America's Criminologist 10 21 25 Guest Robin Dreeke

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Col steals Gattle's wait, just discussing him as a fate.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Shadows secrets lot.

Speaker 1 (00:14):
Doctor Curry last AMers graminologist con.

Speaker 3 (00:23):
Sells a law in the Anlacys, a crime break in
Sage Bruce.

Speaker 4 (00:35):
And here's America's Criminologists, Doctor Curry Myers.

Speaker 5 (00:42):
All right, all right, all right, I hope everybody's doing well.
Welcome to America's Criminologists, where we look at the roots
of criminal behavior through the lens of faith, family, and formation.
I'm your host, Doctor Curry Myers, a retired sheriff turned professor,
applied criminologist, an advocate for virtue based Just on the show,
we don't just talk about crime, we talk about what

(01:04):
causes it and how to stop it. My friends, if
you're tired of watered down criminal justice commentary, woke ideology,
masqu rating as reform, and ivory tower theories that don't
work in the real world, that it's time for you
to join me on substack. At doctor Curry Meyers dot
substack dot com. You'll get unapologetically grounded, virtue based analysis

(01:25):
of crime, justice, culture, public policy. I write public policy
papers all the time. I combine over thirty five years
of law enforcement, academic and policy experience as a clear
moral framework rooted in faith, family information. Every week I
break down real criminal justice news, expose threats to public safety,
and offer data informed, principled solutions you won't hear anywhere else.

(01:49):
We're very seldom. Whether you're in law enforcement, education, politics,
or just a concern citizen, you'll find resources here to
help you fight back against the chaos. So go to
doctor Curry Meyers do subtact dot com. You can subscribe
for fee excuse me for free, but if you become
a Premium member you get all access to all my

(02:09):
written published works, including my book The Advent of feral Man,
and stay connected to the mission of rebuilding American justice
from the ground up. The rise of feral Man in
our society isn't random. It's the result of three catastrophic breakdowns.
The collapse of faith, this disintegration of family, and the

(02:30):
failure of moral formation. When young men grow up without structure,
without fathers, and without truth, they don't just become misgodded misguided,
they become dangerous. Add to that the social contagions that
have been spreading through digital culture, where we are celebrating narcissism, nihilism,
and rage. And we're now dealing with the generation infected

(02:53):
by what some psychologists call the Dark Triad traits, which
are narcissism, Machabelianism, and psychopathies. It was the genesis behind
my book. In fact, this isn't theory, it's observational in
the rising rates of justice, violence, the lack of empathy
that we're seeing, and inability to delay gratification. Schools have

(03:16):
abandoned discipline, families have abdicated responsibility, and even churches have
become afraid to preach moral absolutes. As these institutions crumble,
behavioral chaos fills the vacuum. But if we want to
reclaim our culture, we need to understand the minds behind
the mayhem. I am excited tonight to have this guest.

(03:41):
I've been hoping to have him on for quite some
time and was able to reach out to them to him,
and he's been very gracious to be able to come on.
Robin Drake as a retired FBI Special Agent, master spy recruiter,
and renowned behavioral analysis expert with over two decades of
experience and care intelligence and human behavior prediction as the

(04:03):
former head of the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Program for the
Counterintelligence Division. He specialized in building rapport, sizing up individuals,
and uncovering deception skills home through high stakes operations and interrogations.
He is the author of several best selling books. I
highly recommend these for you to take a look at,

(04:24):
including The Code of Trust, Sizing People Up, a veteran
FBI Agent's user Manual for behavior Prediction, and It's Not
All About Me, The Top Ten Techniques for building quick
rapport with Anyone. He frequently appears as a behavioral expert
on media outlets and podcasts, providing insights into criminal psychology, radicalization,

(04:46):
and true crime cases. Welcome Robin Draeke doing back.

Speaker 2 (04:51):
I think, Curry, I'm doing well. Man. It's always interesting
listening is your own bio being read, because you're like, wow,
that's interesting. I want to listen to that guy.

Speaker 5 (05:00):
Oh, you know, you deserve it after all these years
doing great work, and it's natural to attain that kind
of bio with the years of service. In my pronouncing
your last name correctly, I want to make sure that.

Speaker 2 (05:12):
Drink yep, you had everything perfectly spot on, better than
I could have said. Thank you.

Speaker 5 (05:15):
Okay. Yeah, So it's a pleasure to have you on.
And one of the reasons I was really excited about
having you on this show is I I perhaps feel
a kindred spirit to you. You may not realize it,
but the kind of work that you do fascinates me,
and it's always fascinated me. It's one of the things
that I've tried to work on in my academic career

(05:40):
in order to truly understand the causal reasons why something happens.
And you've been able to not only understand it from
a theory, but in the learned environment, you've been able
to actually practice what the theory is and see whether
or not it's you know, it's coming to fruition and
whether these things make sense. So what is trust and

(06:04):
why is the foundation? Why is this the foundation and
the all human interaction?

Speaker 2 (06:09):
You know, trust is the foundation. And I'm gonna you know,
and there's a lot of words we've been already talking about,
and when we want to have great conversation dialogue with anyone,
and especially recognized in those people that want to do
harmed others, it's really important to understand what that word
means to them. And so there's a couple of things

(06:29):
that you know, I think are really great to talk
about when trying to understand what makes people do what
they do. You've said at the beginning, I love it.
It's such a passion that I think we all have.
It's why we're all into true crime. It's why we
watch things on TV, It's why we want to have
great conversations with people because we really want to understand
what makes people do what they do. And trust is

(06:49):
a cornerstone. But I'm going to get to that in
one second, because before there, it's really important to understand
human motivations, and human motivation are really really simple. I
always try to keep things because you even use that
word chaos, and you're so right. People allow chaos to
infect our lives so much, and you don't have to,

(07:11):
because that the foundation of all human beings. Our greatest
motivation is fear, and in order to counterfear, we have
to understand what makes us feel safe, and it's that
feeling of safety, which is trust. And we're going to
get to that in a second, which really motivates all
our behaviors. We're genetically and biologically coded to always act

(07:33):
in our own best interest in terms of our safety, security,
and prosperity from the other person's point of view. So
if we understand that people are always going to do
what they think is in their best interest of feeling safe,
as long as you can have that deep, very active
empathy to see the world through that other person's lens
and optics by completely letting go of your judgment of them,

(07:56):
which is the hardest thing we have to do. Is
why we struggle so much to understand how to communicate
and how to recognize people starting to go down that
dark tria that you mentioned. It's very it'll fall apart.
And so part of that feeling of safety is trust.
And so in order to trust, I'm going to define
trust is not intense, and people will use like morals

(08:21):
and ethics and all these different belief systems that I
can trust someone. But I like to really think about
at a granular level what trust is. Trust is really
essentially predictable behavior. And what I mean by that is
is this, let's do a little thought experiment. One of
my favorite people has ever lived was Einstein, because Einstein
was constantly admired, because he was constantly curious. Because those

(08:43):
people in life that are always curious. Are the ones
that are beloved by most, you know, whether it's the
Da Vinci Einstein, Jesus, I mean, he was a curious
guy too. It's like always asking those pragmatic questions. Charlie
Kirk was another great example of using a Socratic method
by asking questions being inquisitive, so it doesn't even matter
what you're be leif system is it's understanding how people

(09:03):
utilize the power of curiosity when engaging other human beings.
When you can do so free of judgment, you can
really start making those connections. So trust, to me is
really predictable behavior because when you can reasonbly predict what
someone's going to do, what's that allows us to do?
I feel safer? And so predictable behavior is something we
can observe in others from these key patterns of behavior.

(09:25):
You know, if I see you doing something once twice
the three times, the likelihood of you doing it very
similarly four or five and six times is really really high.
So I feel safe because I can really reasonably expect
what I can expect from you. So that to me
is trust. And so here's a great thought experiment, is
so I have a very good friend Steve. Steve and
I were in the FBI together. We've retired around the
same time. Steve has been a friend for a very

(09:48):
long time. Matter fact, he's been with me as my
sons and daughter have gone off to college and my
daughter became a nurse. My son's a Marine corpjet pilot,
and so now his son is doing something very similar
as my son. Commiserate all the time. I would trust
Steve with my life. I would trust Steve if I
toss Steve the keys to my car. Is Steve, I
need you to take me to point A and point B.

(10:08):
I could close my eyes and I Trusteve with my life.
But Steve's not a pilot. I'm a pilot. I would
not trust Steve. If I throw Steve the keys to
a plan and says Steve, I'm going to close my
eyes and I trust you to take me to point
A to point BE in that plane, it's a reasonable
it's an unreasonable expectation because he doesn't have reps in there.
There's no trust because he has no observable pattern behavior

(10:29):
that I could trust him with my life in there.
So that's what I mean by trust. Trust is just
understanding what I can reasonably expect another person to do
by sitting back and observing free to the best of
my ability of judgment of right, wrong, good, bad. Again,
those things do exist, but we're going to deeply understand
to your point at the very beginning, what makes people

(10:50):
do what they're going to do. We have to see
it through their optic and lens and law enforcement. That's
what we did all the time. I mean, I love
talking to law enforcement like you. You didn't get someone
to confess to something that was not in their best
interest to confess to because you sat across the table
and judged them. You actually walked them ale on their
shoes and took your shoes off first, so you could
actually understand what drove them to that decision point. Not

(11:12):
that you agree with it, but you understood it. Because
people just want to be seen, they want to be heard,
and they just want to be understood at that deep level.
So that's where they'd all what I call a narrative
answer to trust.

Speaker 5 (11:25):
I think it's wonderful that you've I never heard it
that way because when you look at Maslow's hierarchy and need,
it's a safety's almost foundational. I mean, it's food and
water first, and then next is I got to protect
myself from the feral animals that are going to kill me.
And until you talked about trust in that vein, it

(11:50):
makes total sense. Though, it makes total sense that it's
so significant to be able to trust other people that
it is part of that protection that innate with us.
And we're talking about over time and moral, Yeah, I memoral.
I mean it's one of those where we have a
different The threats that existed to us as early men

(12:14):
are totally different than we are now, but we still
have Maslow's theory that applies.

Speaker 2 (12:20):
And the things that we did as early man really applied,
has always applied, and this is what's kind of getting
out of control as we've been seen. As you so
eloquently stayed at the very beginning, we are the only
genetic and biological organism on this planet that does our
best to control our environment. We've had to control our
environment if we wanted to procreate and have our children survive.

(12:41):
We had to control fire, we had to control shelter,
we had to control food sources, and we got better
and better and better at it. And so control is
genetically and biologic coded to us. And so in order
to overcome that need of control where it goes into
high levels of psychopathy and narcissism and all these things,

(13:01):
we place rules, regulations, morals, ethics, laws, religions, all these
things behind it, so we can actually temper that need
for over control, so we can actually live as a
great civilized society more than our cousins, the apes do
that are limited to bands of one hundred and fifty.
We were able to go beyond that because we actually
learned how to control the environment, control the world around

(13:23):
us within limits, so we can conform to societal and
social norms that are acceptable. We're not going to deny
life liberty in to purtursuit of happiness to anyone around us,
or try not to. So that's and that is a
huge foundation for that understanding of trust.

Speaker 5 (13:39):
What makes somebody control things from a more evil point
of view? Have they have they lost their How have
they lost their way? Because we're all born with original sin.
So that's the first thing, but many people can deal
with it through I think what you said earlier that

(14:00):
we have certain morals, certain capabilities on how we interact
with people, how we treat people. Those are moral absolutes
in many ways, but we've had now it seems to
me more and more people that are seeking a truth
that they define themselves. They don't define it through some
other pattern. They are defining their own truth, which leads

(14:21):
us down to chaos in my opinion, at least, how
is that? How is this manifesting itself today maybe than
some other time in history? Or is it or is
it just because we're here and seeing it and living it,
we think it's bigger than what it is.

Speaker 2 (14:41):
Yes to everything you just said. And so you have
the two sides of coin, as you've seen throughout your career.
You have those that are genetically quoted and born with
high level psychopathy like Brian Colberger. Brian Coberger was not
a product major I mean a product nurture. He's in
my opinion, he is product of nature. He was born

(15:02):
with a very broken brain, as I call it, because
his level of psychopathy and lack of empathy towards other
human beings was not coming from that family, which, in
all intensive purposes from our outside optic looking in, look
pretty darn healthy. Lots of caring, lots of trying, lots
of trying to save their child from going down this
dark triad that as he was, and then you have
the other side where you're really hitting, especially with the

(15:26):
feral man, and that is the lack of anchoring that
we're seeing through everything around us. You know, you talk
about the lack of a father figure in a lot
of people's lives, and a lack of religion base and
ethics and morals and all those things come down to
foundations of anchoring to something greater themselves, to anchoring to

(15:49):
things that are healthy. Because when you're not anchored to
a healthy, strong relationships and you don't have problem solving skills,
you're going to start going to find places where you
can find The children you mention this too. Children, you know,
my wife's a teacher. They crave structure, They crave stability,
they crave discipline because why it makes you feel safe,

(16:11):
Because when you can go to school and you can
reasonably expect to, Hey, if I do X, Y and Z,
I'm going to be rewarded. If I do X, Y
and Z, I'm going to be punished. So I now
know what my path forward to feeling safe is and
I know where the lanes are. And when people have
fear because again look at fear's another motivator here. When
people fear confronting people because they've been canceled for it,

(16:33):
when they fear confronting people because they're going to be
called by administrators on it, they stop taking action. And
so when you stop taking action, structure starts falling apart.
There's no anchors, and so that's that's where these people
are becoming more prone to self radicalization, and they're going
to other groups and organizations which are much easier to

(16:54):
find online now than they've ever been before before we
had online. Now to your last point, we do live
in a time where there's easier access to get information
about all that's going on. But as you know, I
mean you're a great researcher, you know, when it comes
to threats of violence against fellow man, we're at an

(17:16):
all time low as a species, you know, I mean,
it is a safer time in history to live now
than any other time in history. But we are living
in a time though, where information is being exchanged at
a faster rate that it has ever been changed exchanged before.
And another funny point on information exchange, a lot of
times you'll hear people saying, well, the more information you
have and the more times has been exchange, it must

(17:37):
be truth. No great author Noah Havari wrote the book
Sapiens and Homodeus and Nexus, and in the book next
he talks about the evolution of our species and information
flows and throughout our history as a species. Every time
there's been an influx of a new technology for information flow,
it takes a while for our own morals and ethics

(17:58):
and belief systems that kind of catch up and regulate it.
And the first time that was really evident, besides ancient
Greeks who first, as I told you before, we started
to show that we're chastising people that learned how to
write because they said it was going to roade their
brains because they could no longer memorize things. That was
the first technology, right, It was actually the printing press.
Printing press in the Middle Ages in Europe caused the

(18:19):
witch hunts and the burnings about fifty to sixty thousand people,
because hey, if it's in the papers, it's got to
be true, you know.

Speaker 5 (18:28):
It's some of the first social contagions that we may
have seen them before, but some of the first social
contagions were the witch hunts, Yeah, if you look at
hotspot mapping that occurred during that time period in that
Greater Salem Era area, it started out there and you

(18:49):
could see it shift to other pattern cities and are
probably a twenty to thirty mile radius, which most towns
have been built twenty to thirty miles away from each other,
just because in old times you have to have that
kind of rest break for your horses and all that
kind of stuff. How has that impacted us? We still

(19:12):
are seeing social contagions, but it's like it's on fire
to your.

Speaker 2 (19:15):
Point, Yeah, I'm sorry, go ahead, No, no way, go ahead, Yeah,
because we're seeing the same things resonate. So let's I
keep going back to when trying to understand what makes
people do what they do, which is wound up being
my great passionate life. As I said most of ours,
it's fear. And so you think of those sale and
witch hunts. What we're people trying to do. They're using

(19:37):
fear as a tool for manipulation to gain control. And
what are we seeing going on right now? The use
of social media fear as a lever of manipulation to
gain control, whether it's control for whatever purpose they have,
whether they believe it a good purpose or no one
believes what they do is for bad, but everyone thinks
for a good purpose. And then when you actually have

(19:58):
so many media, let's compared to when you and I
grew up, what keeps me Outlet's go on sales, sales
of ad space, and what sells ad space fear? I mean,
it's so it becomes this this self perpetuating cycle of well,
I got to sell ad space in order to sell adspace,
I got to make a clickbait in order to be clickbait,
and have the algorithm said it's got to be fear,

(20:19):
and what it controls fear is it? I mean, so
it's constantly feeding, but it's going it keeps going back.
It's nothing new, It keeps going back to the same
primal urge as we have as a species, both genetically
and biologically. And then as as people are taking advantage
of us from our nature part, our nurture part has

(20:41):
to catch up. And so this is where all right,
So now we see this advent of self radicalization. We
see where people where children are being more disconnected and
the AI is kicking in. Now now we're going to
need to catch up because we rush so far ahead
to make money, to make profit and all these things
and to advance our species as we think we are.
We now have to catch up moral and ethically to

(21:03):
that so we can actually rein it back in, so
we can keep the groundings so that we don't run
a muck and try to control everyone through or expanded
in narcissism.

Speaker 5 (21:13):
Well, we're as we're suffering from that in society. The
question is, and you've wrote, you've written about this in
your book, what are some practical techniques then that can
be used by parents in others because we want to
focus on making sure that we don't lose our children
and they're serving something greater than themselves and not kind
of cave into the observational learning, the negative observational learning

(21:35):
that's going on today. What are something techniques that they
can consider going forward in order to protect their kids.

Speaker 2 (21:44):
I think I thought about this one hard before we
went on, and I have my five steps of the
Code of Trust, and we have six signs or sizing
people up and tech tek things quite quickly pore and
oh my gosh, there'd be so much to memorize. But
if we left people too many things to memorize, no
one's going to do anything. So I want to break
it down to something really, really simple that my wife
would always make us do in our house when my

(22:06):
kids are growing up into this day. As you're facing
a challenging situation as your kids are growing up, and
this is from basically when they start hitting middle school
and they start having their own thoughts and opinions and
you stop telling them, you stop telling them what to
fear in the world, and they start learning on their own.
What that is the most important thing to do is
keep communication, and so always ask yourself this. I'm always

(22:30):
reversing adoptic. When I was recruiting spies for the FBI,
my boss would always ask me before I was about
to go out and do an operation, whether I was
doing an interview or an interrogation of an espionage subject
or trying to recud a spy. And in your case too,
you know, catching criminals, You're always asking yourself, so what
can I do to inspire that person to want to
share with me? Because you can't you can't course anyone,

(22:53):
you can't convince anyone because that becomes reluctant and you
can't trust any information come out of their head, or
they'll just shut down, their lawyer up or whatever it is.
You always have to think in terms of what can
I do to inspire someone to want to share with me?
And so when you're working with your children, especially as
you're starting to face some of life's most challenging situations
where you need information, your first and primary goal with

(23:15):
your children should always be a healthy, strong relationship. And
then the second part of that is start asking yourself
in all situations when you're about to open your mouth,
is what I'm about to do or say going to
help or hinder a healthy relationship from their point of view?
And their point of view is really simple. They just
want to be heard and they want to be understood.

(23:38):
Setting boundaries and setting rules are completely fine and acceptable
as long as they feel heard and understood. And so
ask yourself, what can I do to inspire them to
feel safe to share with me? And what makes people
feel safe to share? This is another thing you never
do an interview. You never show someone their shame. You
want to get someone to shut up fast, show them

(24:00):
where you're you. You scorn them, you shame them, you're
judging them in some way. So as hard as it
can be. Don't judge, seek to understand when you seek
to understand, for you have judgment. And this here's the
hardest part, Curry. You can't have any nonverbal leakage, you know,
and so you have to believe it in your heart

(24:21):
and in your mouth. You know, when you say wow,
I never heard you say that before. Like, here's a
great example. So my kids. If my kids were starting
to date someone that I started to deem as an
unhealthy relationship, and it was very rare when things happened,
because we radiate healthy people in our lives. But every
now and then you'd have a situation where I started

(24:43):
getting some concern and my wife did. And it got
to a point every once in a blue moon where
I'd say to one of my children and said, listen,
I'll tell you what. You have made such amazing choices
in your life. I love your friends. So and so
is a fantastic for all these people in your life
and your entire life. It's been such amazing, wonderful people.
I love the interaction you have with them. You know

(25:03):
you have great, healthy relationships. I don't understand this one.
Please help me see what you see. I want to
believe like you believe. I want to see what you
see in them, and instead of saying, hey, I think
this person's a dirt bag, never see them again. I
want to see what they saw and it made them
think and inspire them to want to share me. Maybe

(25:24):
there's blind spots I had to them that I was
unaware of, or maybe they weren't thinking hard enough about it.
So those are the types of conversations.

Speaker 4 (25:31):
I would have.

Speaker 2 (25:31):
And this is the way I think parents can engage
and be those loving critics as I call them that
we all need in our lives that can be there
to guide us, be there to low us, but also
be there to set the bounds in boundaries so we
are accountable to something, to keep us on that track,
so we are anchored in something and not going off
in dual oblivion.

Speaker 5 (25:49):
I absolutely love that, because we have lost something that's
been significant in in human nature, and that's the ability
to discern better. And as parents, it's so important to
help your children discern. And you and what you said

(26:09):
kind of delivered that kind of essence of discernment without
being aggressive about it. And it kind of goes back
to law enforcement. You know, there was many times I'd
get frustrated listening to interviews on it, whether it's a
homicide case or something else, and it became very argumentative
or aggressive. And I always whenever I did interviews, I

(26:31):
always approach it from a sense of empathy, and then
I look for themes that might develop over the course
of our conversation, and that generally they walk into their
own trap when you empathize with them and allow them
to you know, then you can go back and see
check these themes to see whether or not they work.

(26:53):
Is is that a dying art? In in with respect
to interviews, I think it is a dialog.

Speaker 2 (27:02):
It is a dying art, But I think it's an
art that's easily researched again because it is part of
our nature genetically and biological coded to want to make
these strong, healthy connections. We just need more reps I
call life repetitions. You know, you and I had to
do it earlier in life growing up, because we had
to get work much earlier in life than typically is
happening now and problem solved with adults as we're teenagers

(27:24):
and younger on back then. But it is definitely the
ability and desire is there, and that's why people are
hungry for it. They just need to know where to
go to get it.

Speaker 5 (27:33):
I love it, Robin. Can you stay for a second
segment of the.

Speaker 2 (27:37):
Show The Greatest Honor and Plasure's Mind?

Speaker 5 (27:39):
All right, folks were just getting warmed up here on
America's Criminologists coming up after the break. Now we'll look
more into behavioral analysis how it can actually help reclaim
virtue and prevent crime in our homeschools and streets. Don't
go anywhere, We'll be right back.

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Speaker 9 (30:34):
Hi, folks, doctor Curry Myers here to let you know
that my new show, It's called America's Criminologist with doctor
Curry Myers, every Tuesday at one pm between the Dave
Ramsey Show and the Kevin mccolla Show. Is a former
State Trooper special agent share for the major county. I
will offer sharp insights into the pressing issue shaping American
society today. I'll have guests, news and my insights as

(30:56):
an applied criminologist throughout the one hour show. So criminals
in the progressive call of that allow them to fester
beware because this show is directed at you. America's Criminologist
every Tuesday at one pm on k E T.

Speaker 5 (31:12):
All right, folks, welcome back to America's Criminologists. I'm doctor
Curry Myers, and today we're joined with Robin Drake, retired
FBI Special Agent, behavioral expert in the man who literally
wrote the book on trust and human behavior. Robin, thanks
to having on the show, and let's get back to it.

Speaker 2 (31:29):
Absolutely.

Speaker 5 (31:31):
So one of the most important parts that I think
we need to talk about is kind of the predictive cues,
if you will. So one is body language and how
that manifests itself. I think body language is woefully misunderstood,
and I think it's misunderstood and law enforcement a lot too.

(31:52):
Sometimes it's you need to take it into account, but
sometimes we overvalue what somebody may be doing with their
body when they're talking, could be a coldal issue or
whatever it may be. So what tell us what your
thoughts are in body language and predictive queuing.

Speaker 2 (32:07):
Yeah, and I'm so glad you brought this up too,
because body language is such it's a small part of
the whole and every remember. So take you back a
number of years when I first came on my behavioral
team in the FBI back in So. I came in
the FBI nineteen ninety seven after the Marine Corps, and
I got assigned to working in a world of counterintelligence,
and part of that world was I got exposed to

(32:28):
the behavioral analysis program because they're helping me on some
of my recruitment operations and I got an opportunity to
meet one of the great legends of nonverbal behavior in
the bureau and in law enforcement in general, and that's
Joe Navarro. Joe Navarrow wrote the book What Everybody's Saying.
He's a good friend of mine and his colleague Jack
Schaeffer wrote some amazing books on body language, and so
I was introduced to the world of body language back then,

(32:50):
and I was I was in hook, line and Sinker.
But one thing I quickly learned from Joe and just
from life examples is it's body language is a part
of the whole, especially in the world of law enforcement
or in life in general. People will get over fixated
sometimes on body language, thinking body language can be this
predictive behavior that it's a soothsayer, it's a truth sayer,

(33:13):
and no, it will tell you a lot of things,
but it won't tell you everything. And so the first
thing that someone that's experienced a body language will tell
you is is they'll definitely tell you it's not a
truth detector. It's a stress detector, and you can detect
whether someone is actually under stress or discomfort, and discomfort
can be deception or it also can be just a

(33:34):
bad thought or memory. There's a lot of things that
cause stress in someone's body language. But the most important
thing I think with body language and thinking in terms
of deception, detection and cues is you got to make
sure you're not trying to see something. And what I
mean by that is as human beings, again, we have

(33:55):
an amazing capacity again more than any other organism on
this plan of confirmation bias.

Speaker 5 (34:02):
Oh boy, yeah, oh boys, right, And am I just
confirming what you said?

Speaker 2 (34:08):
Oh yeah, So, I mean just so in the world,
especially if you're gonna use body language and you and
you think you're going to detect deception, you will find
it because if you're looking for deception indicators, you will
see deception indicators. But what you're going to miss is
all the truth indicators as well, because you have a
negative confirmation bias of trying to find something. The most

(34:32):
important thing when trying to assess the world around you
body language, the environment and do what behaviorist and everyone
calls baselining is it's the hardest thing in the world
to do. Years ago. That's why I kind of do
a two prong attack of these things. Here's the tools
and techniques to start you on your path. But the

(34:52):
same time, though, the whole point of being on the
path is to get rid of the tools and techniques
and just be because if if you're focusing on what
you're trying to see, if you're focusing on all the
body language cues, you're going to miss the words, You're
going to miss tempo, you're going to miss the interaction
of the entire world around them and how the world's

(35:14):
responding to them, how you're responding to them. And so
when assessing body language, to me, it's a part of
the whole. In order to keep a much broader viewpoint
of it, I don't try to see anything. I am
present reading of an agenda, and I'm just paying attention

(35:35):
and seeing where the person I'm interacting with takes me.
They will take me on a journey. They'll take me
on a journey from where we're starting here, and I'll
start here in a great place of a simple, open
ended question of Hey, what was that sparkling inspiration all
those years ago that inspired you to be the person
you are today. It's a great opening question, and you're
gonna start taking me on a journey of your choice.

(35:55):
And when you're taking me on a journey of your choice.
I'm geting a beautiful comfort baseline and get your normal,
your comfort, and I'm going to ask you a question, Hey, so,
who was that inspiration all those years ago when you're
younger that you think gave you that great idea to
do this? Or when you're struggling at school, what teacher
stepped in and encouraged you? And actually this wound up
being your great passion in life. So I'm gonna keep
a lot of positive confirmation things. I'm gonna talk about

(36:18):
things that made you feel wonderful because that's gonna give
me a nice comfort baseline. So that way, when I say, so, hey,
you know, doctor Curry, tell me about the most greatest
challenge you went through when you're getting your PhD. And
so I'm gonna get a little bit of a control
question there. So I'm gonna just sit back and assess
what a little bit of discomfort and stress looks like
to you, just a little bit of a memory, a

(36:38):
jog of something that might be uncomfortable. And then so
when we hit then maybe a potentially bigger question in life,
one of your greater challenges, I'm gonna then be able
to assess by comparison in you, not because I'm thinking
of what it is, but based on what you're saying
it is, both verbally and nonverbally, how much of a
challenge that was to you, how much of a pain
point was for you? Because then me, as a human

(36:59):
being that I'm trying to anchor relationship with, I can
see your greatest challenges, prides and pain points, and I
can now assess what can I do to be a
resource for you in those moments? What can I do
to see you in those moments, be present and value
to you in those moments that no one else can.
That's where we start building that report, we start building
that trust, and so that you're now anchored to me,

(37:21):
and I inspire you to tell me the truth before
you have an opportunity or even want to lie to me,
because you know I will hear you and understand you
without shaming you or judging you in a nonverbal way,
and actually do the beautiful word to use, which it
is great word discernment. I can discern where you're at
and what path you're on. And so nonverbals to me

(37:42):
are all those things. But the other key one here,
I think is easier for people to walk away with
is tempo. Everyone has a tempo. And so if you're
not trying to use the hundreds of micro expressions, embody
and macro expressions and trying to figure out all right,
we got an eye compression, lip compression, lip compression, blading,

(38:03):
blocking all the hooky, spooky spy stuff that people are
looking for. It's so much easier for me. Just just
look at your tempo. You have a tempo of how
we interact with life to how a tempo of people speak,
how they're moving. We have a natural gait, we have
a natural way in which we engage the world. When
something changes in someone's mind, they are now going to

(38:25):
have a physiological response that change of thought. It's going
to either be positive or negative or neutral. If it's
positive negative, there will be a change on what they're manifesting.
And so if we see what comfort looks like and
we now have a change in tempo, we can now
see what that change looks like. And also if we
have a stress indicator, we can also see what that
change looks like. So that's how I'm taking in my environment.
It's how we can take in nonverbals without memorizing hundreds

(38:48):
of thousands of them, and just look at tempo and
what changes comfort stress.

Speaker 5 (38:53):
You mentioned something that I think is extremely important. Those
are cognitive biases. There's many cognitive biases, but there's probably
about twelve to thirteen that we seem like humans do
all the time, and even in law enforcement, we haven't.
We're not able to either train ourselves out of it,
or maybe we don't talk. I don't think we spend
any time talking about it and learning about cognitive biases.

(39:15):
Quite frankly, I try to always introduce them in my
classes whenever I'm in criminology students. But is there something
that we can do when I say we thus those
of us in law enforcement or teaching in law enforcement,
that we could focus more on identifying and establishing those

(39:35):
cognitive biases, so we think of those as we go
into interviews and how we interact with people that because
what you set up earlier, you removed yourself from those
cognitive biases just by what you said beginning. Is there
something that we can do to make sure that we

(39:56):
establish that as a foundation for how we conduct our interview.

Speaker 2 (40:00):
Yeah, I think there's a few things you can do.

Speaker 5 (40:03):
I want to.

Speaker 2 (40:04):
So I grew up in New York. I'm an extrovert,
I'm I have a snarky mouth, and so I was
genetically I think coded to be judgmental. I mean, I
can you know, And so I had to overcome a
lot of things in my upbringing from my nature part,
I mean my nurture part, to overcome these things as well.
I use that as an example because if I can

(40:24):
do it, anyone, any human being, can do it. And
no one's perfect that these things either. It's just recognizing
where we're at on at that continuum. But when you
start interviewing hundreds, if not thousands of people that are
from all across the world. Because my world encounterintelligence was
if a conflict in the world broke out someplace, my
job in the world of counter intelligence, and I signed

(40:45):
in New York City for most of my career was
to interview everyone from that country here to try to
garner information to protect the nation security, the United States
or NATO whilies and these individuals themselves from persecution in
some way. And if I was going to engage with
the human being and judge them in any way whatsoever,
I was going to fail at my job. And so
you learn very rapidly both what you say not say

(41:07):
verbally and nonverbally. And so here's what I learned through
lots and lots and lots of reps. And I finally
I didn't stop doing something, I increased something else. You know,
the great works on emotional intelligence are great. And one
of the things I love about emotional intelligence is you
don't have to think about what you have to stop doing.

(41:29):
It's hard to stop being who you are. It's easier
to say, what can I add to myself to mitigate this?
And here's one thing we can all add to ourselves
that will help mitigate and begin mitigating any of these
confirmation biases that we have. Be curious. So in all
these situations, how do you recognize the need to be curious?

(41:50):
If you find yourself in a situation where you're talking
to someone, interviewing someone, whether it's your kids or a
bad guy on the streets, If you have an emotional
response of joy, exultation, or anger or resentment, any emotion
that goes outside of a normal baseline of emotional regulation
for you, that's when you have a bias. Because you're

(42:14):
now employing a bias of liking or disliking on the
information coming in. And if you automatically like someone, you're
going to have a hard time hearing what you don't like,
and you're going to miss a lot of other things.
And same thing. If you don't like someone, you're going
to miss all the things that are going right. And
the greatest example this politics. If you don't like a candidate,

(42:37):
if you don't like someone who's in public office, now
I can almost guarantee you there's not anything that person
could do or say that you would agree with. And
conversely the same thing. So here's the challenge I have
for you in these situations, as I challenge myself all
the time, is as soon as you have an emotional
response to something, or you hear something you haven't heard before,
or someone says something that is incongruent with your own morals, belief, ethics,

(43:01):
what I want you to do is do this, get
excited and get curious and ask yourself what inspired them
to be like that? That's it. Be curious. Think of
the world as this beautiful I call the show. This
world is a great show. Be curious about the show.
Be curious about what made this person who they are today,

(43:22):
because you know what, here's another guarantee human behavior. Everyone
puts a lot of thought, time and effort, believe it
or not. As much as we think people do dumb
things to them, they're not doing anything dumb to them.
They are acting in their own best interests. Here's what
I want you to get curious about. Get curious about
what makes them think that's in their best interests, and
to do so with utmost curiosity. Because when you can

(43:46):
do so and let go of that judgment and they're
gonna see it not leaking out of you, they're gonna
take you on their journey. And they're gonna take you
on their journey. So you're gonna be able to start
walking that path with them and not agreeing with them,
but understanding them. And that's all human beings are seeking.
Very very rarely does someone have to agree with you.

(44:07):
They just want to be heard and they want to
be understood. This is how you do it. You just
get what I call active curiosity and not just curious
about what it is you want to know, because if
what you want to know is incongruent with what they
want to share, and you can be very off putting.
What I'm talking about is active curiosity, is being curious
about what it is they want to share, and that
requires you to pay attention to their words they're saying,

(44:29):
not what it is you're trying to do, because every
time you're thinking about what you're doing, about a script,
a ligne or something you're doing, you're missing what they're doing.
Human beings. Everyone wants to think you can multitask.

Speaker 4 (44:39):
No, you can't.

Speaker 2 (44:40):
Science very solidness, whether Simon Sinek talking about or Tashi
Yerich in the book Insight us as human beings in
a species, we cannot multitask. We focus on one thing
at a time, and if you're going to do a
good job with other human beings, focus on them.

Speaker 5 (44:56):
Kind of goes back to Maslow's thirty again on how
we So, yeah, okay, I want to switch on you
here go a little deeper into some areas. So youth
radicalization and disconnected masculinity and the impact of the dark
traits and evil. When I mentioned those things, what comes
to mind.

Speaker 2 (45:16):
Yeah, the self radicalizations. What really comes to my mind
on this and this is that lack of anchoring that
you're talking about. And there's lots of definitions. People put
on this you know, evil broken brains as I call it.
And I looked at this from a standpoint when researching
all these things. It is religion plays a big part
of this and can play a big part of this

(45:37):
because it creates a structure and organization and something we
can believe in which anchors us. But there's also societies
around the world even now that actually are very non
religious and that are very secular, whether it's Japan or
or any of the some of the Baltics that actually
have very cognizant societies free of those kind of that

(45:58):
are very secular is easier way to put it as
secular that are able to still do because they have
societal cultural norms that they're adhering to, that are ingrained
in them and anchored them from an earlier time. So
all these things help and they they're playing those amazing
need of us just having a set of codes of
behaviors of how to interact in a healthy way with others.

(46:18):
And you're talking about the masculinity that the father figure
hugely impactful in this area as well, because it says
that hey, here's the person that will keep me in
my boundaries. They will be my loving critic. They will
kick me in my butt when I need to be kicked,
but they're going to give me that unconditional love and support,
and they're going to not shame me or only you know,

(46:41):
I don't want to. It's funny. You can get down
down the road of shame to a little bit of
shame and everyone's life is good because it keep us
well within the bounds, but always going to be used
as a manipulation tool.

Speaker 4 (46:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (46:52):
So yeah, all those things that you just mentioned keep
us from going down that dark triad and that self radicalization.
And this, to me is probably the greatest darkness that
has come about because of social media. I'm a believer
that as we as a species continue to evolve, technology

(47:12):
is always evolving with us, and we do catch up
to it at some point. So I think the pendulum
always swings back and forth. But in this one area
it seems to be definitely more than it's ever been before,
and that is self the ability to self radicalize, meaning
you know, they did a great research study at Rutgers
back in April on the self radicalization of the youth

(47:32):
of this era generation. Because what happens is when they're
not anchored in these great, healthy, strong relationships like you've mentioned,
they will find a place to anchor, to be seen,
to be heard, and to be vocal and to share
their thoughts and opinions. And so they'll go on these
online forms you will find other people the same thoughts.
And that's where that they get caught up in the

(47:53):
mailstrom of chaos and non problem solving and they start
rationalizing abhorrent, horrendous behavior and start thinking that the only
way to solve problems is violence, and they and they
celebrate each other on it.

Speaker 5 (48:08):
For parents, it kind of goes back again to the formation,
uh in how you're going to develop your family. So
this would it not be appropriate? Is this is when
you have family time. This is when you have a
dinner together as a family. To try to make to
try to disconnect, if you will, from these echo chambers

(48:30):
that that probably is occurring in their room or in
their car when they have some isolated time. Is the
best way to try to deal with that is take
them out of that isolation or are I mean you
can't be with them all the time? They could be
they could wake up at two in the morning and
be doing that. This kind of stuff as well. So,
what are some helpful hints that can potentially be done

(48:53):
to help mitigate this issue.

Speaker 2 (48:57):
Traditions are great in this area. Set up family traditions,
whether you're able to do the family tradition of the
nightly meal or even if it's like my kids are
grown and gone in the house, our family tradition is
Sunday Night's FaceTime call. And so you get people caught
up in a tradition of sharing. And the only way
people are going to want to share is if they
look forward to sharing. And if they look forward to

(49:18):
sharing more with you than anyone else in their life,
who they're going to want to share more with you.
And so what makes people want to share? Non judgmental acceptance,
in validation for who they are, the thoughts of opinions
and ideas. And so I have these four keys of
communication I love to employ with across everyone, whether it's family, friends,
or law enforcement. And that is, seek the thoughts and
opinions of others instead of going on and on about

(49:40):
your own. To talk in terms of their challenges, their priorities,
their paying points and friction points in life, instead of
continually lamenting about your own. Three is A big anchor
here is that non judgmental, discerning, active curiosity about who
they are, the path they're walking in lives. And finally,
you empower people with choices. When you use one of

(50:02):
those four keys of communication that I discovered number of
years ago, you're completely shifting the focus from yourself to
the person. The big four in their brain is fir
and the serotonin of the oxytocin, the dopamine, and the
endorphins are firing in the other person's brain because by
your words alone, you're saying to them, I see you
and I value you. And when you're doing that more

(50:23):
than any other human being, including these self ridicalized online forms,
when they get more rewarded, when their brain becomes addicted
in a healthy way to engaging with you, what can't
they look forward to doing? They can't wait to see you,
They can't wait to talk to you. When you can
think to yourself, who could walk around that corner right now?

(50:43):
And I just lay it up inside because I can't
wait to share with them that person you're thinking of
walking around that corner. They're doing one of those four
things very well with you. And so that's what you
need to think about with your own children, people in
your life. What can I do to be that person?
People can't wait to see me walk around that corner
and to you. If you're doing one of those four things,
especially at non judgmental, discerning, active curiosity, people want to

(51:09):
talk to you. They'll be inspired to talk to you
because their brain is saying to them, the big four
in the brain are saying, I can't wait because my
brains being so rewarded for the engagement with you, and
all it takes is that and you don't have to
do it twenty four to seven, but you just have
to be that much better than everyone else in their life.
And today, in today's society, it's so much easier to

(51:29):
do that. People are going online to TikTok and social media,
all these things that get the five second highlight reel
of someone's life, which is completely fabricated because we get
caught up in this cult of comparison, a disease of
more and they're lacking the true anchors that again, as
a genetic and biological organism, you're not going to overcome
hundreds of thousands of years or less, depending on your

(51:50):
belief system of our evolution in the last five and
so we're seeking and craving exactly the same things. And today, yes,
we're infected with these horrendous things that can undermine it.
But at the same time, it's easier now than ever
before to compete against it, because if you're the one

(52:11):
person doing it just a little bit more than all
these online forums, you will win. You just have to
put in the effort.

Speaker 5 (52:19):
There's one thing I think that men in particular, fathers
in particular, should do to prepare. Whenever you're driving home
or getting ready to come home, you need to spend
some time in some reflection, turn off the radio or
whatever is going on in the car, and actually think
to yourself, how am I going to be a leader
in my family today as I walk through the door.

(52:42):
Because if you don't, it's so easy to just get
caught up and we'll go sit down and then I'm
going to watch what the news is saying. Or I
don't connect individually with everybody, from my spouse to my children.
I'm not connecting with them, not only in mass, but
I'm not doing it individually. Is there some things that

(53:02):
men in particular can do that they can help prepare
them as they walk through the door to be able
to have that kind of moment where they can actually
help with a reprogramming.

Speaker 2 (53:15):
The Yeah, this to me is you bring this up
so eloquently. This is the most important thing we all do.
And typically when people do a big, long, beautiful intro
for me like you did, and they come to me
and say, so, Robin, tell me about what you do,
my first answer is, I'm a father and I know
you I've talked about this too. It is my single

(53:37):
most enjoyable role in my entire life because everything I've
ever learned as a professional gave me the tools and skills,
like everything we talked about today gave me. The most
important thing in the life to do is to be
a better father. Yeah, And so think about this when
you're getting ready to walk in that door. That's when
you're gonna get rewarded because these people that you're about
to engage within your family are going to give you
that non judgmental, total acceptance in love. If you just

(54:00):
show up and you show up and be there for them,
you lead them, You be that person that can inspire
them to be who they want to be in life,
and just do all things we talked about today. They
will be so grateful, whether they say it in words
or just in actions. Remember, they can't wait to see
you when you walk in that door. Be what they
need quickly. How can they follow your work very simply?
Robindreak dot com, R O B I N D R

(54:22):
E E K E dot com. All things me are
there by all means reach out if you ever need anything.

Speaker 5 (54:28):
Robin, my brother, incredible, great job. Appreciate you very much,
thanks for coming on the show, and we definitely want
to have you back. There is so much more to
unpack here. That's it for this week on America's Criminologist. Folks,
Remember crime begins where virtue ends, and it ends up
to restore in the pillars of faith, family, and formation
in every corner of American life. Stay safe.

Speaker 1 (55:00):
Mister Niver has a fate, A man shadows a secrets light.
Doctor Curry Lawns cuts through the sky amid a an
squab anologist.

Speaker 3 (55:11):
Calling to l sails of the law and the atmosphere.
Gag goes and crimes break in the change.

Speaker 2 (55:23):
The truth SIPs the star through the fame