love to have a conversation. And we became friends. And then I was helping him just with some interview tactics and it was like, how would you like to join me on a training? We did one training and it went so well that I established that relationship with the Secret Service. And then I've been, I work really hard and I put out a lot of content and I just try and do as much as I can. And my thinking is, you know, one day I'll come back to you. And then I released, I have a new book coming out and someone from the Secret Service personally reached out to me and invited me to come and do their training of my new book. And from there it's just been one to the next to the next.

Can you give us a layman's definition of behavior analysis and some of the applications?

Well, behavioral analysis is extremely broad. It really is just looking at the way a human interacts with another human and trying to understand it or the way one human interacts with the world. So I'm a behavioral scientist and I look at how people think, I look at thought processes, I look at decision making, why we do the things we do. And then I'm also a social scientist so I look at how we interact with people and I take a biopsychosocial approach, which basically means I take a little bit of neuroscience, a little bit of biopsych, a little bit of sociology, a little bit of psychology to try and understand the human as a system. Why we think the way we do, why we make the decisions that we do. And really behavioral analysis is just the application of that in the real world. And we think of it mostly in a security context. So if I'm looking at behavioral analysis as say airport security, I'm looking at how this individual is interacting with their environment to see, okay, are they a threat? So, so I'm looking at behavioral cues that indicate to a particular intention. But then behavioral analysis is also, you go on a first date, you know, and you're looking at the body language of the other person. Do they like me? Do they not like me? That is behavioral analysis. It's just we tend to think of it in a security context and that's typically where I apply it. But I also teach business leaders, I teach CEOs, I've done a lot of work with dating. So it can really be a very, very broad field.

How does it stack up against neuro linguistic programming?

I am not a supporter of neuro linguistic programming mostly because there is no evidence in the literature that it is scientifically sound. And there are a lot of concepts that, I mean I've published in deception detection based on non verbal cues. And I wrote that behavior is a cue of deception. But science progresses by making mistakes. And then we Go, ah, that isn't how it works. And we progress. My first couple of research papers because of the development of science since I recognize I made mistakes in those papers, but that's how we make progression. And neuro linguistic programming was a good stepping stone for behavioral analysis because it made us look into non verbals and cues and things like this a little bit more. But it's not a scientifically valid field of work and I'm not a component of it.

Yeah, it's parlor tricks and there may be indications, but just because you're detecting a behavior or a cue, the context matters and the baseline matters. And just because somebody's uncomfortable doesn't mean that you can necessarily, they're not necessarily lying or you know, so it's, it's much more, it's much more nuanced than oh, somebody's, you asked them what year they went to high school or whatever and they, they looked up into the right so their right hand recall and now anytime they look to the left, they're lying. It's right. I mean there's, yeah, there's all of these little things and they work great at a cocktail party, but. Yep, but they're not, they're not reliable.

No. And they, they sell really nicely.

Yeah, exactly.

They sell really nicely. And I see this all the time because there's a couple things when I meet a fellow expert and now honestly, anyone can say I'm an expert. And if you look everywhere, everyone's an expert, but they don't have any formal qualifications. And formal qualifications, scientific degrees, when it comes to this field of work is very important because if you're looking to understand human behavior, yes, it's great to be a practitioner, but you understand it at a surface level. If you're looking for someone to teach you psychology, formal qualifications are very, very important. And there's a lot of people that recognize that, oh, this is an idea. If I say, if you buy this course, if you buy this book, if you listen to this speech, you can leave this room and be a human lie detector. And their, their source is trust me, it worked for me. And now you see this a lot with people who are very, very successful and they realize that people want what they have, they want to be in the position that they are. So if I now put out a course and say trust me, you can get to where I am, if you get these things, people are going to buy it because that sounds great. And that idea of doing like a six week course and being an expert and a master of Non verbals. How great does that sound? I barely have to do anything. But if you think that you can get to that high skill level without barely doing anything, there's likely to be a catch. Or it's likely to be pseudoscience, which it is, right? But when people teach that of, you can get to where I am because I did this. So trust me, it works. The problem is you don't really know what obstacles they've overcome, what biases they've had, what they're lying about, what was working in their favor that might not for you, or the underpinnings of how they got there. And as soon as someone represents something like they say, oh, 95% of communication, 97 is non verbals. I do NLP. When I hear these things, I instantly know you. You don't know what you're talking about. When people talk about, oh, well, you can detect this micro expression. If you do my course, I'll teach you to read micro expressions or you don't know what you're talking about. Because these things, when you dive into the actual research, have been discredited and have been dismissed for much more complicated but very, very robust research. And it's something that I always look for. And this is why when I teach behavioral analysis, I don't teach do X get Y. I teach. This is how people think. And here's the evidence of why. And now it's up to you to go and apply that. Because I think what we should be teaching is an understanding of how people think. And we should be teaching people kind of the basics of psychology and then layering it on rather than saying, do these five things and they will work every time. Human beings are so much more complicated than that. They. There is nothing that if everyone does it, it will always work for them. But that's what you hear in nonverbals. And it's like you said with the. You see this cue, and it means they're lying. There is not one single cue in the existence of the literature that will always mean someone is lying. That's not how humans work. We are complicated. There are absolutely consistencies. But behavior doesn't happen in a vacuum. There are always other components to consider. And. And that's why instead of just teaching that robust, see this? It always means this. See this? It always means this. Trying to teach a deeper level of why. Like I try and teach people why nonverbals occur so they can have that more nuanced understanding of, okay, well, if this is why they occur when I See this, I can kind of trace it back to a thought process rather than just this is cause, this is effect.

Aspirationally, I always strove to teach my children how to think, not what to think. Yeah, some of that's a little bit of intentional neglect. Letting them struggle, letting them figure it out, not solving for them, and just letting them go through the machinations of trying to figure it out. What are some of the things that you see today that challenge young people, children, young adults in their development because of things like social media, things like lack of connection that really impact them from. We're talking about social cues, we're talking about reading people, we're talking about all of these things. And I mean, we live most of our life through a screen in a lot of cases. So what are, what are some of the challenges that you see and what might be some of the things that you would recommend to young people if you had the opportunity?

Well, there's a couple of things. One is the excessive amount of information that they're given that is inaccurate. Because you can be the most curious, hardworking, dedicated kid. And a lot of these kids, they want to learn so badly. So they go on YouTube and they go on TikTok, which feels like a dirty word because there were studies looking at TikTok of the amount of educational platforms, and I think it was something like 80 to 90% had misinformation. And it's very few pages that of someone that says they're an expert, that can back up expertise with qualifications, and they present information very confidently. And they go on YouTube, they look for people, okay, well, this looks great. They take all this information in because they want to learn, but the problem is rubbish in, rubbish out. If I'm looking to appear, okay, well, how do I appear confident? And then I take in information that says it's teaching confidence, but it's teaching dominance. Doesn't matter how much I want to show confidence, I'm taking in the wrong information. So the output will be dominance. The goal is there and it's the same. Say I'm trying to learn about taxes or any other subject and I'm doing everything that I need to do to learn. I'm taking all the information, I'm revising, I'm working hard, I'm putting in the hours, I'm doing all the learning strategies. Great. But the information itself that I'm taking in is. Is inaccurate. Take in accurate information, get out unsuccessful results. And I see that a lot because there is such an excess of inaccurate information.

Is this through misinformation, through intention or through ignorance?

Both. So there are a lot of people that talk very confidently on subjects they know very little about. And then there are people that know what sells. And a lot of people have very good intention and they're trying to teach stuff, but they don't fully understand it, so they're miss teaching. Or there's people that are just very passionate and they have a lot of followers. So they give their ideas, they give their concepts. People take it as fact, people take it as their ideas. There's a lot of popular podcasts that people will live by. And I remember I was seeing a friend of mine many months ago, and he was obsessed with these male, male podcasts that talk about relationship dynamics. And he thought he had the most in depth, wonderful understanding of evolutionary psychology. And you couldn't have a conversation with him without him talking about the evolutionary dynamics of it. And I said to him, yeah, but you're misunderstanding. I said, you're not taking into consider the proximal causation. And he was like, what do you mean? I was like, what do you mean, what do I mean? You're not taking in the proximal causation. And what this means is the very foundation of evolutionary theory is built on ultimate causations, which are those evolved mechanisms. And then proximal causations are lived experiences. And it's the foundation of every evolutionary argument. An argument cannot be an evolutionary argument unless it considers those proximal causations. But that's in the literature, that's in evolutionary theory. And you understand that as a scientist. It doesn't sell so well, though, because it's really easy to say women want resources and women are after money and men want young, pretty women. That sells so much easier.

I saw that podcast. I saw it. It was with the lady from Dubai.

There are so many out there.

And it was with the psychologist from the U.S. i saw that exact podcast. I found it. I found it fascinating. Are you telling me that I have to unlearn all that now?

Well, I mean, it's not unlearning. You take it and you build on it. Okay, but there's so many out there that talk about that, but they miss that one component. And when I said to him, what about the proximal causations? He didn't even know what the word meant. And this is the problem. People are seeking. And he spent an inordinate amount of time reading evolutionary books by popular scientists. I'm popular authors, sorry, not scientists watching podcasts on it watching YouTube videos and Ted talks and all these things. But he was getting the same inaccurate information over and over and over. So he felt he had a very strong knowledge base. He and he was keen to learn, he was trying. But again, inaccurate information in ineffective results. And we see this so much because now everybody's connecting on social media. The spread of misinformation is huge. And now AI scares me. Yeah, AI really scares me because yes, you can get so much information out that looks very, very realistic. You can have someone and all you need is someone who has a level of authority. Now that can be because of perceived qualifications. So in my field I would be an authority because I have a PhD and I have my qualifications. But say I was just someone that has a lot of books. I have no qualifications, but I've got a lot of popular books, I have a very popular YouTube. All of these things gives me authority in the same right to other people. And we look up to those people. And when someone has authority in the field for whatever reason, we believe that their information carries more weight. And this is something that I think is really hard to combat because we don't want to. Because looking deeper into things of okay, well is this person biased? You know, where did this information come from? Are they explaining the concept or just as you said, not giving them the tools, you're telling them what to do, not how to think. And it's really hard to question ourselves. But that is my first tip that I always give to people of question everything. And if someone says do something, always say why?

Yes.

And I've caught speakers out because there are a lot of speakers in my industry that watch Joe Navarro's work because he is leader of non verbals, he is the world leading expert in non verbals and he is always so friendly to give help. And if someone wants any mentoring, he gives them mentoring. If someone wants a conversation, he helps them. And I see a lot of people read his work and take his stuff and present it as their own. And I've seen it in conferences and I remember I put my hand up and I said why does that work? And it was dead silence because it wasn't their information they didn't understand. At a deeper level they knew how to regurgitate it.

That's right.

Now with AI, this is one of the biggest problems, not learning information. You're regurgitating ChatGPT, you're not learning it. And that process of effort and mistake is how we, we learn and how we integrate knowledge.

Isn't it that ironic? Because with the availability of information at our fingertips and now the agents that can go compile that information and now present it in a very compelling, argumentative way, we are losing, we're losing our depth.

Yes, that's a really nice way to put it.

Yeah, there's no depth because we, we stay right on the surface. We, it's convenience, it's fast, we get what we think we're looking for and we never question and go deeper, deeper into it. So yeah, we're drowning in a sea of information, but yet we're, we're becoming less knowledgeable.

Yep. And it's like say let's take non verbals or behavioral analysis and you go and ask ChatGPT. It's a really quick process and you go, okay, I understand this. If I give you the rules of tennis, could you instantly go be a master tennis player? Of course not. You have to integrate it, you have to practice. It takes time, it takes understanding, it takes effort, it takes mistakes. Oh, I did this wrong. Oh, let me try this new thing or let me do it this way. Over and over and over and over again and again and again and again and then you start to pick it up and then you start to develop those skills. When it comes to psychology and science and non verbals, it's very much the same. These skill sets that you pick up, they take time, they take practice. It takes diving into the literature. And what we get when we put it into chat GBT is we get a one sided argument. If in psychology anything was that simple, we would never have multiple papers published on the same concept. People are complicated and thinking is complicated and we publish papers that are then thrown to the side and go, ah, that was inaccurate. And we published multiple papers on the same topic with vastly different outcomes and arguments. And it's the consumption of all of that knowledge, utilizing critical thinking, looking at surrounding fields where we then formulate our own opinion. And it's very important that we do this because if you just get the one sided argument, you're not really understanding things at an in depth level. But this is what people are doing. They're diving to chat GPT. And I have put my papers through chat GBT and said explain it to me and explains them wrong. It doesn't fully understand them and it doesn't understand them in a way that you learn thinking as a scientist because you're trained as a scientist to think critically in a way that a robot really doesn't do. And I don't know whether I call it a robot or AI but it feels like it should be labeled a robot. But you get this really one sided view and what it's teaching us to do is think very much the same. And I think that's very dangerous. And we've seen it play out in history. What happens when we have group think, when everybody starts to take one opinion and formulate it as their own and we start to develop ideas and start to believe things that we don't fully understand. And again, that's a really dangerous place to be. And there was a quote that I read and it said, if you don't understand where your belief came from, it's not your belief. Or if you can't explain your belief and why you believe it, it's not your belief. This is what we're doing with ChatGPT. We don't understand our own knowledge, we just regurgitate it. And I, I think that is very dangerous because now we think we know it. I'm going to teach it to other people, people. And it leads to this system of misunderstanding.

Think about the evolution of physics as a science. Hundreds of years ago, people are starting to understand gravity. And then as the, the years go on, then there's, then there's this concept of relativity, but it's built on the deep knowledge of everything that's come before. So now if you want to evolve on that, you've got to learn everything that came before you. And then, only then can you move the science forward. And it's just, it's, it's at the core of it, you've got to start from the beginning. And honestly it's, you know, I mean, I remember back when I was in school, they're like, should we allow the kids to have calculators? You know, it's like, I mean, that was our thing, right? Should we, should we allow them to have calculators? Because now they're basically cheating. And now you get a, a four function calculator to do your physics and whatever, because that's the least of it. But you know, at the end of it, it's, it's, it's become, everybody's become a genius. And everybody, everybody goes to the party with five minutes of depth of information that they got off the Internet. And then they are, they are purporting this as their absolute truth, their belief and their opinion. It's crazy.

Yep, yep. And you asked, you know, what one of the biggest issues are for children. And I also think that we're not allowing them to struggle. You said that you purposefully allow Your kids to struggle a little. And that is so important. You know, we're giving participation trophies out.

Yes.

And that's not how the world works. And it might be great to cuddle the kid and say, yes, you should participate. Well done. Say well done, but you still lost. There are winners and there are losers in things. You can't expect to always be a winner because it sets unrealistic expectations. You can't expect there not to be struggle. We have come to a time where we have become a little too empathetic, which is the idea of it is wonderful. We want to protect and love, and we don't want to see people struggle. Of course, I hate seeing my students not know what they're doing, and I hate seeing them not get an idea. And I hate seeing them struggle. And I want to give them the answer, but they need that struggle. And obviously mine was, in my childhood was an extreme case of getting myself out. No kid should have to go through that. But there should be struggle, there should be difficulty that you can help them out of, but you don't because you let them develop those skills themselves. Because neurons that wire together. Oh, neurons that fire together wire together. If we do something repeatedly, it creates those connections in our brain to set us up for our childhood. So if every time something's hard, someone saves me. If every time someone something's hard, something saves me. Every time I get involved in something, I don't really need to put much effort into really winning because I still get a participation trophy. And also when I don't get this thing, I still get something. And I have those expectations now. That's how I now interact with the world. And now I go into corporate America, which is absolutely cutthroat, and it is dog eat dog, and it is hard and it is tough. And you go into the world of business and you expect those things to carry because that's what you've learned. Although the intention is wonderful to help kids and just give them love and empathy and celebrate everything they do, the intention's there, but it doesn't actually help them survive in later life. That doesn't mean we're horrible to children and we purposely make them fail. But it means setting realistic expectations. And we've kind of moved away from that a little bit. And we are seeing this. We are seeing now on Tick Tock, hundreds and thousands of young children crying, having breakdowns because they have to go to work all day.

Actually, all they have to go all day.

Oh, all day. All day. And you see this culture of people that really want for nothing. And I see it a lot in Florida. And there's a lot of people that work really, really, really hard. There's also a lot of people that have learned that someone is coming to save them. Now, if someone comes to save you, wonderful. But you need to be able to save yourself. You need to be able to have these skills yourself. You have to learn to be independent. And we're not really giving our kids as good a chance as they deserve.

Well, that's the paradigm of the unearned reward.

Yes.

Which is I'm on social media and I'm getting a reward for doing practically nothing, which then gives me more of what I'm looking for, which gives me more of it, which puts me into the echo chamber, which now creates social proof that everybody should be getting these unearned rewards. And I'm just part of it. And it just drives me away from reality. I think the reality. It's like the reality is what's. We've lost reality in a. In half of a generation, we've lost reality. And if people don't grow up hard. And I'm empathetic for how you grew up, but I'm sure there's a point in time where you're sitting there after giving a speech and meeting some incredible people and traveling all over the world that you said, thank goodness that I've had my path because it made me who I am.

Yes.

And it's made me tough, it's made me resilient. It's given me perspective that other people don't have.

Yep. And I thank my dad sometimes because he said he wish he saved me. And I said, I'm glad you didn't, because I've carried that skill set across my life now. I don't think kids should have to go through that extreme adversity.

No. Not everybody gets out. Not everybody gets out.

Yeah. And when I look at the route that me versus my sisters went through, we all took very different paths. And I. I volunteer a lot with the Innocent Lives foundation, where we catch child predators. And a lot of what we do is working with trauma victims and things like that. And I see people that. They go through these things and it absolutely destroys them because it takes them very tough core to pull yourself through that. And not everybody has that. I got that from my dad. My dad is the toughest man in existence. And I say that as my dad is my superhero. I'm sure everybody thinks that of their dad, but he taught me so much resilience. So I'm lucky that I had that and not everybody does. But one of the biggest issues here with the social media stuff is when you go back 20 years soon, you ask a kid, what do you want to be when you grow up? I want to be a rocket scientist and be a doctor. I want to be this. You ask him now. I want to be TikTok star. And that isn't just me being old and moody about social media. The problem here is on my wall. I have my degrees, I have my awards, I have my books. I have things I've worked really, really hard for that you can't take from me. It doesn't matter what happens in the future. Say I work for a company, the company goes bust, I have still built a strong foundation in which I can build my life from. I have a PhD, I have these qualifications. So if my environment changes, I still have a steady foundation on what I have built. If you are a TikTok star, if your goal is social media, what if Instagram goes bust?

Yeah.

What if TikTok wasn't bought in America? And what if it went and your whole life you've dedicated it to that and you haven't developed transferable skills? Now, I don't think everybody should go to uni. I don't think that science or these qualifications are for everyone. They are for me because it's what I'm passionate about. But whatever it is in your field, whether it's you want to be an expert practitioner, if you want to be an academic, if you want to be an artist, it doesn't matter what the goal pursuit is. It just means build a foundation based on hard work that no one can take from you. Because once you do that, once you, you're an artist, you build your portfolio, you're a practitioner, you get your certifications, you get the things you need that allow you to stand on your own two feet. If the environment changes and social media doesn't allow people to do that. And we don't really think about that, we don't think about the fact that, ah, I'm putting everything I'm building in the hands of something unreliable. Yes, social media is great right now. What if a new law comes into play? What if something happens and you can't do this? What do you do now? Now you don't have transferable skills. And this is why it's like, if you want to do social media, do it, but don't make it the only thing you can do right. Make sure you have skills that if something Happened you can stand on your own two feet.

Yes. I'd like to build a tool. Would you like to help me?

I would love to.

Okay. It's called the Transform Me tool. And on the left is a column with the word replace. And on the right and column is the word with. So I'm going to give you something and I'd like you to tell me what we should replace this with. And the first word I'm going to put is shame.

I don't think we should replace it.

Okay. Why?

I think we should keep shame.

Okay.

And.

Well, this tool, this tool sucks.

This, I mean that it's the development. Right? We should. Okay, I will, I will take the replacement.

No, no, no.

But I will add to it.

Shame. Shame. We'll keep it, but we will remove.

Toxic shame and we'll replace it with healthy shame. So shame in itself is simply. It's an evolved mechanism. Every emotion functions for a reason. You know, the brain weighs 2% of our body mass, takes up 20% of our energy. It's a very energy hungry organ. It doesn't just accidentally do things. Everything is purposeful. Emotions are evolved signals. Anger tells us that we feel an injustice. Happiness tells us that we enjoy this thing. Shame is a signal that we are doing something that is bringing us further away from our social group or further away from who we see ourselves to be or who we want to be. When I do something and I feel guilt, it doesn't mean I'm necessarily, necessarily going against my own moral compass or my group values because maybe I break up with a partner. I feel guilt, but I don't feel shame because I know it was the right thing to do. If I see myself as a loyal person and I cheat on my partner, I'll feel guilt. But I'll feel shame because I contradicted who I am as a person. Now, the reason I said we replace toxic shame with healthy shame is we think shame is one thing. And actually we say shame is the antithesis of empowerment and it's bad. That's not true. Shame is a very, very important signal. It is so essential for healthy growth. Because shame, again, if we don't listen, if we're doing things and we don't listen to that shame and use that information of, okay, why am I doing this? How do I change? We'll never grow. We'll just keep living in denial. So we need to take shame. But the problem is we move the dial from behavior to self. So if I do something and I feel shame, I move from bad Behavior. Now, if I feel toxic shame, I did a bad thing, so I am bad. I am my behaviors. And when I think I'm bad, that means, well, what's the point in growth? What's the point in changing? Because I'm. I'm flawed at the core of who I am. What we need to do is, I did a bad thing, but I'm not a bad person. Bad people do good things. Good people do bad things.

Right?

But we forget to move the dial from behavior to self. And often we learn this in childhood. We do a thing, we do something wrong, and the parent goes, you're a bad kid, or you're in school and you're a bad kid. So you learn to associate behavior and self. We also learn we are the accumulation of our behaviors, which we are, but we can choose to change those behaviors.

I challenge that. I think our outcomes would be the accumulation of our behaviors, but our self is not.

Yes, that would be a better way to put it, that outcomes are an accumulation of our behaviors, but we can also change that. So our past behaviors are an accumulation now of our current environment. But we get so locked in that we don't realize, hey, we can always make a change. Just because you've been doing this thing for so long doesn't mean you can stop. You should keep doing it. You can stop. But that's why shame is so important, because it's an emotion we move away from. We won't. We don't want to face it. Because if we look at it and go, why am I doing this? Usually the answers to why we do these things are very painful. They hurt. There's a lot of unhealed things there. There's possibly trauma. There's a lot of things that we just don't want to accept about ourselves or our environment. And in order to make that change, we have to look shame in the eye and say, help me understand you. But that is very uncomfortable. And when we're taught to make shame go away, we're kind of teaching people to deny our true emotional experiences, and we're giving them injustice because you need to understand that shame. But we have to keep that dial on behavior because if we start to feel that shame and move it to self again, we're not going to have that psychological process of, I can be better. I can make a change. And I remember I did some volunteering with a recovery facility, and I spoke to someone who was a volunteer there who helps run the facility, and he said that what he learned was for such a long Time he'd burnt so many bridges and he had done so much wrong and felt so much shame that he felt the only thing he could do was keep doing it because if he stopped, he'd have to face that shame. And it's easier to not face the shame and just keep living in denial. But it stacks up. It never goes away. The only way out is through. You can't. There's no back door to healing. You have to go through it and you have to deal with that. And the longer you keep running from it, the more you're going to have to keep dealing with. So we shouldn't get rid of shame, but we should replace toxic shame with that healthy understanding of you should feel shame because shame is that signal that you're growing. And. And I felt a lot of shame for things that I did and when I started to change. It doesn't make the behavior go away. I still did those things. Right. But I don't feel shame for them. I feel embarrassment. They don't represent who I am and I wish I never did them, but I did. And it will always be embarrassing to me. There's things that I wrote in my book and I did it on purpose because if I'm telling people to talk about your shame, I put a lot of mine in there. And when people say they've read my book, I'm like, okay, don't talk to me about it because there are things in there that I'm embarrassed about. But I don't feel shame because I moved the dial to healthy shame. And now I recognize that that's just something we have to move past. And this is something we should be teaching kids at some point.

We're not who we were five years ago or 10 years ago or 15 years ago. So at some point you can kill yourself with regret or embarrassment and you can self flagellate yourself for as long as you want to, but it's not helpful. You have to. There has to be grace at some point. We're human, we make mistakes. It's not the last one we're going to make. And we have to reconcile with it that we're imperfect. I, I've done. I've had to do a lot of that. And I'm happier now because I just. You. I can't. I don't regret things that I can't go back and change. Even though there was a horrible person that did it. I'm not that person any longer.

Yeah, we. We shed those versions of ourselves. And there's also a misunderstanding Here when we are changing and growing, we think that we are totally new. You know, new Year, new me. And we go, okay, well, I've left this version of me behind, and I'm moving forward with this. And to a degree that's true. But we're not a totally new person. You are still the person that did those things. I suffered with a really severe drug addiction when I was 16. I know in me there will always be that person that could do that again. Now I live a very clean, clean life, and I'm very studious, and I try and do right as much as I can, but I know inside of me is still that version of me that did those things. I just choose not to be, and I choose to grow and change and. And develop new skills and new thinking. But you don't leave that other version totally behind. You can shed aspects of it, but you don't shed it completely. And I think this is one of the biggest things I see with people who've gone through trauma and it's changed that complete perception of themselves and the world. So they try and start afresh because that version of them before the trauma happened is gone. But there's still aspects of that person there. And integrating what's left and what's new and what's changing is really hard because it is really complicated. Of what do I still believe in that I didn't? And what aspects of me do I want to stay? And how do I create this into one whole person? It's easier to go, okay, I'm a blank slate now. I'm going to build. But that's not really realistic. Yes, you're different versions of yourself, but you still carry that, that person with you. And that's why, you know, we need to keep checking ourselves. And that's why I called my first book Work in Progress, because there's never a point where we're like, okay, done. I'm grown. I am this perfect version. And no work needs to be done because the earth keeps spinning and the days keep going by and you keep changing and you go through new experiences, you meet new people, and even if everything else stays perfectly static, you still change and grow and you learn more. And we need to always be checking ourselves. And just because, say, your social climate changes, maybe things you believed and perspectives you had back then don't fit now, we have to be a little malleable, and we have to have that realization of we're not tied to those versions of ourself, and we always have to be ready for Growth.

Wow. Beautifully said. I've got two places I want to go. One is to ask you what you would replace the word fear with. The other place that I was thought would be interesting would be I'd be interested in your take on the word trust. And as I've grown, I would trust people historically who would behave or react to a situation in the same way that I would. So I would trust them if. If they were consistent with how I would act. But what I've evolved to is trusting people that act consistently with who they are. So, for example, let's just say you're in a relationship and you found out that somebody has cheated, and then you make amends. Faced with the same set of circumstances in the future, what is this person's behavior likely to be? Do you trust them to be who they, you know, who you would want them to be or you. Do you trust them that behave consistently with who they have in the past? Do you have a view on. On what healthy trust is from a behavioral analysis perspective and how people should look at it?

Well, trust is. It's not perfectly defined, but it's related to vulnerability. So I give you a vulnerability, and I believe you won't exploit that. And that could be informational, it could be emotional, it could be financial. I trust that I'm going to give you this vulnerability and you're not going to exploit it and use that weakness. When it comes to things like distrust in a relationship, someone has cheated. Getting trust back is very difficult because past behavior is the best indication of future behavior. Because we can change aspects of our personality. Absolutely. But our core values, they can change, but it's very rare that they do. And I have seen people make remarkable changes. But what you'll notice is those people that have dramatically changed their life. There was a big catalyst, there was probably a big trauma, something big that happened. It is very rare that someone changes their. Those core moral components of themselves without a big catalyst. People generally are very consistent. Again, we make those small changes, but most people don't really want to grow. Most people are very happy with the way that they are. And most people think that the way they are is the way that they should be. So in general, most people are pretty consistent. So trusting after infidelity is something I personally could never do. But I have observed other people who have. And in the literature it is clear that, yes, just because someone has cheated doesn't mean that they will in the future. But you look for consistent behavioral signs of these are the things that need to now be worked on. So there'll be consequences of I don't feel emotionally safe in this situation, or there were things that you were doing that may be uncomfortable, and you have to observe for all of those things. Now, what I say when it comes to trust is it's not the big things, it's the small things. So you want to look for signs that that person's character has changed. And that's hard because if they've done something like infidelity, it's a character issue, It's a character flaw. They need to work on their character. And it's really easy to do a big gesture. I can cognitively go, I should do this thing. They need this. I should do it. The little things, the things that you do without thinking. Like, I remember when my dad would get back from a hard day's work, I would know the time he usually gets in. So I would wait around, and when I heard the back gate go, I would go to the kitchen, I'd turn on the kettle because then he could, you know, go upstairs and get ready, and he would have a cup of tea waiting for him every day. And he didn't need to tell me to do that. And I didn't have to cognitively think I should do this thing. I just did it because I cared. And there's little things like that, small things that show that they're considering your emotional state, that they're trying to provide you safety. And usually when you. You bring them up on it and say thank you for this, they're like, oh, of course. Because for them, it's not something that they're thinking about doing. It's just something that they do. And those little things are signs of character. So when you're looking to trust someone again, look for those little things, the things that show that they are thinking about your sense of safety without having to think about. About it. And the big gestures can really blind us, especially when we're trying to rebuild trust with someone, because, oh, they're doing all the things I asked them to do before. They're doing these big things. And it. It does blind us, but they're still not doing those little consistent things that you really, really need. And that's what I would say. Big things. Great. They should be doing those big things to reboot the trust, but it's not enough. It's kind of the bare minimum at that point, and then it's looking for those little behaviors.

Yeah. You have a new book coming out.

I do. Ah, your question about fear.

Ah, you Want to do that?

Yes.

All right, let's do that.

So I would replace fear with inexperience because we say, I'm scared of this thing and we stop ourselves doing it, and we kind of have fear as a dirty word over, I can't do this. And actually all you need to do is observe yourself doing it, and then you realize, huh, I can't do this. So fear, often, like, I'm scared of doing this bungee jump is an extreme one, but you can also be scared of being vulnerable in a relationship. You can be scared about talking about your feelings, can be scared of having a hard conversation, but often that comes from you've never really learned the skills on how to do it. So it. A lot of the time, fear is just inexperience.

Yes. What about doubt? Similar.

Similar. Yeah. And I think doubt, I would say inexperience, but also a lot of that is to do with self esteem.

Self esteem was right under the word doubt on my list.

Yeah. Yeah. Self esteem is a really complicated one. And I. I probably wouldn't replace it with anything, but I would replace doubt with a lacking of sense of self.

Yeah. Low self esteem should be replaced.

Low self esteem with maybe a lack of self belief.

Fair enough. I read your book.

Yes.

There's a lot of you in there. A lot.

The first one. Yes.

Yeah. I mean, well, no, the upper hand. I mean.

Oh, yes.

The first of all great headings.

Thank you.

Interesting takes. It pulls you through, lots of references. Who'd you write the book for? And the subtitle for those who are going to go out and buy. Is it out? Is it available?

It is. It came out on Tuesday.

Congratulations.

And it's a bestseller.

Of course.

The bestseller list.

Of course it is. Mastering persuasion and getting what you want with the science of social engineering getting the upper hand. Who'd you write it for?

I wrote it for everyone that thought or thinks that science isn't for them, and everyone that thinks science is too hard. Because I. I said my motto is making science accessible. I hated physics. I hated it. And I thought I was too stupid for it. I thought I'd never understand it. And then I read Carl Sagan, and he made complicated things seem approachable. And I realized, wow, physics isn't scary, it's exciting. You just need someone to explain it to you in a way that you can understand. So when I go and train Secret Service or federal agents, usually the feedback I get was, that was easy. But I know it wasn't easy, and I say, that's My favorite feedback, because they go, you explained it in a way that made it seem like, oh, yeah, this makes sense. But we know we're learning something difficult, and that's my goal with these books. I take the real science, I take the research papers. Everything's referenced, and I try and explain it in a way that anyone can understand it. Because we avoid learning things because we think we will never be able to. We think it's too complicated for us. Actually, if you break it down, it's really not. And that's what I tried to do with these books. So I wanted everyone that thinks they can't learn this information or they're not smart enough to realize, actually, you are smart enough.

There's a chapter in there that says, pants yourself at the. At a high level. That's not literal. What.

No.

What. What was the. What was the inspiration behind that chapter?

So the chapter is about making yourself vulnerable sometimes. And it came to me. I was in a meeting, and the other person was just not being cooperative, and they were being aggressive, and they were being very stubborn on a point that they were inaccurate on. And what I could have done is correct them, and I could have felt really good about that. You know, we. It feels great to correct people when. Because it makes us feel great. It's natural to want to correct people when they're wrong and to show, hey, look, how much I know. And it's an ego thing. But what I realized was I needed this individual for business, and it wouldn't be in my best interest to make him feel embarrassed. So what I did was I said, instead of saying, look, I can't handle you because you're being stressed out, you're being unprofessional, and you're wrong. I made it me. I said, right now I am. I'm actually not in the emotional capacity or I don't have the emotional capacity right now to be able to provide you the support that you need. And I really want to be able to help you the best that I can. So would we be able to step back so I can take a breath and then let's come back to this? Instead of, you need to take a step back so you can breathe and you can calm down, and then let's get back to it. I made myself vulnerable, and I didn't hurt his ego. I instead showed, hey, I really need something here, and, hey, this is a me issue. And when we came back, he was deflated. He was very polite, and he apologized for his outburst. And I didn't need to say it. We know when we're having an outburst. We know often when we're being angry and when we're in the wrong. But we're so stubborn, and our ego often doesn't let us say it. And if someone points it out, it doesn't feel good. And although it might feel good for us doing it, you have to think long term of is this beneficial for that relationship. And sometimes we need to take the hit on the chin if we want it to benefit us in the long term. And that's really what pants us. You pants yourself, is it? Sometimes in a situation, instead of embarrassing someone else, you make yourself a little vulnerable, and then you watch as people lower their defenses to you.

I do it all the time. And it comes across as authentic.

Yes.

And approachable. All of these things. It's not a power. Like, it's not a power thing. Jen, can you get me the hand, please? So the other chapter that I want to talk about, because I have a whole thing around this hold, but don't squeeze. All right. We're talking about handshakes here. And I was going to do an entire. An entire podcast on handshakes, because all of the handshakes that people do are untenable to me. And so you have a chapter on your book about the perfect handshake, but it's an analogy. So can you. Can you share with us a little bit about what you're thinking about handshakes?

Yes. So it's an analogy for our influence that often we go in with this really hard approach of this is what I want, and I'm going to go and get it. And I compare that to the real squeezing power grip where we put, you know, the hand on the wrist as well when we go in with, I'm going to get this thing, thing, and I'm going to get it now, and I'm in power. And we do that with influence a lot. We have these really hard approaches. Give me everything I need.

Right.

But when we do that, it comes across as a threat, and the brain registers threat and safety. And if someone is providing threat, we don't want to cooperate with them. We want to remove ourselves from them because evolutionarily, we want to avoid threats. But if you're also trying to influence someone to give you information and you go into software, then they're not really motivated enough to give you information. You go with a really sort of wet, loose handshake. There's no real evidence there of authority. So with influence, you need to put a bit of Pressure on. So that perfect handshake is kind of the in between. The neurological component of this is really important because the reason that I say we need this middle grip is if I want you to provide me information, say I'm in a negotiation and I go in with that hard handshake, I go in with that. I want to get what I want right now. Our brain communicates via electrical signals. So you give me a request and say you ask me for information. My brain needs to go and get the information from the appropriate region. So one neuron will pass on electrical signal to another and it goes all the way back and it goes and grabs the information. And while the other neurons are grabbing the information, this neuron is recharging because it needs to send it back. Right. So I need to go and get it, and then I need to send it to you so you can relay the information. If you go in too aggressively when your neurons pass on that signal to go and get the information, it's too charged up to recharge. So that's why, you know, if you're in an argument and you're all riled up and they go, go on, tell me a time I've done this, you know, you know, because you were just thinking it over of, I can't wait to use this against them. But in that moment, you cannot think of the example. Right. And you cannot think of the right thing to say because that neuron is too charged up to. Too fired up to recharge and pass you that information. And then when you settle down, I remember it.

Why didn't I say this?

Exactly. But then also, if you don't put any pressure on, that neuron isn't going to be charged up enough to even pass on a signal to go get the information. If I have no motivation to do it, I'm not going to do it. So it's about finding that middle ground of you can't go into everything full speed and you cannot try and dominate the conversation. You cannot try and force someone to do something, but you also need to make them motivated. So there's gotta be that middle ground with influence and elicitation, just like there is with a handshake.

Yeah. So there's this concept of an 11 second hug when you're with a significant other and you hug them and you hug for 11 seconds and it fires up whatever is, you know, you get a, you get something out of it and I don't know what it is and I don't know if that's junk Science or not probably is based on your reaction, but.

Well, it's. It's not this junk science. It's that it is. And it does increase oxytocin.

Okay.

But it's just a very awkward thing to do. So often the social aspect of this is a little uncomfortable.

Yeah.

If it's a significant other, then fine. But I wouldn't recommend it with many people.

No, no, I. But I. Well, I was trying to go to the pharmacy and get it to get my oxytocin. They would, they were not culpable, they were not willing to do it.

But no, so.

But the anal, it's analogous to when I meet a very good friend, they will hold my hand when I shake it. And maybe it's. And it's. I think it's men or women, depending on my relationship with them. And if I haven't seen them in a while, you know, you shake their hand and then they just hold it or they grab it with the other hand and they look at you and they'll talk to you for a minute and after two or three or four seconds you just feel very connected and very like, oh, I miss this person.

Yes. And as we have skin to skin contact in that way where is consensual and it is purposeful, it increases oxytocin in both individuals, which creates bonding and it feels really calming. And we. That's why it was such a shame with COVID when we stopped doing handshakes, because physical touch is really important. We are a species that develop with physical touch. And there are studies done that they've looked at some babies that were incubated that had poor development and some that had great development and they couldn't understand why. And there was a camera and it showed that the clock cleaning lady would come in and rock some of the children and they were getting the physical touch. And if you bring up a child and give it everything it needs, you give it food, you give it shelter, warmth, all of those things. But you deprive it of physical touch, it physically stunts their growth. We need physical touch for our well being.

Well, and then also the face putting. If your caregivers have masks on, the children are just looking at every aspect of the face and they are just engaging with it. And you know, I think there's science will determine the total impact of COVID one day.

Yes.

And I think it's going to be material from a mental health perspective, unfortunately.

I agree.

Okay, so what. But hold up. What is the perfect handshake in a situation? A Business situation where you want to have influence.

It is a tight enough grip that it's sturdy, but you're not squeezing. And it will also depend on your partner. So squeezing to a level that feels comfortable, a little bit looser with women than men in general. But it is a one hand. It is not one hand on the wrist.

Okay.

And it is not trying to like come to the front. A lot of people will make it a little bit awkward so they can overpower the handshake. And it's not a rapid shake. It's a very quick 2 to 3 second.

How do you, how do you feel about a double squeeze?

It will depend on the relationship.

Okay.

If it's someone that you're meeting for the first time.

No tickling the palm.

No tickling the palm.

Okay, Fair enough. Well, that's been my problem.

Well, there you go. See? Poor information in poor results.

I got it. I. I got it from Tick Tock.

Yeah, that's where I get my information from usually.

Yeah, sounds like it. Okay, well, look, it books out Tuesday. Bestseller. Upper hands. It's excellent. Very digestible, very personable and a lot of fun. We need to tug on the reins a little bit and turn these horses towards the barn. But I do have a curveball and a fastball for you. Are you game to play?

Absolutely.

Okay. And before we do that, can you share with people the best way to get in touch with you?

My website, which is just Abby a B b I e morono.com. so a B-B-I-E-M a r o-n o.com. my Instagram is Dr. Abby Official. And then Dr. Abby Morono on LinkedIn.

Yes. And she will get right into your feed should you choose to follow. I've experienced it myself, so I will.

I post a lot of content.

Yes. As you do. Okay, so here is the curveball. Gun to your head. Something you have to do. You have to start a business in the next 30 days and it can't be something that you are currently active in. Based on your travels and your view and your exposure to the world. Where are the opportunities that come to you that you see that somebody like you would take advantage of if you were forced to.

I would. Me personally, sure. I would work with animals. Oh. I think we think that humans are so different than animals and actually we're not that different. And the way the animals interact with each other, they have a lot of the same cognitive processes, obviously a much simpler degree, but empathy and emotions. And I've learned a lot. I was volunteering in Africa a few years ago in a safari. And watching the animals interact with each other, you realize there's empathy and there's love and there's fear and there's care, for sure. And I would take my skills and I'd work in zoology because you'd be surprised how much psychology can translate into working with animals.

That would be a fantastic reality show.

It really would be great. And I think I would be very happy surrounded by animals all day.

Yeah.

So I would take that.

Yeah. I've seen some other ones that were. Had a lot less to offer and they're on the Discovery Channel, so that would be great. I would watch.

Yeah, there's a few of those.

Yeah, that's all right. Okay. Fastball right down the middle. If you had one sentence to make an impact in somebody's life, what would that be?

It will get better if you choose it to.

Perfectly said. We'll leave it right there. Thank you so much for being on.

Thank you so much for having me.

Yeah. This has been a lot of fun.

It has.

Yeah, it's been good. This is Jeff Duden. We have been here with Dr. Abby Marono. We have been on the home front. Thanks for listening.