0:00:12 I’m Guy Kawasaki, and this is Remarkable People.
0:00:15 We’re on a mission to make you remarkable.
0:00:19 And helping me in this episode is Garrett Wing.
0:00:24 Garrett is the founder and owner of American Standard Dog Training.
0:00:29 He has over 17 years of experience in law enforcement.
0:00:34 He served as the commander of the tactical investigations unit, senior police canine
0:00:40 unit supervisor, patrol canine handler, and narcotics canine handler.
0:00:44 This basically means he knows a lot about dogs.
0:00:50 So with his extensive experience in law enforcement, dog training, and instruction,
0:00:56 Garrett has become a highly respected figure in the field of canine training and handling.
0:01:00 If you’ve ever wondered about what it took for a dog to be in the canine unit, you’re
0:01:02 about to find out.
0:01:11 I’m Guy Kawasaki, this is Remarkable People, and now here is the Remarkable Garrett Wing.
0:01:18 When I walk past a canine unit, can you just tell me what it took for that dog to be in
0:01:20 that car?
0:01:21 How did they find the puppy?
0:01:22 How did they train them?
0:01:25 Do puppies fall out of training?
0:01:28 Is there a rejection rate and how long do they serve?
0:01:29 What happens when they retire?
0:01:32 I just want to know the whole story of canine units.
0:01:35 Typically, they’re born often overseas.
0:01:38 They’re pairing up championship leaders.
0:01:45 We’re talking about dogs that have competed in sports overseas such as Shudson, IGP, Mondio
0:01:49 Ring, depends which country we’re talking about, but they have different variations.
0:01:53 In other words, they’re protection sports, and these are typically civilians who, instead
0:01:56 of going golfing on the weekend, this is their passion.
0:01:58 This is what it’s all about for them.
0:02:01 After work, they come home and they start training dogs.
0:02:06 They need to continue to produce offspring, so they’ll have a litter, and then they’ll
0:02:08 typically take that litter.
0:02:11 They’ll get a few of them and they start working those dogs as young puppies.
0:02:16 Now, as those puppies start to develop around six months, eight months, nine months old,
0:02:21 10 months old, they can really dial in on which ones have it and which ones don’t.
0:02:23 Which ones are going to likely succeed?
0:02:24 Which ones are healthy?
0:02:26 Which ones have the drive?
0:02:29 What ends up happening is they don’t want to take a puppy.
0:02:32 If you’re competing in the sport, you obviously can’t compete in the sport with an eight-week
0:02:34 old dog.
0:02:39 We can’t compete until maybe that dog’s 12 months old, a year and a half, a little older,
0:02:43 but you don’t want to hedge your whole bet on one puppy because it’s always a roll of
0:02:44 the dice.
0:02:47 So they don’t just pick one puppy and then invest all their time and energy into that
0:02:48 one puppy.
0:02:51 God forbid, it’s not healthy or it doesn’t have the drives they need.
0:02:55 So they’re going to spread their bet or hedge their bet on a handful of puppies.
0:03:00 Now, what ends up happening is once they develop these dogs to a certain age, now they’ll make
0:03:04 their selection and spend most of their time on that one dog, maybe two dogs.
0:03:07 So they want to take that one dog to the championship.
0:03:09 They want to title that dog.
0:03:10 And there’s different levels of titling.
0:03:13 This is not my area of expertise, this is what they do over there.
0:03:16 They’re going to try to put all their energy now into the one dog.
0:03:20 Now, what happens to the three, four, five, six other dogs that they were grooming, they’re
0:03:22 going to just throw them in the trash.
0:03:26 So what they end up doing is we have folks over in the states who are considered like
0:03:31 vendors and they will fly over to Europe, meet with their contacts there and say, “Hey,
0:03:34 I’m a vendor for the police and military.
0:03:37 We’re constantly looking for the best dogs that we can get.”
0:03:41 And so they’ll visit those kennels over there and those kennels are now basically bringing
0:03:45 these dogs back or saying, “Hey, this dog’s still excellent.
0:03:47 It’s still an A plus dog.
0:03:48 We just don’t have anyone that’s training it.”
0:03:53 The owner of this dog decided to go with this one, but we have plenty left over.
0:03:54 Which would you like?
0:03:56 And so the vendors will then import those dogs.
0:04:02 If you want to talk price, again, not my area of expertise and it constantly changes, especially
0:04:07 with the political climate and whatnot and import fees, but you’re talking on average
0:04:11 $3,505 grand depending upon the quality of the dog.
0:04:12 What’s the genetics of the dog?
0:04:14 Oh, both parents were champions.
0:04:20 And so anyways, they’ll import those dogs maybe a handful at a time, a dozen at a time.
0:04:24 Then they’ll end up stateside because the police departments locally, they’re not spending
0:04:32 money typically to send their trainers overseas for a one or two week paid travel to check
0:04:33 out these dogs.
0:04:37 Furthermore, if you haven’t developed good relationships with the folks over there, they’re
0:04:39 just going to pawn off their leftovers.
0:04:42 They’re not so good dogs because they got to get rid of those dogs too.
0:04:44 They got to get rid of the good ones and the not so good ones.
0:04:48 So if you come over unsuspecting or you don’t speak the language, they’re going to hide
0:04:50 the good ones and only show you the bad ones.
0:04:53 So we’re typically, as police departments, relying upon vendors who have built these
0:04:56 relationships over decades.
0:05:01 And so they’ll bring the dogs over and then that’s where we come in, where we as police
0:05:06 canine handlers and trainers will meet with, usually we have a vendor, a preferred vendor
0:05:09 that maybe the department’s been working with for decades or sometimes there’s multiple
0:05:10 vendors.
0:05:13 We keep our options open because it depends what they have brought in lately.
0:05:14 Then we will test the dogs.
0:05:16 Now every department tests their dogs differently.
0:05:21 Some departments go to the vendors on their home turf and other times will say, hey, look,
0:05:23 we’re going to buy like six dogs.
0:05:27 Can you make a trip down here, however many hours of travel that is and we’re going to
0:05:29 test whatever you have.
0:05:32 Also the vendors start to know what each individual department is looking for.
0:05:36 Some departments want harder, tougher dogs.
0:05:37 And so they’ll know to bring that.
0:05:41 Or if you have a good relationship with them, say, look, we’ve got four handlers that need
0:05:42 dogs.
0:05:44 Two of them are veteran handlers.
0:05:45 You already know what they want.
0:05:47 They want something similar to what they had last time.
0:05:49 They want a German shepherd.
0:05:50 They want a Belgian Malinois.
0:05:51 They want high drive.
0:05:56 This guy likes to compete with his dog in police canine trials and competitions.
0:05:58 So let’s get him something real turnkey.
0:06:03 Oh, we also have a brand new kind of rookie handler happens to be petite, whether it’s
0:06:08 a female or just a smaller frame male, a, uh, probably don’t want that 120 pound dog.
0:06:11 You have something a little more on the small side, like a pocket rocket.
0:06:15 So all of this is taken into account and then the dogs will be tested.
0:06:20 Now we can talk about the kind of testing we do, but we are typically examining the
0:06:21 dog’s drives.
0:06:24 What kind of drives are we talking about?
0:06:29 It could be prey drive, hunt drive, fight drive, defensive drive, just their overall
0:06:30 courage.
0:06:32 Also their social drive.
0:06:36 We used to not care about social drive, but it’s a new age and we used to think we wanted
0:06:41 the biggest, toughest, hardest dogs and just a little bit about my background.
0:06:45 I was a police canine handler and police canine supervisor for the city of Miami police department.
0:06:48 My father and stepmother were also members of that canine unit.
0:06:54 So combined we probably have, I don’t know, 30 or 40 years of experience in the canine
0:06:55 world.
0:07:02 So when we go to test dogs, especially back in the day, we just wanted tough dogs.
0:07:08 But over time we realized, we used to think if you got a tough dog, you either had to
0:07:12 get a tough dog or a social dog and it was hard to find a dog that was super sweet with
0:07:17 people and your family could pet it and other police officers could pet it, but it would
0:07:19 still be a good police dog.
0:07:22 We used to think, no, we’re kind of, we’re going to go into backyards, we’re going to
0:07:26 go on tracks for murder suspects, rapist, armed robbers.
0:07:29 I’ll err on the side of a harder dog.
0:07:31 He doesn’t need to be pet by anybody.
0:07:35 He just needs to bite when I need him to bite so he could save my butt in the backyard.
0:07:40 Well I would say, at least during my tenure, towards the end of it, we started to switch
0:07:46 because we would get these kind of almost unicorn dogs like robots, turnkey, super social,
0:07:51 but if you said the right word and you turn that dog on and put them into the right drive,
0:07:55 at the drop of a hat, they would go into action and handle business.
0:07:57 And so we tried to get more social dogs.
0:08:02 There’s no reason to have a dog that is so hot that nobody can get near it.
0:08:06 And we’ve had dogs like that in the past that get so, they’re so dangerous to be honest
0:08:11 with you that even backups can’t get close enough to you as a handler to back you up.
0:08:15 So now you end up going into a backyard and we always say, hey backup, do me a favor,
0:08:19 stand about 30 feet behind me because we might be using a 15 or 30 foot lead.
0:08:22 And so you got to give that canine dog and the handler some space.
0:08:26 If you get too close to the handler, the dog’s going to bite you, the SWAT backup just as
0:08:28 quick as it’s going to bite anybody else.
0:08:31 But the point being, sometimes we still get dogs like that.
0:08:35 We tend to try to get dogs that have all the drives and yet they’re clearheaded.
0:08:36 We like a clearheaded dog.
0:08:38 Anyways, we’ll do the testing.
0:08:39 We can get more into the details.
0:08:41 Some of the testing is pretty cool that we would do.
0:08:44 And yes, some of those dogs get maybe washed out in the sense, we’re telling the vendor,
0:08:47 hey, thanks for bringing these 12 dogs.
0:08:48 We’d like these four right here.
0:08:54 Now other departments might come along and maybe they’re a softer, kindler, gentler department
0:08:56 or they haven’t been in the game long enough.
0:08:57 They don’t know what they’re looking for.
0:09:01 And so same thing, the vendors are like, hey, this is a great dog.
0:09:05 It’s a dog we might rate as like a C plus, maybe we’re not taking it, but if they want
0:09:08 to take it, sure, maybe it turns out to be a great dog for their purposes because all
0:09:14 they need is a dog that looks pretty and shows up to the school demos and can catch a ball.
0:09:18 We need a dog and a department that we work in that needs to be everything and handle
0:09:19 business.
0:09:22 So we were very selective on what dogs we would get.
0:09:26 And oftentimes too, even after we selected the dog, you might be a month or two into
0:09:30 training, call the vendor up and say, ah, yeah, this dog’s too much.
0:09:34 Or hey, we tested this dog and we thought it was good, but it doesn’t quite have what
0:09:35 we need.
0:09:36 We found a problem.
0:09:37 We also would test for health.
0:09:41 And so health issues might pop up and there’s a certain level of guarantee from the vendors,
0:09:43 but we try not make that happen too often.
0:09:48 It’s just bad business to constantly take dogs and actually mess the dog up in your
0:09:52 training because you can mess up a good dog with bad training, send the dog back.
0:09:53 The vendors don’t like that.
0:09:55 They don’t want to do business with you anymore.
0:09:59 Anyways, then we do, I’m trying to, I never asked me a question without expecting a 30
0:10:01 minute answer, but this is my passion, this is what we love.
0:10:05 So then after selection, they passed that selection.
0:10:08 We’ve now selected them to go through a canine training.
0:10:14 Every state is different, but in the state of Florida, we do what’s called a 480 hour
0:10:15 canine certification course.
0:10:18 The dog and the handler must go through that.
0:10:22 On average, it takes around three or four months and we’re following a state standardized
0:10:26 curriculum that hasn’t probably changed much in 20 or 30 years, but what work back then
0:10:28 is still working now.
0:10:32 And we are getting the dogs trained to do tracking, to do what we call area searches,
0:10:35 which is using their nose to find a hidden subject.
0:10:41 Obedience obviously is a big portion of it, agility and just general control of the dog.
0:10:47 We build the dog up so that it can pass certification and then typically the better agencies will
0:10:52 do what’s called, and this may be a little risqué, but we, soon as they’re certified
0:10:56 technically you can hit the street and go handle business.
0:11:03 However, a lot of agencies will hold the handler and the dog back for above and beyond training,
0:11:05 which we often call dirtying the dog up.
0:11:11 And what that is, the state certification is the bare minimum standards, if you will.
0:11:13 It’s all textbook material.
0:11:19 Do this, do that, make sure your dog bites the guy in the suit and when you recall, he
0:11:20 recalls.
0:11:24 In fact, the entire test that’s done for certification happens on a training field.
0:11:28 Well, if anybody’s been in the game long enough, the training field is one thing.
0:11:31 The street is a whole other thing.
0:11:38 And so after the dog passes its kind of ABCs, then we say, okay, now let’s make it real.
0:11:43 Let’s now focus on, and by the way, at this point, we need the dog under tremendous control.
0:11:46 Beautiful recall, beautiful obedience.
0:11:51 We try to maintain that, but when we talk about dirtying a dog up, we’re kind of saying,
0:11:53 hey, get ready for the real deal.
0:11:56 You might get in a fight tomorrow with a real bad suspect, he might punch you in the face.
0:12:02 I don’t want, when we’re in a backyard, the police dog for the first time ever realizing
0:12:04 that you might get hit too.
0:12:05 So we have to prepare the dogs for that.
0:12:11 We start exposing them to any type of scenario that you can imagine to prepare the dog for
0:12:12 real life encounters on the street.
0:12:14 And I’ll just give you one example.
0:12:19 In certification, it’s on a sanitary field with a guy in a Stay Puff Marshmallow suit,
0:12:20 right?
0:12:22 The big body, the big bite suit and dogs are very visual creatures.
0:12:27 While in the street, it’s not going to be a guy running away from you in a big old puffy
0:12:28 suit.
0:12:33 What it’s going to be potentially is a guy hiding, let’s say, in the bushes, maybe with
0:12:34 no clothes on.
0:12:37 Maybe he’s shed a lot of his clothes because he’s trying to get rid of whatever it is we
0:12:39 saw him wearing.
0:12:43 Maybe, and this happens a lot, you’d be surprised, guys will break into homes, they’re running
0:12:47 from the police, they bail out of a stolen vehicle or an arm carjacking vehicle, you
0:12:53 go searching for them, they’ll find an open door, they’ll go in and start taking a shower
0:12:55 in somebody else’s house.
0:12:57 Just like, “Oh yeah, I live here, man, I’m taking a shower.”
0:12:59 And while they’re taking a shower, you’re like, “Hey, what’s the address?”
0:13:01 And they’re like, “Yeah, I don’t know.”
0:13:08 Anyways, has your dog ever bit someone with no equipment on in the shower with the water
0:13:09 coming on them?
0:13:14 And you’d be surprised, there’s a lot of hard-ass police dogs who’d be like, “Nah,
0:13:15 I don’t feel like getting wet.
0:13:17 I don’t feel like slipping on the floor.”
0:13:21 A lot of dogs, even police dogs are a little terrified of slippery floors.
0:13:25 So these types of things we do over the coming, not just weeks and months to kind of dirty
0:13:30 them up, this is what training is like now for the rest of that dog’s career.
0:13:36 It’s all about getting that environmental exposure, showing different pictures, biting
0:13:40 a guy in a river, biting a guy in an attic, biting a guy in a tree, biting a guy under
0:13:41 a car.
0:13:42 And I keep saying, “Bite, bite, bite.”
0:13:46 But that’s what we’re preparing the dogs to do, to be able to make a physical seizure
0:13:50 on a subject that’s either refusing to come out or that wants to fight the police.
0:13:58 So that’s kind of how we get the dogs from overseas into our training program and then
0:13:59 on the street.
0:14:05 And the only thing I missed was pre-COVID, we used to get what we would call turnkey
0:14:06 titled dogs.
0:14:11 These are dogs, you remember we go back to the folks who maybe have a handful of puppies,
0:14:14 they raise them up, they select one, then they take that one all the way across the
0:14:19 finish line, try to get it as high up as they can in competition and get all the titles.
0:14:25 We used to buy title dogs, give or take $15,000, $20,000.
0:14:28 When those dogs came, they were fully mature, two, two and a half, sometimes three years
0:14:29 old.
0:14:32 Pretty much turnkey, we called them Ferraris.
0:14:36 You put a competent handler behind the lead there, you could pass certification like the
0:14:38 same day.
0:14:40 You have to put in your requisite hours, but those dogs are ready.
0:14:42 In fact, you know what often happened?
0:14:47 We’d give rookie handlers the turnkey dog and the dog was actually worse three or four
0:14:50 months later than it was when we first got it.
0:14:51 How do I mean worse?
0:14:56 Little rusty, not as clean and sharp as it came right off the boat because those folks
0:14:58 over there don’t play, they want those dogs perfect.
0:15:03 It’s like if I gave a gated manual Ferrari to someone who didn’t know how to drive a
0:15:07 manual and I said, oh, just good luck to you, go drive that.
0:15:09 It might have some dense on it.
0:15:11 You might have burned up the transmission.
0:15:14 That kind of what happened, we give these turnkey dogs to someone who’s never worked
0:15:16 a dog before and their timing is off.
0:15:20 Their leash pressure skills are not there and the dog ends up getting a, I mean, it’s
0:15:21 still a great dog.
0:15:23 It’s just not as sharp as it used to be.
0:15:25 That’s what we used to get back in the day, title dogs.
0:15:29 Then when COVID came, you couldn’t title a dog in Europe because you couldn’t have the
0:15:30 competitions.
0:15:31 Everything was shut down for like two years.
0:15:37 So it was a really weird time in canine world where we couldn’t get two-year-old turnkey
0:15:38 dogs.
0:15:41 We were getting what we call green dogs, which is what I described to you earlier.
0:15:43 Green dogs meaning they don’t really know their name.
0:15:45 They don’t know how to sit or down.
0:15:47 They just know how to bite things.
0:15:52 They’re just like very raw, animalistic, think of if you had a 10 and 12-year-old boys and
0:15:56 you just let them raise themselves on an island, like almost feral.
0:15:57 That’s what we get.
0:16:01 And then we take the best of the feral dogs that are just high drive and we say, okay,
0:16:02 I like this one.
0:16:06 Then we put in all the training, the obedience, the out command, the searching, the tracking,
0:16:09 the explosives or narcotics, detection, et cetera.
0:16:10 There you go.
0:16:13 Why do you have to get these dogs from another country?
0:16:15 How come we don’t just have them here?
0:16:16 That’s a great question.
0:16:23 There are vendors here that will take a lot of these import dogs, take the best of them
0:16:26 and have their own breeding program.
0:16:30 However, I think it’s one of those, if you want a Ferrari, you got to go to Italy.
0:16:32 I honestly don’t have an answer for you.
0:16:38 I don’t think there are some, there definitely are some breeding programs here that are just
0:16:42 as good as the breeding programs over in Europe.
0:16:44 It’s just past practice.
0:16:46 But again, I think it depends where you are in the country.
0:16:49 There are some police departments that have their own breeding program.
0:16:52 But there’s a lot of expense in that to raise your own puppy.
0:16:55 And we don’t even know until the dog’s six, eight, nine months old if it’s even worth
0:16:56 anything.
0:16:59 Now, if you have a litter of eight and four make it, well, now what do you do with the
0:17:00 other four?
0:17:02 What are you going to do with the dogs that don’t cut it?
0:17:05 And so I’ve got to find homes for them.
0:17:10 When you have a litter of puppies, what can you tell at the puppy stage?
0:17:12 Is there already dominance going on?
0:17:14 Do you want a dominant dog?
0:17:16 What’s the characteristics you’re looking for?
0:17:18 I think it depends who you ask.
0:17:22 But even when you look at a litter of puppies, six, seven, eight weeks old, one of the tests
0:17:28 that we encourage our customers to do, because sometimes we often help customers procure
0:17:29 a dog.
0:17:30 Find a breeder.
0:17:31 We’re talking about police dogs right now.
0:17:33 We’re just talking about dogs in general.
0:17:34 And they’re working with a particular breeder.
0:17:36 We help get the right breeder.
0:17:38 And then now they get the pick of the litter.
0:17:40 Well, how do I pick the one I want?
0:17:43 And so it all depends on what you’re looking for your lifestyle.
0:17:49 But when it comes to the dominance, absolutely, if you throw, let’s say a ball or a toy or
0:17:54 even better a bone with some meat on it, but there’s only one bone and there’s eight puppies.
0:17:56 Not every puppy’s going to get a bite of that bone.
0:18:01 You’re going to see the top one or two dogs out of that litter, maybe three, letting everybody
0:18:04 else know, hey, this is mine, and you’ll probably have a pretty clear winner.
0:18:07 And that’s going to be repeated over and over again.
0:18:09 And there’s some theories as to how that happens.
0:18:16 I find it very interesting, but what makes this puppy more dominant than his brother
0:18:18 or sister right next to him?
0:18:23 The thought process behind that is that when the mother’s feeding them, more milk comes
0:18:25 out of the middle teats.
0:18:30 So there’s more milk and what makes a dog more physically capable and more mentally
0:18:31 capable?
0:18:35 By the way, dominant and alpha type dogs are not always the biggest, though sometimes they
0:18:36 are.
0:18:38 They’re the smartest.
0:18:42 And so they say that what is it that makes a puppy develop?
0:18:44 Why did this one develop better than this one?
0:18:45 Why is one the runt of the litter?
0:18:48 Obviously, there’s some genetics in play, of course, right?
0:18:51 Who got the luck of the draw when the sperm hit the egg?
0:18:57 But also when it comes to feeding time, the stronger dogs already are going to fight their
0:19:01 way, crawl and fight their way to the middle teat to get more milk.
0:19:04 They’re also in the middle of the bunch, so they’re flanked on either side and they’re
0:19:07 getting warmth from their brothers and sisters.
0:19:10 What happens to the guy on the end or the gal on the end?
0:19:13 Less milk, less warmth, less development.
0:19:15 And so that’s where you might get a runt of the litter because they didn’t get as much
0:19:16 calories in.
0:19:18 They didn’t get as much warmth.
0:19:22 And so their brain and physical development was not on par with their brothers and sisters.
0:19:24 Now what do you want for a police dog?
0:19:26 Very interesting conversation.
0:19:28 There’s alpha dogs, if you will.
0:19:30 What I like is a beta dog.
0:19:34 Now beta is often referred to in a negative connotation, you’re either an alpha or you’re
0:19:35 a beta.
0:19:42 Now actually, alphas are super tough dogs, very smart, and they don’t like being second
0:19:43 to anybody.
0:19:48 So if you get a real strong alpha handler and a real strong alpha dog, they will clash for
0:19:49 their whole career.
0:19:50 Right?
0:19:54 It may not happen every day, but every time, every once in a while, that dog will literally
0:19:55 turn on the handler.
0:19:57 Here’s an example.
0:20:01 The dog’s in full drive, and it’s very hard to explain what a police dog in full drive
0:20:02 is like.
0:20:10 It’s like having a 1,000, 1,200, or 1,500 horsepower engine in a car, rip-roaring, ready to go.
0:20:12 And you better hope you’ve installed some brakes on it.
0:20:15 By brakes, I mean obedience, some level of control.
0:20:20 But the dogs have serious drive, one of them being bite drive.
0:20:24 So when they get frustrated, and they want to bite someone, and this happens in real
0:20:30 life all the time, you get a suspect that’s run from the police, he’s putting off a ton
0:20:32 of what we call fear odor.
0:20:36 This dog has been trained his whole life to find and bite.
0:20:37 It’s his whole purpose in life.
0:20:43 It’s beyond a game, it’s their life’s mission to satisfy their urge to track down basically
0:20:46 a prey item and capture it.
0:20:50 And so their urge to bite, they’ll literally chatter their teeth, and they’re building
0:20:52 up and they just want to go for it.
0:20:56 Now what ends up happening is sometimes at the end of that track, remember, the handler’s
0:21:01 full of testosterone and adrenaline is just dumping.
0:21:02 All the backups are like that too.
0:21:06 The dog’s seen this picture before, this all, by the way, happens even before you get to
0:21:10 the scene with the lights and sirens, the dog goes, it’s on, the dog gets its own type of
0:21:11 adrenaline dump.
0:21:15 And so you’re in a backyard, it’s all culminating to this point, and the dog knows, I’ve done
0:21:19 my part, I found this guy, I’m going to take care of business.
0:21:24 Problem is the guy’s giving up, the guy’s on top of a shed, and maybe this is the worst.
0:21:28 He’s not giving up, he won’t come down, but the dog can’t get to him.
0:21:32 And so the dog’s building frustration like, man, I know you’re there, man, I can’t get
0:21:33 to you.
0:21:35 And they finally hit a limit, you know what they do?
0:21:40 They turn and bite the backup, they turn and bite the handler, oh yeah, it happens a lot.
0:21:42 They have to unload.
0:21:47 The best way I can explain it, remember, they’re animals, we’re animals too, but we are our
0:21:57 most animalistic when we are enraged, when we are frustrated, maybe if we’re drunk, right?
0:22:05 You combine all of that, and you might say, why would a guy ever smack or hit or punch
0:22:09 his own loving girlfriend, and a guy that would never do that?
0:22:12 I’ll tell you how that happens.
0:22:18 He’s enraged, he’s frustrated, he’s got adrenaline pump in his system, he’s about to fight maybe
0:22:22 another guy in the bar, and the fight’s probably over his own girl.
0:22:27 And his girlfriend’s trying to hold him back, but he’s already determined, I’ve got to unload
0:22:29 on this guy.
0:22:32 Anything holding him back might get an elbow to the face, it’s not even personal at this
0:22:34 point, it’s get off me.
0:22:37 And the dog sometimes goes, will you just let go of the leash, man, I’ve got to go handle
0:22:41 business, and sometimes they get frustrated, they’ll reach back, they’ll bite the leash,
0:22:46 they’ll bite the handler’s hand, so that hopefully the handler lets go, and they can go handle
0:22:47 business.
0:22:48 Wow.
0:22:53 So that’s what we call sometimes too much drive, uncapped drive, and we’re constantly
0:22:56 with a really high drive dog, we’re always riding that razor’s edge.
0:23:00 We want full horsepower, but sometimes as you know, if you go around a racetrack, you’re
0:23:02 going to go off the racetrack if you go a little too fast.
0:23:06 And is that why you want a beta, not an alpha?
0:23:07 Alpha is.
0:23:08 Ah.
0:23:09 Yeah, so thanks for circling back.
0:23:14 If you have two strong alpha males, meaning the handler and the dog, they’re just constantly
0:23:19 vying for who’s the boss, and there are some police dogs out there, you might correct the
0:23:24 behavior, you might teach the dog a lesson for that day, and the dog, and you may do this
0:23:28 in training, it may happen because it’s planned, or it may happen, and you didn’t suspect it
0:23:29 to happen.
0:23:33 But one of those situations comes about where maybe the dog gets frustrated and he wants
0:23:37 to bite, but sometimes in a training and in real life, it might not always end in a bite,
0:23:41 so the dog doesn’t get what he wants, and so he’ll do something stupid, let’s say.
0:23:44 Be non-compliant, go after the handler.
0:23:46 The handler corrects that behavior and says, “Don’t do that.”
0:23:50 The handler wins that battle, and then you got to repeat it all over again the next training
0:23:51 day.
0:23:55 And so there’s just these dogs that they’re just too tough for their own good.
0:23:58 Now, a betadog is what I call second in command.
0:23:59 It’s the general.
0:24:02 It’s the general’s right-hand man, however you want to look at it.
0:24:10 Very strong, very confident, physically fit, just a tougher, bigger dog, but likes being
0:24:17 second in command, loves to, doesn’t want the alpha role, loves being second in command.
0:24:20 Now what often people think about as a betadog is what’s considered an omega dog.
0:24:21 That’s the runt of the litter.
0:24:26 A lot of folks out there actually have omega dogs, and this would be the sign that you
0:24:27 have an omega dog.
0:24:30 There’s this, it’s what I call alarm barking.
0:24:36 Someone knocks at the door, an alpha or a betadog is going to put a deep guttural bark.
0:24:39 An omega dog usually does, you could call it an omega howl.
0:24:43 It’s, they’re scared like, “Hey, so where does this all come from?”
0:24:48 In the wild, wolf packs have alphas, they have betas, and they have omegas.
0:24:51 Omegas are like super anxious dogs.
0:24:54 They’re usually on the perimeter, and they are so quick to sound the alarm because they
0:25:00 had generally just anxious dogs, so there might be a crack of a stick 50 yards away.
0:25:02 The omega dog’s going to start howling immediately.
0:25:04 It’s like paranoid.
0:25:07 An alpha and omega is going to, excuse me, an alpha or a betadog is going to get up and
0:25:08 see what’s going on.
0:25:12 Now here’s one more thing that I find super interesting, and I read this in a book, it
0:25:16 in the name will come to me in a minute, but it’s a gentleman who spent time living with
0:25:19 a wolf pack in the wild for months.
0:25:23 And so this is what he gained from it, among many things, but this is one thing that sticks
0:25:24 to me.
0:25:27 When he was trying to make inroads with the pack, he couldn’t just show up one day and
0:25:28 be part of the pack.
0:25:31 He would hang around, get near it, try to follow them.
0:25:38 One day, one of the pack members came over to see who he was and what he was all about.
0:25:42 And when you think about it, this gentleman poses a threat to the pack.
0:25:48 So who from the pack, who should be selected to go check on that guy?
0:25:49 That’s not going to be the omega.
0:25:50 It’s too scarce.
0:25:52 It’s not going to do that.
0:25:56 So most people would say, oh, it’s the alpha, because he’s the toughest and the baddest.
0:25:58 No, he’s the smartest.
0:26:02 He basically, hey, beta, you’re big and bad, go over there.
0:26:07 And oftentimes I think of betas as kind of dumb jocks, big and bad, but just ready to
0:26:08 take an order.
0:26:14 So when he went to go check that pack out, the beta male is what came over to him and
0:26:19 basically checked him out to see if he was a threat or you are your friend or foe.
0:26:22 And furthermore, are you tough enough to be part of us?
0:26:35 And anyways, very interesting.
0:26:38 Let’s suppose God forbid one day I’m a suspect.
0:26:43 And I’m in a backyard and you are hunting me and this dog shows up, okay, knowing what
0:26:47 you know, what would a smart suspect do?
0:26:49 Give up.
0:26:50 Give up.
0:26:55 Yeah, there’s no, there’s nothing you can do really to hide your scent or evade it.
0:26:59 These dogs have thousands upon thousands of years of development.
0:27:02 Just they are, this is what they do.
0:27:05 It’s very hard to hide your scent signature.
0:27:11 And once the dogs on you, if the dogs trained right and it’s got the proper genetics, we
0:27:15 train these dogs to not give up no matter what we call it the 1%.
0:27:18 We train our dogs for the 1% say what is that?
0:27:24 The kind of the argument goes rough math here, if you have 100 suspects and you pull a police
0:27:29 dog out, right, you got a guy he’s not given up, you bring the dog out, you make the announcement,
0:27:33 the dog barks around 50 people out of the 100 to say, you know what, man, I don’t even want
0:27:34 to mess with that dog.
0:27:36 I’m giving up right now.
0:27:41 Then you’ll have the other 49 or so who will say, I heard the dog, but I’m going to keep
0:27:42 in my hiding spot.
0:27:44 Maybe he won’t find me.
0:27:45 Yeah, maybe you’re right.
0:27:47 Maybe you’re not.
0:27:50 Dog finds you as soon as it bites you, they don’t want to play.
0:27:54 We’ve had full grown men, they pee themselves, they poop themselves, and they scream for
0:27:58 their mama, which I always find funny, grown men screaming for their mama.
0:28:01 We could laugh about it or not, but it’s like, they’re terrified, you’re actually getting
0:28:05 eaten by another animal and it’s not an everyday phenomenon and it hurts.
0:28:06 But what about the 1%?
0:28:12 The 1% of the guys that mentally deranged, they’re on drugs, they’ve been to prison before,
0:28:13 they’re ready to die out there.
0:28:16 They are not going back to prison no matter what.
0:28:19 You could put a dog on them and we’ve encountered them in real life, I’ve encountered them.
0:28:22 The dog is biting them, it doesn’t matter.
0:28:25 You think the dog would handle business for you and it’d be over.
0:28:27 Nope, it’s all hands on deck.
0:28:30 You can bite them, you taser them, taser’s not working, you pepper spray them, it doesn’t
0:28:31 matter.
0:28:35 You’re going to fist fight for your life and you hope the dog stays in on the fight
0:28:40 and a lot of dogs will, it’s all conceit for them when we train this for them.
0:28:44 All this is a game of tug of war, by the way, and people ask like, how do you get a dog
0:28:46 to bite someone?
0:28:49 It’s just an elevated game of tug of war.
0:28:53 We teach them as a young puppies, you see this little piece of rag or this little jute
0:28:55 tug, just bite it and hold it.
0:28:59 They’re natural prey draft to bite and hold and chase things and then we transition that
0:29:03 from small little pieces of equipment to larger and larger pieces of equipment as they get
0:29:06 bigger and their mouths get bigger and they get rid of their puppy teeth.
0:29:09 Now they have adult teeth, now they bite the bite suit or the sleeve.
0:29:12 It’s just a big old toy.
0:29:17 Then the trick is now that we’ve got you biting this big bite suit, now we have to find interesting
0:29:22 ways to teach you if the person’s not wearing a bite suit, you can still bite them and it’s
0:29:24 okay, it’s just a game.
0:29:29 Then you have some dogs that go their whole life thinking it’s a game and then they’re
0:29:33 in the street and they get punched or kicked in the face.
0:29:35 These bad guys out there now, they’re not getting any better.
0:29:39 They’re stabbing police dogs, they’re biting their ears, biting them on the mouth and the
0:29:44 last thing you want when you’re in an all out battle in the backyard, you don’t need
0:29:50 a police dog backing out on you going, “I’ve had enough, this is not what I signed up for.”
0:29:53 We’ve seen dogs do that, very scary to have.
0:29:57 Can you imagine, it’s you and me guy and we’re going in, you’re a trained police officer,
0:30:00 I’m a trained police officer and then we didn’t plan it, but this guy’s not going to jail
0:30:05 and we got to get put hands on and as soon as you get punched, you’re like, “I’m checking
0:30:08 out Garrett, I’m going to go to Dunkin’ Donuts to get a coffee and donut, I’ll see you in
0:30:09 a bit, good luck to you.”
0:30:16 And sometimes we’ve had dogs, I’m sure you’d hang around for a while but that happens and
0:30:19 we don’t want that but what we train our dogs to do is that’s what I said, we’re looking
0:30:24 for those dogs that maybe a little lean towards being a little too much to handle because
0:30:26 these are the types of dogs that thrive.
0:30:30 They’re like, “Oh, punch me in the head, no problem, I’ll just bite you harder.”
0:30:33 And we need dogs that can stick it out for that two, three, four minutes or whatever
0:30:36 it takes to get this kind of custody.
0:30:43 My last canine question, which is earlier you said something like, “Now that you want
0:30:49 dogs that have some social skills and the kids can pet them and all that kind of stuff.”
0:30:54 And you said you say one magic word and that turns into an attack, so like literally you
0:31:00 say one word and bada-bing, bada-bang, now that dog is a weapon.
0:31:01 Yes.
0:31:02 Is that a secret word?
0:31:05 I mean, is it only a handler can say that?
0:31:13 No, it can be literally made up words, it can be a sound, it can be, oftentimes these dogs
0:31:18 are trained in either Dutch commands, French commands, German commands, “Hey, but here’s
0:31:23 a fancy one, you know the French command to bite someone or to attack?”
0:31:24 It’s attack.
0:31:29 It’s not really a secret, but it’s more to it than that, it isn’t, it isn’t because
0:31:32 usually there’s a build up to this and the dogs are really interesting, man.
0:31:36 They love their routines and habits and there’s cues, right?
0:31:38 Everything’s with classical conditioning.
0:31:40 Everything you do to train a dog, whether it’s a police dog or a pet dog, it’s all
0:31:43 classical conditioning, meaning pairing.
0:31:47 And we go back to Ivan Pavlov, ring the bell, present food.
0:31:50 The bell didn’t mean anything to the dog before, just like the French dog, when it
0:31:54 hears attack, they don’t speak French, they don’t speak English, that word doesn’t mean
0:31:55 anything to them.
0:31:59 A lot of people tell their dogs, no, I’m like, does your dog even know what no means?
0:32:03 Because you just told it no, get off the couch and it’s still on the couch.
0:32:06 So it’s either not listening to you or more likely it doesn’t speak English, it doesn’t
0:32:10 know what you’re saying because no has no, there’s nothing behind it.
0:32:16 Anyways, back to Ivan Pavlov, he found that the secret formula is ring bell and exactly
0:32:20 a quarter second later, there’s room for error there, but around a quarter second later,
0:32:25 if you ring the bell and present food, you will now classically condition that the bell
0:32:26 means food.
0:32:27 How do we know that?
0:32:31 Because after so many reps, he would ring the bell, no food in sight, but the dog salivating.
0:32:32 So it’s a mind trick.
0:32:34 The bell equals food.
0:32:38 Now that’s technically what the attack command would be, and it could be a bell.
0:32:43 You could ring a bell and say, except it’s not bell equals food, it’s bell equals bite.
0:32:47 And so we create that phenomenon if you will, but there’s more than just the verbal cue.
0:32:48 They can smell it.
0:32:51 They hear the police sirens and they get jacked up.
0:32:55 When you put the tracking harness on, a lot of times that means go time.
0:32:57 They know what that equipment means.
0:33:01 With our police dogs, I always find this an interesting fact, both for my father, myself,
0:33:04 they don’t know what day of the week it is.
0:33:09 So if you work a Thursday night shift, they don’t know that it’s Thursday, but they see
0:33:13 you get out of the shower and you’re going to get dressed and they kind of look.
0:33:16 They’ll wait till you put the pants on.
0:33:18 They will walk over and smell the pants.
0:33:20 Is that the polyester pants that my dad goes to work in?
0:33:21 Yes, it is.
0:33:23 And they’re like, they’re ready.
0:33:28 They start waiting by the door or some dogs would take a nap, like a little pregame nap.
0:33:31 But they smell to see what you’re wearing because it’s classically conditioned.
0:33:34 When I smell polyester pants, we’re going to work.
0:33:39 But if they come over and smell blue jeans, man, I’ll go chew a bone because dad’s not
0:33:40 taking me tonight.
0:33:43 So all of that’s classically conditioned.
0:33:44 It’s pretty cool.
0:33:48 And speaking of Pavlov and classical condition, is that the role of the clicker?
0:33:51 I saw you in many videos using a clicker.
0:33:52 The clicker is now the reward.
0:33:54 Just hearing it.
0:33:55 Yes.
0:33:56 Yes.
0:33:59 It is all about what we call marker system or marker training.
0:34:00 That’s different names.
0:34:01 It all means the same thing.
0:34:03 I like to use the marker idea.
0:34:04 Some people call it clicker training.
0:34:07 The whole point by it, you’re exactly correct.
0:34:11 When you first click, it doesn’t mean anything to the dog.
0:34:13 But when we expose it, it’s click.
0:34:14 And guess what?
0:34:19 The secret sauce, a quarter second later, preferably present food or a treat or a toy.
0:34:21 Click equals party.
0:34:23 Click equals awesome.
0:34:28 And so what it allows us to do is consider it a bridge so that if you’re 50 feet away
0:34:33 from a dog, for instance, and you tell it to down and it nails it, dogs kind of have
0:34:35 horrible short term memory.
0:34:40 And so they say you have a three to five second window to let the dog know whether it did
0:34:42 right or it did wrong.
0:34:45 And I think the difference between a good trainer and a great trainer or in this case
0:34:51 a good owner and a great owner in this forest communicating with your dog is timing is everything
0:34:52 in dog training.
0:34:55 I don’t think three to five seconds is like on the extreme end.
0:34:59 I like to mark behaviors within milliseconds.
0:35:03 So we say down, the dog drops into a down.
0:35:08 We need to be able to communicate to that dog at the speed of sound.
0:35:09 I love that.
0:35:12 So the second he hits the ground, we’re going to click.
0:35:16 And that’s letting him know what you did right there was perfect.
0:35:20 Now let’s contrast that with we tell the dog down, he drops into a down.
0:35:21 We’re happy with that.
0:35:25 We’re so happy that we walk over with food to pay him for that down.
0:35:29 By the time we get over to him, he breaks it down, comes into a sit and maybe takes a
0:35:31 couple of steps towards you.
0:35:34 Once he does that, he breaks the sit and the down, he’s in the city, comes towards you
0:35:35 and now you pay him.
0:35:36 What did he get paid for?
0:35:42 Did he get paid for the down that was 20 seconds ago, or is he getting paid for breaking?
0:35:44 And that’s the beauty of a marker system.
0:35:50 One advantage would be the ability to mark literally like a timeline right here is where
0:35:51 you did perfect.
0:35:55 So when I walk over and pay you 20 seconds later, you know what I’m paying you for is
0:35:58 for the click you heard earlier.
0:36:00 So it buys you a little more time.
0:36:06 Don’t dogs figure out that how come sometimes there’s a click and I get food and sometimes
0:36:07 there’s a click and I don’t get food.
0:36:09 I’m confused.
0:36:10 Sure.
0:36:11 Two ways to answer that.
0:36:14 One is when you click, you always give food.
0:36:16 It’s a guarantee of payment.
0:36:17 It’s a promise of payment.
0:36:18 You will get paid.
0:36:24 However, when you get more advanced in training, we bring up the idea of, there’s a scientific
0:36:30 name for it, Robert Sapolsky is a neuroscientist, I believe, and he does a lot of experiments
0:36:35 with primates and things like that, and they’ll put them in like a skinner box and they’re
0:36:39 hooking up things to the brain and checking blood, but they’re really looking for dopamine
0:36:40 dumps.
0:36:42 So he talks about like the dopamine hit.
0:36:47 And so what they found is when you introduce, let’s say, let’s just go with that for a
0:36:48 minute.
0:36:51 And he has a really killer, maybe 15 or 20 minute video on it on YouTube where he talks
0:36:55 about variability of rewards.
0:36:56 And we can talk about this.
0:36:58 I find this so interesting.
0:37:05 If you put a monkey in a cage, and if he knows that every time he pulls the lever, he’ll
0:37:10 get a treat, some kind of banana or whatever he’s into, you can check the dopamine levels
0:37:11 of that creature.
0:37:16 And then maybe in the very beginning, it’ll be excited about this game, but then it stops
0:37:20 being fun for the animal because it’s so repeatable.
0:37:21 It’s so known.
0:37:24 I’m going to pull it, I’m going to get something.
0:37:30 He says, but when you introduce the idea of maybe you might, you could, you might not,
0:37:32 it makes them crazy in a good way.
0:37:35 They start pulling this thing and they’re pulling and pulling and they’re pulling.
0:37:37 They know the pulling will work.
0:37:39 They just don’t know when they’re going to get paid.
0:37:44 The way I equate that to is people do not go to the casino because they know they’re
0:37:45 going to win.
0:37:49 They go for the hope or the chance that they might win.
0:37:53 And this I find, I love this is the example I use, hopefully you like this.
0:37:56 This is where the idea of the clicker can get charged up.
0:38:01 And we say the clicker is more powerful than the actual reward itself.
0:38:02 So what are you talking about?
0:38:04 Whether it’s a clicker, there’s verbal markers.
0:38:07 You can use yes in place of the clicker, whatever.
0:38:10 What we end up doing, let’s just take this example.
0:38:14 You got a 40 year old guy, doesn’t leave his house very often.
0:38:16 He ends up going to Vegas for some business trip.
0:38:17 He goes into a casino.
0:38:19 He’s never played a game in his life.
0:38:21 He goes in, he’s got 20 bucks to spend.
0:38:22 He goes, well, I’m here.
0:38:23 I might as well play.
0:38:26 He’s got 20 bucks in the machine and he pulls the lever.
0:38:33 When he pulls the lever, the lights and sounds go off and like 30 grand comes out and he
0:38:34 gets a huge dopamine hit.
0:38:36 He goes, Mike, this is amazing.
0:38:37 And he really needed that money.
0:38:38 It’s perfect.
0:38:39 So he calls his mom, his girlfriend.
0:38:41 He goes, I just, you believe it?
0:38:44 I just won 30 grand on my first pull and he’s set.
0:38:45 He’s done.
0:38:46 He takes that money and he runs.
0:38:50 That would be the dog’s first exposure to click reward.
0:38:55 Now what ends up happening is he ends up spending that 30 grand and now he can’t wait to come
0:38:56 back into the casino.
0:39:00 So he comes back a couple of weeks later and he goes to that same machine and he brings
0:39:01 another 20 bucks.
0:39:05 He puts the 20 bucks in and he pulls the lever, but nothing happens.
0:39:06 Let’s all try again.
0:39:08 Of course he’s going to try again.
0:39:09 He’s feeling lucky.
0:39:10 He keeps pulling.
0:39:11 He keeps pulling.
0:39:12 Man, nothing’s happening.
0:39:19 He pulls and that same sound comes on the lights and everything, huge surge of dopamine.
0:39:20 He’s already pulling his phone out.
0:39:21 He’s calling his mom.
0:39:22 I won.
0:39:23 I won.
0:39:30 I knew I was a winner and then he looks to see what the payout is, $5, but he got the
0:39:31 dopamine hit.
0:39:35 He got the same dopamine hit, whether it was five bucks or $500,000.
0:39:39 He still got that hit and that’s what ends up happening potentially with the clickers
0:39:40 and we do the same.
0:39:42 So we do variability of rewards.
0:39:44 When we click, sometimes you get one piece of food.
0:39:49 Sometimes you get 30 pieces of food and then we always end on, guess what?
0:39:51 Click a gambler on a jackpot.
0:39:55 So the dog, when it comes out to train with us, never knows when the jackpot’s coming.
0:39:59 There’s also different markers called duration markers, which is to let the dog know again
0:40:00 at the speed of sound.
0:40:01 I like what you’re doing.
0:40:02 Keep doing it.
0:40:04 You’re on the right path, but I’ll pay you soon.
0:40:06 I’m not going to pay you for this one.
0:40:07 You just keep on doing that.
0:40:08 So we might tell the dog down.
0:40:09 It’s holding a beautiful down.
0:40:11 We’re going to let it know good.
0:40:13 Good is what we use for a duration marker.
0:40:14 Some trainers use it.
0:40:15 Some people don’t.
0:40:16 I like to use them.
0:40:17 I like what you’re doing.
0:40:18 Keep doing that.
0:40:22 When I walk over, maybe the dog’s held it down, stay for 10 minutes, yes, or click.
0:40:38 And then I give it a big old jackpot and say, this is all your hard work paying off.
0:40:40 I want to move into broader areas.
0:40:42 I got the canine part now.
0:40:45 So can you just address for me?
0:40:49 How accurate are these stereotypes of dogs?
0:40:51 Should everybody be afraid of pit bulls?
0:40:54 But then every time you hear that story, there’s a counterpoint.
0:40:55 No, it’s the breeder.
0:40:56 It’s the owner.
0:40:57 It’s not the pit bull.
0:40:59 Pit bulls are not inherently bad.
0:41:04 So are there stereotypes that are actually true about dog breeds that people should be
0:41:05 aware of?
0:41:07 Yes and no.
0:41:11 And very sensitive topic, depending upon who you’re asking.
0:41:13 Yes, but again, a strong no.
0:41:16 I’ll give you an example, golden retrievers.
0:41:19 It’s like America’s golden child, that in the Labrador.
0:41:24 Generally speaking, they’re great with families, great with other dogs.
0:41:28 You don’t really see Labrador’s or golden retrievers doing police work.
0:41:29 You never see that.
0:41:33 Yes, they do explosive detection, but I’m talking about utility dogs, or other words
0:41:34 apprehension or bite dogs.
0:41:37 You’re never going to see a Labrador or golden retriever do that.
0:41:38 Why?
0:41:40 They just don’t have the genetic predisposition for that.
0:41:41 They’re retriever dogs.
0:41:45 In fact, their golden retrievers have what they call a soft mouth.
0:41:50 They were trained or genetically selected over, I don’t know, I wouldn’t say maybe 100s of
0:41:54 years, 100 or 200 years, however long they’ve been developing that particular breed.
0:41:58 I’m not a golden retriever expert by any means, but they didn’t want the golden retriever
0:42:02 or other retriever type dogs to go out there, find the duck that they just shot, and squish
0:42:04 it and crunch it on the way back.
0:42:06 They wanted that soft mouth.
0:42:11 So when you try to take a golden retriever, I’m not saying it couldn’t be done.
0:42:15 Really going against nature, mother nature, trying to get a golden retriever to bite a
0:42:16 bad guy really hard.
0:42:17 Could they do it?
0:42:18 Yeah.
0:42:21 Maybe you could probably over train it with that perfect dog.
0:42:22 You might find it.
0:42:28 Now, one of the meanest dogs I’ve ever met in my life was a Labrador retriever named Bronco.
0:42:30 That’s a mean son of a gun.
0:42:34 And he was an explosive detection dog.
0:42:40 He had some of the worst, what they call food aggression and also barrier aggression.
0:42:42 So he was okay with you when he was out of the crate.
0:42:46 As soon as you could pet him, and he’d like it, as soon as you put him in the crate and
0:42:50 close the door, he’d spin around and fire off and let you know he’s my crate back off.
0:42:52 You put food down, back up.
0:42:53 Mean son of a gun.
0:42:56 I would never let that dog around any of my kids or anybody else’s kids.
0:42:57 But he’s a Labrador retriever.
0:42:59 So there’s variations on a theme.
0:43:02 Yes, generally speaking, like we’ll talk about pit bulls.
0:43:06 I think pit bulls can be some of the sweetest, nicest dogs on the planet.
0:43:08 I’ve not personally owned any.
0:43:09 I’ve trained a ton of them.
0:43:10 My old roommate had one.
0:43:12 That dog wouldn’t hurt a fly.
0:43:18 However, if you get a pit bull that isn’t properly trained, maybe with improper genetics,
0:43:23 and they have tremendous drive, what makes pit bulls so dangerous is they have incredible
0:43:24 levels of drive.
0:43:25 Remember we go back to that.
0:43:28 They have those 1,500 horsepower engines.
0:43:31 Not all of them, but a lot of them do.
0:43:38 And because of how they bred those dogs back in the day, they wanted those dogs in the
0:43:45 pits to first go after rats, bears, and then other dogs, and maybe not in that particular
0:43:46 order.
0:43:47 We did a little research on it.
0:43:49 Like where did this come from?
0:43:56 And then they outlawed the blood sports over in the UK with the pits going after each other.
0:43:58 It still happens to the state underground.
0:44:03 I call it misplaced prey drive, and it still runs in the bloodlines of some of these dogs,
0:44:10 where through man’s genetic breeding selection, we have six dogs came out of this litter.
0:44:12 These two are too soft.
0:44:13 These two got it.
0:44:17 They’re going to continue that down the line, and what it could be is what I call misplaced
0:44:18 prey drive.
0:44:23 I’m not saying this perfectly, but you understand, man tinkering with the breeding program.
0:44:24 That’s how breeds come about.
0:44:27 Anyways, golden retrievers didn’t exist 10,000 years ago.
0:44:33 All breeds come from the wolf, a chihuahua comes from the wolf, 99.9% of the same genetics.
0:44:37 In fact, the chihuahua and a great dane, 99.999% same genetics.
0:44:43 Anyhow, point being pit bulls have sometimes what I call misplaced prey drive, meaning
0:44:47 they look, we would think nothing of my personal dog.
0:44:50 If he sees a squirrel or a deer, it’s game on.
0:44:52 And we’d go like, yeah man, good for you.
0:44:53 Go chase that squirrel.
0:44:54 That’s what you’re bred to do.
0:44:55 You want to chase things.
0:44:56 Good for you.
0:44:59 What happens, however, and I’ve seen it a few times, and it’s scary when you witness
0:45:02 it, where a pit bull, and it doesn’t have to be a pit bull, and they’re not picking on
0:45:03 that breed.
0:45:07 But some of these dogs have a misplaced prey drive where they look at another dog as a
0:45:09 prey item, and they go, I want to chase that.
0:45:13 I want to chase that down, grab it by the neck, and shake it, just like I do with the
0:45:16 squirrel, except I want to do it to that dog.
0:45:19 And it’s an anomaly that they just kept breeding.
0:45:22 I don’t know how it came about, but it came about.
0:45:27 But anyways, going back to your original question, yes, there’s generalities, but rottweilers
0:45:29 can make great home protectors.
0:45:33 There’s also rottweilers out there that are big, fat, and lazy and wouldn’t hurt a fly.
0:45:36 So yeah, you’re hedging your bet when you get the right breed.
0:45:41 But there’s no guarantee that even if you get the breed that kind of fits your lifestyle,
0:45:45 so you hope, there’s no guarantee that the dog will be exactly what you want now.
0:45:52 So we always say when it comes to dogs, I’ll end with this, 50% genetics, 50% of what you
0:45:54 put into it training.
0:45:56 That’s how you can get the dog to be where it’s going to be.
0:45:59 But you’ll never get a chihuahua to be a police dog.
0:46:03 The genetics aren’t there, but you can have a dog with perfect genetics, primed and ready
0:46:08 to do X, let’s say police work, but if you don’t put in the training, it’s not going
0:46:09 to get there either.
0:46:10 Okay.
0:46:18 So if it’s 50% genetics and 50% training, what happens when you go to the humane society
0:46:20 or you go and you rescue a dog?
0:46:22 So you’re not sure about the genetics.
0:46:25 You’re not sure about the dog’s history.
0:46:28 I tell you, we’ve had several rescue dogs and they were great dogs.
0:46:29 I don’t know.
0:46:34 Are you telling me that rescue dogs is like rolling the dice, you know, you’re just shooting
0:46:36 crabs there?
0:46:40 That’s exactly what I call it, but it’s a roll of the dice.
0:46:46 Even when you go to a reputable breeder of any breed of your choice, it’s still a roll
0:46:47 of the dice.
0:46:48 You don’t know what you’re going to get.
0:46:53 Yes, you’re hedging your bet a little more, but there’s no guarantee.
0:46:57 The benefit though of, here’s how you’re hedging your bet a different way.
0:47:01 When you buy a puppy from a breeder, those puppies are eight weeks old.
0:47:05 You get that kind of rough idea what that dog’s going to be like, but that’s kind of
0:47:06 like me.
0:47:11 I could go to the preeminent researcher, scientist who studied human behavior and understands
0:47:13 childhood development.
0:47:16 And I can say, we’ll go to a nursery and I’ll say, you see all these babies, they were just
0:47:18 born in the last 48 hours.
0:47:20 Which one of these is going to become a CEO?
0:47:22 Which one’s going to become a drug addict?
0:47:23 You don’t know.
0:47:24 You don’t know.
0:47:25 Now you could look at the genetics.
0:47:30 You could see who mom and dad are, but even that doesn’t predict everything because, again,
0:47:32 that’s the nature versus the nurture.
0:47:34 Why is Elon Musk who he is?
0:47:35 I don’t know.
0:47:37 Is it how he was raised?
0:47:39 Or is it something genetic going on there?
0:47:42 Are his kids going to turn out to be successful like him?
0:47:43 Who knows?
0:47:45 Now what happens when you go to a shelter?
0:47:49 The good news is where you can hedge your bet in a different way is now some of these
0:47:53 dogs are already six months old, one years old, two years old.
0:47:58 Now we take that same person, the researcher who knows human behavior.
0:48:02 Now I get him in a room with argument’s sake.
0:48:07 It’s a whole room of 20 and 30-year-olds, maybe 40-year-olds, and I’m like, look, I’m
0:48:12 not going to tell you what these people do for a living, but you can spend 15 minutes
0:48:13 with each of them.
0:48:14 You can test them.
0:48:18 And that researcher will probably be able to tell you, hey, who’s a drug addict?
0:48:21 Who tends to be shy, outgoing?
0:48:23 Because your personality is set.
0:48:25 Why am I saying all of this?
0:48:29 Dogs are fully physically and mentally mature around two years old.
0:48:34 But the older they get, meaning six months old, nine months old, especially around 12
0:48:37 months old, the personality is pretty set.
0:48:43 So we just use the contrast of babies in a nursery and a room of 20, 30, and 40-year-olds.
0:48:45 What about that middle ground?
0:48:51 Maybe a 10, 12, 14-year-old kid will still have a much better idea at 10, 12, or 14-years-old.
0:48:52 What is that?
0:48:56 That’s the puppy around six months, eight months, nine months, 10 months old.
0:48:59 We’re going to have a much better idea what that puppy’s going to turn out to be.
0:49:03 That’s why you’re not seeing police agencies, among many other reasons, selecting eight-week-old
0:49:05 puppies and crossing their fingers is going to be a police dog.
0:49:09 No, we’re going to hedge our bet by waiting to see how their personality develops.
0:49:13 So when you go to a shelter, that’s the added benefit is you can meet with maybe that dog
0:49:15 that is two, three, four years old.
0:49:17 What you see is what you get.
0:49:19 That’s the dog’s personality.
0:49:20 Can we cheat it a little bit?
0:49:22 Of course we can.
0:49:28 Just like you can come across maybe a 30-year-old who has been addicted to smoking for the last
0:49:32 five or 10 years, there’s still hope that we can get him to quit smoking.
0:49:37 So if you have a two- or three-year-old dog that’s in the shelter and they have habitually
0:49:41 been peeing in the house, you can break the habit, right?
0:49:42 They’re probably in there for a reason.
0:49:44 A lot of these shelter dogs are in there for a reason.
0:49:50 There’s some bad habit, jumping, barking, biting, bad potty training.
0:49:52 Bad manners in general.
0:49:58 A good trainer can go in there and get that 50% that was missing, the training, and see
0:49:59 what they can do with it.
0:50:00 There’s no guarantee.
0:50:04 There’s some dogs that are a lost cause, and I’ll end with this, and I think this will
0:50:07 really blow your mind.
0:50:10 Because we get these calls a lot with dogs.
0:50:11 Hey, I’ll give you an example.
0:50:14 Hey, I have a four-year-old dog right off rip.
0:50:17 I’m like four years old, pretty set in their ways.
0:50:19 In fact, the older they are, the more set in the ways there are.
0:50:23 It’s a Rottweiler, again, breed or not, it doesn’t matter.
0:50:25 And it’s bitten six people.
0:50:27 And the last two, it’s sent to the hospital.
0:50:28 Can you fix it?
0:50:30 I’m like, oh my God, man, I don’t know.
0:50:32 There’s no guarantee there.
0:50:37 We might not fix it, but we might get it to be more manageable, help you understand what’s
0:50:38 getting that dog.
0:50:41 But anyone coming across, say, 100% I’ll fix that, they’re lying to you.
0:50:42 Because we don’t know.
0:50:43 Because this is where it makes sense.
0:50:45 You ready for this one, guy?
0:50:51 If I gave you, and I went to the most, again, preeminent, behaviorist, psychologist, so
0:50:53 you could be a whole room full of them.
0:50:59 And I hand them a 40-year-old pedophile who’s committed crimes in the past.
0:51:02 And I say, can you fix him and make him not a pedophile anymore?
0:51:03 I don’t know if you can do that.
0:51:05 You can do a lot of things.
0:51:09 But would you ever trust that human in a room with your kid?
0:51:12 No, just like I probably wouldn’t ever trust that four-year-old Rottweiler.
0:51:13 It’s already bit six people.
0:51:15 I don’t care how much training you throw at it.
0:51:16 Can we make it better?
0:51:17 Yes.
0:51:18 Would you ever trust it 100%?
0:51:19 No.
0:51:24 Are you telling me these dog whisperer shows, it’s like bullshit when they take this, in
0:51:28 the first part of the thing, they take the Rottweiler, it’s bitten six people, and then
0:51:32 at the end of an hour, this is a perfect family dog.
0:51:35 Is this like all bullshit in Hollywood then?
0:51:36 No.
0:51:37 No.
0:51:39 I mean, of course, there’s a little bit of movie magic going on because it’s not happening
0:51:41 usually in one hour.
0:51:45 A lot of those shows, they’re taking the dog and taking it over a month or two or whatever
0:51:49 it is, and bringing it back, and yeah, absolutely, you can have, we’ve done this, we’ve been
0:51:53 able to do this, and yet honestly, sometimes you can do it as little as 15 or 30 minutes.
0:51:57 You can absolutely transform a dog.
0:52:02 Sometimes what we find in homes where these dogs are wiling out, they’re just misbehaved.
0:52:06 It’s just basically a lack of leadership and a lack of know-how.
0:52:07 What would the example be?
0:52:11 You remember those old Maury Povich talk shows, and whether it was Maury Povich or not, but
0:52:16 they bring those kids in that are like 15, 16, 18 years old, and they’re really just
0:52:19 bad kids, mouthing off at the mom.
0:52:23 Mom seems to have no semblance of control, usually a single-family household.
0:52:29 There’s just no one putting rules, and this kid’s out of pocket, sneaking out, maybe getting
0:52:30 pregnant at a young age.
0:52:32 You know all that stuff, and then the drill sergeant comes in.
0:52:36 Remember that, and then the drill sergeant would come in and get in the kid’s face,
0:52:40 and now this hard kid that was mouthing off to everybody in the audience, and Maury Povich
0:52:44 himself or whoever it was, all of a sudden starts crying.
0:52:46 You see a completely different look on the same person.
0:52:48 It just depends who’s in the room.
0:52:51 Now, and then they said that kid away to some kind of boot camp.
0:52:56 It comes back two, three, four weeks later, back on the show, and it’s hugging their mom,
0:52:58 and it’s apologizing, and it’s like there’s a transformation.
0:53:00 Does it work 100% of the time?
0:53:04 No, but yeah, you can absolutely have some huge transformations.
0:53:11 It just, that’s what I love about dogs is they can be molded, and they can change very
0:53:18 quickly with proper leadership, with proper tools, with proper timing, all the good stuff.
0:53:21 But a lot of owners just don’t know what to do.
0:53:23 They’re like, “I was just reading one today on Instagram DMs.
0:53:28 My dog’s jumping on me, and it jumps on me, and it bruises me, and I tell it no, but it
0:53:29 doesn’t seem to help.”
0:53:32 I’m like, “That’s because your no doesn’t mean anything.
0:53:33 You could tell it banana.
0:53:35 It’s not going to stop your dog from jumping on you.
0:53:39 It’s a self-rewarding behavior, it jumps on you, you fall to the ground, the dog gets
0:53:42 enjoyment out of that, thinks you’re playing.
0:53:44 Maybe you pet it when it jumps on you.”
0:53:46 So, of course, that’s not going to stop you.
0:53:49 In that specific example, what are you supposed to do?
0:53:54 Sure, so a dog that has bad behaviors, pulling on the leash, jumping on your counter and
0:53:59 stealing food, jumping on you, these are all typical behaviors, maybe chewing on a couch.
0:54:04 All of these are in the same category in the sense that it’s a self-gratifying behavior.
0:54:09 So, if you just leave the dog to its own devices, it’s going to repeat it, because every single
0:54:13 creature on the planet, humans included, not to get too deep in the science of this, but
0:54:16 we’re talking about operant conditioning, right?
0:54:23 Either the behavior is reinforced with a reward or it’s diminished with a punishment.
0:54:29 If your dog jumps on the counter, even if you yell no at it, if it grabs your sub sandwich
0:54:34 and eats it, and I cannot wait until Elon Musk gets that neural link for dogs, I want
0:54:38 to communicate with him, I’d love to hear what they have to say, and I say this to owners
0:54:39 all the time.
0:54:44 I said, “If we put neural link on your dog right now, and I asked your dog in your home
0:54:49 with you, your husband, and your kids, hey, Fido, who runs this household?”
0:54:51 “Oh, I do.
0:54:53 Who’s this lady right here, your mom?”
0:54:54 “Oh, she works for me.
0:54:58 She scratches my belly and she picks up my poop.
0:54:59 What about this guy?”
0:55:00 “Oh, he’s an idiot.
0:55:01 He just sits on the couch.
0:55:02 He does nothing.
0:55:03 He’s useless.”
0:55:06 I’m like, a lot of times, these dogs that are out of control, no leadership, no guidance,
0:55:10 just like you might say a kid, most of these kids that are out of control these days lack
0:55:14 of good parenting, strong parents, I’m not trying to make this a sociological political
0:55:16 discussion, but you see the same thing happening.
0:55:21 Raising and training a dog is a lot like raising and training a kid, but how do you fix it?
0:55:25 Well, self-gratifying behavior, so a lot of trainers out there, especially the ones
0:55:31 you just see on TV in this softer and gentler and kinder society we live in would say, “Well,
0:55:33 you just ignore the behavior, it’ll go away.”
0:55:34 That’s a lie.
0:55:36 It’s plain and simple.
0:55:39 If you put a sub sandwich on the counter, what happens is the dog knows what happened
0:55:40 last time.
0:55:43 So not the best short-term memory, and we’ll come back to this in a minute.
0:55:46 Remember that it means short-term and long-term memory in a dog.
0:55:48 Long-term memory in dogs is great.
0:55:53 Next time they smell that turkey sub sandwich on the countertop, they go, “Man, I remember
0:55:54 what happened last time.
0:55:56 That sub sandwich was on the counter.
0:55:57 I jumped up.
0:55:58 I ate it.
0:56:00 I felt better.”
0:56:04 Dogs are always trying to improve their position in life at every moment of every day.
0:56:05 So they smell that turkey sandwich.
0:56:07 Of course they’re going to jump up and get it again.
0:56:09 There was no consequence last time.
0:56:13 So now what we have to do is institute a positive punishment, is what it’s called.
0:56:17 This is going to confuse some of your listeners, but on the operant conditioning chart, the
0:56:20 only way you change behavior in both humans and dogs and every other creature on the planet
0:56:23 is through positive punishment.
0:56:24 And by the way, it does not mean good.
0:56:26 It just means the addition of.
0:56:29 So let’s just call it adding a punisher.
0:56:31 You could also do a negative punishment.
0:56:32 So what the hell is that?
0:56:36 That’s removing something from the equation that creates a punishment.
0:56:38 So the example there would be, you tell your dog to down.
0:56:40 It sits instead.
0:56:41 No payment.
0:56:42 And the dog’s like, “Oh, man.
0:56:43 I’ve got to try again.”
0:56:45 So negative punishment is very powerful also.
0:56:48 A negative punishment in the example of the sub sandwich on the counter would be it jumps
0:56:52 on the counter, but you remove the sub sandwich, and you wash your hands, repeat that.
0:56:54 So good luck, good timing.
0:56:56 By the way, that just sometimes ends up builds more drive.
0:56:59 Let me jump faster and try to get it before you get it.
0:57:01 So back to how do you fix it?
0:57:05 The only way you’re going to decrease that behavior from happening again is by adding
0:57:06 a punisher.
0:57:11 And the punisher in this instance is going to be, for instance, a leash pop correction.
0:57:14 So there’s a leash hooked up to the dog.
0:57:16 This is where it gets a little weird.
0:57:18 Everything is about timing.
0:57:23 For the short-term memory idea, you have to set the dog up to make the mistake that you
0:57:24 know it’s going to make.
0:57:25 It’s made it in the past.
0:57:28 We know it’s going to make the same mistake in the future.
0:57:35 What would be unfair is to put the sub sandwich down, walk out of the room, come back in.
0:57:36 The dog ate the sandwich.
0:57:39 And as it’s licking its chops, and it’s only been, you know, the dog’s going to eat a sub
0:57:44 sandwich in about 10 seconds, 30 seconds later, the sandwich is gone.
0:57:47 You cannot go over there and punish the dog.
0:57:49 It has no idea what happened.
0:57:50 It forgot it ate the sandwich.
0:57:52 It said, “What are you talking about?”
0:57:55 Of course, and then some people say, “But the dog had the look of guilt on its face.”
0:58:00 It had the look of guilt because it saw that dogs can read our emotion.
0:58:02 They can smell our frustration, right?
0:58:06 They actually, the pheromones that we’re putting off, they can see the look in our eye.
0:58:10 And then we turn and look at our dog like this and go, “Fight oh!”
0:58:13 And the dog goes, “Oh, I don’t know what I did, but mom’s pissed.”
0:58:16 And they go, “See that look of guilt?”
0:58:20 Dog does not remember, and the people can’t wrap their head around that.
0:58:21 So they go and punish the dog.
0:58:22 Where does this happen a lot?
0:58:24 Potty accidents.
0:58:27 You leave the house for eight hours, you come back, the dog’s peed or poop somewhere.
0:58:30 I don’t know if that happened five minutes ago or five hours ago.
0:58:35 You cannot punish your dog for something that they don’t even remember happened.
0:58:36 You missed the moment.
0:58:39 Remember, we said three to five seconds to capture behavior and let the dog know it’s
0:58:41 either good or bad.
0:58:42 But people say, “No, the look of guilt.”
0:58:44 I’ll say, “Let me switch it on.”
0:58:45 You forget the punishment.
0:58:51 You tell your dog to down in the kitchen before you leave for work and the dog does
0:58:52 it.
0:58:54 Then you get in your car, you go to work and come back eight hours later.
0:58:56 Of course, the dog’s not going to be in a down.
0:58:59 It might be, who knows what, running around the backyard.
0:59:04 How on earth can you give that dog a treat eight hours later for the down it did?
0:59:08 There’s no trainer on the planet that will be able to tell the dog eight hours later,
0:59:10 “Hey, you know that down you did eight hours ago?
0:59:11 Here’s a treat for that.”
0:59:12 Okay.
0:59:13 So the same concept, right?
0:59:15 If it makes sense that way, of course, it makes sense the other way.
0:59:19 How can you punish a dog for the PP action that did even 30 minutes ago?
0:59:20 Three to five seconds is the window.
0:59:24 So the point being, what I was getting at is, when you try to fix a behavior in a dog,
0:59:26 we do what’s called a setup for failure.
0:59:29 It seems evil, but it’s the most fair thing you can do.
0:59:32 We know the dog has the likelihood of jumping on people.
0:59:33 When does it happen?
0:59:34 When they come in the front door.
0:59:36 We know the dog likes to jump on the counter and eat food.
0:59:37 When?
0:59:38 When we put the food on the counter.
0:59:39 Perfect.
0:59:40 So you put everything in place.
0:59:41 It’s a setup.
0:59:42 The dog doesn’t know.
0:59:44 You do everything as natural as possible.
0:59:46 But now you have a proper tool.
0:59:48 In this case, we would use a leash attached to a collar.
0:59:51 For harder dogs might use a leash and a prong collar.
0:59:52 Why a prong collar?
0:59:55 Long story short, it emulates what we call mama’s teeth.
0:59:58 How do dogs correct each other in the wild in nature at a dog park?
0:59:59 With their teeth.
1:00:00 They don’t use their hands.
1:00:01 They don’t use fists.
1:00:03 They don’t write each other a letter.
1:00:05 They don’t have their attorney send out lawsuit papers.
1:00:06 They bite each other.
1:00:07 When do they bite each other?
1:00:09 Right when the bad behavior happens.
1:00:10 And then they’re over it two seconds later.
1:00:12 We use the prong collar as mama’s teeth.
1:00:13 We set it up.
1:00:14 What does that look like?
1:00:18 Hey, when I give you the winkity wink, I want you to come in the door.
1:00:21 And I’m going to say, hey, how are you?
1:00:22 And what’s the dog going to do?
1:00:24 Like it’s done every other time in the last six months.
1:00:25 It jumps on the guest.
1:00:30 The moment it jumps on your guest down to the millisecond, you use the leash to deliver
1:00:32 positive punishment, meaning we add a punisher.
1:00:37 The dog feels a correction on its neck and it goes, oh, that didn’t feel good.
1:00:38 That’s right.
1:00:41 When you jump on people, it doesn’t feel good.
1:00:43 So stop doing it.
1:00:48 Then ideally, if you’re really good at training, and this is the stuff we teach in our courses,
1:00:53 we will show how you use the leash to then communicate to the dog, I don’t want you jumping.
1:00:55 It doesn’t feel good when you jump.
1:00:59 However, if you go into a sit, you’re going to get all the love and pets and treats and
1:01:01 toys and everything you want.
1:01:03 So now what we call is called giving your dog a job to do.
1:01:05 All dogs were bred to do some type of work.
1:01:10 But what we’ve done in the last 50 or 80, maybe 100 years, and we’re not all farmers
1:01:14 anymore, these dogs aren’t pulling carts, these dogs aren’t hurting sheep.
1:01:17 They have no job, nothing to fulfill them.
1:01:21 They sit on the couch all day, and then they chase your cat, they jump on your guests.
1:01:25 They think that’s their job and they get really good at that.
1:01:26 Problem is, it’s not the right job.
1:01:28 So instead, we flip it on and that’s where obedience comes in.
1:01:31 Your job is to sit, to down, to heal, to recall.
1:01:33 If you do a good job, I’m going to pay you.
1:01:37 If you mess up, just like a owner of a restaurant, if you’re not doing a great job, we’re going
1:01:41 to counsel you, we’re going to train you, you’re going to do a better job.
1:01:45 Problem is, you can’t fire your dog, but you can correct the behavior.
1:01:46 And the dogs learn this quick.
1:01:50 That’s why he said, hey, those things where it’s like they transform the dog in one hour,
1:01:54 I can get pretty much any dog on the planet to stop pulling on a leash in about five minutes.
1:01:59 I can get just about any dog on the planet to stop jumping on people in about five minutes,
1:02:02 maybe 10 minutes if I take my time, because it’s pretty clear.
1:02:04 In fact, I’ll throw it to you, guy.
1:02:11 How long does it take to teach a human to stop touching a 400 degree oven or stove?
1:02:14 How many times do you have to put your hand on it to realize that thing’s hot and it’s
1:02:15 going to burn you?
1:02:19 By the way, what’s really interesting is, do you need anyone there screaming at you,
1:02:22 saying no, no?
1:02:23 We set it up.
1:02:24 Hey, turn the oven on.
1:02:26 Hey, guy likes coffee.
1:02:27 Perfect.
1:02:28 Put the coffee right there on the oven.
1:02:31 Guy reaches for the coffee, whoo, that burned.
1:02:35 What’s funny is, dogs and humans alike will always go for a second.
1:02:37 They will always try one more time just to confirm.
1:02:39 When you go for, ooh, yeah, that really did.
1:02:40 Yeah, that’s hot.
1:02:41 I don’t want to touch that.
1:02:42 That’s it.
1:02:43 Now, why do we do this?
1:02:44 Because some people say, what’s the harm in jumping?
1:02:45 You got your grandma coming over.
1:02:48 Some dogs are big enough to break grandma’s hip.
1:02:50 What about a dog eating rocks?
1:02:52 That’s a three, four, $5,000 surgery.
1:02:53 If you don’t catch it in time, you can kill your dog.
1:02:57 What about in some parts of the country, there’s rattlesnakes.
1:03:01 In South Florida and the Southeast of the United States, we dealt with bufo toads, extremely
1:03:03 toxic to dogs.
1:03:09 One lick of one of those toads will kill your dog in just a couple hours.
1:03:14 What’s better, letting the dog figure that out, and it’s too late, it’s dead, or we would
1:03:17 use, in this instance, an e-collar, an e-collar, same thing.
1:03:19 For trainers who use it, they love it.
1:03:24 It’s the best thing to happen to dog training since the invention of dogs.
1:03:29 The e-collar allows us to reach out at the speed of sound or the speed of electricity
1:03:33 and say, I probably wouldn’t touch that bufo toad because it’s going to kill you.
1:03:38 I’ll go on the record and say, I would rather shock a dog on the full level of an e-collar
1:03:39 just a couple of times.
1:03:40 Why twice?
1:03:43 Because it always, at least two or three times, I’ve been doing this a long time.
1:03:48 They will feel the burn on the first one and go, that hurt, but man, that toad looks
1:03:49 pretty good.
1:03:50 Look at it hot, man.
1:03:54 It just wants me to go chase it, and now you’re dealing with thousands of years of mother
1:03:58 nature saying, you must chase things that hop and move and run away from you.
1:04:01 They’re like, it burned, but let me go one more time.
1:04:04 When it goes for it the second time, it learns just like it did the first time, it will burn
1:04:05 you every time.
1:04:08 Don’t touch that toad.
1:04:12 That would be an example of how you might use, by the way, e-collars can be used much
1:04:13 more than that.
1:04:17 This is just an inversive example, but you can use the e-collar to basically teach the
1:04:20 dog certain things are electric.
1:04:21 You probably don’t want to touch them.
1:04:25 When you put your feet on the counter to eat that sub-sandwich, go for it.
1:04:26 Go for the sub-sandwich.
1:04:29 I just want to let you know that the countertop is now electric, so I don’t know how you’re
1:04:31 going to get that sub-sandwich.
1:04:33 Is it worth it to you to get the sub-sandwich?
1:04:37 Let the dog make that decision on their own, but it’s probably not going to be worth it.
1:04:42 They jump up, they feel the electric, they go, that doesn’t feel good, and they don’t
1:04:45 get the sub-sandwich, so the dog makes a pretty quick calculation.
1:04:49 It’s not worth my time, and then when they don’t jump for the sub-sandwich and they sit
1:04:54 down on the ground or lay down, you come over with a piece of the sub-sandwich and say,
1:04:55 “I’m proud of you.”
1:04:56 Here’s some sub-sandwich for you, bro.
1:04:58 Thank you for doing a good job.
1:04:59 Make sense?
1:05:00 Make sense.
1:05:01 All right.
1:05:02 All right.
1:05:07 Is there an e-collar that also you can use as a clicker to put out the positive sounds?
1:05:08 You’ve got one thing?
1:05:09 Yeah.
1:05:13 So there are e-collars that have a tone, and some people will use the tone of the e-collar
1:05:16 to mark good behaviors, so the tone is charged up just like a clicker.
1:05:22 You can also use the tone to be charged up as the recall command, and the world is your
1:05:23 oyster when it comes to dog training.
1:05:28 So for instance, my dog, Thanos, we use the vibrate to mean down.
1:05:32 So I have him laser trained, like you might have a special forces dog, some police dogs
1:05:33 are trained with this.
1:05:35 I can use a laser pointer.
1:05:39 If he can see the laser, he will run there, so I can send him out 300, 400 yards.
1:05:44 He will go exactly where I want him because he’s going to follow the laser, and then when
1:05:48 he gets where I want him to go, he can’t even hear me he’s so far away.
1:05:53 Or in a tactical application, not that I do that anymore, but I still like to play, you
1:05:58 know, play like a toy soldier, I will use the vibrate to drop him right where I want
1:05:59 him.
1:06:01 Now, how does that work in a tactical application?
1:06:06 You might want to put your dog, your police dog or your military dog downwind of an area
1:06:07 of concern.
1:06:09 Hey, it’s a pretty open backyard.
1:06:13 I don’t see where a bad guy could be hiding, but hey, there’s a shed over there.
1:06:18 A bad guy might be in or on top of that shed, and everything we do in police work, when
1:06:20 you’re using a dog, it’s all about the nose.
1:06:24 The only way a dog’s going to smell a bad guy is to be downwind of a period.
1:06:27 A dog’s not going to smell someone upwind, it just won’t happen.
1:06:33 You read the wind, and then you laser the dog, downwind of the object in question, and
1:06:38 then you might drop him there with a vibrate on the down, and then watch the dog’s behavior.
1:06:43 It’ll let you know pretty quick whether he’s wind-sensing something or not, and then you
1:06:44 might move a tactical team up.
1:06:48 So anyways, in this instance, the point being, I used the vibrate to teach down.
1:06:50 You could also use the vibrate to teach recall.
1:06:52 You could use the tone to teach down.
1:06:54 So it’s however you want to shape him.
1:06:57 Up next, unremarkable people.
1:07:00 My friend Mike came over and was like, “This is going on for minutes, Garrett.
1:07:02 Nobody can get this dog to let go.”
1:07:08 I came over, grabbed the little wiener dog with my hand and kind of turned off oxygen.
1:07:09 He said, “The dog let go in two seconds.”
1:07:12 I said, “Oh, that’s great, but what did the owner think of that?”
1:07:15 She was so thankful, because some people were like, “Ah, you hurt my dog,” but she
1:07:16 was desperate.
1:07:19 The other dog was all but killing the other dashhound.
1:07:20 I’m like, “It’s wild.
1:07:24 You wouldn’t think those little dogs would do that much damage to each other, but hey,
1:07:28 they don’t know how small they are, dogs are dogs.”
1:07:30 Thank you to all our regular podcast listeners.
1:07:34 It’s our pleasure and honor to make the show for you.
1:07:39 If you find our show valuable, please do us a favor and subscribe, rate, and review it.
1:07:46 Even better, forward it to a friend, a big mahalo to you for doing this.
1:07:51 You’re listening to Remarkable People with Guy Kawasaki.
1:07:57 I saw one of your videos in which, and I just want to confirm this, that God forbid if you
1:08:04 are attacked by a dog, or you’re witnessing an attack by a dog, the only way to stop the
1:08:06 dog is to choke them?
1:08:07 110%.
1:08:08 Yep.
1:08:09 Yep.
1:08:14 When we’re talking about, I’m not talking about a dog that just nips at your hand or just
1:08:15 nips at it.
1:08:18 I’m talking about a dog that’s locked on.
1:08:24 The only way you’re going to get that dog, well, the cleanest way, the fastest, the guaranteed
1:08:29 way, is to shut off oxygen and blood flow to the brain.
1:08:30 It’s exactly what we do.
1:08:31 Where does this come from?
1:08:33 This may shock people.
1:08:35 I don’t care how much training you put into a police dog.
1:08:40 If you have a high enough drive police dog, 9 out of 10, 99 out of 100, if not 100 out
1:08:47 of 100, police dogs will not let go of a bite on the street from a verbal command alone.
1:08:50 I get a lot of flak for that.
1:08:51 Really?
1:08:52 Yep.
1:08:54 It’s just the nature of the beast.
1:08:58 We put so much horsepower into these dogs that you tell them to let go.
1:08:59 I’m not saying it can’t be taught.
1:09:00 Of course it can.
1:09:04 Yes, there are police dogs that will let go on a verbal out.
1:09:09 However, more often than not, you can give the commands, “I just saw a video the other
1:09:10 day.
1:09:11 It happens all the time.”
1:09:14 I encourage you, next time you see a police dog deployment, you’re going to see one of
1:09:18 two things probably happen when they go to remove the dog.
1:09:21 The handler is either going to give multiple, multiple, multiple commands for the dog to
1:09:26 let go, or he’s going to come over and do a physical removal, or both because the commands
1:09:27 aren’t working.
1:09:28 Why are the commands not working?
1:09:30 You are fighting thousands of years of mother nature.
1:09:33 You’ve created the monster, good for you.
1:09:36 Now you’ve got to get that monster to let go, and they don’t want to let go.
1:09:37 I don’t mean monster in a bad way.
1:09:40 I just mean it’s just a tremendous drive.
1:09:43 You have to come over and how are they getting these dogs to let go?
1:09:44 We teach this in training.
1:09:48 There’s multiple ways, but you’re either using the collar, you’re lifting up on the collar.
1:09:53 That collar is now restricting airflow, and the dog is basically, they don’t even actually
1:09:58 make, oftentimes, this is crazy, they don’t make a conscious decision to let go.
1:09:59 It’s a physiological response.
1:10:01 It’s a gag reflex.
1:10:03 They’re holding on for dear life.
1:10:06 They’re saying, “I don’t care how long you choke me, I’m not letting go,” until they
1:10:11 start to gag and their body is saying, “You’ve got to let go if you want to breathe.”
1:10:14 That’s how we get dogs off, it’s called the physical removal.
1:10:16 Now, what about the verbal out?
1:10:20 You can tell the dog to let go, but every time you tell your dog to do something, whether
1:10:25 it’s your pet dog that’s sitting on your couch and you said, “Get off the couch,” or
1:10:31 a police dog that’s on a bite and you tell it to let go, they make a conscious decision
1:10:34 every time you tell them to do something, whether it’s in their best interest or not.
1:10:36 The recall is the great one.
1:10:40 Your dog’s chasing after something, and you say, “Fido, come here,” and the dogs will
1:10:43 look at you and go, “What’s in it for me?
1:10:44 I don’t see a treat.
1:10:45 I don’t see a ball.
1:10:46 I am chasing a bunny.
1:10:47 Now, the bunny’s a pretty good time.
1:10:50 You don’t look like that great of a time.
1:10:52 I’ll chase the bunny instead.”
1:10:56 We must now, that’s where we come in with the different tools or the different training.
1:10:58 We say, “You have to come back.
1:11:01 By the way, if you come back, I’ll reward you, but I promise you, if you don’t come
1:11:03 back, there’s a price to pay for that.”
1:11:04 Same with the police dogs.
1:11:06 Why would they want to let go?
1:11:08 What’s in it for them?
1:11:11 Every time they let go, there’s not really a prize.
1:11:15 It’s not like they get a cheeseburger shoved in their mouth as soon as they let go.
1:11:20 There are ways to train it where if you let go of this, I’ll give you a toy, but oftentimes
1:11:23 on a real deployment, you’re not walking around with a toy in your back pocket.
1:11:28 You’re dealing with a hard-ass criminal who might be armed, and we joke about this a lot.
1:11:32 Hot dogs, can and will, treats, hot dogs will solve a lot of problems with a pet dog, but
1:11:36 you’re often not seeing a police dog or a police handler deploying on a track for a murder
1:11:39 suspect with a pouch of hot dogs in his back pocket.
1:11:45 We are not controlling that horsepower by adding fuel to the fire, drive to the fire.
1:11:49 We are going into those backyards using a leash, using a prong collar, using an E-collar,
1:11:54 and what we call as a steering wheel and a brake on that 1,200 horsepower mallon wall
1:11:55 that we just brought back there.
1:12:00 So when we tell the dog to let go, sometimes they don’t even hear you because they have
1:12:02 auditory occlusion.
1:12:03 They’re literally not even there.
1:12:04 They’re almost possessed.
1:12:07 They’re just satisfying that bike drive.
1:12:09 When we say let go, they’re like, “Yeah, I’ll be with you in a minute.
1:12:10 Let me finish this.”
1:12:13 No, you got to let go right now because you’re about to cost me a lawsuit.
1:12:14 You better let go.
1:12:15 The guy’s giving up.
1:12:20 So you’ll often see, like I said, you’ll hear multiple, multiple commands.
1:12:23 Oftentimes if they’re letting go from a verbal command, it’s not really the verbal command
1:12:24 by itself.
1:12:26 It’s that the verbal command is paired with an E-collar.
1:12:30 So you’ll see the guy fidgeting on his equipment, on his gun belt or on his vest, stimming the
1:12:32 dog, and you might even hear the dog go, “Right?”
1:12:34 It’s because I told you to let go.
1:12:36 You didn’t let go, so there’s a price to pay.
1:12:37 That’s one way.
1:12:41 But again, more often than not, you’re seeing what’s called a tactical or physical removal
1:12:45 where they’re either cutting off oxygen and blood flow through the collar.
1:12:46 There’s other methods.
1:12:50 What we’ve been seeing a lot in the last decade or so is what’s called a breaker bar.
1:12:55 The breaker bar, when used incorrectly, they try to put it in between the teeth, and then
1:12:58 it’s like a bar, and then they twist it to try to open the jaws.
1:13:00 That’s not how it’s supposed to be used.
1:13:04 What a breaker bar actually is, is a gag reflex tool.
1:13:10 They come in different shapes, but it’s basically some type of item that’s long and cylindrical.
1:13:11 They have different types.
1:13:14 What you’re doing is, as the dog’s on the bite, there’s usually a little gap in the
1:13:19 back by the molars, and you put that tool back there, and you actually are aiming down
1:13:22 towards, I guess you’d call it the tonsils area of the dog, right?
1:13:26 The back of the throat, and it makes the dog go, “It induces a gag reflex,” and they
1:13:27 let go.
1:13:31 When done correctly, you can get a dog off a bite in three to five seconds, but most
1:13:35 of us aren’t walking around with a breaker bar or a gag tool in our pocket.
1:13:38 What we would suggest, going back to your question, I know it’s around about way of
1:13:39 getting here.
1:13:40 Wow.
1:13:45 If the dog has a collar on, or there’s a leash, you got to get that collar high and
1:13:46 tight on their neck.
1:13:50 You got to get that leash potentially wrapped around their neck, and you got to lift and
1:13:52 hold.
1:13:56 Some dogs will let go in one, two, three seconds, some will go for the ride, and it’s funny
1:13:59 because one of my good friends was telling me the other day, he said, “I watched your
1:14:00 video on that.”
1:14:02 He’s got no police canine experience.
1:14:08 He was at a dog park or some park, and two dashhounds, the little wiener dogs, brother
1:14:11 and sister or something from the same owner, got into it, and they were just eating each
1:14:13 other up.
1:14:17 The owner could not get this little dashhound to let go of the other one.
1:14:22 There’s blood everywhere, people are screaming, a crowd’s forming, and you’ve seen the videos.
1:14:24 People are pouring water on the dogs.
1:14:25 Can that work?
1:14:26 Yes, sometimes.
1:14:29 People are hitting, not the dashhound, but I’m going back to the videos you’ve seen.
1:14:34 People are hitting dogs with shovels, with bricks, with sticks, ain’t working, and with
1:14:39 a real hard dog, often times a pit bull or some other bully type of breed, that just
1:14:45 makes the dog fight harder and bite harder the more pressure you put on them.
1:14:48 My friend Mike came over, he’s like, “This is going on for minutes, Garrett.
1:14:49 Nobody can get this dog to let go.”
1:14:55 I came over, grabbed the little wiener dog with my hand, and kind of turned off oxygen.
1:14:57 He said, “The dog let go in two seconds.”
1:15:00 I said, “Oh, that’s great, but what did the owner think of that?”
1:15:03 She was so thankful, because some people were like, “Ah, you hurt my dog,” but she
1:15:04 was desperate.
1:15:07 The other dog was all but killing the other dashhound.
1:15:10 I’m like, “It’s wild, you wouldn’t think those little dogs would do that much damage
1:15:18 to each other, but hey, they don’t know how small they are, dogs are dogs.”
1:15:25 My last question is this, knowing all that you know, just give us the general gist of
1:15:28 how to select a dog.
1:15:31 You’ve brought into so many aspects to think about.
1:15:36 It’s not as simple as going to the shelter and finding the cute one.
1:15:44 How do you pick a dog, specifically for a family, not a guard dog, for family?
1:15:45 Sure.
1:15:48 That’s interesting too, because nowadays, for whatever the reason is, a lot of people
1:15:52 want, quote, “a protection dog,” so they are getting that family dog, but they’re
1:15:55 getting dogs that are more like the Connie Corso, one of our breed of choice.
1:15:57 You’re going to German Shepherd, Doberman, Rottweiler.
1:16:01 I get those questions more than anything, “Hey, Garrett, what’s the breast guard dog
1:16:02 from my house?”
1:16:06 But regardless, whether you’re getting a guard dog or you’re just getting the golden retriever
1:16:07 family pet.
1:16:08 Okay.
1:16:09 Stop for a second.
1:16:14 Then first, adjust the question is, do you really want a guard dog?
1:16:17 What’s the probability that someone’s going to come in your house and try to murder you
1:16:19 or rob you?
1:16:22 It’s much more likely a guard dog is going to attack your family, then you’re going
1:16:27 to get the guard usage from the guard dog, or am I making this up?
1:16:28 No.
1:16:31 I think it could go so many different ways.
1:16:34 Studies have been done, and I’m not going to quote it, because I don’t have it in front
1:16:38 of me, but it goes without saying, if there’s a bad guy that wants to break into your home
1:16:42 as a burglar, and they show up to your, you’re not homeless, let’s just say, or you are home.
1:16:46 Middle of the night, middle of the day, whatever it is, they come to break in through an open
1:16:51 window or your back door, and there’s a 130-pound Connie Corso Italian Massif on the other side
1:16:52 of that door.
1:16:54 You’re probably going to skip that house.
1:16:58 Of course, there’s some real bad dudes who have a gun, and what’s your dog going to do
1:17:00 against an armed intruder?
1:17:04 Not much, other than maybe slow them down just a little bit, maybe at least alert you that
1:17:05 someone’s there.
1:17:06 But any dog can do that alert.
1:17:08 You can have a Chihuahua that’s a great alert dog.
1:17:12 So for that, dogs are great, and that’s one of the best things about dogs.
1:17:16 But if I saw a Chihuahua on the other side of the door, I might be like, if I was really
1:17:20 on drugs, I need the money, I’m breaking into your house or somebody’s house, I might take
1:17:22 my chances with the Chihuahua.
1:17:25 Now to your other point, I don’t care almost what breed you get.
1:17:27 You can get the baddest breed on the planet, right?
1:17:28 You can get a Belgian Malinois.
1:17:30 Everybody thinks Belgian Malinois are the best dogs.
1:17:32 Yeah, they’re great for police work.
1:17:35 They don’t make great house pets, let me tell you.
1:17:40 But Belgian Malinois aren’t naturally really territorial, nor are they really vicious.
1:17:43 They’re actually super friendly, generally speaking.
1:17:47 They love their social creatures, but again, it depends what training you do or not.
1:17:51 So anyways, what I’m getting at is, do people need a protection dog?
1:17:52 I don’t know.
1:17:55 The more you tell them not to get one or that it’s too much for you to handle, I know this
1:17:58 from personal experience, because this is what we preach all day long on our channels.
1:18:02 Hey, the Cane Corso, amazing dog.
1:18:06 Not ideal for 99.9% of people, it’s too much dog for you.
1:18:08 I equate it to having a battle tank.
1:18:10 Do you need a battle tank in your suburban neighborhood?
1:18:11 I don’t know, probably not.
1:18:14 But then again, I’m a big second amendment proponent.
1:18:15 It is a free country.
1:18:19 If you want a Cane Corso, you want a whole pack of them, more power to you.
1:18:21 The training is really the essential part.
1:18:22 Now here’s the other thing.
1:18:25 Even if you get a, quote, “protection dog” or a guardian breed, that doesn’t mean they’re
1:18:26 going to do anything.
1:18:27 There’s Cane Corso’s out there.
1:18:31 You get it from the best breeder on the planet, and it might be just the biggest softie.
1:18:32 It might do nothing.
1:18:36 But then true protection training, that’s where people get all, they don’t realize.
1:18:40 You’re talking 60 to $120,000 to get a, quote, “protection dog.”
1:18:43 Now here’s this crazy part.
1:18:45 You can get $120,000 protection dog.
1:18:49 There’s no guarantee it’s going to bite human flesh.
1:18:51 And it’s not going to stop a guy with a gun.
1:18:52 I don’t care.
1:18:53 It’s just not.
1:18:55 Now it will help you raise and train and select a protection dog.
1:18:56 I’m here for you.
1:18:58 But I’m also, I’m just a realist.
1:19:01 I will tell them like, I don’t care how much training you put into this dog.
1:19:03 It’s not going to replace, say, a firearm.
1:19:04 It’s just not going to do it.
1:19:08 But anyways, when it comes to selecting a dog back to your previous question, what dog
1:19:09 should you get?
1:19:13 You got to do your research, and you really got to compare that dog to your lifestyle.
1:19:15 But not just your current lifestyle.
1:19:19 Remember these dogs are going to live 8, 10, 12 years, 14 years.
1:19:20 What does it look like?
1:19:23 Where are you going to be living 10 years from now?
1:19:27 You might get a connecorsa because this is a big bad guard dog, great.
1:19:31 But you live at home with your mom, or you’re planning to go to college, or you’re going
1:19:33 to be more of a renter in a condo.
1:19:38 Well, a lot of places in HOAs will not allow certain breeds like a German Shepherd or Rottweiler,
1:19:39 a Corso.
1:19:41 Pit bulls are banned in a lot of places.
1:19:43 So you got to think about that too.
1:19:49 So really what it comes down to is look at your lifestyle currently and into the future.
1:19:53 Are you the type of family that likes to sit around the house and do barbecues and watch
1:19:54 Netflix?
1:19:58 Do not get a Belgian Malinois that wants to run 20 miles a day.
1:20:02 If you’re the type of family that goes on hiking adventures and you’re always outdoors,
1:20:07 then don’t get the English Mastiff or the Bulldog who can’t barely make it to the mailbox
1:20:10 without needing oxygen therapy.
1:20:13 So look at that, like how much time do you spend outdoors, et cetera.
1:20:16 Also just generally the size, like Great Danes are cool.
1:20:17 They’re cool looking dogs.
1:20:21 Very expensive in the sense of how much do they eat, and you got to rearrange your whole
1:20:22 house to have a Great Dane in there.
1:20:27 They’re just monsters, like a horse in your house, and they only live so long.
1:20:30 All these variables, it’s size and it’s the temperament.
1:20:35 But again, it’s always a gamble when you buy these dogs.
1:20:39 Generally speaking, if you get a golden retriever or a Labrador, it’s probably not going to
1:20:41 make the best, quote, guard dog.
1:20:44 It probably won’t bite your mailman.
1:20:46 And actually there’s a video we’re going to put out.
1:20:48 I’ll give you a little glimpse now.
1:20:52 To contrast two videos to really drive home the point, some type of delivery driver comes
1:20:57 up to a house, knocks on the door to drop a package, and an Italian Mastiff, probably
1:21:04 130 pound Cane Corso, breaks through the glass window and chases this guy down the street.
1:21:07 I’m telling you now, no training required.
1:21:11 It’s the natural protective guardian defensive drive instincts of that dog.
1:21:15 They’re not all like that, but you’re hedging your bet, yeah, maybe 60, 70, 80% that come
1:21:18 out of the womb will do that with no training.
1:21:23 Then we’re going to contrast that video with a mailman comes up to the front porch and
1:21:26 there’s a golden retriever, but he didn’t know it was there.
1:21:30 So he’s going to deliver the package and the golden retriever comes out and rolls on its
1:21:32 back and says, rub my belly.
1:21:34 No training required there either.
1:21:36 But that’s the genetics of the dog, right?
1:21:41 This is all your golden retriever won’t bite the mailman, he’ll probably lick him to death.
1:21:45 And then again, like you had mentioned, be careful what you wish for.
1:21:48 There’s actually a crisis going on right now with the Cane Corso.
1:21:52 It’s one of the most popular breeds on the planet right now.
1:21:56 I actually feel guilty because I think we’re part of that because we show our dogs on the
1:21:59 channel and we show how well trained they are.
1:22:03 And the same thing has happened and is continuing to happen with the Belgian Malinois breed.
1:22:07 They see police dogs, they see police agencies in the military using them and they make this
1:22:10 assumption that these dogs come out of the womb like that.
1:22:14 They come out of the womb knowing how to sit down and heal and no, they’re wild animals.
1:22:17 And in fact, it’s just a lot of dog.
1:22:19 Same with the Corso, same with the Malinois.
1:22:24 Okay, just because you see us doing it doesn’t mean like get the dog, but you where people
1:22:27 mess up is in the training.
1:22:29 They just think the dog’s going to just train itself.
1:22:30 It won’t.
1:22:32 You have to train it one way or another.
1:22:33 You have to.
1:22:35 So you can enjoy the dog.
1:22:40 So the dog doesn’t eat your neighbor by accident, run away from you, get hit by a car and all
1:22:42 these things that can happen and just make your life miserable.
1:22:44 So training is the answer always.
1:22:47 So you mentioned the mailman.
1:22:53 He goes up to the porch and there’s a Doberman, German shipper, Connick Corso or whatever.
1:22:56 And this dog is now starting to chase him.
1:22:58 What do you do if you’re the mailman?
1:23:00 Do you drop to the ground?
1:23:02 Do you keep running?
1:23:06 If you’re in that situation, what’s the best thing to do?
1:23:07 Great question.
1:23:11 And we do a lot of these breakdown videos where we show incidents like these happening.
1:23:17 If you run away, you are showing you’re less dominant and you’re also activating prey drive,
1:23:19 which is only going to make the dog chase you even harder.
1:23:23 However, if you can run away and jump on a car or run away and climb a tree real quick,
1:23:24 go for it.
1:23:26 You’ll see me doing the same thing.
1:23:28 However, sometimes that option is not available to you.
1:23:35 And so the best thing you can do is look big, get big, let that dog know you mean business
1:23:38 and you’re not a prey item, you’re a predator.
1:23:43 And so we just did a video recently where a gentleman had a small dog on a leash and
1:23:50 a big mastiff, it’s got to be 140 plus pounds, comes barreling out of nowhere and goes to
1:23:54 attack his basically like a puppy, like a 20 pound dog.
1:23:57 He’s doing what we call the keep away game.
1:24:01 This dog’s coming and he has his dog at the end of his leash, and he’s just spinning it
1:24:04 around to keep the dog from getting his dog.
1:24:05 I don’t blame you for doing that.
1:24:08 I’d probably do a little bit of the same thing, reactionary, get your dog away from this dog
1:24:09 that’s chasing it.
1:24:15 All he’s doing is it’s exactly, we call it a flirt pole training, we do this to encourage
1:24:18 dogs to bite things that are the end of the leash, the end of the pole.
1:24:21 We make the item like a prey item, like a rabbit.
1:24:26 And so now he’s just incentivized this dog, yeah, you probably want to chase this thing
1:24:27 because it’s running from you.
1:24:30 Now you’re tapping into thousands of years of prey drive.
1:24:34 And so what ends up happening is he plays the keep away game, plays the keep away game.
1:24:35 This is happening in seconds.
1:24:39 After about 10 or 15 seconds, the big dog can’t quite get to the little dog.
1:24:44 He’s now got the little dog up on his chest and he’s still playing the keep away game.
1:24:47 Finally, the mastiff’s had enough says, I’m going to bite something and bites this guy
1:24:49 on the arm.
1:24:50 And that’s a lot of dog.
1:24:53 And this dog brings them straight to the ground and just go into town on his arm.
1:24:57 The only reason this guy got away less harm than he did was somebody was watching this
1:25:01 and came up with a car and actually bumped the dog with the car.
1:25:04 And the dog goes, whoa, but see what happened there?
1:25:07 He kept playing the runaway keep away game.
1:25:08 What did the car do?
1:25:11 It played the, no, I’m going to chase you game.
1:25:13 And so what am I getting at?
1:25:18 If a dog comes at me like that, I’m going to get big, get loud.
1:25:23 If I have a leash on me or a box on anything, you throw it at the dog.
1:25:26 It’s called an English kick, meaning get your foot out.
1:25:31 If you can get that foot out and make contact, that’s a dog that maybe’s never been struck
1:25:32 in the face before.
1:25:33 And it might think twice.
1:25:34 Oh, that didn’t feel good.
1:25:35 Yeah.
1:25:36 Stop chasing me.
1:25:37 I’m not a, I’m not a prey item.
1:25:39 I’m going to kick your butt.
1:25:41 And so you flip the game on them.
1:25:42 Don’t chase me.
1:25:43 I’ll chase you.
1:25:47 And the dog goes, wait a second, I didn’t sign up for this.
1:25:48 Yeah.
1:25:49 Get big, look big.
1:25:52 And then in this case, had I had that little 20 pound dog and this big mastiff’s coming
1:25:53 up to me.
1:25:56 It’s counterintuitive because you want to run away.
1:26:00 You’ve got to confront the threat and get in their face.
1:26:03 And then you are really increasing your odds of coming out of that because look, you’re
1:26:04 not going to outrun the dog.
1:26:05 It’s not going to happen.
1:26:09 Again, if you can climb a tree, great, but that’s the best thing you can do.
1:26:10 Okay.
1:26:11 I got it.
1:26:17 No, I learned more about dogs today than in my entire 69 years of life before.
1:26:19 So thank you very much.
1:26:22 And we’re only skimming the surface.
1:26:26 I hope you enjoyed this episode of remarkable people.
1:26:32 It’s a little bit different from our usual episode where we have professors and authors.
1:26:35 But Garrett Wing was a very interesting guest.
1:26:38 I hope you learned a lot about dogs.
1:26:42 Not just dogs in canine units, but dogs in general.
1:26:44 I’m Guy Kawasaki.
1:26:46 This is remarkable people.
1:26:50 Now let me tell you about the rest of the remarkable people team.
1:26:55 That would be Madison Nizmer, who’s the producer of this remarkable people podcast, as well
1:26:59 as the co-author of our book, Think Remarkable.
1:27:04 I’m honestly getting tired of plugging this book, but I really, really want you to read
1:27:05 it.
1:27:07 It will help you make a difference and be remarkable.
1:27:10 Again, it’s called Think Remarkable.
1:27:16 Now the rest of the team, Jeff C. and Shannon Hernandez on sound design, Luis Magana and
1:27:19 Alexis Nishimura, as well as Tessa Nizmer.
1:27:24 We are the remarkable team and we’re going to help you be remarkable.
1:27:29 We’re going to do that by covering a range of topics from astrophysics to behavioral
1:27:35 economics to influence and persuasion to writing to training dogs.
1:27:40 That’s a remarkable range of topics, but this is a remarkable podcast.
1:27:47 Until next time, mahalo and aloha.
1:27:49 This is Remarkable People.

0:00:14 “Hello everyone. I’m Guy Kawasaki and this is Remarkable People. We’re on a mission
0:00:21 to make you remarkable. Helping me in this episode is Terry Givens. She is the former
0:00:29 Vice Provost of the University of Texas at Austin and the former Provost of Menlo College.
0:00:34 Terry broke barriers as the first African American and first woman in both roles. She
0:00:40 has continued her journey at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. There she advises on
0:00:47 anti-racist initiatives and contributes to academia through her professorship. Despite
0:00:54 opportunities to ascend further in administrative ranks, Terry continues to make direct impact
0:01:00 through her teaching of students. In this episode, we dive into her new book, Radical
0:01:07 Empathy. This reflects her dedication to fostering inclusive leadership in these very troubling
0:01:14 times. I’m Guy Kawasaki. This is Remarkable People and now, here is the Remarkable Terry
0:01:25 Givens. Would you start us off by explaining the roots of racism in America?
0:01:29 Yes, because that’s a very important thing to understand and this is why I wrote my book
0:01:38 The Roots of Racism because I think we don’t understand that history is still present today.
0:01:45 And the roots of racism go back to the 1500s when you had Portuguese sailors first enslaving
0:01:51 people in Africa. But the important thing about that is how they defined Africans at
0:01:58 the time, which was they basically dehumanized them. And that dehumanization has persisted
0:02:05 since then. And so you see it in so many different ways and of course to basically say that enslavement
0:02:11 was okay, that the church was involved in defining who was human and who wasn’t. And
0:02:15 one of the important things we have to do is to trace the history. How did we get to
0:02:22 where we are today? And show, as we know, people are trying to keep us from learning
0:02:26 our history because they don’t want people to understand those connections. They want
0:02:31 to say, oh, we’re done with racism. It doesn’t matter. It’s like, no, racism is baked into
0:02:38 our systems, not just in the US, but in Europe, across the globe. So we have to understand
0:02:41 that that history is critical to where we are today.
0:02:48 I heard a theory from one of our other guests that I don’t know if it was 1600s or 1500s,
0:02:56 but racism didn’t really exist until somebody needed an intellectual argument for why we
0:03:02 want to get free labor and enslave people. So in order to justify that, they came up
0:03:08 with this theory that black people are less than human, so it’s okay to enslave them.
0:03:10 What do you think of that theory?
0:03:16 Oh, I agree with it 100%. There’s this really great book besides mine by Nell Painter called
0:03:22 basically, now I’m going to forget the exact title, but it’s how people became white. And
0:03:28 the history of white people, basically. And this book really goes through and examines
0:03:32 because it’s not just that we’re saying black people are not human. We’re also saying white
0:03:41 people are superior. So the underlying theme is that this whole history of white supremacy.
0:03:46 And so you have to understand that component as well. So yes, I agree with that. I said
0:03:51 the Catholic Church was involved in saying it’s okay to enslave Africans because they
0:03:57 are not human. And so there’s all these different factors. It really does go back to the 1500s
0:04:02 when the church was involved in saying it’s okay to enslave Africans.
0:04:10 And why has something persisted for 500 years? I mean, you think we would figure out better
0:04:12 ways to do business.
0:04:17 Well, you would think, but the reality is that we had this period of enslavement, we
0:04:24 had the Civil War, which was to end slavery. But the federal government, after a few years
0:04:30 of the whole process of moving us, theoretically moving us past slavery, just basically gave
0:04:36 up eventually and let the South and not just in the South, but they allowed the development
0:04:41 of Jim Crow voting laws, the disenfranchised black people. And so that’s one of the things
0:04:47 I want to, and I’m a researcher, this is what I do for a living. And I’m actually working
0:04:51 on a major project that is going to try to examine not just in the US, but how, what
0:05:00 is this, why does this persist? And what does race mean today? And so the bigger problem
0:05:08 it was in the United States and in other places that there was never a real acceptance of
0:05:13 black people. You had all kinds of laws and regulations and rules that kept them from
0:05:17 voting, that kept them from getting jobs. You can look in almost any developed country
0:05:24 today and black people are going to be less employed. Let’s take France, for example.
0:05:29 This is a country that was a colonizer. A lot of people who were in the colonies like
0:05:36 in Algeria have gone to France to find work. They get put into the suburbs because in France,
0:05:40 the place where the poor people go is in the suburbs. So you’ve got black people living
0:05:47 in the suburbs, their educational opportunities are less. All these different ways that, if
0:05:53 you think about redlining, that happens everywhere. Redlining is the process where banks and regulators
0:05:58 say, oh, we’re going to make sure that people who live in these, or buy these houses, don’t
0:06:03 get preferred loans, they have to pay more, et cetera, et cetera. And so there are so
0:06:08 many different mechanisms that are put in place. That’s why we call it systemic racism
0:06:12 and systemic discrimination because you have the bureaucrats involved and they’re doing
0:06:17 these things consciously initially, and then they just get perpetuated over time.
0:06:23 And do you think in this case that it’s a racist argument, like we don’t want black people
0:06:30 to have houses and competitive interest rates, or it’s a intellectual argument that, oh,
0:06:37 they’re higher risk, so we have to charge them higher interest? Is it racism or flawed
0:06:38 economics?
0:06:44 It’s both. It’s hard to separate out the two. I still have this issue today. I’ve been
0:06:50 working on hiring more black faculty at McGill University, and faculty will still come and
0:06:54 say, well, why can’t we just hire on merit? We are hiring on merit. We’re just saying
0:07:01 that we want to recruit people who look different from you. And the funny thing is, is we go
0:07:07 around and we hire people from the best universities in the world, and then they’re like, oh, I
0:07:12 didn’t know these people were out there. Oh, let’s go hire more. And it comes back to my
0:07:17 other book, Radical Empathy, where people don’t understand how they have internalized
0:07:22 bias, how they have internalized these ideas about people. And they’ll say, oh, we just
0:07:27 hire on merit. Yeah, but the only people you hire are your buddies who look just like you,
0:07:31 and you aren’t willing to look at the people. We went to Stanford around the same time.
0:07:36 Oh, no, actually, I was 10 years after you. You’re much younger. I’m going to be 60 this
0:07:43 year. But anyway, I’m going to be 70. Like I said, 10 years apart. But even in that 10
0:07:48 year difference, right, there were probably a few more blacks, dude. But anyway, the interesting
0:07:53 thing to me is that I was going to Stanford in the 80s and there were still a lot of issues
0:07:58 around hiring black faculty and they’ve gotten better. Don’t get me wrong. I love my alma
0:08:04 mater. But the problem is you look across academia and we’re still only three or 4% of the faculty
0:08:09 and we’re still struggling to hire and we’re still struggling to retain. And this whole
0:08:15 idea of merit, we forget about the belonging component, right? And I know this is something
0:08:20 you care deeply about. And this people should feel like they belong. So we’s like, okay,
0:08:25 we hire these people, but we don’t necessarily give them the opportunity to succeed in those
0:08:32 positions. One of my frustrations with this is that how can you make decisions like this
0:08:40 based on the color of skin? Okay, tell me you made a decision on height or weight or
0:08:47 color of pupil. But what’s the rationale that someone with black skin is somehow inferior
0:08:55 to you and shouldn’t get tenured away? It makes absolutely no sense to me. They attach
0:08:59 so this is the problem. We judge people, right? And I talk about it in the context of, okay,
0:09:04 you have your tribal brain that says you see somebody who looks different than you.
0:09:09 And so your brain says, oh, this person isn’t, you know, part of me. And so we have to fight
0:09:14 against that tribal brain or that very basic idea that we only want to be around people
0:09:19 who look like us. But the reality is we’re, you know, I mean, you look at there’s no one
0:09:26 kind of black person or Asian person. We all are a range of colors, right? And so they’re
0:09:33 basically in the 1800s and early 1900s, people just bent over backwards. They wanted to look
0:09:38 at things like skull size and all of that to try and say, oh, this group of people is
0:09:44 inferior because their brains are smaller kind of thing. So people have bent over backwards
0:09:50 to try and find scientific reasons why people from Africa who have different skin color
0:09:57 or people from Asia who are somehow inferior or I could get into all kinds of trouble saying
0:10:02 some of the things that people said about us. But it’s a protectiveness. I mean, you
0:10:08 see what was happening right now in places across the globe really, but particularly
0:10:14 in the US is people are trying to protect their privilege. And so they ascribe a certain
0:10:19 level of privilege to themselves if they are white. And then we don’t want to let these
0:10:24 other people have that same privilege because the problem is they see it as a pie. And if
0:10:29 they get that, then I don’t get that. Instead of saying, we all get better if we all are
0:10:35 open and accepting all boats will rise. There are so many if I need to talk to Heather McGee,
0:10:40 if you haven’t yet, because her book is amazing, the sum of us, the problem is not to get a
0:11:06 bigger slice of the pie. What you should do is bake a bigger pie. That’s the solution.
0:11:13 Is there any example of like in Africa, there’s a black nation and all the power structure
0:11:21 was black and they imported thousands of Europeans as slaves to work on plantations.
0:11:27 And now it’s 2024. And they’re trying to wipe out their history of white enslavement
0:11:33 and they’re trying to preserve systemic racism against white people. Is there any country
0:11:42 like that? No, no, no, no, no. No, you know, I wish Wakanda was there. No, I mean, you
0:11:48 know, the problem is you look at a place like South Africa or Zimbabwe and they had
0:11:54 white settlers who once the governments were taken over by black natives, South Africa
0:11:59 has bent over backwards to support things for white people living there and their land
0:12:04 and so on. And Zimbabwe maybe not as much. But that’s the only cases I can, there may
0:12:10 be other African countries. One interesting case is Algeria because Algeria they didn’t
0:12:14 enslave. Nobody’s enslaved white people in Africa as far as I know, maybe they’re somewhere
0:12:22 out there. But Algeria was part of France until they got independence in the early 60s.
0:12:27 And so once they got independence, a lot of the white French people left and moved back
0:12:32 to France and they felt like they had basically been expelled and they were unhappy. You know,
0:12:36 it’s about that. And that’s why some of those people are strongest supporters of the far
0:12:42 right National Front, which has now become the Rassemblement in France. But that’s the
0:12:47 closest I can come to is like landowners who once the country became independent, lost
0:12:51 their land or had to leave and so on. So that’s about the extent of it.
0:12:58 I read your book about radical empathy. And at the end, and this was in 2020, I would
0:13:04 say you were fairly optimistic that things could get better. Now, we’re four years later.
0:13:07 Where’s your mind at?
0:13:08 Very frustrated.
0:13:11 Things have gotten worse.
0:13:17 In some places they’ve gotten worse. Yes, not everywhere. And I’m always hopeful. It’s
0:13:21 my nature to be hopeful. And I’m actually working on a follow up to radical empathy.
0:13:26 And it’s been hard to write because there’s every day there’s bad news. But on the other
0:13:33 hand, one of the goals of both radical empathy in the book I’m working on now is like you,
0:13:37 I want to empower people. I want people to feel like they can do something. And that’s
0:13:41 when I wrote radical empathy that when I would talk to people about it, that’s the first
0:13:49 thing that came, which is what can I do? So I’m hoping that yes, things are bad. And actually
0:13:54 one of the things I’m writing about right now is the difference between apathy and empathy.
0:14:01 And apathy is you just sit back and you’re just going to let things happen versus empathy
0:14:07 and radical empathy, which as you know, is taking action. And I just keep imagining what
0:14:12 if we all, and we did in 2020, so many of us rose up and said, yes, I’m going to vote,
0:14:17 I’m going to vote for democracy. And I think that’s going to happen. I’m crossing my fingers
0:14:21 and hoping that’s going to happen again. And we don’t have interference and all of that.
0:14:29 But I think that I’m frustrated, but also still hopeful because, you know, I read your
0:14:34 book and I’m like, look at all these amazing people and these remarkable people and what
0:14:40 they’re doing. And you’re doing the work to bring these people to the forefront so people
0:14:45 can see what you can do. And that’s exactly what I want to do as well. I want people to
0:14:49 understand, I haven’t given up, I’m still working, I’m still fighting, I’m still doing
0:14:54 what I can do in my part of the world. The part of the problem is, and there’s some great
0:14:57 books that have come out talking about how black activists in particular, we tend to
0:15:02 get burnt out and so on and that we have to take care of ourselves and I’m doing that.
0:15:08 But I also know that I’m privileged. I’m in a unique position. I’m in the process of
0:15:15 changing the university system in Canada to be more open to black people. That’s huge.
0:15:20 And so I think it’s really important that we understand that the things we are doing,
0:15:23 even in our little space of the world, is creating change.
0:15:30 Yeah. Would you say that America 2024, is it an apartheid?
0:15:38 Not yet. And the reason we’re not really apartheid is because the attacks that are happening
0:15:45 now are intersectional. It’s not just on black people. When you get rid of a DEI program,
0:15:49 people forget. It’s not just black people who benefit from that. It’s women. It’s people
0:15:58 with disabilities. It’s LGBTQI. It’s everybody who is underrepresented or oppressed. If
0:16:05 it’s an apartheid, it’s an apartheid of white men versus everybody else, right? Because
0:16:10 you can’t say that, oh, we’re getting rid of DEI and people want to say we’re only going
0:16:14 after this group. No. There’s lots of research that shows one of the biggest beneficiaries
0:16:21 of the civil rights acts and so on are women. All women. Women were able to get into the
0:16:27 workforce, et cetera, et cetera. You’re saying over 50% of the population is falling under
0:16:33 the system of apartheid. I just think that there is resistance. And so no, we’re not
0:16:37 anywhere near that. Okay. I’m going to tap all your political science
0:16:50 expertise. Okay. So would you draw any similarities between America today and 1930 pre-Nazi Germany
0:16:58 or pre-Nelson Mandela, South Africa? Are we South Africa or are we Nazi Germany? Are
0:17:04 we headed in those directions? Not yet is my answer. And we have, trust me, I can’t
0:17:08 tell you how many times on social media I’ve seen my colleagues. I was like, oh, we’re
0:17:16 just like, and even I thought about this, right? Are we in Weimar Germany? And I’m worried,
0:17:20 but it’s a different thing. I think, yes, we need, so as you know, I’m a huge advocate
0:17:26 of understanding history. But on the other hand, we also have to understand the complexity
0:17:31 of our current age. And frankly, what really worries me is the inequality that you have
0:17:39 these billionaires out there who are controlling the media and so on, and are trying to push
0:17:45 certain types of agendas that is influencing people to vote particular ways and act particular
0:17:53 ways. And that is different in the sense that I don’t see the US going out and starting
0:17:58 wars. I mean, I think I see the US, if we go in that particular direction, becoming
0:18:05 more insular. But we’re in a very much a global environment. And so I think when we’ve, people
0:18:09 like in Europe, for example, have seen what’s happening in the US, I mean, Germany, they
0:18:15 have a far right party. And there have been millions of people on the streets saying no
0:18:20 , we don’t want this far right party to be in our government. And there are millions
0:18:26 of Americans. The funny thing is, it’s actually it’s not funny, it’s sad, is there are protests
0:18:31 and things going on in the US on a daily basis and the media is not covering it, right? They’re
0:18:37 happy to cover, we’re going to go talk to this Trump voter, but they won’t talk to the thousands
0:18:42 of people who are protesting in front of the Supreme Court about their latest ruling. There’s
0:18:47 a lot of things happening. I have friends who are out there writing postcards to get
0:18:53 people to vote. I have friends who are working with candidates all over the place here in
0:19:00 Canada. There’s huge groups of people who are fighting for democracy on various fronts.
0:19:07 And so I think that democracy is in danger around the globe, right? But I’m still hopeful
0:19:13 that there’s enough of us who are supporting, we both have lived in California. I always
0:19:18 tell people, yeah, I’m in Vancouver, British Columbia right now, but I think that the whole
0:19:23 West Coast, well, if it gets to that point, we’ll split away and we’ll have California
0:19:25 and Oregon and Washington.
0:19:33 Hey, Gavin Newsom for president of our country. I could live with that. So in your book, you
0:19:39 said several times, and it was certainly a surprise, but almost a shock. And listen,
0:19:47 I’m an Asian American male, right? So I don’t walk in your shoes, but you say that racism
0:19:55 manifests itself daily in your reality. So can you tell me how racism manifests itself
0:20:01 daily in someone as successful and visible and powerful and et cetera, et cetera, as
0:20:06 you were not talking about some illegal immigrant who’s like working in the back of a restaurant.
0:20:15 We’re talking about, you know, Terry Gibbons, my God. So how does racism affect your daily
0:20:16 reality?
0:20:22 Well, not everybody knows who Terry Gibbons is. They will, especially after this podcast,
0:20:28 they will. But it’s really interesting because part of it is internalized. So, you know,
0:20:32 my reality is yesterday, I was walking around and I was like, oh, I’m going to go into this
0:20:37 boutique. Every time I walk into that place where people do not know who I am, I’m like,
0:20:43 okay, how am I dressed? Are they watching me? Do I have to put a smile on my face? You
0:20:49 know, I try to be a non-threatening. And so that’s not that the people in the store,
0:20:53 I don’t know if they’re racist or not. And you’ll see, and that’s the thing, right? And
0:20:57 throughout my career, because I’ve been a trendsetter and ahead of my time in so many
0:21:04 ways in political science, I’ve been in high-level positions. And the reality is that I’m often
0:21:09 in the only black person in the room or the only woman in the room. And there’s so many
0:21:15 different ways that the racism manifests itself. And it’s not just the fact that people see
0:21:19 I’m a black woman and might be racist towards me. It’s just the things I study. I study
0:21:24 race and immigration politics in Europe. And I can’t tell you how many times people have
0:21:28 said, oh, why do you study Europe? They’re so surprised when I tell them I speak French
0:21:33 and German. And the funny thing is this could happen to anybody, but I could be a white
0:21:38 guy as an American. Why do you study French and German and so on? But they aren’t going
0:21:40 to be a surprise, right?
0:21:47 I can honestly say, Terry, I have never met a white man who had imposter syndrome.
0:21:55 You know, it’s really funny. I’m on a job search right now for an executive director
0:22:01 of an organization. And I was laughing because we didn’t get very many women and minorities
0:22:05 applying, but we had a lot of white men. And I was laughing because I was like, these white
0:22:10 guys aren’t even qualified for this position, but they apply. Whereas we know there’s research
0:22:14 shows women and minorities won’t apply for positions that they think they don’t qualify
0:22:18 for. But these white guys are like, Oh, yeah, I sort of qualify. I’m going to go ahead and
0:22:26 we didn’t keep them in the pool. But you know, the audacity, I don’t know.
0:22:32 So let me ask you something. So what’s the end goal to use your terminology so people
0:22:37 don’t get all pissed off with me when I asked this question. But is the end game like for
0:22:46 every Negro to be an exceptional Negro? Is that the goal? No, absolutely not. The goal
0:22:52 is for every person, for everybody to be who they are. So this was a struggle I went through
0:22:59 personally is how do I make sense of who I am and so on and so forth. I’m black. I used
0:23:03 to get people would give me a hard time for the way I talked because I didn’t talk black,
0:23:08 blah, blah, blah, this and that. So the reality is people try to put you into boxes. So what
0:23:13 I want for everyone, not just black people, but for everyone just to not have to live
0:23:17 in the box and to be who you are. And that’s what by the time I got to the end of my 20s,
0:23:23 early 30s, I finally figured out just be who you are. And don’t be afraid to be who you
0:23:28 are. And that means that, you know, I was going to mention this earlier when you’re
0:23:34 talking about so racism, it’s not even race and it’s like expectations. Terry Gibbons
0:23:39 is a graduate student at UCLA. Oh, she must be studying race and ethnic politics in the
0:23:48 United States. I literally had people say, I would give you a job if you studied race
0:23:53 and politics in the U.S. And like, that’s not what I study. And I don’t want your job
0:23:57 if that’s what your expectation is, right? And that’s why I’m like, first of all, start
0:24:01 with yourself. Who are you? And do you really want people putting you into boxes the way
0:24:07 that you’re doing to others? Not everybody’s going to be exceptional. We just want people
0:24:14 to be able to have access to becoming remarkable. And that’s what we’re doing here, but also
0:24:16 just being who you are.
0:24:25 When the term in your book was used as exceptional Negro, it wasn’t about being, getting the
0:24:32 best scores or anything like that. It was basically fulfilling a white man’s expectation
0:24:37 of what a black person should be. If you did that, you were, quote, an exceptional Negro,
0:24:38 right?
0:24:43 And I was applying that to myself because the problem is people look at me and say, oh,
0:24:50 you’re exceptional. And Oprah’s exceptional. And Chris Rock is exceptional. But the rest
0:24:57 of those black people, we don’t care about them. And so this is the problem. We can pick
0:25:02 out a few people and they are exceptions. So that word exception is important. They’re
0:25:09 the exception to the rule. And the rule is that black people aren’t to the level that
0:25:11 we think white people are.
0:25:12 Okay.
0:25:16 But oh, but you’re okay. I have had people. Oh, you’re, you know, I remember when it was
0:25:25 a big deal that Barack Obama was articulate. And it’s like, well, yeah, he speaks normal
0:25:26 English.
0:25:28 What’s wrong with him?
0:25:29 Any smokes?
0:25:39 Yeah, yes. That’s all other stories purely in practical terms. Are you serious? Are
0:25:46 you saying that a white male can possibly empathize with a black woman?
0:25:53 I have had so many white males who have been the ones who have propelled me along my career.
0:25:59 Yes, absolutely. Going back to high school, I remember my high school principal, who was
0:26:06 a Jesuit priest, stopped me in the hall one day. I’d recently taken the PSAT and he was
0:26:10 like, Terry, are you going to apply to Harvard or Yale or Princeton? Like, what are you talking
0:26:17 about? I don’t even know what college is, you know? And he saw me. You know, it’s not
0:26:23 just empathy. It’s actually being seen. And there are many white men who I can tell you
0:26:31 have seen me. They accepted me as a black woman who speaks French and studies European
0:26:36 politics and can be a leader. And I always say there are people who saw more in me than
0:26:39 I saw in myself. And those were mostly white men.
0:26:40 Really?
0:26:41 Absolutely, 100 percent.
0:26:45 So Terry, they were exceptional white men.
0:26:49 Oh, you got me.
0:26:57 Okay, so now you talk about just the beauty of empathy and even beyond that radical empathy.
0:27:04 But are you saying conceptually that you should have radical empathy for the Trumps? Is there
0:27:07 a limit to empathy?
0:27:11 The number one thing, and that’s going to be at the very top of the first chapter of
0:27:18 my next book, is empathy is not absolution. I do say this in the book. Look, not everybody
0:27:23 is going to listen to me or hear my message. I don’t need all these people who support
0:27:29 Trump to understand or have empathy, but there’s this huge number of people out there who are
0:27:34 open and want a better world and want to understand these things. And I can tell you, I’ve had
0:27:39 many, many interesting discussions about this over the last few years in particular. And
0:27:45 yeah, there’s some people you can’t reach. Not everybody is going to be remarkable. But
0:27:53 what we need is that core group of people, because we can move mountains. And that’s
0:27:58 the thing we have to understand is that I may not be able to convince this Trump voter
0:28:03 over here, but maybe I can convince this independent person over here, and then they’re eventually
0:28:07 going to talk to their buddy who’s a Trump voter. It’s a process. And the process is
0:28:12 working right now so that these people are being very cut off and they only watch certain
0:28:18 media. But if we can start to break through those silos, not directly necessarily, but
0:28:22 really get the word out so that people understand that there’s a different way to think about
0:28:24 things.
0:28:29 So in your book, you also expressed something which when I read that I said, how do these
0:28:37 two things relate to each other? And you made a statement that empathy requires embracing
0:28:45 vulnerability. So why does being empathetic require being vulnerable?
0:28:48 Thank you for that question. Because that’s one of my favorite things about radical empathy.
0:28:53 And you’ll see I’m vulnerable all the way through the book. I try to model vulnerability.
0:28:58 But what I figured out in my own life, and I’ve seen this with other people, you mentioned
0:29:03 imposter syndrome. So part of the problem, for me personally, was that I had a hard time
0:29:14 accepting who I am. And it was partly because I didn’t really understand who I was. And
0:29:18 I grew up in Spokane, Washington. It’s less than 1% black. And I’m just like, why did
0:29:25 my parents choose for us to grow up in Spokane, Washington of all places? But as I learned
0:29:31 that history and about the Great Migration and how black people from my parents’ era
0:29:36 wanted better than what they had experienced. And so by moving to the Northwest, my dad
0:29:41 was in the military. Spokane was the last place he was stationed. So it made sense for
0:29:46 us to just stay there. And it was like where he grew up outside of Pittsburgh. I went then
0:29:52 visit. Oh, no wonder he settled in Spokane. It’s a lot like where he grew up. But a big
0:29:58 part of that is that they wanted us to have better education, to be safe, et cetera. So
0:30:03 for them, Spokane was that place. But I didn’t grow up around a lot of other black people.
0:30:08 And so that was something that I would beat myself up about. I wasn’t in the same social
0:30:13 situations as a lot of my friends when I went to Stanford, et cetera, et cetera. But what
0:30:17 I had to learn was I had to be vulnerable to be willing to look at those stories, that
0:30:21 history, to try to understand. So the first step in vulnerability was saying, I need to
0:30:27 understand better why my parents made these choices, why I am who I am. Because I had
0:30:34 some anger towards my parents. And so by being vulnerable, and it’s hard to ask yourself
0:30:39 those tough questions, if you’re not vulnerable. And Brene Brown, she’s my model when I talk
0:30:45 about vulnerability. The biggest thing about vulnerability, first of all, we can talk about
0:30:48 it in the context of leadership, but it’s really important to be vulnerable with yourself.
0:30:52 People always say, why do I have to be vulnerable? It’s not with everybody else. You have to
0:30:57 be vulnerable with yourself so that you understand yourself better, so that you know who you
0:31:01 are, so that you’re more open to other people. It’s really hard to love others if you don’t
0:31:07 love yourself. And so you have to be vulnerable and look at the full picture and try to understand
0:31:14 why you are the way you are and say, I’m okay with that. And that makes it much more likely
0:31:19 that you’re going to be okay with other people because you see yourself and then you can
0:31:27 see others. Explain to me, well, that implies that I don’t agree or I don’t understand,
0:31:34 which is not true. But why do we need to teach the history of slavery in America? Yes, that’s
0:31:42 a great question, because it still has implications today. So we had 400 years of enslavement,
0:31:49 and we haven’t been how many years since the 1860s. Historically, we’re still not that
0:31:54 far away from it. And because you can’t understand why we had Jim Crow if you don’t understand
0:31:59 slavery. You can’t understand why the U.S. shut itself off to immigration except from
0:32:06 Northern and Western Europe if you don’t understand the history of slavery. Because
0:32:11 it was all part of a process where even though we ended enslavement, we still had the same
0:32:16 ideas about people. We still had this idea. And that’s why it’s really important to understand
0:32:23 that it wasn’t just about slavery. It was about a worldview that said certain people
0:32:27 are not human or certain people are lesser than. And that included people from Southern
0:32:32 and Eastern Europe. That’s why in the 1920s, the U.S. cut off immigration from Southern
0:32:36 and Eastern Europe and most of the rest of the world. People don’t really know that we
0:32:43 cut off immigration from most parts of the world except from the 1920s to the 1960s.
0:32:48 And after that is when you start to see more people coming from India. The first group
0:32:56 of people to have immigration control placed on them were Chinese. You had Chinese exclusion
0:33:03 in the 1870s. And so it’s not just that there was enslavement. There was a whole worldview
0:33:08 of white supremacy that said we don’t want Chinese. We don’t want the world. They couldn’t
0:33:11 get rid of the black people. There were too many of us. So they were going to put all
0:33:16 kinds of rules and regulations and for Jim Crow laws about you have to sit in the back
0:33:22 of the bus and you can’t go to good schools, etc., etc. It’s still impacting things. When
0:33:29 I got to McGill University in 2021, there were 12 black faculty out of 1700.
0:33:30 What?
0:33:32 Why is that?
0:33:35 12 out of 1700?
0:33:42 Yes. Now, because of me and many others who did a lot of work were close to 50. And it’s
0:33:49 like Canada didn’t go through slavery and they did. But it wasn’t like in the U.S.
0:33:55 So why does this happen? Because people have ideas. Those ideas don’t come from nowhere.
0:34:00 Those ideas come from 400 years of enslavement. Jim Crow, Chinese exclusion, exclusion of
0:34:05 people from Southern and Eastern Europe, Irish people can being considered black, all kinds
0:34:07 of things, right?
0:34:19 Wow. I tell you this story as an aside. I have hosted many AI panels, members of the
0:34:28 panel, including chancellors of very large schools. Okay. And unlike most AI moderators,
0:34:36 I always ask this question, which is who would you rather have designed your kids curriculum?
0:34:46 Ron DeSantis or chat GPT. Everybody says chat GPT. And I will tell you that I have gone
0:34:53 to chat GPT and asked, why should we teach the history of slavery in America? And chat
0:35:02 GPT comes up with six great bullet points about the benefits of teaching slavery in America.
0:35:08 And I tell you that story only because I think smarter than Ron DeSantis, but I mean, that’s
0:35:12 not a very high bar, but
0:35:18 So AI is a learning model. It’s pulling in information. And it’s not biased in any way
0:35:22 about that information. It’s saying, look, here’s what I have learned. I’m going to give
0:35:30 it back to you. And so it has this material that is saying these things about why we need
0:35:35 to understand this history. So that doesn’t surprise me. And frankly, there’s so much
0:35:41 research and I have colleagues all over who do this work. And what’s really interesting
0:35:47 is forget DeSantis and all that. The people who matter are students. What are they learning?
0:35:54 I mean, I taught a class a year ago. I love my students. It was just such a blessing because
0:35:58 even my students from Sweden, McGill is a very international university. So I had students
0:36:03 from all over. And it was probably one of the most diverse classrooms I have ever taught
0:36:08 80 students and a little bit of everything. I tried to really create a classroom where
0:36:13 everybody could say what they want that they wouldn’t have any fear. And so many students
0:36:17 told their stories because I would tell my stories. So they would tell me their stories
0:36:23 about their parents who were immigrants, the difficulties they had wearing the hijab, all
0:36:27 kinds of things. And Canadian students coming to me and saying, I never knew that Canada
0:36:36 excluded Chinese people and hadn’t slavery and all these things. And so to me, that is
0:36:41 just so gratifying that I have the privilege of being able to teach these students these
0:36:46 things. And they are grateful to Santa’s and all that. Oh, making white people feel bad.
0:36:51 No, we’re not. We’re helping them learn and understand their history. They don’t understand
0:36:59 why there’s so many black people living in horrible living conditions in the United States.
0:37:04 Why do we have homeless people living on the streets? All these things, they need to understand
0:37:08 that because they want to create change. They have the energy. They’re out there. So many
0:37:13 students who’ve gone into activism and working in nonprofits. And I think people like the
0:37:19 Santas are afraid they’re going to overthrow this white supremacist, white male. And I got
0:37:24 to remind myself, I always have to remember to say white male supremacy because white
0:37:30 women are being oppressed as well. But that they want this change. They are students are
0:37:36 the ones who are pushing for diversity and understanding.
0:37:45 Can you say that? Isn’t that the reason that school boards and stuff are trying to remove
0:37:51 this part of not not to be too clever, but they’re basically trying to whitewash history?
0:37:56 Yes. Absolutely. Because they’re afraid. But the funny thing is, these kids are getting
0:38:02 this news that my boys are older, but we don’t control what they read. My boys are out there
0:38:07 doing stuff that I’m just surprised they know more about so many things than I do because
0:38:13 they are consumers of what’s out there. And of course, they follow what their mom does
0:38:18 and so on. But they have chosen the things that they really care about the environment
0:38:24 is a really big thing for them. And the funny thing is, the more you try to hold tight, the
0:38:28 easier it is that things are going to slip away. And that’s what they don’t understand
0:38:31 when they’re trying to ban books and so on. It just makes kids curious. Oh, this book
0:38:55 is banned. I’m going to read it. This is another aside. But I hope that Think Remarkable is
0:39:01 banned in Florida and Texas. I know I keep waiting for radical empathy to get banned.
0:39:08 Yeah. Like we there should be some service that submit your book to Ron DeSantis and
0:39:13 Greg Abbott. Absolutely. No roots of racism, which is the politics of white supremacy in
0:39:18 the US and Europe. That’s at the top of the list. Oh my God. I mean, that and Project
0:39:27 1619. Those definitely two books that I open up Think Remarkable with a discussion of Olivia
0:39:34 Giuliana, because I’m hoping that some legislator reads this in Florida and Texas. This is holy
0:39:41 shit. He opened up with the most radical Latina we know. And we got to ban this book. But
0:39:45 it hasn’t worked yet. I’m trying. If I figure out how to get my book banned, you will be
0:39:51 the first to know Terry Givers. I guarantee you. Thank you so much. I’m always thinking
0:39:58 about you. How do we bridge the racial divide? That’s an easy question. Go ahead. I give
0:40:05 you 60 seconds. Let’s see. How do we bridge the racial divide in 60 seconds? First of
0:40:11 all, we have to recognize it. And so the first step is it’s like that whole thing of vulnerability
0:40:14 and internalizing. And that’s another reason you have to be vulnerable because you aren’t
0:40:18 willing to recognize that there is a racial divide unless you’re willing to be vulnerable
0:40:24 and say, yes, I have internalized bias. That’s a really important component. And I think
0:40:30 we can bridge racial divides if we all understand that we all have bias and that we need to
0:40:34 work past it. Because I have so many friends who, and sorry, I’m going past 60 seconds,
0:40:41 but I have so many friends who are, yes, Black Lives Matter, blah, blah, blah, but they don’t
0:40:45 understand. I have a house in Menlo Park. We have to be willing to have more than just
0:40:49 me and my friend who are Black living in Menlo Park. And what we have to figure out, what
0:40:56 do we do to get there? And that takes action. And how do we make people who aren’t currently
0:41:03 living there to feel like they belong? So anyway, that’s more than 60 seconds. But the
0:41:06 most important part is recognizing the problem.
0:41:14 Let’s suppose that you have recognized a problem and you’re not a provost or you’re not in
0:41:19 charge of a university. You’re just, I don’t know, you’re random Google or Apple employee
0:41:27 or whoever the demographics are to listen to my podcast. And now you believe and you
0:41:35 understand. And your question is, what can I do? What’s the answer? I give you 120 seconds
0:41:44 for this. Okay. Thank you. Like I said, so first step, figure out where you are and what
0:41:51 you have the capacity for. So some people, they are good at writing. So write your congressman.
0:41:56 Some people are good at hosting friends, have dinner parties and talk to your friends about
0:42:00 the issues. I think you talk about this in your book to find what are you passionate
0:42:05 about? What do you care about? I mean, if you care about the environment, I joined the
0:42:10 Peninsula Clean Energy Commission because of their citizens council because I care about
0:42:16 the environment. I support lots of nonprofits. I’m so proud of this organization foundation
0:42:20 for our college education. I was the direct board director for several years and it just
0:42:26 got a $2 million grant from Mackenzie Scott. Oh, Mackenzie Scott. Yeah. Mackenzie Scott.
0:42:31 Yes. And trust me, there were times when I didn’t think that organization was going to
0:42:36 survive and now they’re just blossoming. And I didn’t know three years ago that this
0:42:42 organization was going to do so well, but they did. And I can say I was a part of that.
0:42:46 And I can look back at every place I’ve been and I’ve done something at every one of those
0:42:53 places to create change. And it can be small. You can just convince one other person to
0:42:58 vote or it can be big. If you have the money, you can support a candidate you believe in
0:43:04 or you can help an organization. And I support lots of organizations. I’ve been on 10 different
0:43:10 nonprofit boards. Some of us do too much, but it’s who I am. I always do too much. But
0:43:20 the reality is don’t feel overwhelmed. Do something that is within your capacity and
0:43:25 then build on that. And eventually you’ll get to that place where you’re as remarkable
0:43:35 as me and God. You should aim higher than trying to be as remarkable as me. Aim higher.
0:43:41 Aim higher. For Jane Goodall and Terry Gibbons. Oh my God. You know, I have to say your Jane
0:43:48 Goodall interview was my absolute favorite. Wow. Thank you. So that was Terry Gibbons.
0:43:54 I hope you have a greater understanding of racism in America and what we need to end
0:44:02 that problem. Check out her book Radical Empathy. It’s sure to help you be a better person.
0:44:07 My name is Guy Kawasaki. This is Remarkable People. May I just remind you that Mattis
0:44:14 and Nismar and I, we have a new book out called Think Remarkable. We take the inspiration
0:44:19 and information we gained from conducting over 200 interviews and make it into a very
0:44:26 brief book. Think of it as a guide to life, a guide to how to make a difference and how
0:44:32 to be remarkable. Anyway, now let’s just thank the rest of the Remarkable People team. That
0:44:37 would be, well, you already heard, Mattis and Nismar. She’s not only my co-author. She’s
0:44:44 also the producer of the Remarkable People podcast. Tessa Nismar is our researcher. Alexis
0:44:51 Nishimura and Louise Magana are also on the Remarkable People team and last but certainly
0:45:00 not least are our amazing sound design engineers. That would be Jeff C. and Shannon Hernandez.
0:45:06 We are the Remarkable People team and we are on a mission to make you remarkable. Until
0:45:16 next time, Mahalo and Aloha.

0:00:13 I’m Guy Kawasaki and this is Remarkable People.
0:00:16 We are on a mission to make you remarkable.
0:00:20 Helping me in this episode is Leslie Valiant.
0:00:25 He is a professor of computer science and applied mathematics at Harvard.
0:00:31 Valiant received a BA in mathematics from King’s College, a diploma of Imperial College
0:00:37 from Imperial College, that makes sense, and a PhD in computer science from the University
0:00:38 of Warwick.
0:00:45 Prior to joining Harvard in 1982, he held faculty positions at Carnegie Mellon University,
0:00:49 the University of Leeds, and the University of Edinburgh.
0:00:55 Valiant has made foundational, remarkable contributions to computer science, including
0:01:01 the theory of probably approximately correct learning, the concept of p-completeness in
0:01:06 complexity theory, and the bulk synchronous parallel processing model.
0:01:13 And if you believe I understand all of what I just said, you are in for a big surprise.
0:01:19 Valiant is the recipient of the Turing Award, the highest honor in computer science.
0:01:25 The award committee said this about him, “Rather does one see such a striking combination
0:01:29 of depth and breadth as in Valiant’s work.
0:01:34 He is truly a heroic figure in theoretical computer science and a role model for his
0:01:42 courage and creativity in addressing some of the deepest unsolved problems in science.”
0:01:48 Valiant’s book, The Importance of Being Educable, explores the unique ability of humans to absorb
0:01:50 and apply knowledge.
0:01:56 He argues that understanding our educability is crucial for safeguarding our future, especially
0:02:00 with the rise of artificial intelligence systems.
0:02:09 I’m Guy Kawasaki, this is Remarkable People, and now here is the remarkable Leslie Valiant.
0:02:12 What exactly is wrong with the term “intelligence”?
0:02:18 It is that we don’t know what it means, it’s got no definition.
0:02:24 No one can tell you exactly how to recognize an intelligent person, what’s the behavior
0:02:26 you’re supposed to look for.
0:02:31 One maybe trivial symptom of this, which may not be that important, but just as a symptom.
0:02:37 So there’s much discussion about the SAT test, which many American students do.
0:02:41 And I was surprised to find out recently what the letter A stands for.
0:02:46 So certainly, S stands for standard and T for test, but what does the A stand for?
0:02:52 So apparently, the A used to stand for aptitude, standard aptitude test.
0:02:56 They changed that, then it’s for standard assessment test.
0:03:01 They changed that, then it was SAT colon reasoning, they changed that.
0:03:05 So now officially, the A stands for nothing, it’s just a brand.
0:03:10 So whatever it tests for, the society is buying without any label on what it’s meant to do.
0:03:17 So if you buy a food in a store, it says more than that there’s a correlation between you
0:03:22 being less hungry afterwards and eating this, but there’s a correlation between these SAT
0:03:25 tests and something, and that’s all that’s promised.
0:03:30 So the problem with intelligence is that it’s widely used, but it’s got no definition.
0:03:31 Isn’t that fixable?
0:03:36 Can’t we get MacArthur Fellows and Turing Award winners and all you guys together say,
0:03:38 “Can you just please define intelligence?
0:03:40 How hard could that be?”
0:03:46 So in the book, I quote some reports of American Psychological Association some time ago where
0:03:51 they report on some other groups saying that they asked 24 experts in intelligence and
0:03:54 they all gave somewhat different answers.
0:04:00 So there’s some concepts for which we have a word, but we don’t really know what it
0:04:01 means.
0:04:06 Seeing as how you’re saying that there’s no sort of agreed upon consistent definition
0:04:13 of the word, how are we seemingly freely talking about AI so much right now?
0:04:18 How can we talk about artificial intelligence if we don’t even know what intelligence is?
0:04:19 Exactly.
0:04:25 So in fact, I think using word intelligence didn’t help the AI field to progress because
0:04:26 there was no goal there.
0:04:32 In my view, it progressed because AI adopted a more specialized definition or rather used
0:04:33 one.
0:04:34 And this is learning.
0:04:38 So learning is something which you can define much better.
0:04:41 So learning from examples, after you’ve seen some examples, you can classify future examples
0:04:43 better than you could before.
0:04:47 So learning from examples is something that’s a very specific ability.
0:04:49 It can be defined.
0:04:53 The computer programs are doing quite well and in practice these large language models
0:04:54 do exactly that.
0:04:58 Okay, so there’s some evidence that they do something interesting.
0:05:04 So AI, in my view, has progressed by trying to realize by computer tasks for which there
0:05:05 is a definition.
0:05:10 In a sense, what you’re saying is that intelligence is such a quagmire that you’re just going
0:05:13 to go outside the box and you’re going to create this new standard.
0:05:18 I’m not saying I want to create a new standard or that’s not how I start.
0:05:23 I’m saying how I phrase it in the book is that in some sense, it’s a very old question,
0:05:29 of course, is what’s the intellectual capability which humans have, which other species on
0:05:34 Earth do not, and the capability which enabled us to create our complex civilization, science
0:05:36 and everything else.
0:05:41 And although this may seem overly ambitious question, in some sense, it’s not because
0:05:44 in the evolutionary terms, we evolved pretty fast.
0:05:47 In the short term, this must have evolved.
0:05:52 So I’m trying to write down this capability.
0:05:58 And the first part of this is exactly what I was describing with learning from examples.
0:06:03 So it’s something which we understand well in computers.
0:06:07 Everyone sees how it works with these large language models in the last year or so.
0:06:09 And then I add a few things on.
0:06:12 So I think I’m doing a natural science.
0:06:15 I’m trying to explain human capabilities.
0:06:20 And I think something real, which has a definition, whether it turns out to be useful, that remains
0:06:21 to be seen.
0:06:25 In some sense, it is a replacement for intelligence, but in a special way.
0:06:32 So I’m curious that in the creation of your book and the title and really the writing
0:06:39 of the entire thing, did you ever think about the difference between “educatable” versus
0:06:40 “educable”?
0:06:44 Did you ever think of the nuances between those two words or now in modern use, their
0:06:46 equivalence, or it doesn’t matter?
0:06:51 I’m not quite sure how you mean any of those.
0:06:56 So at one point, these terms were used in the sense of yes/no.
0:07:01 So with children, could be educated in a regular school as opposed to having to be sent out.
0:07:04 So I think that’s the use these terms had maybe 50 years ago.
0:07:07 And maybe that’s the way in which you mean “educatable”, right?
0:07:12 But what I’m trying to capture is to define more ground up, the capability which I think
0:07:17 all of us have to some extent, and I’m not trying to distinguish with us some of us have
0:07:18 more of it than others.
0:07:22 Just generally, we’re trying to distinguish us from other species.
0:07:26 So it’s not to be confused with the other senses in which this word may have been used
0:07:27 in the past.
0:07:29 Just like its new technical term, if you like.
0:07:30 Okay.
0:07:37 Now, from your point of view, is this level of “educableness” if that’s the word?
0:07:45 Is it a person’s or a machine’s innate ability or is it also subject to the methods and resources
0:07:49 and environments around that person or is it just the person?
0:07:54 So the capability itself, some of it there at the beginning, the question is whether
0:07:58 it can be enhanced by some sort of life experience.
0:07:59 I don’t know.
0:08:00 Okay.
0:08:02 So I think that’s a good subject for investigation.
0:08:05 Certainly if you can enhance the rate at which you can learn, for example, that would be
0:08:07 fantastic for society.
0:08:10 But I think that’s a subject for research.
0:08:15 And I should add that most capabilities can be enhanced by some sort of training and the
0:08:16 right environment.
0:08:22 So the default assumption has to be that this also can benefit from suitable interventions.
0:08:23 But I don’t know.
0:08:28 You’re saying theoretically, if we could do this controlled experiment and we took you
0:08:33 or we took Stephen Wolf from or we took Neil deGrasse Tyson or I don’t know, Freeman Dyson
0:08:38 or something and we stuck you in the middle of the Amazon jungle with no internet, no
0:08:40 books, no nothing.
0:08:42 Clearly you’re still the same person.
0:08:44 If we go back 20 years later, are you running the jungle?
0:08:46 Are you the leaders there?
0:08:52 How much did where you are in modern society play into the fact that you’re such overachievers?
0:08:55 Well, well, first, I’m not equating.
0:08:59 So let’s suppose that you can measure adequability.
0:09:01 Different people have different levels of adequability.
0:09:05 Let us assume that I’m not even certain of that, but let’s assume that what it correlates
0:09:08 with in society again, I don’t know.
0:09:10 It’s not obvious.
0:09:16 The most educable people may not be the ones who are most successful in politics or academia
0:09:17 or whatever.
0:09:18 I’m not sure.
0:09:24 I don’t want to speculate, but it would be if you put someone in the jungle, then adequability
0:09:30 would cause one to how fast they can learn what’s going on there relative to what they
0:09:31 know.
0:09:34 Obviously, it may be that they know so little that’s relevant to how to survive there that
0:09:37 the adequability isn’t enough to survive.
0:09:44 But it’s a measure of how fast you can learn and understand what’s going on.
0:09:50 If I had to put my money on you or Stephen Wolfram to figure out Kurare before the random
0:09:53 person in the jungle, I think that’s a pretty good bet.
0:09:57 So I don’t want to speculate, but certainly there are some people, it’s maybe the entrepreneurs
0:10:02 who are very good at picking up lots of information, sitting through lots of information, understanding
0:10:03 what’s going on fast.
0:10:08 So I’m not quite sure which profession exhibit educability the most.
0:10:13 For example, scientists obviously need it, but they may not be the most extreme because
0:10:17 they’re also good at concentrating for a long time to pursue a direction.
0:10:23 Educability may be more where you keep finding out new things all the time and relating everything
0:10:24 to each other and running with it.
0:10:46 Are you familiar with the work of Carol Dweck and the growth mindset?
0:10:52 She’s a professor at Stanford and she in the early 2000s pioneered this dichotomy between
0:10:55 the growth mindset and the fixed mindset.
0:10:59 The fixed mindset basically says that you think you are what you are.
0:11:00 You cannot be anymore.
0:11:03 You cannot learn new skills.
0:11:06 It also means you think you cannot deter your rates.
0:11:10 So if you’re a genius, you believe you’ll always be a genius and Carol Dweck’s theory
0:11:15 is that the growth mindset means you can learn things, you can do things and it seems to
0:11:23 me there’s a great deal of parallel between your theory of educable and the growth mindset.
0:11:27 So I thought that maybe great minds thought alike and you knew each other.
0:11:33 No, but I mean that theory may be more about one’s attitude, but I think this educability
0:11:35 is something which kind of everyone has.
0:11:40 So the fact that most people are gathering information all the time, they’re watching
0:11:44 movies for example, they’re reading novels, they’re looking at their cell phones, they’re
0:11:46 all soaking in information.
0:11:50 Much of the information is of no relevance to them, it’s got no benefit to them, but
0:11:51 that’s what they do.
0:11:52 They soak in information.
0:11:53 Okay.
0:11:57 So I think it’s this distinction whether you regard your ability to soak in information
0:12:00 or whether you’re going to do it usefully to yourself, to benefit yourself, to find
0:12:01 a new profession.
0:12:03 I think that’s not exactly the same thing.
0:12:04 Okay.
0:12:09 I think what I’m describing is something which we freely all have and I quite generously
0:12:10 I think.
0:12:18 In your book you mentioned this example of chimps escaping from their cage in a zoo using
0:12:24 a fallen tree to jump over the wall and then the other chimps watched that and learned
0:12:27 and also jumped over the wall.
0:12:33 And so are you saying then that in this case these animals are educable?
0:12:36 Is that the conclusion to draw that they pass the test for educable?
0:12:43 No, I’m saying that they look pretty smart and they can solve problems and they can obviously
0:12:48 the first one to jump over the wall figured out what to do assuming that hadn’t seen something
0:12:50 like that being done and the rest could copy.
0:12:55 But so by educable, described in great length in the book, so it’s a combination of learning
0:13:01 from experience, being able to train together what you’ve learned and some kind of reasoning.
0:13:06 And the third part is being able to learn from someone else, describing to explicitly
0:13:08 what should be done.
0:13:12 So in some sense, copying behavior is like that, but in humans it’s much more general
0:13:13 that we sit in.
0:13:18 If you go to college, you sit in a lecture room and someone tells you the laws of quantum
0:13:23 mechanics and they sit there for 30 lectures and at the end you can do a lot of stuff.
0:13:28 So I think it’s only humans who have this ability to be able to soak in a lot of information
0:13:29 given explicitly.
0:13:34 So it’s like other people having had the experience, other people having done the experiments,
0:13:38 but they can tell you the conclusions and you can internalize it yourself and use it
0:13:41 as if you had the experience yourself.
0:13:48 Have you made observations yet about the presence of educableness in life?
0:13:50 Is it normally distributed?
0:13:53 Is it distributed differently to genders?
0:13:59 Does your educableness, does it grow or decay chronologically through life?
0:14:04 Have we had some longitudinal studies and cross-cultural studies, cross-gender studies
0:14:06 to understand more about this concept?
0:14:09 No, we haven’t had any studies.
0:14:12 It’s a new concept, we haven’t had any studies.
0:14:16 So to answer any of the questions, you’d have to develop some test which you possibly think
0:14:22 does measure educability and these tests would have to be of the nature that you’re…
0:14:27 It’s like if you do a one-hour test, in principle you could have a test which is like a one semester
0:14:31 course or you could have a one-hour test, but what you’d be measuring is how much you’ve
0:14:34 learned during that one hour.
0:14:39 So you’re given some questions where it wouldn’t help you to have previous knowledge to answer
0:14:40 the questions.
0:14:46 So it’s related to current IQ tests, but it would have a different emphasis.
0:14:52 It’s a new kind of question, but the only related point I’d make is that if one accepts
0:14:57 this notion that what Kersh has assumed is his educability, which means an extreme ability
0:15:03 to learn and soak up information, then this also illustrates why it’s very difficult to
0:15:10 answer the questions you ask, I mean to try to prove differences between groups in abilities
0:15:15 and other abilities is difficult just because if you make some measurement of the performance
0:15:19 of a group today, somewhere else at a different time, the outcome may be different because
0:15:23 the group may have different experiences.
0:15:29 So we are being so subject, so extremely subject to outside influences throughout educability
0:15:35 that we’re the least promising objects of scientific study, if you like.
0:15:39 By doing surveys on humans in different places, you shouldn’t be surprised that these results
0:15:45 are transferable, generalizable from different places, different times, just because we’re
0:15:49 so prone to change the point of educability that we’re so prone to change, so prone to
0:15:55 be influenced by our environment, it’s very hard to answer any of the questions you ask.
0:16:01 If you think about how would you possibly control all the variables in an experiment
0:16:02 like that?
0:16:03 Right?
0:16:07 Although, I gotta tell you, if I had to guess, I would tell you that women are more educable
0:16:08 than men.
0:16:12 There’s no doubt in my mind, but I don’t have any objective proof for that.
0:16:14 Just my life experiences.
0:16:20 So if we’re at such like the starting point of all of this, let’s say somebody’s listening
0:16:24 to this and saying, “Yeah, you know what, really, I want myself, I want my kids, I want
0:16:26 my company to be more educable.
0:16:28 What can I do now?
0:16:33 Give me some tactical and practical stuff, Leslie, help me out here.”
0:16:36 I don’t think I can, I’m sorry.
0:16:44 I think the only rational thing is to do research and develop some tests which possibly
0:16:46 measure this kind of thing.
0:16:49 If we can’t measure it, then there’s not much we can say about it.
0:16:54 So I think it’s a long-term project, the question of whether we can improve our educability.
0:16:55 I think it’s a long-term project.
0:17:01 Of course, many people have ideas about learning to learn and teaching to learn, but to validate
0:17:07 any of these things is difficult without the measure of when you can declare yourself to
0:17:10 be successful in having an enhanced learning.
0:17:17 If you were to just take a social welfare perspective and step back, it’s hard to imagine
0:17:22 more things that could be more important than this.
0:17:28 This could be the key to the survival of mankind to figure out how to make people more educable.
0:17:31 Personally, I agree.
0:17:32 I do.
0:17:37 So I think that, yeah, I think exactly, I think it’s a public issue for discussion.
0:17:40 Listen, let me give you some shallow thinking.
0:17:44 Let me see if this metaphor will work for you.
0:17:52 Is it fair to say that intelligence, even though we can’t really define it, intelligence
0:17:59 is like the chip speed and educableness is programmability.
0:18:00 Is that a fair statement?
0:18:01 No.
0:18:02 I don’t think so.
0:18:10 I think educability is, if supposing, let’s talk about a computer rather than a human.
0:18:15 Eucability is like a discussion of what the capabilities are of this thing.
0:18:17 And intelligence, I don’t know what that is.
0:18:19 I really don’t know what intelligence is.
0:18:25 Some people say intelligence is what a standard intelligence test measures, which is a bit
0:18:26 circular.
0:18:29 But again, I don’t quite know what that is.
0:18:31 Any cognitive capabilities are correlated.
0:18:35 If you’re good at one thing, often you’re good at something else, often a weak correlation,
0:18:37 strong correlation.
0:18:41 So these intelligence tests are just something, maybe arbitrary, which is correlated with
0:18:45 many things, which colleges may want to find this out because it may be correlated with
0:18:47 how our students do.
0:18:49 But many other tests would also.
0:18:51 So I really don’t know what intelligence is.
0:18:59 Personally, I’m really, so I don’t think I go around and say, oh, this person, my neighbor’s
0:19:00 intelligent.
0:19:06 I don’t think I would necessarily say that orthogonal to this is, is there no concept
0:19:11 that we need to take in account something like morality, right?
0:19:16 So that morality, you could be the most educable person in the world.
0:19:20 Not that I believe this, but let’s just suppose for, for a second that we think Donald Trump
0:19:22 is educable.
0:19:24 But I would say he has zero morality, right?
0:19:29 You, you, you could take an educable person who could learn from others and extrapolate
0:19:31 and all do all these great things.
0:19:33 But what if that person is fundamentally evil?
0:19:34 Then what?
0:19:36 Then, then it’s unfortunate.
0:19:44 But certainly, educability only defines exactly, as they say, someone’s basic cognitive capabilities.
0:19:49 And it’s about how facing the book that it’s the not know that I talk about beliefs that
0:19:53 you learn beliefs of the people’s beliefs that tell you their beliefs.
0:19:57 And so in that sense, the theory is about capabilities.
0:19:59 So in one sense, it’s morally totally neutral.
0:20:03 It doesn’t discuss morality because, as you say, the beliefs could be good or could be
0:20:04 bad.
0:20:10 But what one’s reaction to this should be, it shouldn’t be moral neutrality.
0:20:15 As you say, some people have different beliefs and some we think are evil and some we think
0:20:16 are good.
0:20:21 And just because our capabilities are neutral to morality, it doesn’t mean that we should
0:20:22 be.
0:20:25 We should still certainly fight for what you believe is right and against things which
0:20:28 you believe are evil.
0:20:34 But the fact that because our basic capability is kind of neutral on morals, totally bad
0:20:36 beliefs can spread through society.
0:20:39 We don’t seem to have any good defense against that.
0:20:45 If people are listening to this podcast and they’re struggling with this educable concept,
0:20:52 do you have any people that might be well known in the the valiant hall of fame of
0:20:58 educableness that you can say, oh, I understand that now he cites this person as educable.
0:21:02 Is there anybody like that you can say, think of him or think of her when you think about
0:21:03 educability.
0:21:07 You mean someone who shows educability in the extreme?
0:21:08 Yeah.
0:21:09 Who’s your hero?
0:21:11 Who’s in your hall of fame of educableness?
0:21:17 I don’t know, but I sincerely believe that this is something which we all have.
0:21:20 I’m not trying to define something which will separate us.
0:21:24 I’m really trying to define something which we all have and which unifies us.
0:21:27 So I think the educability is very important, otherwise I wouldn’t have spent so much time
0:21:28 on it.
0:21:33 But I don’t know, as we said before, what this correlates with exactly.
0:21:39 What human formative correlates best with, what kind of people exhibit it the most.
0:21:40 Yeah.
0:21:43 So at this point, I just don’t have a good answer to your question.
0:21:47 It’s a natural question, but it’s not the direction in which I’m looking.
0:21:48 Okay.
0:21:53 If we can shift gears slightly towards artificial intelligence, I know I just used the I word,
0:21:55 but that’s what everybody use, right?
0:22:02 At this point, when people say artificial intelligence, do you think it means that it
0:22:09 refers to what a machine can do like a human or what a machine cannot do like a human?
0:22:11 Like what is artificial anymore?
0:22:16 I think the meaning of the term has changed in history, but at the moment in the media,
0:22:21 it clearly means the kind of things which current machine systems can do.
0:22:22 Okay.
0:22:27 So by AI people seem to mean large language models and things for which you can download
0:22:30 some software with which they can do.
0:22:35 So it’s in the area of machine capabilities and manipulating language pictures.
0:22:37 So I think that’s what it means now.
0:22:43 It’s artificial in the sense that it’s a machine doing what humans can do and that’s what makes
0:22:45 it artificial.
0:22:46 Yeah.
0:22:49 The artificial part always means that it’s doing it.
0:22:53 Now, in your opinion, is chat GPT educable?
0:22:59 No, no, basically chat GPT, just the one of the three requirements of educability, which
0:23:01 is learning from examples.
0:23:04 So it’s trained to predict the next syllable of texts.
0:23:06 That’s what it’s trained for doing, basically.
0:23:12 They predict syllable by syllable texts from being given billions of examples.
0:23:19 Now, I understand at a technical standpoint, but from the outside looking in, if you just
0:23:23 give it a series of prompts, I don’t think most people would look at it like, oh, here
0:23:26 comes syllable after syllable very rapidly.
0:23:29 It looks very cogent and salient to me.
0:23:31 What’s going on there?
0:23:32 How does that thing work then?
0:23:39 It’s trained on a very large number of sentences, so the next syllable will be very likely to
0:23:43 come from some sentence or some phrase which has been uttered before many times.
0:23:49 And also, it works on very large windows of texts, so it predicts the next thing on many
0:23:51 hundreds of characters.
0:23:56 So it does give the impression of some sort of stream of consciousness, as if it can remember
0:24:01 what it’s talking about for a while, because it’s got this very large bit of text from
0:24:03 which it’s predicting.
0:24:10 But it uses the fact that it’s got vast numbers of sentences stored, which it can use.
0:24:17 And so some of the mystery is that with machine learning in general, intuitively, what happens
0:24:21 if you’ve got billions of examples is something which is really counterintuitive.
0:24:26 So if you train on these numbers, people never looked at before, then the phenomena are almost
0:24:28 different in kind.
0:24:34 It’s okay being impressed, I’m just impressed, so the smoothness of the sentence is amazing,
0:24:39 but I don’t think one should assume that these things are providing you more than what it’s
0:24:43 doing, predicting the next syllable, so certainly you shouldn’t take it to advice, for example,
0:24:46 for some important decision you have to make.
0:24:53 If you were to take a Turing test orientation, and now, okay, you’re going to have to correct
0:24:57 me if I get this wrong, but the Turing test is if you’re interacting with this thing and
0:25:00 you don’t know if it’s a human or a machine, but you can’t tell the difference between
0:25:03 a human and a machine.
0:25:04 Isn’t it a human?
0:25:05 Yeah.
0:25:06 Okay.
0:25:11 So Turing wrote this paper in 1950, we discussed the word thinking and also intelligence and
0:25:16 basically said that, yes, if you can’t tell the difference between a human and a machine,
0:25:19 then you can’t say that this human is thinking and the machine isn’t thinking.
0:25:22 So this is like almost a definition of thinking.
0:25:26 So in some sense it’s the opposite of what I’m trying to do.
0:25:30 I’m saying that you should define what thinking is and what intelligence is.
0:25:32 So Turing didn’t do this, he said, it is what it is.
0:25:36 If it looks like thinking, it’s thinking.
0:25:42 So Turing test is where the machine can effectively impersonate a person, but again, I don’t know
0:25:44 how far that takes us.
0:25:48 So for example, if you look at these large language models, in some sense it looks like
0:25:55 a human, but so the Turing thing is that you do some 20 questions with it, you ask questions
0:26:01 and see what the answers and for example, you’ll find that large language models don’t
0:26:04 know about yesterday’s news because it was trained a long time ago.
0:26:05 Okay.
0:26:08 So clearly it doesn’t pass the Turing test technically.
0:26:09 Okay.
0:26:15 But the point is that the Turing test philosophically is of course was very important, it’s intrigued
0:26:17 people for decades.
0:26:21 But by itself it doesn’t tell you what to do to make an intelligent machine.
0:26:25 It just says that you shouldn’t quibble philosophically.
0:26:35 So the fact that chat GPT is not educable, does that make you more comfortable with everybody
0:26:38 jumping on large language models or does it scare you more?
0:26:43 Is it a good thing or a bad thing that it isn’t educable at this point?
0:26:49 The only way of saying it is that with a completely at all levels, there are some choices to be
0:26:54 made and it’s not clear what the best choice is, but with large language models, with just
0:27:00 learning from examples, as we all know now, we always did, the training set is all important.
0:27:05 For example, these large language models can have a political orientation, depending on
0:27:09 what text is being trained on, they could have a bias just depends what is trained on.
0:27:13 Even at this level, it’s not clear what you should be doing.
0:27:17 I mean, depending on your political orientation, you may want to train in a different way.
0:27:21 Already we’re disagreeing on what the ideal large language model is.
0:27:27 If you make things educable, then the problems pile up because if you just tell your system
0:27:31 beliefs, then it’s an important question of what beliefs you give it.
0:27:36 So maybe telling it evil beliefs is just such a good idea.
0:27:40 So although we’re wonderful, we think and are educable, there are all kinds of problems
0:27:43 with reducing our educability.
0:27:46 No one knows what the best method of education is.
0:27:49 No one knows what the best beliefs are to instill in people.
0:27:52 No one knows what right beliefs are and wrong beliefs are.
0:27:57 So if we made machines with the same capabilities as humans, it wouldn’t solve anything because
0:28:01 we don’t quite know what the best thing would be is to educate humans.
0:28:02 Okay.
0:28:06 So if you have an educational machine, you have to educate them and make choices to be
0:28:07 made in education.
0:28:35 What do you think poses a greater existential threat to the survival of mankind, mankind
0:28:38 or artificial intelligence?
0:28:39 Mankind.
0:28:47 So the dangers of misusing artificial intelligence or having accidents or things like that are
0:28:52 obviously present as there are with any other dangerous technology, chemistry, nuclear weapons,
0:28:53 whatever.
0:28:58 But I think the extreme viewpoint that somehow machines will take over because they become
0:29:04 so intelligent that they’ll control the world, I think that’s a misplaced fear.
0:29:08 So certainly we have to distinguish control from other capabilities.
0:29:12 So we certainly shouldn’t give control to a machine if you’re not sure what the machine
0:29:13 is going to do to us.
0:29:14 That’s absurd.
0:29:15 Okay.
0:29:17 So we try to not give it control.
0:29:21 But if we don’t give it control, then what it’ll do will be things I think which we kind
0:29:24 of understand what’s going on, bit like with chemistry.
0:29:27 We understand some chemistry, not all of chemistry.
0:29:33 So we have to treat it as any other powerful technology, but I don’t think by its nature
0:29:35 it’s different from other technologies.
0:29:39 So I don’t think some monster is going to emerge from some machine somewhere, which
0:29:40 we don’t understand.
0:29:42 I’m not worried about that.
0:29:43 Okay.
0:29:49 So is it a fair summary to say that we’re at the starting line of educableness and we
0:29:53 are not sure how to foster it, how to grow it and all this.
0:29:58 And so there’s so much research to be done, but it offers great potential to make the
0:30:02 world a better place if we can just figure out how we can get people to learn more from
0:30:05 each other, learn more from what happened before.
0:30:08 And is that kind of the picture you’re trying to paint?
0:30:09 Yes.
0:30:11 That’s a very nice, generous description.
0:30:12 Yes.
0:30:14 I think that’s a very nice way of putting it.
0:30:15 Yes.
0:30:19 And in a sense, I’m asking the same question twice, but if I’m listening to this and I’m
0:30:25 buying into this, just like people listen to Carol Dweck and buy into the growth mindset.
0:30:27 So now what can I do?
0:30:32 I’m looking for some tips that I can use for my teenage son to make it more educable.
0:30:35 I’m not sure whether I can give a tip.
0:30:39 I think possibly being aware of this dimension.
0:30:44 So being aware to the extent to which we’re soaking up information, we easily absorb ideas
0:30:46 which we hear.
0:30:50 So one of the points I’m making in the book is that our educability is very strong.
0:30:55 We soak up information, we can relate information, use information, but evaluating information
0:30:56 is much more difficult.
0:31:03 So if we hear a theory, it’s evaluating whether it’s true or not, isn’t part of our basic
0:31:08 cognitive capabilities, and probably because it’s impossible if you hear some report of
0:31:12 something happening on the other side of the world, that you can’t go and look at it.
0:31:14 You have to see whom you believe.
0:31:20 So I think appreciating that we are so much subject to what we hear and see, and we can
0:31:22 soak it up and agree with it maybe.
0:31:27 So one parameter which is important to be psychologists look at is, that’s what we said
0:31:31 before, is that you hear all these theories, but which ones do we believe?
0:31:33 So what’s our criteria and for whom to believe?
0:31:38 So if we can, in turn, like all these theories, we have to choose which ones too because they
0:31:39 may be contradictory.
0:31:42 So what are our criteria?
0:31:47 And so psychologists, of course, look at this, that we prefer theories which agree with what
0:31:51 we already believe, theories which agree with our friends, et cetera.
0:31:56 So this educability, I think, is also a weakness, it shows us all the time we’re prone to some
0:32:01 new idea which we believe, but we shouldn’t really, we may be tricked into it, it’s our
0:32:08 weakness to, we have some policy for agreeing with things which already have a sympathy,
0:32:09 but maybe wrong.
0:32:14 So I think it’s a viewpoint which is new to me, just showing how vulnerable we are to
0:32:17 the ideas which are swirling around us.
0:32:23 So I think being aware of this educability notion may help people in understanding what’s
0:32:24 going on.
0:32:28 Listen, fundamentally, I am a marketing person.
0:32:33 So I was chief evangelist of Apple, chief evangelist of an online graphics design service
0:32:34 called Canva.
0:32:38 So I’m all about sales and marketing and evangelism.
0:32:45 And I’m telling you from the outside looking in, you are holding in your hand a golden
0:32:47 opportunity to change the world.
0:32:54 If you could just get people off this kind of SAT IQ test, Mensa memberships and all
0:32:59 that and just point out to them that it’s not about this score, it’s about how you can
0:33:02 adapt and learn and coexist with other people.
0:33:09 That’s much more important than your GPA and your SAT and I’m serious, I think you may
0:33:14 be holding the future of humanity in your hand here, Leslie.
0:33:16 You got a big responsibility here.
0:33:17 Thank you for the comments.
0:33:22 I think there are many ways this can go and I certainly need the help of lots of people
0:33:25 to actually go in any of those ways.
0:33:33 But yeah, so I think there’s a new idea here which is very general relevance to us, I think.
0:33:38 There’s no doubt in my mind that Leslie is onto something with this concept of “educable”.
0:33:43 I think it is just the flip side of Carol Dweck’s growth mindset.
0:33:47 And you know how much I love Carol Dweck’s growth mindset.
0:33:53 Carol Dweck and Leslie Valiant, that would be a remarkable combination.
0:33:58 Maybe I’ll send this episode to Carol and see if she’s interested in meeting Leslie.
0:34:00 The world would shake if this happened.
0:34:05 Anyway, I’m Guy Kawasaki, this is Remarkable People.
0:34:10 Once again, I’m going to remind you, please read our new book, Think Remarkable.
0:34:16 It will help you make a difference and change the world and be remarkable.
0:34:22 Now speaking of “educable”, we have a particularly educable group of people on the Think Remarkable
0:34:23 team.
0:34:30 They are, of course, Madison Nizmer, producer, Tessa Nizmer, researcher, Jeff See and Shannon
0:34:39 Hernandez on sound design, and our best buddies, Alexis Nishimura, now at Santa Clara University,
0:34:44 Louise Shortboard, Magana, and finally, Fallen Yates.
0:34:46 This is the Remarkable People team.
0:34:49 We’re on a mission to make you remarkable.
0:35:00 Until next time, mahalo and aloha.

0:00:13 I’m Guy Kawasaki, and this is Remarkable People.
0:00:20 As you’ve now heard for about 250 times, we are on a mission to make you remarkable.
0:00:24 Today’s remarkable guest is Dr. Sharan Ranganath.
0:00:30 He’s a distinguished professor of psychology and neuroscience at UC Davis, and he’s the
0:00:33 director of the Dynamic Memory Lab.
0:00:39 Sharan has dedicated over two decades to exploring the intricacies of human memory,
0:00:45 and he’s employed a variety of methods from brain imaging to computational modeling.
0:00:52 His book, “Why We Remember, Unlocking Memories Power to Hold on to What Matters,” offers
0:00:55 a remarkable perspective on memory.
0:01:01 It not only demystifies the common frustrations of forgetting, but also highlights the critical
0:01:07 role memory plays in our daily lives, from learning and decision-making to managing trauma
0:01:09 and fostering healing.
0:01:13 The book challenges the traditional understanding of memory.
0:01:18 It argues that our brains are not designed to retain every minute detail.
0:01:24 Instead, they extract meaningful insights from our experiences to better navigate the
0:01:27 present and prepare for the future.
0:01:29 I’m Guy Kawasaki.
0:01:36 This is Remarkable People, and now here’s the remarkable Sharan Ranganath.
0:01:37 How many guitars do you have?
0:01:39 I see guitars in this picture.
0:01:43 So if memory serves, there’s about three.
0:01:44 Wait, wait.
0:01:45 What do you mean if memory serves?
0:01:46 You’re the memory guy.
0:01:47 I know.
0:01:54 Well, okay, so there’s some guitars that are basically dismantled or in various states
0:01:55 of non-playability.
0:02:01 But if I include the ones that just need minor repairs or actually, okay, that would be three
0:02:12 acoustic guitars, one bass, and then another two baritone guitars, and then I think three
0:02:13 electric.
0:02:16 I thought this was just going to be a multiple choice question.
0:02:19 It wasn’t going to be an essay.
0:02:22 Yeah, I know it’s one of these things.
0:02:23 So people who play guitar will understand.
0:02:29 So I always skimped and skimped when I was a grad student and because I played music
0:02:33 then and I played in bands, but now that I can, I collect them.
0:02:39 But I use them because it’s like every guitar brings out different songs from you.
0:02:41 They feel different in your hands.
0:02:43 So it’s not so much the sound of the guitar.
0:02:48 With electric, it’s like you can make it sound like anything if you know what you’re doing.
0:02:53 But it’s really more that the feel of it, the feel of different guitars brings out different
0:02:54 playing in you.
0:02:58 To give you a parallel question, which you could probably relate to because you mentioned
0:03:00 surfing in your book.
0:03:04 If you ask me, how many surfboards do you have?
0:03:09 I would have to give you an essay answer too.
0:03:16 Depends on how you define I have is it I have that I use or I have as trophies on the wall
0:03:20 or I have with my kids that we share.
0:03:25 It’s not as simple as six acoustics and three bass, but anyway, yeah, that’s right.
0:03:26 You need a what a thruster.
0:03:27 You need the longboard.
0:03:29 You need so much stuff.
0:03:30 How is your surfing?
0:03:31 Have you continued?
0:03:35 No, part of it is that it’s I’m a lousy swimmer.
0:03:37 Part of it is that it’s I’m out of shape.
0:03:39 Part of it’s that I’m very far away.
0:03:41 Let’s blame it on the fact that I’m far away from the shore.
0:03:47 So since I wrote the book and finished it, I have not been surfing or where do you live?
0:03:50 I live in Davis, California.
0:03:55 So that’s about a yeah, it’s not as bad as you might think.
0:03:59 If I went to Bolinas, it’s probably about a two, two and a half hour drive, two and a
0:04:00 half hours.
0:04:01 Let’s say parking.
0:04:03 They’re supposedly pretty bad, but it’s cold.
0:04:04 It’s cold water.
0:04:05 Are you in Hawaii?
0:04:08 Oh, I’m in Santa Cruz, California, or Watson.
0:04:09 Oh, you’re in Santa Cruz.
0:04:10 Okay.
0:04:11 Oh, yes.
0:04:12 So do you have any, you have a connection with Hawaii?
0:04:13 I’m sorry.
0:04:14 I don’t know that.
0:04:15 Yes.
0:04:20 I was born and raised in Hawaii, but I never surfed what I was, it’ll growing up.
0:04:24 And I came to California and I started at age 60.
0:04:26 So you’re not 60.
0:04:30 So you know, you can, you could take like probably how old are you 40?
0:04:31 Wait.
0:04:35 Did you say age 16, 60, six, zero, six, zero.
0:04:36 Oh my God.
0:04:37 You look great.
0:04:40 That’s the beauty of high res cameras and AI.
0:04:41 Yeah.
0:04:45 I’m 50, I just turned 53 last week.
0:04:48 So I got to tell you a short story to get this rolling.
0:04:49 Okay.
0:04:51 I’m from Hawaii.
0:04:56 My family and I, we go to Hawaii probably every year, once a year.
0:05:00 And when you go to Hawaii, you have the stereotypical great surfing sessions.
0:05:05 You go to the luau, you go to all the great restaurants and all that stuff.
0:05:09 What the Hawaii Visitors Bureau wants you to know.
0:05:16 But one year we stayed in a place called Hawaii Kai, which is about 15 miles from Waikiki.
0:05:23 And on New Year’s Eve, the guy who owned the house took us in this powerboat to watch
0:05:28 the fireworks on New Year’s Eve from the water.
0:05:34 And little did we know that a small craft warning happened while we’re out there.
0:05:35 And so going there was fine.
0:05:41 But coming back got really rough and people started throwing up and it was like awful.
0:05:44 They thought they were going to die and you know, they’re like really throwing up over
0:05:47 the side and all going crazy.
0:05:52 And I tell you this story because now when we talk about Hawaii, we don’t talk about
0:05:57 the great food, the great surfing, the great, we talk about the trip from hell.
0:05:59 Okay.
0:06:01 So now you’re the memory guy.
0:06:05 Why do we remember what we remember?
0:06:11 Why do we focus on something so bad at the time as like now brings us great joy?
0:06:16 Yeah, I have a few stories like that in my book too, which is stories of things where
0:06:19 everything went totally wrong.
0:06:25 And you know, I always like to say that if something bad happens to you, it’s not worth
0:06:28 it unless there’s a good story you get out.
0:06:31 I suspect you live by similar philosophy in life.
0:06:38 But I think the two things that come from these experiences are one is they’re emotional
0:06:44 and are emotionally intense experiences are going to be the ones that we remember.
0:06:49 There are certain chemicals in the brain that are released during intensely emotional experiences,
0:06:55 times where we’re scared or times where we’re in moments of desire or attachment stress.
0:06:59 And so those chemicals, we call them neuromodulators.
0:07:05 They actually promote plasticity and enable memories to stick around and be more resilient.
0:07:06 So that’s part of it.
0:07:11 I think another part of it is that you have something that’s memorable and emotional and
0:07:13 you want to share it with people.
0:07:19 So if it’s not something truly traumatic that’s associated with shame, you probably
0:07:24 will share those experiences and sometimes start commiserating about them.
0:07:29 But then they can also be used as almost like a little brag that you survived it.
0:07:35 As that becomes now, every time you tell that story, it becomes more memorable.
0:07:40 It actually you strengthen that memory itself just by virtue of retrieving it over and over
0:07:41 again.
0:07:44 Now you might even embellish it more and more.
0:07:48 Like I imagine you have a long version of this story that you tell people after a couple
0:07:50 of years or something.
0:07:53 And the long version, I’m sure there’s a lot of embellishments that come into it.
0:07:57 And the more times you embellish, the more of those details can become incorporated in
0:07:59 the memory too.
0:08:04 Those experiences that are emotionally intense, but we get a good story out of it.
0:08:08 Sometimes they become at some point more of a story than they are a memory.
0:08:13 It started off as rough seas and it’s already progressed to small craft warning and next
0:08:14 step is hurricane.
0:08:19 I can see the, I can see the slope of this line already.
0:08:22 It’s like that movie, A Perfect Storm.
0:08:25 I’m picturing Mark Wahlberg on the boat with you.
0:08:30 I want the rock to play me, okay.
0:08:34 You could play you, man.
0:08:37 So you kind of answered why we remember what we remember.
0:08:41 But now why do we forget what we forget?
0:08:48 So forgettable experiences are ones in which the memories are just like every other experience
0:08:49 we have, right?
0:08:54 What I mean by this is that memories in the brain compete with each other.
0:09:00 And many times when we forget, it’s because these memories are drowned out by other memories
0:09:03 that overlap with them and are similar to them.
0:09:05 And there’s nothing remarkable about them.
0:09:07 There’s nothing emotionally intense.
0:09:11 There’s nothing important relative to our goals.
0:09:13 There’s no surprises involved.
0:09:19 And so all those factors can lead us to essentially forget about them.
0:09:21 And that’s a good thing, right?
0:09:26 Think of all the temporary passwords, the people who you meet in passing who you’ll never meet
0:09:27 again.
0:09:30 No offense, but it’s like, you know, you meet a TSA agent while you’re going through, you’re
0:09:31 nice to them.
0:09:36 They have one line, but you don’t really need to carry that information with you.
0:09:37 That’s what I’m talking about.
0:09:40 And those memories, it’s hard to reverse engineer.
0:09:42 Why did you forget them, right?
0:09:46 And maybe there’s something in there so that if you met that TSA agent, again, it would
0:09:52 be a little bit easier to memorize their name and remember their face the second time around.
0:09:54 I don’t know.
0:09:59 Many of those things we just don’t know, but the basically the kinds of factors that make
0:10:06 something forgettable are unimportant, familiarity, like they’re just not novel, predictable,
0:10:09 and emotionally bland.
0:10:15 It sounds like I’m bringing back TSA trauma to you, but okay.
0:10:20 So well, I just got back from Seattle a couple of days ago, but it wasn’t a traumatic one.
0:10:25 It was actually a nice experience, but I could not remember the TSA agents that I dealt
0:10:27 with for the life of me.
0:10:31 Actually, there was a colorful, so this is a great example.
0:10:37 The one thing I remember was there was an extremely colorful guy who was near the conveyor
0:10:45 belt and he just kept saying, okay, don’t forget to put this inside, put your electronics
0:10:51 in a separate crate, but he was doing it in this way that was almost like theatrical.
0:10:56 And it just struck, that’s what I remember from my TSA experience and if it wasn’t for
0:11:00 that guy, I would not have any memory of it, I’m sure.
0:11:04 It’s like when you see a traffic cop having really lots of fun, right?
0:11:05 Exactly.
0:11:06 Yeah.
0:11:07 Yeah.
0:11:08 Exactly.
0:11:13 Explain to me, are things like remembered and then forgotten, or is it, what’s sort
0:11:15 of the baseline?
0:11:20 Do you remember and then you forget or you forget and then you have to recall?
0:11:21 What’s going on there?
0:11:25 Are we predisposed to forget or predisposed to remember?
0:11:33 This is a very hard question to answer because it depends on what it is we’re talking about.
0:11:38 So what I would say is on average, we’re predisposed to forget and what I mean by this is research
0:11:44 shows that if you give people like a bunch of meaningless information that they have
0:11:51 to memorize about little less than two thirds of it will be forgotten by the next day.
0:11:55 How that translates though into real world events is a little bit harder to say, but
0:12:01 on average, I would argue that, yeah, we forget most, and here’s one way in which we can answer
0:12:02 this question, right?
0:12:07 Later on, you say, hey, do you remember that really amazing interview you did with this
0:12:08 memory researcher?
0:12:15 So then you go, oh yeah, and you describe it and you can describe that event in like
0:12:19 about two minutes, but then at that point you’re going to run out of details to talk
0:12:21 about, right?
0:12:27 So it’s not a literal replay of however long we’re going to spend talking.
0:12:29 It’s really a reduced version of that.
0:12:35 And there’s a lot of details, exact words that I’m saying, exact things that are going
0:12:40 on in the background, sentences, even several minutes, they’re just going to be dropped.
0:12:45 So when I’m asked about this interview in a year, I’m going to say, oh, that’s the guy
0:12:49 with all the guitars, right?
0:12:52 Then you’ll go, what was he talking about again?
0:12:53 I can’t remember.
0:12:55 Oh, yes, that’s what we talked about.
0:12:57 We talked about forgetting.
0:12:58 Yeah.
0:13:02 But when people ask you about interviewing with me, you’re going to say, oh, that’s the
0:13:07 guy who sent me to socks, and you’re not going to remember anything right.
0:13:12 I have already forgotten many of the podcast interviews, but I will not forget the man
0:13:19 who sent me those great socks and the microphone too.
0:13:23 I don’t care what it takes to stand out as long as I do.
0:13:26 So now, no, no, this has been a lot of fun already.
0:13:31 He’s a very memorable interview, so much more memorable than you say that to all the
0:13:32 podcasters.
0:13:49 But anyway, I mean it on a slightly more serious topic, based on your book, I must say that
0:13:55 I am not too confident in witness testimony.
0:14:00 So when you read about criminal cases and it’s 10 years old and they have eyewitnesses,
0:14:04 it’s hard to have faith in what they’re saying, isn’t it?
0:14:06 I think it depends.
0:14:12 What I hope to convey in the book was that you can’t look at any of these things in
0:14:15 memory as an all or none phenomenon.
0:14:20 In the case of eyewitness testimony, it’s not like I’m telling people, “Oh, ignore
0:14:21 it.
0:14:26 It’s all unreliable,” nor would I say that it’s like you should just blindly trust a
0:14:28 confident witness.
0:14:31 Let’s say if you and I became friends, and hopefully we will because I need some serious
0:14:38 surf instruction, and I have to go visit you and Santa Cruz a bunch of times, right?
0:14:44 We start hanging out, we become pals, I teach you a little guitar, you teach me a little
0:14:50 guitar, and so next thing you know, I see you rob a bank or something like that.
0:14:53 So the policeman said, “Okay, so who robbed the bank?”
0:14:59 I’ll say it was Guy Kawasaki, and I will be very confident and I’ll be pretty accurate
0:15:03 because I know you, and so I have a very good memory of who you are.
0:15:08 I’m hopefully not going to mistake you for somebody who looks like you, right?
0:15:13 But on the other hand, if it were somebody who I didn’t know, and let’s say they were
0:15:18 from, my wife actually says this to me, that I cannot tell faces apart, she’ll say this
0:15:24 about anybody, if you look at the literature, for instance, there’s a big factor called
0:15:30 the other race bias where essentially people have a harder time recognizing faces of people
0:15:35 of other races, and it’s not necessarily a prejudice thing, it can be just a lack of
0:15:38 exposure to people of other races.
0:15:43 It’s also the fact that I think there’s data to suggest that people, when they look at
0:15:49 someone from another race, they actually don’t pay attention to what makes them unique as
0:15:53 much as the factors that help them identify the race, whereas when they look at people
0:15:58 of their own race, they’re able to actually see them as a unique face, which is sad but
0:16:01 also fascinating and revealing.
0:16:07 So let’s say somebody is trying to do an other race identification, and it’s very quick,
0:16:13 they just get one flash, and then let’s say they look at the mugshot, and then they’re
0:16:18 being asked to look at it again and again and again, and then at some point, third time
0:16:20 around, they’re like, I think that’s it.
0:16:24 So then they do another lineup, they’re like, I think that’s it, and then they really, the
0:16:26 third time around, they’re really sure.
0:16:32 At that point, that’s a highly unreliable testimony because people can essentially create
0:16:38 a memory for seeing this person rob the bank when actually they just saw this person in
0:16:42 the mugshot book, and they may have looked a little bit like the person who robbed the
0:16:43 bank.
0:16:47 And as they look at it more and more, they become more and more confident.
0:16:51 So there’s a case like this in the literature that I describe in the book, and in fact,
0:16:55 there’s many other cases out there that I did not describe in the book, but this is a remarkably
0:16:56 common thing.
0:17:02 And you’ll even see this with AI face recognition systems, that they will also have these biases
0:17:05 especially with people of color.
0:17:10 And the reason the AI systems have this problem is because they’re using data curated by humans,
0:17:12 and the internet has these biases baked in.
0:17:19 So it’s an issue period when it comes to face recognition of strangers.
0:17:20 There’s more to it.
0:17:22 I could go on and on and on, but that’s just one example.
0:17:29 You dedicate quite a bit of space to the creation of false memories, and I got the impression
0:17:36 that in the hands of a skilled or skillful or manipulative person, that person can create
0:17:39 false memories in people without too much difficulty.
0:17:41 Did I get that right?
0:17:46 I would say that we don’t know why, but some people seem to be more susceptible than other
0:17:47 people.
0:17:52 There does seem to be some evidence that age and so children and the elderly are a little
0:17:56 bit more susceptible to false memory creation.
0:18:00 There’s other factors like if you’re under the influence of alcohol, if you’re just tired
0:18:06 and stressed out, all these things that reduce your ability to check yourself would be the
0:18:08 factors that predispose you.
0:18:14 Under an ideal circumstance, no, many people would not be susceptible to having an entirely
0:18:20 false memory created, but I would argue that most people are susceptible to having their
0:18:21 memory corrupted.
0:18:26 And what I mean by that is that maybe you could ask me a question about a crime and
0:18:28 you give me a leading question.
0:18:33 When you saw this person rob the bank, were they in a blind rage?
0:18:37 And let’s say they just seemed a little bit, you saw someone and they’re just walking into
0:18:41 the bank and they just look a little frowning or something like that.
0:18:47 You might now remember it more like they were really ready to go off and they’re unhinged.
0:18:52 And that’s the power of imagination because when we remember the past, we get all these
0:18:58 little bits and pieces, but then we generate a story and that story reflects our beliefs
0:18:59 in the present.
0:19:07 Aren’t you telling me that a skillful detective or a skillful prosecutor or a skillful criminal
0:19:11 attorney can use these things to their advantage?
0:19:13 I would argue that they do.
0:19:20 I wouldn’t necessarily say that it’s intentional to create a false memory, but I think a good
0:19:27 defense or prosecuting attorney will want to manipulate their witnesses to say what will
0:19:30 be needed to convince a jury, right?
0:19:33 But I think during the question, I mean, there’s a technique that I talk about in the book
0:19:39 called the read technique and it’s part of a standard manual for interrogation.
0:19:45 And it contains basically the recipe for getting people to confess to crimes that they never
0:19:46 even committed.
0:19:52 It’s definitely those kinds of questioning approaches that can lead people to get severe
0:19:56 distortions in their memory, but not everybody uses those techniques.
0:20:01 I don’t in fact know how many people use those techniques, but it is out there for sure that
0:20:02 somebody can.
0:20:06 And keep in mind, by the way, this is not just limited to prosecutors.
0:20:13 So one of the things I talk about in the book is an example of how George Bush Jr. was going
0:20:16 up in a primary against John McCain.
0:20:21 And so his campaign started doing these phone polls where they would call up people at their
0:20:28 homes and say, Hey, do you remember when John McCain said this, what do you think of it?
0:20:33 And they implanted things in the questions that weren’t true.
0:20:38 And so what happened is that people who did the polls were more likely to think it was
0:20:39 true.
0:20:44 And so they spread this false information about John McCain and had to do his tax policies
0:20:50 and this incredibly racist story of him like fathering a black child illegitimately.
0:20:55 And these stories ended up spreading just because they were in the question that was
0:20:57 being asked in this poll.
0:21:01 That wasn’t even studied by memory researchers until years later.
0:21:02 Wow.
0:21:07 And I suspect that in the research community, we’re catching up to where people are actually
0:21:09 using these techniques already in the real world.
0:21:16 You also mentioned a positive sense of that quizzes can help you learn as opposed to just
0:21:18 help you test, right?
0:21:20 This is the same concept.
0:21:22 Absolutely.
0:21:27 If you’re trying to say learn a new language, for instance, or even memorize someone’s name,
0:21:30 the intuition would be, Oh, I need to study it.
0:21:33 I need to just say it over and over in my mind, say the name.
0:21:38 Or if I’m trying to learn a word, I can just memorize the Spanish word just by saying it
0:21:43 over and over again, like a Palabra, which is Spanish for word, actually.
0:21:44 That’s not true.
0:21:47 The better way is actually to test yourself.
0:21:54 And one of the coolest findings out there is if I test myself on a word or a name before
0:21:59 I even get it, testing myself even before I know the answer can actually help me remember
0:22:01 it better.
0:22:03 And so we have a computer model of how this works.
0:22:09 What happens in the computer model is when you have some degree of error in the testing,
0:22:12 that’s when you really get some benefit.
0:22:17 Because then what happens is the brain can suppress the wrong answer, which helps the
0:22:19 right answer pop out more in memory.
0:22:21 Wait, let me get this straight.
0:22:26 So you’re saying if you’re trying to learn a new subject, you take a quiz before you know
0:22:28 anything about it to prep you?
0:22:29 Yeah.
0:22:30 Wow.
0:22:34 Now what I would do is prep on each thing that you’re trying to learn, though, but do
0:22:35 the prep test.
0:22:40 You don’t want to wait till the end after you spent an hour studying and then give your
0:22:43 or I mean, you basically don’t want to do it like give yourself a quiz on the entire
0:22:46 thing and then, you know, an hour later, come back to it.
0:22:49 You want to get some feedback fairly immediately.
0:22:55 This is it’s an eerie coincidence, but I’m Madison and I just about to release a book
0:22:59 called Think Remarkable and this is the Remarkable People podcast.
0:23:04 So we have a lot of knowledge about how people can become remarkable.
0:23:09 And we’re also creating a course with Canva about how to be remarkable.
0:23:18 And the people who designed the course, they have quizzes inside each section, really simultaneous
0:23:21 with actually presenting the information.
0:23:24 And they said, yeah, these quizzes help people learn.
0:23:25 And I said, how can they help people learn?
0:23:28 They don’t know the answer yet.
0:23:33 And then, but a bing, but a bang, one week later, I’m hearing from a scholar that yes,
0:23:34 it’s true.
0:23:35 There you go.
0:23:36 God works in strange ways.
0:23:37 Yeah.
0:23:39 That’s exactly right.
0:23:47 I see in your book and many other books, they always talking about MRIs, right?
0:23:51 So they show a person this and they look at the MRI and they say, okay, this is where
0:23:55 the prefrontal cortex spiked and this proves that and that.
0:23:57 I mean, is this all bullshit?
0:24:02 I mean, tell me, everybody’s going into an MRI and they’re proving that this does that.
0:24:05 You look at an image of this, it spikes this.
0:24:06 Everything is an MRI.
0:24:13 It’s an MRI so reliable that I could show the MRI result to a scientist and the scientists
0:24:19 could say, oh, I can tell you what caused that spike as opposed to show the person this
0:24:24 and then prove that the MRI, MRI do that is MRI predictive.
0:24:30 So you’re actually asking me the method that I’ve used it by research for the past 25 years
0:24:31 is it all bullshit?
0:24:33 You should be able to defend it.
0:24:35 Oh, no, you’re absolutely right.
0:24:38 No, actually, the question is various stew.
0:24:43 Can you just look at an MRI scan and can it be predictive?
0:24:49 And the answer is in some circumstances, yes, for instance, what people are starting to
0:24:55 do is to use machine learning techniques where if somebody’s watching a movie or even if
0:25:02 somebody’s remembering a movie, you can train computer models that relate the brain activity
0:25:06 to the things that people are seeing and thinking about and so forth.
0:25:12 And then in theory, you could present new things to the person and be able to generate
0:25:16 a prediction of what it is they’re thinking about, what it is they’re remembering.
0:25:23 Now, that requires a lot of data that may need to be person specific and right now we’re
0:25:28 still in the stone age of doing that for anything that’s remotely interesting.
0:25:29 But it can be predictive.
0:25:34 A lot of the work that I talk about in the book, though, is more of an average of people,
0:25:35 right?
0:25:41 And this is a lot of the psychology and the neuroscience of everything, the neuroscience
0:25:46 of everything is averaging across people and across animals and so forth.
0:25:52 And so we don’t yet have a great idea of what makes you different from me.
0:25:56 And that is something I think that’s the big gaping hole in our research.
0:26:02 And then sometimes people do experiments and they just don’t have the richness to be able
0:26:07 to do what you said, which is to predict what you’re going to do.
0:26:11 But I think we can do it and that’s one of the goals that I have in my research for the
0:26:17 next few years where we’re developing computer models of memory and we are using machine
0:26:19 learning tools in our MRI research.
0:26:20 And so that would be the hope.
0:26:23 And let me just add, I know we keep giving you these long answers.
0:26:27 I should just add MRI is just one tool.
0:26:30 We’re measuring blood flow in the brain, which is very slow.
0:26:35 There’s other tools like where we can record directly from the brain in patients who have
0:26:39 epilepsy, for instance, they stick electrodes in their brains for surgery, where we can
0:26:42 read out data in the millisecond scale.
0:26:46 And that’s the time scale in which brain activity really happens.
0:26:51 And so I think in an ideal world, we would be able to do that in general.
0:26:53 So MRI is one technique.
0:26:58 It’s very crude, but it can be very powerful in the right circumstances.
0:27:02 Please don’t take this personally because quite frankly, nonfiction book writers, business
0:27:06 book writers like me, we have no proof of what we say is true either.
0:27:08 So don’t sweat that.
0:27:09 No, no, I really have not.
0:27:11 I was giving you a hard time.
0:27:14 But can I just one more detail?
0:27:22 So I have had something called Meniere’s disease, which is deafness, tinnitus and vertigo.
0:27:27 And when you first try to get diagnosed, they stick you in an MRI.
0:27:32 And this MRI is this thing where you’re in this huge thing and you’re in this little
0:27:37 whole tunnel and it sounds like a jackhammer is going off in your head.
0:27:42 Is that the kind of MRI you’re saying that we show people movies and we measure their
0:27:43 MRIs?
0:27:46 They’re sitting in the middle of this thing with their jackhammer in their head watching
0:27:47 the movie.
0:27:48 Is that what you’re telling me?
0:27:49 It’s remarkable.
0:27:50 Yes.
0:27:54 Actually, every kind of scan we do, let’s say if I want to get a picture of the structure
0:28:00 of your brain or I want to look at the white matter in your brain or I want to be able to
0:28:05 measure fluctuations of brain activity, they all involve different kinds of what you call
0:28:09 pulse sequences, which are different ways of using the magnets to measure things in
0:28:11 the brain.
0:28:16 And I have had people in my lab who’ve been scanned so many times, they actually can tell
0:28:20 what it is we’re scanning based on the unique sounds of the pulse sequence.
0:28:26 So how do we do experiments is a great, you’re really guy, I guess these are remarkable questions.
0:28:28 I never get these questions.
0:28:29 So it’s great.
0:28:33 So if people are lying in an MRI scanner, they actually look up and there’s a little
0:28:39 mirror and then they can see in the mirror outside of the magnet, we have a video screen
0:28:42 and the video screen will play the movie.
0:28:47 And they have these noise canceling earbuds that we put in and we put like ear plugs around
0:28:51 them to keep them insulated from the sound of the magnet.
0:28:54 And so people can hear them and we have a noise canceling microphone that people can
0:28:57 use to speak to us while the scans are taking place.
0:29:01 So it’s not cheap, it’s not easy, but we can do it.
0:29:02 Okay.
0:29:09 So I’ve had maybe two or three MRIs in my life and I will tell you, an MRI is the most disturbing
0:29:13 thing you can have without pain.
0:29:18 Like why would, do you pay these people a lot to do this or they just massacred us?
0:29:23 They just like like sitting in a tunnel with a jackhammer going off in their brain.
0:29:26 No, we pay people, but not all that much.
0:29:29 And first of all, you should have ear protection.
0:29:34 So the jackhammer-ness, it actually, the experiments we’re doing, most of it just sounds like beeping,
0:29:36 beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep.
0:29:37 It just depends.
0:29:41 Some people have claustrophobia, for instance, and can’t stand it.
0:29:42 I have trouble staying awake.
0:29:47 I feel like if I could, I would probably sleep in an MRI scan or better than I would in my
0:29:48 house.
0:29:51 It’s, it can be so comfortable.
0:29:55 If I ever come to Davis, we’ll try an MRI.
0:29:56 Okay.
0:29:57 All right.
0:29:58 All right.
0:30:03 Now, why do some memories return out of the blue seemingly?
0:30:08 Sometimes what happens is that you haven’t forgotten a memory, but you just don’t have
0:30:10 the right way to access it or find it.
0:30:15 And what I mean by that is you can think of the world as having a bunch of cues in it.
0:30:21 They could be like a key that unlocks your access to that memory and helps you time travel
0:30:22 back to that point.
0:30:25 But without the key, you don’t actually have any access.
0:30:32 So in the case of memory, we find that things like music, for instance, everyone tells me
0:30:36 that almost everyone tells me that music, they’ll hear a song from their childhood and
0:30:41 boom, it brings back some memory that just seemed dormant before that.
0:30:42 Smells are another one or being in a particular place.
0:30:48 I bet you when you go back to your hometown in Hawaii, you probably have memories that
0:30:55 pop into your head that you didn’t think about while you were here in Santa Cruz, right?
0:31:00 Places, smells, anything that’s unique to a time in your life can be the cues that allow
0:31:03 you to travel back to those times.
0:31:06 I thought you said by default, we’re forgetting.
0:31:11 So what does it mean to forget if all of a sudden you can smell something and it comes
0:31:12 back?
0:31:16 Is it like a forgotten, is it like a hard disk where you reformat and it’s gone?
0:31:17 Yeah.
0:31:20 So this is, I wrote about this actually in an editorial, which is that there’s different
0:31:22 kinds of forgetting.
0:31:27 There’s forgetting that out says the benign kind, which we call retrieval failure, where
0:31:31 it’s not that the memory isn’t there, it’s just that you don’t have the right cues to
0:31:32 find it.
0:31:35 And this happens a lot as we get older.
0:31:40 Then there’s the big F forgetting where you just lost the memory or you never really adequately
0:31:42 formed the memory in the first place.
0:31:47 That also happens to all of us and it happens a little more as you get older, but it’s not
0:31:51 much worse than you’d think.
0:31:56 If it happens very, very quickly and it happens all the time, that’s a sign that you have
0:31:58 a memory disorder.
0:32:02 But what you’re talking about is the classic retrieval failure case where you don’t have
0:32:06 any awareness that’s there because you don’t have the right cue to get you back.
0:32:12 And is there a purposeful way to get the cue or it’s just happenstance.
0:32:15 You smell the same durian or something.
0:32:16 There is a way for sure.
0:32:24 So all of our experiences in life, all these events are like basically encoded in our brain
0:32:27 according to the time and place they happen.
0:32:31 That’s in a place that part of the brain called the hippocampus and this part of the brain
0:32:35 just blindly associates things according to when and where they happen.
0:32:39 But what you can do is you can put yourself in the mindset.
0:32:44 So if you just close your eyes now and imagine the sounds of the birds and the smell of the
0:32:51 tropical flowers and the ocean kind of rushing in on the beach, you could probably remember
0:32:56 some of that Hawaiian vacation that you took and be able to pull up memories that go beyond
0:33:02 just simply that time where you almost drowned in the tidal wave on New Year’s Eve.
0:33:05 When I smell barford reminds me of that night.
0:33:06 How’s that?
0:33:11 No, I’m trying to go for more pleasant.
0:33:17 The answer I’ve been hoping to get since I read your book is this.
0:33:24 It seems to me that you’re saying that the human mind has the ability to remember important
0:33:31 things and that’s why we forget stuff so that we’re not distracted or our hard disk is not
0:33:33 all used up.
0:33:39 But I’m telling you that where my car keys are and what my hotel room number is.
0:33:44 I know is important, but how come I cannot remember those things?
0:33:46 They’re important.
0:33:51 They’re very important and it is one of the most frustrating things, but the things that
0:33:54 we forget about that are important.
0:33:58 The problem is that we have so much competition in memory.
0:34:05 So if you’re not disciplined and I’m definitely not disciplined and you put your glasses or
0:34:10 your keys or your cell phone in random places as soon as you get distracted, what happens
0:34:16 is that you have now multiple places and where you have memories for different places that
0:34:19 you put your keys at different times.
0:34:21 So the issue isn’t where did I put my keys?
0:34:27 It’s where did I last put my keys because there’s all these other memories of where you put
0:34:28 your keys yesterday, right?
0:34:33 If you’re going around traveling, giving talks to big audiences, which I’m sure you
0:34:39 do, it’s not what’s the number of my hotel room, but what’s the number of today’s hotel
0:34:42 room as opposed to the one I had last week.
0:34:47 And these are fairly arbitrary bits of information and they’re competing with all these other
0:34:53 similar memories and often we don’t pay enough attention to them even though they are important.
0:34:59 And so all those factors lead you to get something that’s highly forgettable.
0:35:04 And this is more the lowercase F benign forgetting like retrieval failures.
0:35:10 Tell me if this is what you call a scheme and listeners scheme is a positive in this sense.
0:35:12 It’s not like a Donald Trump thing.
0:35:15 This is a scheme to help you remember.
0:35:21 So I used to go to SFO all the time, like once a week I used to park in SFO.
0:35:30 And I came up with this scheme that no matter what, I would always park on the bottom floor.
0:35:35 Even if it was the opposite side of the parking lot, I would always park on the bottom floor.
0:35:40 That way, whenever I return, I would always know it’s on the bottom floor.
0:35:43 You don’t have to remember all the floors and all the colors.
0:35:45 Is that what you call a scheme?
0:35:48 Or you think are you talking about a schema?
0:35:49 A schema.
0:35:50 Sorry.
0:35:51 That’s okay.
0:35:52 I do like scheme.
0:35:55 I wish memory readers used more terms like that.
0:35:56 Yes.
0:36:02 Actually, so you can think of what you’re talking about as a way of organizing information
0:36:03 and memory.
0:36:08 So you just have a rule that you use that you can go back to again and again.
0:36:14 And so my guess is if you just have that rule, you’ve simplified the playing field a lot.
0:36:18 And that makes it a lot easier to remember where you park your car while it’s on the
0:36:20 ground floor.
0:36:25 And so because you’ve reduced the amount that you have to remember, it makes it easier to
0:36:26 pull that information up.
0:36:32 And that’s the key to schemas in general, is there a tool for reducing the amount of
0:36:33 information you need to memorize.
0:36:34 Okay.
0:36:38 And so now you might as well explain chunking for us too.
0:36:43 To understand chunking, it first helps to just keep in mind that we have only a limited
0:36:46 amount of information that you can hold in your mind at a given time.
0:36:51 So if you tried to spell my name out, you just didn’t have any idea and I just gave
0:36:56 you all the letters of my name, you’d have a really hard time keeping all those letters
0:36:58 in mind.
0:37:03 But if I tell you just my name is Charan Ranganath and you just have two things to keep in mind,
0:37:05 well, that’s not so bad.
0:37:08 But those things don’t have a whole lot of meaning.
0:37:11 So you might actually store it as Charan Ranganath.
0:37:13 So it’s like five things.
0:37:18 But once you’ve read my book and once we’ve talked to become friends, now it’s just one
0:37:20 chunk in your mind.
0:37:26 So the same amount of information could be just far too much to hold in mind or just
0:37:31 the max of what you can hold in mind or something that you can easily hold in mind just depending
0:37:35 on how much you’re able to lock it in with your prior knowledge.
0:37:37 Up next on Remarkable People.
0:37:43 So you could find somebody who seems like they have a terrible memory or they seem like
0:37:46 they’re not very intelligent, put them in the right context and all of a sudden they
0:37:47 seem a lot better.
0:37:53 So, I don’t know, it’s a little bit of a, maybe I’ve bought into the whole Adam Grant
0:37:59 hidden potential thing, but I feel like there’s a lot that we don’t know about people and
0:38:04 I would definitely not encourage anyone to look at somebody who’s struggling to remember
0:38:07 something and say, “Well, that person’s not intelligent.”
0:38:16 Thank you to all our regular podcast listeners.
0:38:19 It’s our pleasure and honor to make the show for you.
0:38:25 If you find our show valuable, please do us a favor and subscribe, rate and review it.
0:38:31 Even better, forward it to a friend, a big mahalo to you for doing this.
0:38:36 You’re listening to Remarkable People with Guy Kawasaki.
0:38:43 Tell me that you have become dependent on Apple Tags.
0:38:52 I have bought them, but I have not yet remembered to actually set them up.
0:38:58 You’re asking this question is the first time in months that I’ve thought about it.
0:39:03 Because you know, Apple Tags really, they do tell you where your keys are and they beep
0:39:06 for you and they really help.
0:39:11 Because someone who is key location challenge, I’ll tell you, it’s a game changer.
0:39:18 I actually bought some for my glasses because glasses are the one that I lose all the time.
0:39:21 And I just haven’t taken the time to set them up.
0:39:30 Okay, so now many creativity experts say that it really helps to be creative and create
0:39:37 memories. If you write things down longhand, not type them, you have to write them down
0:39:38 longhand.
0:39:42 Is that like an old wives tales or there’s some truth to that?
0:39:43 I don’t know.
0:39:45 I don’t study creativity.
0:39:50 I know somebody, Indra Viscontas, who’s like really into this research and I would ask
0:39:51 her.
0:39:55 But wait, what about you for remembering things?
0:39:58 Is it better to type notes in a class or write them down?
0:40:03 I actually, there’s a study on this that was done that said that it was better to write
0:40:08 them down, but then another study did not replicate that finding.
0:40:14 So it’s not 100% clear, but I think the principle that you can see based on everything that’s
0:40:20 been done in memory research is if I were to just write down literally every word you
0:40:24 say and just barf it onto a piece of paper, that’s not helpful.
0:40:27 And in fact, it can be counterproductive.
0:40:31 But if I’m thinking about what you say and I go, aha, this is the remarkable part of
0:40:33 what he’s telling me.
0:40:38 And I write that down or I use my notes to say, hey, wait a minute, he mentioned this
0:40:42 thing about the surfing and then we talked about it previously.
0:40:44 This is something that he really likes to talk about.
0:40:49 And I just focus on those parts that are the most meaningful.
0:40:55 Now I’m actually enhancing my memory because the writing is focusing me on what’s unique
0:40:56 about this moment.
0:40:58 And that’s the key for everything.
0:41:03 Whether it’s writing notes, typing notes, taking pictures, it’s really all about focusing
0:41:08 you on what’s unique in the moment for memory.
0:41:13 And I imagine for writing down ideas, it’s a similar kind of thing because part of writing
0:41:16 things down by hand means slowing it down.
0:41:19 I don’t know about you, but I’ve almost forgotten how to handwrite.
0:41:22 So it’s so slow for me.
0:41:24 So I really have to think about what I’m going to write.
0:41:28 And I think if people are deliberative, that’s what really helps.
0:41:36 You discuss this person who became a memory superstar, the world’s greatest memory competition
0:41:37 or whatever it is.
0:41:40 So what explains people like that?
0:41:45 So there’s this whole group of people out there called memory athletes and they’ll get
0:41:51 into these competitions where they’re being asked to just memorize the order of a deck
0:41:58 of cards, for instance, or a series of names and faces that they’re just like endless.
0:42:03 And people learn these strategies, the interviews that I’ve seen with memory athletes, none
0:42:07 of them say, oh, I’ve been blessed with a great memory from birth.
0:42:08 They don’t say that.
0:42:13 What they say is that I’m just like anybody else, but I just learned these strategies
0:42:16 and I practiced them over and over again.
0:42:22 And I would argue, in fact, that we all have this capability that we use, but we just don’t
0:42:23 realize it.
0:42:28 So an example that I give in the book that I just love is LeBron James, for instance.
0:42:32 So LeBron says he has like a photographic memory.
0:42:38 And there’s these gorgeous YouTube videos of him actually calling out point by point
0:42:44 everything that’s going on and several plays in a row basketball game that he just played.
0:42:46 And it just corresponds beautifully.
0:42:51 You can see the videos side by side of his own recollections and they’re remarkably detailed.
0:42:57 But the thing is, is that he has such a beautiful memory for the game, such a beautiful knowledge
0:42:58 of the game and so much expertise.
0:43:05 And you can see this in chess experts, you can see this in bird experts, it’s that expertise
0:43:11 basically gives you these rich, rich schemas that you can use to encode less.
0:43:15 You actually can simplify the memory problem dramatically.
0:43:22 And so that’s what memory athletes do, is they learn strategies for memorizing decks
0:43:29 of cards and so forth that allow them to effortlessly pick up this new information.
0:43:34 In the case of LeBron James, is it the fact that LeBron James is a great basketball player
0:43:40 so he can have such detailed memories or he has a great memory so he can become a great
0:43:41 basketball player?
0:43:49 I believe that he’s put in the time to learn and to study the game.
0:43:56 And I would argue that he’s extraordinarily intelligent and capable of deploying that
0:43:57 information.
0:44:01 I only wish that I wasn’t an MRI when the outage occurred.
0:44:07 Then I would, you could see what happens to my hippocamos when I, when a podcast goes
0:44:09 off the rails like that.
0:44:10 You could see what part of my brain.
0:44:15 I actually bet I would have seen a huge spike in activity.
0:44:16 There was definitely no huge spike in interaction.
0:44:20 Maybe we have to start scanning you while you’re doing podcast interviews.
0:44:23 That would be a lot of fun.
0:44:26 That would be a little scary here.
0:44:29 Well, luckily, we’re going to see what we get.
0:44:30 Who knows?
0:44:36 But I have a backup recording in real time here locally so that should not be anything
0:44:38 too bad for us.
0:44:42 So we were talking about memory superstars and their normal people, what they have developed
0:44:43 these techniques.
0:44:44 Great.
0:44:49 But so my last question is that I think a lot of times when people see, I don’t know,
0:44:55 winners of the spelling bee or winners of this memory test, they equate that ability
0:45:02 to regurgitate or recall facts with intelligence.
0:45:09 Is that necessarily, like a good speller is intelligent or someone who can tell you the
0:45:12 order of a deck of cards?
0:45:17 Does that mean that person is smart or just can regurgitate stuff?
0:45:23 I believe that the concept of intelligence is stupid.
0:45:28 I just think this idea of intelligence, it just does it.
0:45:32 When you actually think about it as a neuroscientist, it just makes no sense.
0:45:36 Now there are people I know who believe in it in the field of neuroscience, but getting
0:45:42 back to your question, I think that, no, I would not use the ability to remember things
0:45:45 as an index of memory.
0:45:51 I think that there are correlations between what people do on tests of IQ and people’s
0:45:55 ability to remember certain facts and so forth and their ability to learn.
0:46:01 But part of it too is how interested are you, how capable are you of insulating yourselves
0:46:03 from the distractions?
0:46:06 How much are you willing to follow directions?
0:46:08 And that’s all part of it.
0:46:14 So you could find somebody who seems like they have a terrible memory or they seem like
0:46:17 they’re not very intelligent, put them in the right context, and all of a sudden they
0:46:18 seem a lot better.
0:46:24 So I don’t know, it’s a little bit of a, maybe I’ve bought into the whole Adam Grant
0:46:30 hidden potential thing, but I feel like there’s a lot that we don’t know about people and
0:46:35 I would definitely not encourage anyone to look at somebody who’s struggling to remember
0:46:38 something and say, well, that person’s not intelligent.
0:46:42 People can often remember everything, but understand nothing.
0:46:45 So it’s not necessarily that the two go together.
0:46:53 Well, but wouldn’t you say that so much of standardized tests is built on memory to remember
0:46:57 facts you scored higher on a, on a standardized test or an IQ test?
0:47:01 But does that really test intelligence?
0:47:06 There’s certain kinds of memory, which would be called semantic memory, which is your knowledge
0:47:08 about facts, for instance, knowledge about the world.
0:47:13 And that is what’s called crystallized intelligence.
0:47:18 And that is measured on some IQ tests, but it’s different from what people call fluid
0:47:26 intelligence, which is this ability to control distractions and stay focused and keep a lot
0:47:29 of information in mind at a given time.
0:47:34 And those abilities tend to change throughout our lifetime, which is why they call it fluid.
0:47:42 And that information is less tied to measures of memory, but people who are higher in fluid
0:47:46 intelligence tend to do better on tests of memory.
0:47:52 So this opens up a whole can of worms because like, why remember facts in a world where
0:47:54 there’s LLMs and stuff?
0:47:58 The fact is now so readily available.
0:48:03 So what does intelligence mean going forward in a world of AI?
0:48:06 I love to talk about AI almost.
0:48:10 You’re going to have to call me back on the show to talk about this again because I could
0:48:11 go on ad nausea.
0:48:17 I mean, I hear all these engineers go on about how AI has reached a point LLMs are like human
0:48:20 intelligence and blah, blah, blah.
0:48:27 They learn in a way that requires gobs of data and tons of electrical power.
0:48:33 So if you think about the carbon footprint of chat GPT, for instance, it’s huge estimates
0:48:41 of the human brain suggests that we use maybe something on the order of 10 to 20 Watts orders
0:48:43 of magnitude less, right?
0:48:45 So our brains are designed for efficiency.
0:48:47 It’s always less is more, less is more.
0:48:51 And so my phone has a photographic memory.
0:48:52 I don’t.
0:48:55 I process the information that’s important.
0:48:57 I process the information that’s meaningful.
0:49:02 And I can deploy that information extraordinarily quickly.
0:49:05 Chat GPT is trying to predict the next word.
0:49:07 I’m trying to predict what’s your point.
0:49:10 I’m trying to go to not the next word.
0:49:12 I’m trying to think about what’s the end point here.
0:49:15 Where are we going with this conversation?
0:49:17 It’s a completely different ball game.
0:49:22 And one of the things I’ve become interested in is people talk about, oh, generative AI
0:49:29 is going to kill human creativity and who knows where things will go, but humans create
0:49:34 from a weird array of lived experiences and interacting in the world.
0:49:37 What I mean by that is you’ve actually surfed.
0:49:39 Chat GPT hasn’t surfed, right?
0:49:41 It’s like Charlie don’t serve.
0:49:43 It’s a chat GPT hasn’t served.
0:49:46 Your memory of surfing will be different.
0:49:51 And if you were to incorporate that in a story, you can do so in a way that reflects
0:49:53 your lived experience.
0:49:58 Oh, my goodness.
0:50:00 This was a fun interview.
0:50:07 I love when you can ask an expert like Sharon really practical questions.
0:50:13 And as you can tell, I’m very curious about memory and forgetting and schemas and schemes
0:50:17 and chunking and taking notes.
0:50:23 So I hope you enjoyed this episode of Remarkable People with Sharon Ranganath.
0:50:28 I can even remember his name, Sharon Ranganath.
0:50:36 And if you ever get an MRI, man, I feel for you because it is a very disturbing experience.
0:50:41 And if this episode doesn’t help you that much, then if I were you, I would buy Apple
0:50:48 Tags and don’t forget to set them up, attach them to your keys, your wallet, your laptop.
0:50:55 I will even give you an official Guy Kawasaki power tip for Apple Tags, which is you go
0:51:01 and buy what’s called adhesive patches for glucose monitoring.
0:51:05 This is a little piece of adhesive that’s round and you can put your Apple Tag right
0:51:07 in the middle of it.
0:51:12 And it’s meant to stick things on your arm, but it’s great to stick on your laptop and
0:51:16 in your wallet and on little things.
0:51:19 That’s a power tip you get for listening to Remarkable People.
0:51:23 You will not get that tip anyplace else in podcasting.
0:51:25 I hope you enjoyed this episode.
0:51:27 Like I said, I hope you learned something.
0:51:31 And now it’s time to thank the Remarkable People team.
0:51:38 And that would be Madison Nismar, producer and co-author of Think Remarkable.
0:51:43 Do not forget to buy and read Think Remarkable.
0:51:45 There will be a test later.
0:51:49 And then there’s Tessa Nismar, our ACE researcher.
0:51:54 There’s Shannon Hernandez and Jeff C., our sound design mavens.
0:51:59 And then there’s Louise Magana, Alexis Nishimura and Fallon Yates.
0:52:05 We are the Remarkable People team and we’re helping you make a difference and remember
0:52:07 that you did.
0:52:18 Until next time, mahalo and aloha.

0:00:12 I’m Guy Kawasaki and this is Remarkable People.
0:00:15 Today we have with us Maureen Dunn.
0:00:21 She is a trailblazer in the field of neurodiversity and cognitive science.
0:00:26 She was trained at Oxford as she has dedicated over two decades to helping organizations harness
0:00:30 the power of neurodivergent talent.
0:00:32 Maureen’s journey is an inspiring one.
0:00:37 She was the first community college graduate to be named a Rhodes Scholar.
0:00:43 And she has carved out an exceptional career as an advisor to corporations, universities,
0:00:45 and government officials.
0:00:50 This includes the Lego Foundation, Cornell University, and members of Congress.
0:00:57 Her work has been featured in Forbes, Bloomberg, New York Times, and other prestigious publications.
0:01:03 In her book The Neurodiversity Edge, Maureen presents a groundbreaking framework embracing
0:01:06 the strengths of neurodiversion individuals.
0:01:10 These are people with autism, ADHD, and dyslexia.
0:01:16 Maureen’s mission is to challenge the status quo and break society’s neurotypical script.
0:01:21 She wants to empower organizations to tap into the vast potential of neurodiversion talent.
0:01:29 Join us as we learn about the neurodiversity edge and unlock a world of untapped possibilities.
0:01:31 I’m Guy Kawasaki.
0:01:36 This is Remarkable People, and now here is the remarkable Maureen Dunn.
0:01:46 Let’s start with something very basic.
0:01:50 Can you give us the definition of neurodiversity?
0:01:59 If you go back to a little bit in history, it started as part of an autism rights movement
0:02:04 back in the late 1990s.
0:02:11 The term originated by a sociologist, an Australian sociologist named Judy Singer.
0:02:18 And since then, it’s really evolved into a much broader global movement.
0:02:24 And while it first started in acknowledging that there are different ways of thinking
0:02:31 about autism and Asperger’s Syndrome, and the value that neurodivergent people bring
0:02:39 to our communities, to our societies, to our companies, it’s now since evolved to encompass
0:02:49 a pretty broad range of neurodiversion conditions, including ADHD, including dyslexia, synthesisia,
0:02:55 hyperlexia, is a pretty broad range of individuals that fit under the neurodiversity umbrella.
0:03:05 But I think the crux of how we are defining neurodiversity now is it’s really a paradigm
0:03:15 shift from how we’ve been seeing things like autism and dyslexia and ADHD for many years,
0:03:25 which has been a purely deficit-based perspective, and seeing the rich diversity of abilities
0:03:34 and strengths and human cognitive abilities that come along with neurodiversity, and seeing
0:03:41 it through this sort of strength-based lens and trying to get the world to understand
0:03:47 the limitations of a purely what we would call a purely deficit-paced model.
0:03:52 And of course, you’ve probably, I’m sure, really aware of there’s a pretty high overlap
0:03:57 between successful entrepreneurs even and neurodivergent people.
0:04:00 So there’s that sort of interesting link as well.
0:04:06 If I were a venture capitalist, I would only invest in neurodiverse entrepreneurs, correct
0:04:07 frankly.
0:04:08 But that’s…
0:04:09 Well, that’s amazing.
0:04:14 Well, then, yeah, we’re definitely peeps here, because I think a lot of people need
0:04:18 to appreciate and understand that most of…
0:04:24 One thing I bring up in my book is there’s a disproportionate number of innovations throughout
0:04:33 history that have been driven by neurodivergent innovators, and yet there’s such a large
0:04:38 number of neurodivergent people that have been left out of our economy, and trying to
0:04:45 reconcile that discrepancy, right, is something that I think we need to, on a moral and functional
0:04:49 and economic level, be having more conversations about.
0:04:55 Since we’ve already touched upon this kind of deficit orientation, let’s go the other
0:04:56 extreme.
0:05:06 And maybe just for ADHD, dyslexia, autism, and synesthesia, can you just briefly explain
0:05:14 what they are and what are the possible positives of those kind of diagnosis?
0:05:15 Sure.
0:05:16 Absolutely.
0:05:17 I think that’s really important.
0:05:23 I think you see some of these conditions from a purely deficit-based perspective, and one
0:05:29 thing I get in my book is just we’re still at an infancy understanding some of these
0:05:34 conditions where there’s still a lot of cognitive biases, but there’s all these amazing strengths
0:05:40 that are critical to the success of organizations, and especially where we’re going with the
0:05:41 future of work.
0:05:46 I believe it really, our collective future depends on having a lot of unique problem solvers,
0:05:53 and we don’t want to have all members of a team be perceptually and cognitively correlated.
0:05:58 We want people that are seeing things from different angles and pointing out new paths
0:06:02 where we could be doing things differently, and that’s in the best interest of corporations.
0:06:08 And so to drill that down a little bit further, if we focus on, say, ADHD, so I’ll give some
0:06:14 examples from ADHD, autism, and dyslexia, and again, I want to really reinforce the
0:06:18 point that there’s actually a lot more overlap and nuance than people realize.
0:06:24 There are so many people, including myself, that don’t neatly fit into one box, and that’s
0:06:29 sort of another conversation to have, which is, I think, super important.
0:06:37 But for people, say, that are ADHD-ers, you could look at ADHD from this perspective like
0:06:45 a very deficit-based lens where people are really impulsive and thinking about the aspects
0:06:51 that are the challenges that go along with ADHD, but there’s also been a body of research
0:06:59 that shows that ADHD-ers, because of the way their brains work, that there’s less boundaries
0:07:04 around more conventional scripts or ways of doing things.
0:07:08 And so there’s a number of studies, which you probably don’t have time to go into in
0:07:14 detail today, but happy to elaborate later, where there’s less what we would call design
0:07:21 fixation, where there’s a lot of creativity, there’s a lot of thinking that are outside
0:07:27 the kind of standard boundaries that a lot of neurotypical people maybe end up intuitively
0:07:29 sticking to.
0:07:39 And one example is a study that Holly White had led, where they looked at ADHD college
0:07:46 students, and it was a task related to trying to imagine and create different types of alien
0:07:50 fruits that might exist on another planet.
0:07:56 And so neurotypical people came up with some innovative ideas, but they’re much closer
0:08:07 to more conventional existing ways of thinking about different fruits, and the ADHD-ers came
0:08:13 up with just a different level of novelty with fruits that really don’t exist on our
0:08:14 planet.
0:08:20 So the idea there was that they weren’t as constrained by some of the boundaries of social
0:08:27 scripts, or they have a sort of broader repertoire of material to draw upon.
0:08:30 So that’s just one example.
0:08:37 And then for autism, there’s a lot of extraordinary strengths that relate to detailed thinking,
0:08:41 hyper-focused, which also sometimes overlaps with ADHD.
0:08:49 But the type, again, I think a lot of the neurodivergent populations, there’s a tendency to solve
0:08:54 problems in unique ways, because they’re coming at these solution pathways from different
0:08:57 perceptual cognitive and analytical tendencies.
0:09:02 And then itself, in my opinion, is extremely valuable, especially when you think about
0:09:10 the future of work and where things are going with AI and a lot of automation is just having
0:09:16 individuals that are at least part of the conversation included on teams that may notice a new path
0:09:24 of exploration or innovation that other people may not notice because they’re coming from
0:09:30 that is problem-solving from new angles, that that’s inherently valuable.
0:09:32 And how about people with dyslexia?
0:09:36 It’s absolutely, absolutely hugely important, I think.
0:09:41 And I’m sure you’re quite aware of Richard Branson’s been a huge advocate for dyslexia
0:09:48 and has been very vocal about how his way of thinking, as in his opinion, been absolutely
0:09:52 essential to his success as an entrepreneur.
0:09:57 And there’s been a growing body research with dyslexic thinking of how there’s a lot of
0:10:04 alignment with the kinds of skills that are predicted to be critical in the future with
0:10:09 being able to connect dots between different fields.
0:10:17 I think a lot of neurodivergent conditions end up overlapping with what I would call nonlinear
0:10:20 thinking and intuitive leaps of logic.
0:10:24 I think that type of thinking is going to personally in my personal view is that’s going
0:10:30 to become increasingly more important, especially as automation starts to become more prevalent
0:10:37 in our society and in companies where a lot of the generative AI solutions still are chained
0:10:43 into a lot of very impressive processing speed, but still extremely linear tasks that are
0:10:45 being taken over.
0:10:50 And I think there’s this whole other domain of thinking where neurodivergent people and
0:10:58 neurotypical people could really work well together to cover some of the more human aspects
0:11:05 or what I would call the limitations of AI that overlap with these intuitive leaps of
0:11:14 logic and an insight and the nonlinear domain of thinking that is really difficult to replicate
0:11:18 from with current the current AI paradigm.
0:11:25 How about you burst the bubble that many people seems to me think that there is a relationship
0:11:30 between neurodiversity and intelligence.
0:11:37 And I’m focusing on the negative assumption that these neurodiverse people, they’re not
0:11:38 intelligent.
0:11:41 Does one thing have anything to do with the other?
0:11:46 I’m glad you brought that up because that’s something that I think has been an inaccurate
0:11:54 way of thinking about this, whereas the degree of neurodivergence and intelligence, there
0:11:56 really isn’t overlap.
0:12:03 A lot of people hear of someone who is autistic or an ADHD or dyslexic and they make false
0:12:09 assumptions about that person’s capabilities or intelligence and it’s really a separate
0:12:10 thing.
0:12:12 Neurodiverse and people are just people like anyone else, right?
0:12:18 They have strengths and weaknesses, they tend to have more spiky profiles from when compared
0:12:25 to neurotypical people, but there should be no judgment about abilities and intelligence.
0:12:32 So an autistic person, for instance, is just a huge, huge range in terms of a spectrum
0:12:38 of abilities and challenges and just like anyone else, we’re just people and there’s
0:12:42 some people that are extremely intellectually gifted and there’s other people that have
0:12:49 intellectual disabilities, but there should be no presumption about what someone can and
0:12:50 can’t do.
0:12:55 And so in something I really feel passionate about that I’ve got into detail in my book
0:13:01 as being a cognitive scientist, of course too, is like trying to educate people about
0:13:08 some of these unconscious biases that really, I think, get in the way of giving people fair
0:13:13 opportunities and I guess I’m trying to spread the message of if we can all just become more
0:13:20 aware of these unconscious biases, we could go in the direction of having just a more
0:13:26 productive and functional world and I even call some species of unconscious biases, I
0:13:31 call them invisible cockroaches, they’re very difficult to become aware of and very difficult
0:13:37 to get a grasp of what you do about them, but two really big examples is there’s one
0:13:43 is called the overconfidence effect and that’s a really common one and I’ve seen it in practice
0:13:49 even with large corporations where I was brought in to consult on a multi-billion dollar
0:13:56 brand where that played out where there was marketing ad focused on autistic people and
0:14:00 they didn’t include anyone in the community that had lived experience and there was this
0:14:07 sort of, I guess, the overconfidence that hey, this is a global award-winning marketing
0:14:12 team so like they felt like they really knew what they were doing, but they ended up releasing
0:14:17 an ad that was actually ended up being extremely offensive and then I was brought in to kind
0:14:23 of do some damage control and so I think what companies need to understand, this is a growing
0:14:29 market segment for them, it’s actually a really huge proportion of our global population
0:14:37 and we’re talking about at minimum 15 to 20% of the global population that identify as
0:14:42 neurodivergent and it’s important to get this right and then even the younger generations
0:14:46 like Generation C, for instance, there’s been some surveys including one from Zen Business
0:14:57 where over 50% of Gen Z identify as being part of the neurodiversity umbrella, I think
0:15:04 it was like 31% so that they identify as definitely being neurodivergent and like 20%, somewhat
0:15:05 neurodivergent.
0:15:09 Of course, there’s some complexities there of identification versus diagnosis, but still
0:15:17 it says a lot that this is an important topic for all companies I think are going to need
0:15:23 to really take this more seriously because it’s just becoming increasingly important
0:15:29 and then there’s also a kind of bias called the availability bias which I think really
0:15:37 was an important one to become aware of because it’s the bias where we all tend to default
0:15:47 to the information that we most readily have available in our mental repertoire or experience
0:15:52 and sometimes that unfortunately ends up reinforcing stereotypes and so I think like the goal is
0:16:00 like to try to make front and center people that actually really don’t fit into the traditional
0:16:06 stereotypes because I think that’s been a huge barrier where especially with women because
0:16:14 I think a lot of the initial data and diagnostic tools were based on Caucasian boys and then
0:16:18 the way in which some of these conditions manifests in women are actually pretty different
0:16:23 and so there’s been so many women that have not been getting the support they need or
0:16:28 been flying under the radar and so I think just becoming more aware and I think their
0:16:35 strategies to become better at this at minimum like questioning yourself, “Hey, okay, did
0:16:41 two or three people I met that were ADHD or autistic or dyslexic?”
0:16:46 That’s not necessarily representative of the community as a whole and becoming more aware
0:16:47 of that.
0:16:54 There’s this really rich chapistry of ways in which neurodiversity manifests itself and
0:17:00 part of my book I really try hard to bring up some interesting examples and drawings
0:17:06 and my hope is to like get people to really appreciate and have a broader understanding
0:17:14 of neurodiversity and have a genuine appreciation and empathy for the gifts that come along
0:17:23 with neurodiversity and just get outside these sort of, I don’t know, more very narrow understandings
0:17:32 of these different typologies that maybe are causing barriers for many people that don’t
0:17:47 necessarily fit one box or another extremely well but nevertheless identify as neurodivergent.
0:17:56 You touched upon this briefly but it seems that until this perfect world where neurodiversity
0:18:06 is accepted if not celebrated, it seems that diagnosis is very important and I want you
0:18:15 to explain to me how people become diagnosed with these neurodivergent kind of conditions
0:18:22 and I think in regular life you go to somebody’s house and that his or her bookshelf, all the
0:18:27 red books are together, all the white books are together, all the green books are together
0:18:33 and you make this like instant diagnosis, “Oh, this person must be OCD.”
0:18:38 So exactly how should diagnosis be done?
0:18:45 Yeah, it’s a great question and one thing I think a lot about is I feel like even though
0:18:49 we’ve made so much progress like in the cognitive brain sciences, I still feel like we’re at
0:18:55 the infancy in some of that because so many of the diagnostic instruments are still somewhat
0:18:56 subjective.
0:19:03 There’s observational options but if you go way back, especially for autism for instance,
0:19:09 there’s been a bias towards white Caucasian boys that a lot of the research has initially
0:19:15 done, I think it’s been improving over time but what I would want to answer in your question
0:19:24 I would want to really focus on is that I feel like there’s so much more nuance and complexity
0:19:30 and overlap between even typologies where there’s a lot of people that are searching
0:19:36 for their sort of tribe sort of speak and they don’t necessarily fit neatly into one
0:19:42 category of another even if they’ve been diagnosed with one or more typologies and I feel we
0:19:46 might be in a really different place say 10 years from now where there’s an explanation
0:19:52 for people even like me that never fit into one diagnostic category really well and maybe
0:19:58 that’s too long of a conversation for this episode but there’s a lot more overlap of
0:20:07 different interesting you know talents and ways of thinking that go beyond one diagnostic
0:20:14 category and so there’s a lot of overlap with like conceptual synthesisia and hyperlexia
0:20:20 and there’s a lot more especially women for instance where they don’t fit really neatly
0:20:27 into an autism diagnosis or any DHG diagnosis at the extremes but that there’s sometimes
0:20:34 being diagnosed with both but there’s true skill sets are best represented at the intersections
0:20:41 of some of these different typologies and I feel like our science is not quite there
0:20:47 to best understand some of these nuances and complexities and you know I’m hoping we get
0:20:52 there over over time but there there’s increasingly of a lot of people that are being diagnosed
0:20:59 with one or more typologies and they don’t necessarily perfectly fit into one or the
0:21:04 other and they’re best explained by like the ways in which there’s synergies or interactions
0:21:11 between these different typologies so let’s pretend that parents actually we don’t have
0:21:20 to pretend this is true so parents are listening to this and they say oh my kid is always sitting
0:21:26 in the corner of the kindergarten classroom he’s not socializing he’s not relating do
0:21:35 you think he’s autistic or my kid is a very slow reader maybe he has ADHD but how do you
0:21:42 know when it’s a real thing versus maybe it’s just a teenage boy who’s bored with your curriculum
0:21:48 and that’s why he can’t focus it’s not him it’s you it’s your curriculum like how do
0:21:54 you decide what’s going on it’s a great question and it’s one of the reasons why I’m a really
0:22:02 strong advocate for what I would call universal design where we move in this direction where
0:22:09 we design neuro inclusive environments where even regardless of diagnosis like we’re moving
0:22:15 this direction where everybody can just be more productive and it’s not necessarily by
0:22:21 diagnosis as much as whatever support needs people have that there is no shame if you
0:22:27 need to use noise canceling headphones or there’s more sensory friendly environments
0:22:32 I think that’s where I think even companies will get the most out of all their employees
0:22:39 but yeah but from a parent perspective I think there’s still a lot of progress that needs
0:22:44 to be made in the schools there’s still usually a structure depending on what school we’re
0:22:50 talking about some are more rigid than others in terms of where there needs to be that sort
0:22:57 of okay which box are what are the exact needs this child needs and what box does someone
0:23:03 someone fit into and generally what I’ve seen is that there’s you know not an issue with
0:23:10 maybe a child that that is diagnosed as say ADHD but that doesn’t explain the full story
0:23:18 and part of what I do then is try to be an advocate to and use my expertise to create
0:23:25 a more nuanced plan and attend some of the IEP’s and every child’s different so just
0:23:32 advocating for what’s really going to work for that particular child and sometimes the
0:23:37 diagnostic process is imperfect I would say too we’re still an infancy I think in this
0:23:44 field where so much of what’s happening is still somewhat subjective and it’s helpful
0:23:50 as a starting point to get the resources that and support that’s needed but I suspect that
0:23:55 if I had to imagine like where things might be even 10 years from now I think we might
0:24:01 have just much more explanations for people that don’t as neatly fit into one box or another
0:24:07 or there’s overlap and the complexity is there is I think that there’s like these stereotypes
0:24:12 and to me that and that’s something I get in my book a lot is just I think one of the
0:24:18 difficulties is to combat these cognitive biases and stereotypes where people tend to
0:24:23 is just how our brains work we tend to desire these mental shortcuts and the one or two
0:24:32 people we each might have met that are autistic or ADHD or you know I’ve seen in the movies
0:24:37 then when we’re going through a hiring process like that ends up unfortunately factoring
0:24:43 into some of these decisions and so a lot of what I do is trying to get people to be
0:24:49 aware of the dangers of that and just how incredibly rich the neurodiversity community
0:24:55 on it really is and the amazing skill sets that come along with neurodiversity and the
0:25:03 importance of thinking through in my opinion all companies should be planning for the future
0:25:08 and future-proofing the organizations not just from the perspective of integrating technology
0:25:13 and AI but taking it really seriously and thinking about the human resources perspective
0:25:19 to and how do you recruit unique talent and how do you recruit talent that are thinking
0:25:24 along lines that are going to be operating out as outside of these sort of conceptual
0:25:32 maps that AI are going to be by far more proficient right in human beings and yeah and how we
0:25:40 can all work together right a couple minutes ago you use the term IEP what is an IEP yeah
0:25:46 it’s an individual education plan so so all you know by law by law all students are required
0:25:53 to what we would call a free and appropriate education the idea there is is is that being
0:26:01 a more inclusive environment as far as I could tell I did not notice one word in your book
0:26:10 about treatment or drugs or concerta or at all or anything like this are you basically
0:26:17 saying we should accept neurodiversity and not try to fix people but rather accommodate
0:26:23 people’s special needs is there a place for quote unquote treatment and drugs it’s great
0:26:30 it’s a great question like yeah I just to clarify I think this is an important point
0:26:41 is that I’m not saying in any way that accommodations again there’s this huge spectrum of strengths
0:26:46 and challenges within the neurodiversity community and I think it’s important to you know it’s
0:26:52 always a case by case basis and there’s each individual is going to be different and I’m
0:26:58 not in any way saying that those supports aren’t important I do think that they absolutely
0:27:04 are and then there’s also just laws right that protect people that have disabilities
0:27:11 and you know making sure that appropriate education and supports are being met but I
0:27:16 think that what I tried to focus on in my book and then there’s more tools on the online
0:27:22 version that get into some more specifics and how to go about that but what I try to focus
0:27:29 on is what I believe just from my 20 plus years of working in this space is that that’s
0:27:34 the support needs and there’s varying support needs but that’s absolutely important so I’m
0:27:39 not in any way dismissing that but I think that even within that it’s really important
0:27:45 that there’s this like cultural shift and paradigm shift where we don’t by default
0:27:54 see neurodivergent profiles as being not as valuable as neurotypical profiles and
0:27:59 throughout history too I mean there’s been so many of our innovators so many entrepreneurs
0:28:06 as I am sure you know as well whether they’re disclosing or not certainly fit a neurodivergent
0:28:12 profile and there has been a disproportionate number of innovations that have come from
0:28:18 the neurodiversity community and yet there’s been also a disproportionate number of neurodivergent
0:28:22 people that have been completely left out of the economy with this just ridiculously high
0:28:29 unemployment rate and so I try to bring up just that discrepancy in how can we as a society
0:28:37 go about trying to welcome and integrate and authentically include people that have some
0:28:45 pretty really amazing skill sets that haven’t been tapped into and so there’s varying support
0:28:51 needs and so I’m not in any way shape or form dismissing that I think that’s certainly part
0:28:55 of this it’s part of this equation but I think it’s one of the challenges is that we need
0:29:01 to acknowledge that there is a really broad range like I say that the consistency is that
0:29:07 most neurodivergent people have what we call Spike Lee profiles where there’s in some cases
0:29:15 more extreme talents and abilities and then more challenges as well but I believe personally
0:29:21 that if we take a strength based perspective regardless of where people fit in the neurodiversity
0:29:29 umbrella that I think that still goes a long way to helping people actualize their full
0:29:34 potential and self potential and some people will need more support than others listen
0:29:41 I realize what I’m going to talk about next is on the fringe of paranoia but I’m just
0:29:48 so curious about what you’d say because much of your book is about accepting people for
0:29:54 who they are and what they are and looking at people’s you know what they bring to the
0:30:01 party as opposed to what they be missing according to your personal specifications now it seems
0:30:08 to me that right now in America there’s a large number of politicians who they just
0:30:18 cannot accept LGBTQ plus black and brown people etc etc basically diverse people aren’t you
0:30:25 afraid that they’re coming for the neurodiverse people to it’s not going to be just your race
0:30:31 your color your creed your religion your sexual orientation pretty soon they’re going to try
0:30:38 to do away with neurodiversity sure that’s I mean and I know I know if you’ve noticed
0:30:45 I’m on the side I’m an elected official myself I don’t know if you you saw that I mean I’m
0:30:51 I’m a trustee at a community college at the community college I got my started at I graduate
0:30:57 high school early and then I’ve been involved in the state national levels in elected positions
0:31:05 and so I’ve been forced into this arena and no more about it than I intended to I suppose
0:31:10 and yeah the country is pretty polarized when we get into a lot of issues around especially
0:31:16 around DEI and I guess from my perspective is I’m so passionate about the space that
0:31:22 I’m just going to keep trying to influence as many people as I can and I know it’s a
0:31:28 really difficult environment politically for that because of all the DEI stuff but
0:31:32 then neurodiversity is an interesting thing because it affects everyone it’s not just
0:31:39 so long political lines it’s not just like every every race every ethnicity it’s something
0:31:45 that has touched I think everyone as well so there’s that common ground but I do think
0:31:52 that it’s something that I certainly think about a lot and it becomes I think that much
0:31:58 more important that there’s people in the community you know neurodivergent people
0:32:03 that are in leadership positions that are very visible they’re at least at the table
0:32:10 having a voice right in some of these conversations I think that’s absolutely critical and also
0:32:15 I would take it as far as to say that it’s not just about the DEI paradigm but it’s
0:32:22 also there’s a lot of unique ways of thinking or seeing things from different angles you
0:32:27 know within the neurodiversity community where maybe even in our political institutions
0:32:35 where there’s been a lot of inertia or innovation stagnation due to groupthink and some of the
0:32:41 social dynamics that come into play of course in that arena and just even including one
0:32:48 or two neurodivergent people into the equation in my opinion just could change the structure
0:32:53 some of the conversations we’re having and start thinking along the lines of okay maybe
0:32:58 there’s other avenues we haven’t thought about before because I just find a lot of neurodivergent
0:33:05 people they’re not quite as bound to the same social scripts or boundaries that a lot of
0:33:12 people intuitively feel they have to stick within and I just think that’s a healthy part
0:33:18 of a healthy and necessary part of our democracy especially considering where we’re at right
0:33:24 at this like current point in our history I think it’s so important that we have problem
0:33:30 solvers involved in these conversations that are maybe less concerned about social status
0:33:36 and and able to talk about some of the problems that we’re experiencing from like a more pure
0:33:43 rational how do we solve these problems and it’s not easy to do because of all the cognitive
0:33:49 biases but I do think that our world would be a more functional place and just a better
0:33:56 place for everyone if we can welcome neurodiversity into all these important conversations.
0:34:07 I’ll tell you a little personal story my son was diagnosed professionally not just us amateurs
0:34:18 with both ADHD and dyslexia and this dyslexia association came to his school for parents
0:34:25 night and they set up these exercises where you use mirrors on text and stuff and they
0:34:31 were trying to make you understand that you read this paragraph of text you can just linearly
0:34:39 read and using these mirrors and other optical things it shows you what a dyslexic sees and
0:34:45 I gotta tell you Maureen I was brought to tears that you try to tell your son or your
0:34:51 daughter focus more you know try harder and then you go and you do an exercise like that
0:34:57 and you see that it’s not a matter of trying harder or focusing it’s just completely different
0:35:03 it was a shock to me it literally brought me to tears that’s really fascinating yeah
0:35:09 and I think part of my motivation to with my book I’m hoping anyway to open the eyes
0:35:14 especially leaders and people and just decision making positions where maybe it challenges
0:35:21 some other assumptions there’s sometimes like entirely different ways of thinking about
0:35:30 things and problem solving and these a lot of people are used to living comfortably very
0:35:36 much outside of the box of how things are currently done and I think to really reap
0:35:45 the value of that I think we as a culture have to be more tolerant and open-minded to
0:35:52 understanding that maybe we don’t understand everything and maybe there is better ways to
0:35:58 go about doing things or at least be open-minded to have these conversations and I also think
0:36:04 from what I found in the companies I’ve worked with and the experiences I’ve had across
0:36:11 organizations and government institutions and political institutions and social enterprises
0:36:19 is just I think that just when we can engage in what I would call complementary cognition
0:36:26 where we really can embrace all kinds of minds and work collaboratively and there be that
0:36:32 complementary where not everyone has to be the same I think that’s where I think we’re
0:36:38 going to make the most progress and but it is a very different way of thinking I think
0:36:47 in that regard step number one is to separate intelligence from diversity because I bet you
0:36:53 a lot of people see diversity and think lack of intelligence and then they say to themselves
0:37:01 why would we bring in people who are not intelligent into this cognition system and there goes
0:37:07 that absolutely and that’s just a complete misunderstanding of neurodiversity and it’s
0:37:13 one of the things they bring up in in the introduction of my book is to say intelligence
0:37:19 or assumptions about what you know one can and cannot do and capabilities is completely
0:37:24 independent of a neurodivergent profile and I’m sure you’ve know been given your background
0:37:30 and being in Silicon Valley as long as you have there’s a lot of really super successful
0:37:36 entrepreneurs that are neurodivergent but I think that one of my goals is to try to
0:37:42 make some of these concepts and ideas more mainstream because I still think there is
0:37:49 a large percent percentage of the world that doesn’t quite understand that you can have
0:37:56 a neurodivergent profile and being extremely gifted and that’s not that uncommon you could
0:38:02 be autistic for instance and be extremely intellectually gifted or you could have an
0:38:08 intellectual disability a lot of people don’t quite understand the nuance of that.
0:38:16 But Maureen being in Silicon Valley I would urge you to be a little cautious there because
0:38:26 you don’t want the thinking to be my son my daughter has these neurodivergence characteristics
0:38:32 therefore he or she is the next Steve Jobs because that’s setting them up for failure
0:38:38 too right you know you can be neurodivergent and live a good life you don’t have to be
0:38:44 Steve Jobs to to make up for your diversity or absolutely absolutely and I think it’s
0:38:51 communicating that wherever someone falls on the neurodivergent spectrum is every human
0:39:00 being deserves to be valued and treated with a sense of dignity but also sending the message
0:39:06 of that some of these stereotypes that have been harmful in the past are also inactive
0:39:14 where it is possible for someone to be ADHD or dyslexia or ADHD and it’s pretty common
0:39:20 in entrepreneurship circles there’s not necessarily an intellectual disability like getting that
0:39:26 across but at the same time truly appreciating the full spectrum of neurodiversity and the
0:39:30 richness diversity that comes along with that and that everyone deserves to be treated with
0:39:33 dignity and to find a meaningful job.
0:39:40 Don’t get me wrong we have used the example of Richard Branson and once Henry Winkler
0:39:46 came to speak to my son’s school so we’ve used those kinds of examples to show you
0:39:52 know what you’re not a loser because you’re neurodiverse there’s people like Richard Branson
0:40:00 who have succeeded but that’s different than saying you’ve got to be a Richard Branson.
0:40:07 You’re absolutely absolutely and I think how I think about this is it is more of just trying
0:40:16 to help people come terms with just having a strategy to rather than focus only on their
0:40:21 deficits which is how many people have been trained to think about their neurodiversity
0:40:28 all their whole life is to just focus more on what am I good at it doesn’t mean I’m
0:40:33 going to be a Steve Jobs it doesn’t mean I’m going to be Richard Branson there shouldn’t
0:40:40 be that expectation but I think everybody benefits from having a more holistic view
0:40:45 of themselves to say okay you know what I’m just like any other person I’ve got strengths
0:40:50 and weaknesses maybe my profile is a little bit more spiky and there’s good you know there’s
0:40:56 some good to that and there’s some challenges to that but just having a really honest examination
0:41:02 of what where those strengths and challenges are and I feel like I fear that sometimes
0:41:09 the negatives and the challenges and the deficits get so much attention that then people don’t
0:41:15 ever learn to leverage their strengths to have the life that they want and have a meaningful
0:41:20 career but I agree with you it’s important to like be careful not to send that message
0:41:25 of okay your nerd version so that means you should be in Silicon Valley and you should
0:41:30 be like this I don’t know you’re the next Steve Jobs no so I’m not saying that I think
0:41:36 it’s more of just there’s such a large unemployment rates hey there’s more we could be doing there
0:41:43 to just tap into these amazing talents that so many people that are just not actualizing
0:41:48 their self potential and should be and could be really contributing at a different level
0:41:55 up next on remarkable people I think there’s more opportunity than maybe ever before where
0:42:00 that cognitive diversity is really a competitive edge I think to corporations and so getting
0:42:06 parents and advocates and employers to see that perspective I think is crucial and then
0:42:12 helping to increasingly develop those opportunity pathways to make that happen I think is going
0:42:22 to be a game changer thank you to all our regular podcast listeners it’s our pleasure
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0:42:43 for doing this you’re listening to remarkable people with guy Kawasaki explain to us how
0:42:53 we can decipher whether diverse neural diverse inclusion is authentic or inauthentic in
0:42:58 an organization that’s a great question so in my research one of the things I’ve found
0:43:04 over many years is that there’s certainly more attention on neurodiversity right then
0:43:10 there was in the past and there’s a lot of good progress that has been made but sometimes
0:43:16 unfortunately there’s been more attention than there should be on this what I would
0:43:23 call check the box approaches where okay we can now advertise we have X number of neurodivergent
0:43:29 people that we’ve hired and that doesn’t really move the needle in terms of creating the kind
0:43:35 of neurodivergent friendly cultures at a deeper level where those organizations are
0:43:43 actually going to really truly benefit from the talents than many neurodivergent people
0:43:47 bring to the table and so I talk in my book a lot about I actually have a pyramid I call
0:43:53 a pyramid of neuro inclusion where I put psychological safety and transparent communication
0:43:59 at the sort of base layer because I’ve worked with organizations where they’re actually doing
0:44:05 seem to be doing some great work with instituting sensory friendly policies and flexible working
0:44:11 policies and doing some good things but if they’re still bullying going on if there’s
0:44:16 still if there’s not really integrity in terms of like how they’re codifying policies and
0:44:22 then what’s happening on an everyday basis is still not going to be the kind of organizational
0:44:29 culture where I think anyone can do their best most productive work and certainly neurodivergent
0:44:34 people you’re not going to get the most out of neurodivergent people and been focused
0:44:42 on that paradigm and the importance of doing the deeper work at a sort of DNA level of
0:44:47 change where I think going through that process where all organizations are really going to
0:44:55 have a competitive edge going into the future and also really be able to leverage the unique
0:45:02 talents and strengths of neurodivergent people as well but also create a culture where everybody
0:45:09 is going to be happier and more productive and not working in the mailroom with a master’s
0:45:16 degree as your book absolutely which yeah there’s unfortunately far too many examples
0:45:24 of that right yeah so if I’m a parent listening to this or I’m a person with neurodiversity
0:45:31 just summarize for me what should be my perspective what should be my best practices what should
0:45:40 I do to live a fulfilling life as a parent as a parent or a person yeah just my experience
0:45:44 because I’ve also been heavily involved in higher ed and creating these neurodiversity
0:45:51 friendly opportunity pathways leading into meaningful work which so starting earlier
0:45:57 I think so also incredibly important but I would say that as a parent I think it’s really
0:46:07 important to support your child in better understanding and supporting a process going
0:46:17 through where’s my child going to best able to belong whether it’s college or a internship
0:46:22 and a lot of things in my experience a lot of things go to go together so a lot of college
0:46:29 students end up doing paid internships and the goal the ultimate goal is to develop a
0:46:37 portfolio of skills and learn how to navigate what can be tricky because given the biases
0:46:43 in that of where’s that first job that’s going to be really a good fit that’s a meaningful
0:46:49 career opportunity and then what one of the things I’ve been working on is I have a program
0:46:56 where we have a support team that continues to support students as they graduate from
0:47:03 college or a certificate program or apprenticeship and help them through like those paid internships
0:47:09 and first jobs and developing these portfolio of skillsets to show employers but I think
0:47:14 a lot of parents are just nervous about will their child ever become independent how they
0:47:22 can help support their child to be able to navigate the complexities of the current world
0:47:31 and showcase the amazing talents that so many of these young people display maybe historically
0:47:36 haven’t been fully appreciated and I’m hoping just given where things are going in the future
0:47:42 with the future work and AI that there’s I think a lot of gifts and talents that actually
0:47:50 really complement even AI and working alongside neurotypical employees I think there’s more
0:47:56 opportunity than maybe ever before where that cognitive diversity is really a competitive
0:48:02 edge I think to corporations and so getting parents and advocates and employers to see
0:48:08 that perspective I think is crucial and then helping to increasingly develop those opportunity
0:48:14 pathways to make that happen I think is going to be a game changer it seems to me that more
0:48:22 or less all LLMs are being created by people who lack neurodiversity so do you think a
0:48:31 case can be made that we should purposely create the equivalent of neurodiverse LLMs
0:48:38 who just see the world differently in order to optimize AI personally yeah absolutely
0:48:43 because I think that neurodivergent people in that this is a process I’ve called in the
0:48:49 past neurodiversification where I think that if you don’t involve people coming from different
0:48:55 perceptual analytical perspectives that there’s always going to be some blind spots and I think
0:49:05 it’s crucial to include right people who are uncorrelated to neurotypical teams and also
0:49:10 something I argue a lot in the book is and this isn’t just neurodivergent people but
0:49:18 there there is evidence of a disproportionate level of ability in correlation with different
0:49:25 types of neurodivergent cognition where there’s strong nonlinear skill sets or lateral thinking
0:49:31 and being a cognitive scientist myself I think that there’s ways of thinking and spotting
0:49:38 some blind spots that I do believe neurodivergent people might have an easier time identifying
0:49:45 and some of the limitations of AI given that the current AI paradigm anyway is limited
0:49:54 to a conceptual map that by and large is focused on linear tasks and is just not really capable
0:49:59 of getting into things outside of that conceptual map but I think a lot of neurodivergent people
0:50:03 are very good at that these intuitive leaps of logic and some of the examples like in
0:50:09 my book is I’ve known I’ve done case studies and known people like where they’re connecting
0:50:15 more sensory experiences that they experienced at a friend’s funeral to an experience with
0:50:25 studying different types of flowers and somehow all these not very logical seeming data points
0:50:32 end up combining in this way that AI is not really well trained for that arrives at this
0:50:38 sort of like original solution for how to solve a problem at work and so I think to
0:50:44 me anyway I think it’s actually incredibly important to be including cognitive diversity
0:50:49 and people that are coming from some of these problems from different angles and yeah and
0:50:54 I think it may uncover some of the blind spots even in product development and design that
0:51:03 other people might not be thinking of thank you Marine for explaining so much about neurodiversity
0:51:09 and helping us to appreciate the special skills and strengths that neurodivergent people
0:51:16 have I’m guy Kawasaki this is remarkable people we’re in a mission to make you remarkable
0:51:23 and the team that’s on this mission includes Jeff C and Shannon Hernandez and sound design
0:51:29 Matt is a Nismar who is the producer and also the co-author of think remarkable and then
0:51:35 there’s Tessa Nismar who does all our great research and Alexis Nishimura Fallon Yates
0:51:42 and Luis Magana we are the remarkable people team and we are trying to help you make a
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0:51:54 this is remarkable people