Chase Hughes - How To Spot A Liar In Seconds: The Secret Mindreading Technique That Can Decode Anyone

Full transcript: Chase Hughes on London Real

2:30 Brian Rose: This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Chase Hughes, the world’s number one behavior expert, bestselling author, and former US Navy interrogator turned neuroscientist and trainer of elite intelligence professionals.

3:53 You served 20 years in the military and have since built a global reputation as the go-to authority on behavioral profiling, non-verbal communication, and ethical influence. Your methods are used by US special forces, law enforcement agencies, and business leaders worldwide. You’re the author of The Ellipsis Manual, The Behavioral Ops Manual, and the upcoming book, Exit, a guide to reclaiming mental autonomy in a world of manipulation and media control.

4:21 Chase, welcome to London Real.

4:25 Chase Hughes: Thank you, sir. Glad to be here.

4:26 Brian Rose: Look, it’s great to have you here. I wanted to ask you right off, you know, we got an education in media and manipulation back in 2020. Um, when we were minding our own business, it was actually April 6, 2020, and we had the second largest YouTube live stream in the world. And based on our calculations, it would have gone on to be the most watched podcast of all time. It would have beat Elon Musk, Joe Rogan, smoking weed, which I think was around 10 million.

4:55 And based on our live numbers and where we were on our previous, we thought that would get to 20. And 30 minutes later, it was deleted and banned from YouTube. Um, now I’d been uh on there for 9 years. We were in the partner program. I’d been down to the headquarters in London, and this never happened ever before.

5:12 And my immediate reaction was anger. And I tried to re-upload the video. That’s kind of how I was like totally I couldn’t compute and that started our, you know, yearslong battle for free speech. Um, soon after that pretty much all the tech platforms dinged us. We were on the front page of the BBC, which actually put pressure on YouTube to pull us down, and I got a a really an education in the censorship apparatus and also in media manipulation, which is what you talk about.

5:40 And so maybe my first question, Chase, is do you think that the world learned a lesson about how the media manipulates them through that whole crisis? Or do you think that the more we think we’re immune to it, the more susceptible we are?

5:59 Chase Hughes: Yes to both. Let me, if I can, break this down.

6:02 Yeah.

6:02 What I think happened is during this this process, I don’t think we learned a lesson per se. I I I personally wouldn’t characterize it that way, but I think you’re right in saying that something shifted for sure. And what I think happened is we had information weaponization, information control. The dude who invented mRNA was banned from from social media for talking about the vaccine that he like

6:33 Brian Rose: Dr. Malone.

6:34 Chase Hughes: Yes.

6:34 Yeah. Yeah. So we had so much stuff like that going on in such a tiny amount of time that it was almost it was like a psyop campaign, but they moved a little too fast to where like everyone kind of woke up to it. So what happened is we developed a rapid and contagious mistrust of authority or of what we perceive or call authority. So, it made a lot of people start seeing things and looking for things that they normally wouldn’t.

7:07 And I think it kind of just woke some people up and said, “Wow, this is really bizarre. It’s very unusual.” And I think when I teach influence and persuasion, it kind of goes back to this in that a person if, like, if I go to Best Buy and I buy a new Windows laptop and I think it’s, what is it in London? It’s Carphone Warehouse or like one of those electronic stores.

7:33 Brian Rose: Argos is the thing, I think. Yeah. Stores. Yeah.

7:37 Chase Hughes: And if I get a new computer, they’re going to try to say, “Hey, do you want this McAfee antivirus? Do you want this anti-malware software?” If I’m the kind of guy that goes, “Nah, I don’t believe in viruses. I stay away from those. I’m immune to that.”

7:51 I am more susceptible. I become more susceptible because I view I’m immune. So it almost kind of inoculated a lot of people because we had this realization that, oh, up until this point X, whenever it was for you who’s watching, I was bought in and I thought they had my best interests in mind. They were putting me first. My health was first and up until point X I was vulnerable.

8:20 But then we kind of downloaded this mistrust, which is what an antiviral uh anti-malware program is. And I think that that level of mistrust, not that it’s paranoia, it’s just that I trust it less, a little bit less. I think that became a little bit of a wakeup call/antivirus for everybody.

8:41 Brian Rose: Okay. Interesting. And how much does the fear factor play into it? Um, because obviously that, look, that was everyone was scared. Some would argue that was used as a tool.

8:52 I still remember the numbers that would show up on the newspapers and on the websites and that they would just almost, you know, paralyze you with the numbers of cases and deaths and all these things, and as you dial up the fear, it seems like you dial down the awareness and the intelligence. Um, how does that work also in the work that you do?

9:13 Chase Hughes: Yeah. So let’s talk about fear specifically. Uh, first, in terms of brainwashing, I’ve been a brainwashing guy for 25 plus years. Written papers on it and books and all this stuff, but FEAR, let’s use fear as an acronym. And if you think of the word fear, that spells out the four steps of perfect brainwashing itself.

9:36 And so the first one is F, and that stands for focus. So the first thing we have to do is capture the focus. And what we’re talking about here is the mammalian part of our brain. This lower little animal thing that lives down in here that makes most of our decisions. I need to capture that focus.

9:55 And the number one way to do that is to subvert expectations and prevent you from predicting your future. So it’s like, if you think of Cesar Millan, how does the dog whisperer come in like some celebrity

10:07 Brian Rose: Chops him? He sticks him in the

10:10 Chase Hughes: He makes a little sound. Right.

10:11 Right. Uh, so like some celebrity’s got this little dog that’s biting everybody and Cesar Millan’s got to come, and first thing he does is massively change that dog’s environment. So it establishes a massive amount of focus. So anything novel or unexpected generates focus. So the next element in brainwashing is emotion.

10:35 So now we need something to kind of bring up and down and up and down emotions. And this is a hypnotic technique called fractionation, where we’re kind of going up and then back down, like a little emotional a tiny emotional high point, and then we kind of crash back down. These numbers are looking better. There’s people getting on ventilators. Oh crap, the ventilators might be doing a whole lot of bad stuff.

10:56 So we had this roller coaster that happened. So we couldn’t predict our future. Something unexpected happened. Emotional crazy stuff going on where we also prevents us from looking into the future. Then we get to the A in FEAR, and this is agitation, and this is changing the environment and changing habits in a new way.

11:19 So think Cesar Millan, we’re going to randomly change all these things that you thought you could expect all the time. You’re going to get locked in your house. You’re going to do X. You’re going to wear a mask. You’re going to, you know, whatever it was.

11:30 So it’s focus, emotion, agitation. If I can disrupt the environment, then I create a raw fresh area for the brain. And just think really quick of the fastest way for us to set goals for ourselves is to, like, when people say move your furniture around, convince your brain you’re in a new environment, get up at a different time, brush your teeth with your non-dominant hand, all of these things, that’s the same process. We’re just manipulating the brain in a negative instead of the positive.

11:57 So focus, emotion, agitation, and what’s the final thing there? That’s the R in FEAR, and that’s repetition. And then we start again. Something novel happens, something emotional happens, we get agitated, the environment’s disrupted, and then it repeats again. So repetition is the core principle of brainwashing.

12:15 Without that R at the end, we don’t have brainwashing. We just have persuasion.

12:20 Brian Rose: Okay. And that interesting, that fractionation term, I’ve heard used by actually pickup artists back in the day. And I think when they meet a girl, I think they try to dial in all sorts of different emotions and that, and it’s not all bad and it’s not all good, is it? It’s just experiencing all of these things which just kind of throw you off.

12:38 Chase Hughes: Yeah. And if you watch any good movie, like, think about how every horror movie starts, it’s the most perfect family vacation in the world. So like this just massive high and the if I can get you to a peak, I can make the valley look way deeper. So that’s kind of the theory of fractionation. If I can kind of bring you up and down, not only do you get more used to going down and kind of get more comfortable in those spots, but I can exaggerate how down you go if I bring you up first.

13:11 So that’s the theory behind that. This was invented by a guy named Milton Erickson. He’s kind of the grandfather of modern hypnotherapy. He’s the guy who got it approved by the American Medical Association.

13:24 Brian Rose: Okay. All right. And so when you look at some of the things that were happening in 20 and 21 and 22, um, whether intentional or not, I guess you see that FEAR cycle to the max.

13:39 Chase Hughes: It is definitely a full repetition of that, and it’s just non-stop, and we could go on for a long time. So just let me know.

13:47 Brian Rose: Yeah. You know the wild dig

13:50 The wild thing that I remember during that time, Chase, is that I had really intelligent successful friends. You know, they always have that analogy that when the tide goes out, you see who’s wearing a bathing suit and who’s not. And these were men and women with, you know, seven, eight figures of income, great titles on LinkedIn. And some of these people were at their front door hiding when the delivery came and then were wiping everything off. They went back to drinking, back to bad habits.

14:21 And like honestly, I couldn’t even recognize them. And yet other people were like, “Okay, cool. I got it. This is a new normal. I’m going to roll through it.

14:29 I’m going to D.” We actually were in a fight. And in some ways, maybe I had it easier than others cuz I worked every day. I was doing burpees in the stairwell when they took the gym. I’d stopped drinking 5 years earlier and I was just like, “Let’s go.”

14:41 But like other people, not what you expected. And maybe that’s because of, I don’t know, this brainwashing technique. I guess maybe it can’t be resisted or maybe it goes to the vulnerabilities of people you wouldn’t see normally.

14:56 Chase Hughes: Yeah. And I can tell you exactly why you saw all your friends like that. It’s the same reason that we see a highly intelligent CEO that’s also socially savvy and smart join a cult. Like it’s a very similar thing. Let me tell you quickly about an experiment that was done, and they redid this in London with Dr. Philip Zimbardo.

15:19 He’s the Stanford prison experiment guy. But

15:23 Yeah, they kind of set up a hotel conference room, like one of those like a Holiday Inn, kind of a crappy little conference room thing, and there’s a circle of chairs. There’s 14 people in the room. 13 of them are actors. There’s only one real volunteer. So 13 of these people have one set of instructions, and that is do nothing.

15:47 So they’re next to a kitchen or near a kitchen, and suddenly through this locked door under a vent system, this smoke starts billowing into the room. There’s obviously a fire somewhere. The smoke starts coming into the room. Not long after, the smoke detectors are going off, beeping super loud. And this one volunteer surrounded by these 13 people is just kind of like looking around.

16:14 He’s like, “Am I crazy?” Like, no one else is doing anything about this. And kind of looking around for a social cue. I need some kind of a cue to do something. And only one guy out of all the people they tested, only one guy stood up out of his chair.

16:32 And for anybody listening, I know that my instinct, too, I’m thinking what you were thinking. I would never do that, right? We all think, “Not me. Never.” So, one guy actually stands up out of his chair.

16:45 He’s an artist and you can see him get up. It’s on video. And he goes over there, checks the door, it’s locked, and then he’s like, “Oh, I’m not waiting around here.” He puts his newspaper down. He walks to the door.

16:56 He gets his hand on the door. And one woman says one sentence and he turns around and sits in his chair. And all she said was, “She told us to wait here, didn’t she?” That’s it. So at the end of the day with this little experiment, 100% of people sat in this room long enough to die of asphyxiation.

17:21 So one of the things that kind of reveals is, when people say, you know, that public speaking is the number one fear of human beings, it’s actually judgment, like shame and judgment, right? So, nobody’s scared of speaking because if they did a great job, it would feel great. We’re scared of people judging us, especially a large group, even of strangers. So, if a person sees three or four or five friends start going down one little pathway, the judgment is a bigger fear than death, which is why public speaking rates higher than death.

17:59 So if it’s powerful enough to override our desire to live, is this fear of judgment, which means I’m going to kind of go with the crowd. And we have two options when we go with the crowd. Either A, I’m a sheep. I have to believe I’m a sheep. Or B, I will somehow rationalize and convince myself that this is the right thing to do.

18:22 I choose between those two. And guess I’m sure you can guess what we all choose.

18:26 Brian Rose: Mhm. Now, if you have practice going against the crowd, like say you’ve been cancelled or you get hate on the social, are you less likely to go with it because you recognize it and you’re like, “Okay, this feels crappy, but I’ve been here before and I better trust my instinct,” or does that not necessarily help, do you think?

18:47 Chase Hughes: I do think it helps because you’ve been shown evidence, because like the same, like when we’re walking up on stage and our hands are sweaty. You and me speak on stages a lot, which is fine for us. It’s not a big deal, but the first time I got on stage, first time you got on stage, it was very different. I’ll speak for myself, but I was really nervous. Like they’re all going to know you’re faking it.

19:08 All of this stuff is going on in my head. Um, but now I’m kind of inoculated from experience. But when we go up and we’re nervous, that’s the same physiological reaction as there’s a saber-tooth tiger coming after us. It’s the same body reaction. So it’s really hardwired unless our brain has a lot of evidence that we’re not going to get killed by a tiger, right?

19:31 So we know we get less and less and less, there’s no tigers, we kind of realize no tigers coming. So these people who have faced public criticism multiple times, or they’ve made an identity out of like, I am the guy who bucks the narrative. I’m the guy who does this. Way more likely because there’s more cognitive dissonance if I stay with the crowd because I’m going against what all these people think I am, which is still a little bit of a fear of judgment.

20:02 Brian Rose: Wow. Powerful. And that’s why you see sometimes what you would see as successful put together people making decisions that seem very illogical.

20:13 Chase Hughes: Very true. And it seems it is illogical, but we don’t make logical decisions. You know,

20:18 That little part that we inherited from our ancestors makes most of our decisions for us. And if you think about this, like for everybody watching, this should help you resonate with other people. Not just to say, “Oh, people are stupid or people are easy to manipulate.” This should help you see your neighbors a little more clearly and understand that we’ve got the same hardware and the same software. All of us have the same stuff going on.

20:43 And it’s uh, we had a lot of confusion going on with this and the people who kind of got wrapped up in this stuff and really went down the rabbit hole without question.

21:42 So the spectrum um, it gets into part of who we are, and the moment it becomes identity, we’re going to defend it no matter how crazy it gets to one side.

21:54 Brian Rose: Right? So we make decisions like amygdala-based decisions, emotion-based decisions, and then we justify them with logic later to prove to ourselves that we’re rational, but 90 some percent of those decisions are not rational.

22:08 Chase Hughes: That is absolutely correct.

22:09 Brian Rose: Okay. And when you say we have the same hardware and software, because you sent me a couple of thoughts that you had. It’s just to say that, look, we’re all the same, and in any moment we could be influenced in the same way. And so depending on what your circumstances are, what your background is, this is your way of saying have some empathy because we’re all really built the same. It’s not like I’m better than you or I’m more immune than you.

22:31 It’s just where I was at that time with the information I got. That’s probably why I reacted that way. Is that what you’re trying to say?

22:39 Chase Hughes: Yeah. So to where we would normally see people as broken or kind of messed up. And what do we do with things that are broken? We want to either fix them or fix the situation. I want to level things out somehow.

22:52 And I can somehow if I view the world as broken, I can level the situation out by just thinking I’m superior or thinking someone else is a, or, you know, whatever. I’m sorry. I don’t know if you say curse words on a live broadcast.

23:04 Brian Rose: That’s fine. It seems very natural for you. So, I like it.

23:06 Chase Hughes: Okay. Um, but the other way is, like, what if we saw people as reasons? Because we see ourselves as reasons all the time. I did this because I did all this, or I am this way as an adult because of all that stuff that happened back then. So at the end of the day, what if we just extended that little courtesy?

23:27 You could still see the same behaviors, maybe even still pass some judgment, but we see the reasons. We see a human being as a reason. We see the behavior as a reason. And then we start to understand, like, that’s when you get to the point where you can persuade a person and you can start changing behavior. Like from a psyop perspective, if you’re trying to, like, engineer people to awaken, to wake people up, we have to see the reasons first instead of the judgment.

23:54 Brian Rose: Okay. Powerful. And look, I want to jump into your background because it sounds uh pretty fascinating and a little dark. Um, and I want to do that, but you also said something that kind of surprised me. You said genuine confidence is a superpower, and I didn’t immediately see a connection with, say, confidence and compromising human minds, and I wonder if you could explain that recently.

24:16 I picked up on a couple statements I’ve seen here and there on Twitter. You know, people always look at, say, Conor McGregor. He was that UFC fighter from Ireland many years ago. He was indestructible, and a lot of fighters tried to mimic his confidence and act like him. But then I always wonder that the brain knows the reality, and so when those don’t match up, does that affect your behavior?

24:36 So I’m kind of curious what you meant by that.

24:40 Chase Hughes: Yeah. So let me start by saying this one thing. Like if you and I went to a piano store right now, just a giant piano store, and I jam my finger down on, like, the middle key, which is a C on the piano in the store. You can go put your hand on all the strings on all these pianos around the entire store, but the moment that your finger touched the C string on any other piano, it’s vibrating. So that little C string on that one piano vibrates all the other pianos.

25:11 So when it comes to human behavior, where we speak from is where we speak to in other people. So if I’m speaking from a C string, I’m going to vibrate that C string in other people. If I’m speaking from inauthenticity or incongruence or performance, like that confidence that other people are mimicking with Conor McGregor, I’m speaking to a performance-based mindset in someone else, a performance-based thought. It’s not necessarily that we feel that, and we can, like, register that in a spreadsheet in our head, but what we do feel is like everything looks great on the surface, but something’s something’s off.

25:52 I don’t know what it is. I can’t put my finger on it, but something’s not right about the situation. We get a gut feeling or an intuition, and when it comes to confidence, like true confidence, it is never performative, and confidence has nothing to do with other people. So our entire world, our society is obsessed with hierarchy and status, especially today, and, well, maybe last 400 years, 500 years.

26:22 So this hierarchy and status, so confidence, people tend to look at other people to see if they have permission to feel confident, or if I’m faking confidence, that means I have to pretend like I’m over other people. And I firmly believe confidence is 100% about what’s in here and not our exterior. And that sounds kind of like some self-help bumper sticker type of crap, but what I’m truly saying is, let’s say you have a YouTube channel. If all the great comments make you feel great about yourself, and all that means all the bad ones have the same exact entryway because I’m defining who I am.

27:04 I’m defining what I’m allowed to do in this lifetime by something outside of myself. So people say I’m shy, I’m timid, I can’t be confident. You can absolutely be confident. And like the biggest shortcut to this, and this is kind of going into this Conor McGregor thing that you were talking about, is a willingness, and this goes all the way back to this fear of judgment, is am I fully willing to face social injury? And that is kind of a good measure.

27:34 Am I comfortable in what’s going on? And am I just open to facing some kind of social injury or social wound uh in this interaction? And that’s truly what real confidence is.

27:46 Brian Rose: Okay. So that’s how you define it. I’m willing to accept a social wound to be myself or whatever I do. I’m willing to accept that because ultimately I judge myself.

28:00 Chase Hughes: Exactly. And I define myself. Everything’s all me.

28:04 Brian Rose: And we’re naturally attracted to that as humans because that’s typically the person that will lead us out of danger, into food, into all these things. I’m guessing why that hierarchy is so important for us.

28:17 Chase Hughes: It is critically important. And in times of emergency, crisis, danger, confusion, we’re not going to follow the guy with the best pitch or the best posture or the guy with, like, the whitest teeth. We’re going to follow the most followable person. And that’s the way to define it. The person that is the most clear, concise, so they have the right movement, appearance, confidence, connection, or, like, intent on what they’re doing, and actual intent.

28:47 So, like, we can see their how without them saying what their how is. Like during an airplane crash, let’s say people survive. The person who’s taking charge is the most followable person.

28:59 Brian Rose: Okay. Now, can someone fake it until they make it with that confidence? I mean, you know, in this day of digital media, you know, uh, they put the suit on and they come out there and they got the advisers behind them, and um, I mean, actually, I think Trump is very confident, but I’m just thinking of the way he kind of displays himself, and he’s always on point and presentable, and it feels like some people kind of did that in 2020 and then it broke down later.

29:22 But can you kind of fool some of the people some of the time?

29:28 Chase Hughes: I definitely think you can.

29:29 Okay. And I think a lot of times we fall into that, like we look at the David Koreshes and the Charles Mansons of the world, and if you just imagine a pendulum shape, so like we have a left and a right side. So on this side we have collapse. On this side it’s like I have to shrink, I’m going to get small to make other people more comfortable. I’m going to shrink down how much money I ask for.

29:58 You know, my presence in a restaurant. It’s shrinking in multiple ways. And on the other spectrum of this, we have posturing. So the posturing is I’m going to exaggerate behavior, which is performative. So anything performative is lacking real confidence.

30:15 So we have this kind of performative bravado. I’m sticking the chest out. I’m speaking louder than normal. My hand movements are crazy, trying to take up space. You were talking about pickup.

30:27 Brian Rose: There’s a lot of that stuff in there.

30:28 Chase Hughes: Yeah.

30:28 This and that’s posturing. But in the center of this pendulum between those two, we have something called composure. And that is what makes someone truly followable, is when we get to that, like what I call, like Andy Griffith is the barnone example of what this composure thing is. If you’ve ever watched The Andy Griffith Show, it’s an older show, but

30:52 Brian Rose: Black and white, right?

30:54 Chase Hughes: Yeah. And then we have his partner Barney Fife. And Barney Fife is a beautiful example of posturing and collapse on both sides. He’ll kind of vacillate between these two. And somebody who lives their life as kind of a collapsing doormat, when they want to solve their problem, they don’t look to the middle.

31:12 They’re looking all the way over there and saying, “That’s the solution. This posturing is the solution to my problem. I’m just going to overdo everything.” And someone who’s postured way too long and then got smacked down for it, they look way over here to the solution to their problem instead of the center, which is composure. And I would say that composure is just the mental stillness and being non-performative and not kind of having a mask.

31:38 So you smile because you’re happy instead of, I’m using a smile or a line as a tool to make you see me a certain way.

31:46 Brian Rose: Yeah, that’s powerful. It’s interesting because of my show I’ve been around a lot of I guess high-level people, you know, that maybe by definition have some confidence, and it’s interesting watching them, you know, behind the scenes and then also on camera and seeing the way they react to things. I always tell people it’s when you get to that high level of people, sometimes it’s not what they do, it’s what they don’t do. And yeah, the composure is something.

32:14 Yeah, I think that makes a great leader where you’re just composed. I mean, you could argue Trump has shown a lot of composure over the past 12 to 18 months and just kept going and I guess didn’t react. It’s interesting that you use that word composure. Um, I guess it goes along. It’s a part of the ultimate bit of confidence.

32:35 Chase Hughes: It absolutely is. Yeah.

32:36 Brian Rose: Okay. I also kind of noticed it in myself as I get older and as I feel like I’m getting to be a better leader, I just try to stay composed or I have two little boys and so, you know, leadership is on 24/7. So, when something crazy happens, I’m like, “Okay, let’s stay composed here,” and uh, let’s not regret something, and let’s also show them that we’re composed cuz I think we all know the analogy, the person that’s yelling and screaming and swearing has less power than the person getting that, although in that Barney Fife thing, maybe we’ve been taught that that’s the alpha, that’s the person, but great leaders don’t yell, scream and bark orders and swear because when you do that, it’s a sign you’ve lost power and now you’re going to desperate measures, right?

33:19 Chase Hughes: Absolutely. It’s a great, that’s a great example too. And my daughter is 17 now, 18 now. And when she was four, I think she had more composure than me. And I was a chief in the military.

33:32 I think she’s maybe an old soul or whatever, you know, whatever that means. But I think she just kind of grew up and started out with more composure than me. So she even, like, at the age of six was like such a shining example of composure to me. And I’ve never seen a kid with that. So, it’s a rare thing to see.

33:51 But the cool thing is it’s not an inborn trait. It’s something we can all learn and we can all cultivate. If you’re trying to start a movement, you’re trying to be a good salesperson, good parent, good leader, good manager, CEO, fill in the blank. That composure has got to be step one. Like, how can I bring myself to that center line so I can kind of monitor in my head?

34:14 I can be hyper aware of when I start going into the collapse or I start moving into that little posturing behavior.

34:21 Brian Rose: So, we were super lucky to have um Jocko Willink on the show really early, like nine years ago, 2016. He had actually just appeared on Tim Ferriss and then was just on Rogan, and I reached out and he came to London and there he was, and um, he made a real impression on me and I ended up getting his book series called The Warrior Kid. And so this is something that I read to my boys, I mean, pretty much every night for the past four years. There’s like five books and a lot of the Warrior Kid ethos is detach and control your emotions.

34:54 And this is something he’s constantly talking about. Um, and it’s something we constantly talk about as well as just a way of kind of just seeing if we can manage it. And so, you know, I remember one time where one of my boys, Damon, was freaking out and Kaden yelled across the room, “Detach, detach.” You know, I would love to say that happens every week, but it doesn’t. But

35:16 I think we’re trying to instill some of that stuff. And um, yeah, those books are pretty uh, they’re pretty cool uh resource to have. Um, that came from Jocko and his Extreme Ownership and the leadership lessons he learned in the military as well. So, uh, yeah, I think that could be pretty powerful. Have you heard of those books?

35:35 Chase Hughes: I haven’t, but I’m kind of, like, covertly writing them down here under the screen. I’m going to get some.

35:40 Brian Rose: They actually made a Hollywood movie, uh, Warrior Kid. It’s coming out in December. It’s got some big actors in it as well. So, we’re pretty excited about that over here. Um, you mentioned David Koresh and Charles Manson, and I was wondering if we could maybe talk about some of these leaders and figure out what we can learn from them and maybe learn about ourselves.

35:56 Chase Hughes: I actually watched the Waco, Texas, um, documentary on Netflix. I don’t know if you watched it like a year ago. It’s like six or seven part series. I was actually, I think, in high school when that happened and I remember seeing the video and it was like, what the hell’s going on there? But pretty fascinating to go deep into that documentary and find out what’s going on.

36:15 And one of the things I just remembered is that they had the phone calls to David with the ATF agents and the FBI or whoever the hell else was there. And that dude is maximum confident. Like he’s just like, he’s like, we’re here. He’s like, “You know what? Bring it.

36:33 Like, we’re not going anywhere. Like, we are going, you know, we’re going to heaven or whatever.” He was just, and just the tone of his voice. And this is after that. You know, maybe the tanks came at the end, but this is after, you know, you’re getting surrounded.

36:45 There are rounds coming in. It’s getting hairy. And I was always surprised. I noticed his confidence. You know, he really was assured in his mission, I guess, until the end.

36:55 And I guess everybody else there was assured of him, too. Um, I don’t know. Did I notice something there? Is this why they’re good at what they do because they actually believe it? Or what can we learn from some of these uh, cult leaders?

37:08 I guess anything can be called a cult.

37:12 So, let’s break this down from a behavioral psychology perspective. So, first we have, like, a sense of purpose and drive. So, this was the last thing I said earlier. We had that movement, appearance, confidence, connection, and intent. Those are the five little trip wires that we see in other people that say I need to follow that person.

37:33 So that drive, that intent, and that we can see the why. So when a person has a real purpose, not like I’ve made some t-shirts out of this catchphrase kind of a thing, some real purpose in their life, then they get down to the next phase of this, which is, if the purpose is very important, I’m willing to accept some injury for this. The injury is okay. So, like, Brian, if you and I are talking and we’re in a negotiation, if I need less from you than you need from me, in almost any relationship, the person who needs less is in charge.

38:13 So, in situations like this and in conflict situations, the person who needs less is typically more willing to be injured, is more willing to suffer a financial loss if it’s a negotiation or whatever it is. This willingness either comes from purpose, uh, maybe some schizophrenia coming in there, but purpose can definitely do that stuff. And the willingness to be injured means that I’m not concerned with performing or how you’re perceiving me. So the willingness to be injured in pursuit of the purpose leads down to this composure.

38:51 And that’s why, like, they would call him. I’ve listened to these tapes. They’d call him on the phone and it’s like he was kind of talking down this nervous hostage negotiator.

39:01 Yeah.

39:01 He was the calm one. He needed less than they needed from him. And typically those are the two factors of what decides who wins an interaction. A, the person who needs less from the other person, and B, the person who reacts to the other person the least. Who’s the most non-reactive person?

39:21 And those are the traits, whether it’s the Manson or the Koresh. It leads down from that passion, willingness to be injured, and it’s typically social injury in today’s world. And that leads to a composure, and the composure leads to I’m not seeking something from you and I’m not reacting, or you’re reacting to me more than I’m reacting to you.

39:46 Brian Rose: Okay? And so in those two cases of Manson and Koresh, they were so sold on their vision. They attracted people around them that maybe didn’t have a vision, wanted a vision, and then wanted to come along with their vision and then therefore started to compromise themselves or make choices maybe that weren’t in their physical best interests. because they were now the more reacting person or the person that wanted to be a part of something. Is that kind of what happens there?

41:14 Chase Hughes: Absolutely. Yeah. And I’ve spent my life studying interrogation and stuff, and interrogation is a way of talking someone into doing something that’s probably not in their best interest. So, I spent time with cult recruiters uh out in California. I spent time with a lot of different people who did jobs like this that talked people into weird stuff.

41:35 And the funny thing is that there’s no intelligence barrier. You’re not going to say like, I’m only going to get people with an IQ under 95 into this cult. There are senior executives, super smart, like Ivy League graduate people that join these things.

41:54 So typically what happens is there’s an introductory identity agreement. So, let’s say I want to walk you. Let’s say I’m talking you into joining a cult, if you don’t mind us kind of going back and forth here.

42:06 Brian Rose: I need a new hobby. Let’s go.

42:08 Chase Hughes: All right. So, uh, you’re okay with the barcode tattoo a little bit later, I’m assuming.

42:13 Brian Rose: Oh, man.

42:15 Chase Hughes: Uh, so here’s how these people do this, and they want some eventually somebody’s going to be doing some crazy weird stuff down the line. So, initially when this approach is made, it’s just an agreement. I get you to make an agreement about identity. So, let’s say we start talking and the only words out of my mouth are, you know, there’s so many people in the world who are just living in this little prison so scared about what other people think of them. And you nodded your head.

42:48 So, I’ve got you to agree that you’re not one of those people within about 10 seconds.

42:54 So, now I’ve built a little hallway of cognitive dissonance. So, now that I’ve got you to agree to one thing, I’ll do a few more things in the conversation to start narrowing that hallway down to where there’s just one little solution at the end of it.

43:09 Brian Rose: Will most people agree to that or not always? And if I don’t agree, then you use a different tack.

43:14 Chase Hughes: I think most people, 99% of people will agree.

43:17 Brian Rose: Okay. But it’s still a yes ladder that takes me down your uh, primrose path.

43:22 Chase Hughes: Yeah. And maybe uh, just two minutes later in the conversation, I might say something like, “Well, Brian, I really appreciate talking to you, man. I had social anxiety growing up as a kid. How did you get like, have you always been this open with other people or is this something you learned?” The moment that you answer that question, then you’ve made an agreement not to shun people who fear other people’s opinions.

43:44 And now you’re giving me advice or answering on how you’re so open. So, I’m kind of like now opening your mind up to different possibilities. So, it is a slippery slope that feels like it might be a compliment here, a compliment there, maybe a question about you, but what that’s doing, those are hacking your identity. It’s not changing who you are when you go home at the end of the day, but you’ve made an agreement in front of another person that you are this.

44:10 So, that builds a hallway that’s each wall is made out of some kind of cognitive dissonance. I have mental stress if what I said I was and my behavior are not lining up.

44:21 Brian Rose: And no one’s immune to this stuff. Even if you think you’re the tough guy, even if you’re the best poker player in the world, you’re saying, I think I’ve seen some of your statements before, that we’re all still the same software and hardware and we’re all susceptible to this. Is that kind of what you assert?

44:38 Chase Hughes: I think we are. There may be some very rare exceptions with some mental disorders or something, but uh, I think we’re all susceptible and I think it’s a good thing. Uh, I think if none of us were immune to this, um, we wouldn’t have social norms. We wouldn’t, like, when you and I both, like, if it’s two in the morning and we’re driving home, there’s not a single car on the road and we come up to a stop sign, just the thought of just, like, running it and going through just kind of produces discomfort in us.

45:10 And that’s our tradition, like our need to follow along with what the tribe is doing. So I think if we’re born with those things, it’s good. That’s what keeps us from, like, getting into an argument and I decide to deescalate instead of punch somebody or us, like, just openly using profanity in front of a giant group of children at a museum. Uh, there’s some weird stuff that we might have a tendency to do if it weren’t for these social norms. And these social norms, if I can get into it for just 30 seconds.

45:42 Yeah.

45:42 Which is fascinating.

45:44 They’re called folkways. And people don’t use that term very often, but folkways, if you imagine, like, the first time you saw a kid in second grade get made fun of. And at our age, I think you and I are about the same age. Um, it was like if I wore a, I did wear a pink shirt to school. I’ll just give myself as an example.

46:06 Uh, back in the day, they had these shirts called Hypercolor that would change if they got hot. Do you remember those things?

46:11 Brian Rose: I do. Yeah. They were a brief fad, I think.

46:14 Chase Hughes: Yeah. Very brief, but I wore a pink one to school one day and I got made fun of. I got called all kinds of, like, homophobic slurs is what they would call them today.

46:25 Brian Rose: Yeah. As you should have.

46:27 Chase Hughes: Yeah. But what that was is this is children enforcing social norms without realizing that that’s what they’re doing. So even as second grade children, like, somebody does something odd or outside the group and people make fun of them and that enforces conformity. So even as children we get this weird instinct almost to help enforce some of these norms. Some of these norms, like when other people are doing stuff like uh, that we saw in 2020 and all this, some of the other stuff are stupid, but a lot of them are great.

47:03 They keep us uh, well-mannered. They keep us nice to each other. They make us kind. They make us, like, get in front of somebody on the highway and still, even if we’ll never see them again, we still kind of do the old uh, wave thing when somebody lets us in. And those are great parts of it.

47:18 So, I don’t think it’s a bad thing.

47:20 Brian Rose: Okay. So, you were kind of walking me through that interrogation um, or maybe even that cult induction. So, you’re kind of getting me to kind of come along, agree. You’re giving me a compliment that will now make me behave in the way you want me to behave. What are some of the things that are coming next?

47:38 I think these are some pickup techniques as well, as I remember where that you’re not the kind of girl that doesn’t call someone back if you give them their number, are you? No, never me. But anyways, I’m having flashbacks to those guys from 10 years ago. Um, tell me some of the more, the steps here,

47:53 Chase Hughes: Man. I was into that. I thought for the first probably maybe a year I was into that stuff and I thought it was great and I brought my mentor was like 72 and I brought this pickup book and like he was buying me lunch when I slapped this thing down on the table. I was like, “You’re not going to believe this.” And he was like, “I want you to do me a favor.”

48:13 And I’m sorry to sidebar this, but it’s great that he was like, “Flip to a random page in this book and show me that any page on this book is not teaching you a way to fake like you’re a man and that you have your stuff together.” And that day I flipped through and I took his challenge. I was done from that day on.

48:35 Brian Rose: Was the book The Game by Neil Strauss?

48:39 Chase Hughes: It uh, no, it was a different one of the other pickup guys. You know, you have a good point there. One thing I will say as a compliment to the pickup guys is that as they go down this route of trying to get better with women, the majority of them actually end up looking inside. And so I would say that those are the guys that actually develop faster, self-develop to build that real confidence and to build a man they’re proud of faster than almost any other people that I’ve seen out there.

49:09 Um, now sometimes it takes some time, but one thing I would say about that community is a lot of times they really finally see, wait a second, instead of doing all these tricks, I could just become the guy. So I will say that to them. I don’t know if you went that far there, but

49:24 Brian Rose: Absolutely. And I think, like, if you go on LinkedIn or anything, you’re going to see these articles like 12 ways to command respect like a CEO, all of this kind of like BS stuff. You open the article and it’s like make really solid eye contact, speak louder, good posture, just all of this stuff. They’re teaching you symptoms of confidence instead of the cause of confidence. Right?

49:48 Chase Hughes: So, like, I can wrap you in a heating blanket and squirt water in your nose. It doesn’t give you CO that’s giving you some of the symptoms, right, of CO. So we’re learning these symptoms and after a while we’re like, well, what if I did something that shifted me as a person where all of those things were a byproduct of me just making that shift. And that’s, I totally agree with you, man, that I think that’s that shift to internal, and we make some of these adjustments and all those things are kind of a byproduct, but let me tell you this final phase of the interrogation culting process here.

50:26 So there’s a few more tactics that they might use, but keep in mind from the beginning there’s compliance escalation. Even if it’s like right as the conversation starts, I’ll step to the side eight or nine inches and get you to start reorienting yourself to me. I’ll point and make you look where I’m pointing. So, I’ll get your neurology to start saying, I’m complying. I’m complying.

50:48 I’m complying. So, it’s like uh, by the time that I need you to do something greater, it feels like logical. It feels like you’ve been doing all of this and you’re subconsciously, you feel like it’s a logical next step. But then we get to this kind of close of the cult recruiter or interrogator, either way. And you want to do four big things, and that’s socialize, minimize, rationalize, and project.

51:19 So socialize meaning everyone will understand if they had this information. You’re not going to be judged by other people. Minimize. It’s not a big deal. A lot of people do this.

51:30 This is tiny compared to X and Y and Z. Rationalize. And in this phase, we’re saying anybody in your position with all this information would do the same thing. And I think this makes sense. If we look back on this and this and this, this is the logical uh, obvious next thing to do.

51:49 And then project. And then we’re going to shift the blame away from you. So, I might say, and honestly, Brian, you know, we’ve been talking a while. It’s no wonder you waited because not a lot of people have access to this level of information about our secret uh, program that we do on the weekend. U So, I’m pushing the blame away.

52:11 So, and a lot of people don’t find out about this because there’s so much noise in the world. There’s so much static, social media, and I’ll blame other things for you not having taken action before. If it’s in an interrogation, I’ll say, you know, it’s probably somebody stole money from their company, let’s say. I would say, and it’s obvious you did this, and I think anybody in your shoes would. They don’t pay you well enough.

52:34 I just talked to a couple other employees. They don’t give you Christmas bonuses. They’re paying you 20% less than the other guys are on average in this industry. And I think anybody in your shoes would have done this. So, I’m projecting the blame off to someone else.

52:48 So, whatever I want you to do that I think you might feel bad about, I’m going to project the blame for you doing it onto somebody or something else.

52:57 Brian Rose: Wow. Okay. And so that’s cult behavior, interrogation behavior, people manipulation behavior, those pieces.

53:06 Chase Hughes: Indeed. Yes.

53:06 Brian Rose: Um, how would Chase Hughes do in an interrogation with, I guess I’m just going to throw in, like, Mossad. Um, how would you do in one of those situations, do you think?

53:20 Chase Hughes: I don’t think it’s much about the human. I think if you have someone that is trained in SERE, and SERE is an acronym for uh, survival, evasion, resistance, and escape, it’s our anti-interrogation training. Uh, so pilots go through it. Uh, dudes who are going out on, like, Middle East deployments are all going through this stuff. So, it’s teaching you how to resist interrogation.

53:43 If somebody’s trained to resist interrogation, it’s a matter of a few factors. Uh, one of the smaller factors, maybe 10% of that, is the skill level of an operator that’s with them. If they’re trained well enough, they might be successful. But then you’re looking at time in captivity. You’re looking at how many friends are in captivity.

54:04 You’re looking at the stakes and what’s at stake if they continue to be deceptive or continue to withhold information. There’s a lot of factors, and I think nowadays in intelligence interrogation especially there are so many laws and stuff where it’s not quite, but it’s almost like those guys, if you’re an enemy combatant, can kind of lawyer up and they can kind of get a lawyer, which is a strange new thing that we’re dealing with. Right or wrong, I’m not to say.

54:35 But I think if somebody’s interrogating Mossad, you’ve got a very, very hard job ahead of you. Or any special operator, I don’t just mean Mossad. I mean any special operator is going to be fully trained in resistance to interrogation.

54:50 Brian Rose: And what are the, the SERE acronym? It is survival, evasion,

54:55 Chase Hughes: Resistance, and escape.

54:56 Brian Rose: And you can do that mentally in an interrogation as well. Just reminding yourselves of those steps. Yeah.

55:04 Okay. Yeah.

55:04 So, survival, just remind yourself that I’m gonna survive no matter what. I’m not gonna

55:10 Chase Hughes: No. Yes. No. No. No.

55:11 Brian Rose: Okay.

55:11 Chase Hughes: So, this is the name of the training school. So, survival is like that phase of the training is like here’s how to eat locusts and

55:20 Brian Rose: Okay, cool.

55:20 Chase Hughes: So, then evasion is like they’re coming after you. You’re in a crashed plane or you’re in a unit that’s isolated. They’re coming after you. Here’s how to evade. Here’s what to do to avoid thermal optics and how to evade helicopter searches and dogs and stuff like that.

55:37 And then resistance would be like now I’m captured after trying to evade. Now I have to resist interrogation. And this is where they teach you mentally to resist interrogation. It is the most ironclad non-disclosure agreement. And you can ask any special ops dude you’ve ever met.

55:54 This is the most uh, very hush hush methods that are in the US military that I’ve ever heard. Like nobody talks about that stuff outside of it. And they make you sign the craziest NDA

56:07 Brian Rose: About how to resist.

56:10 Chase Hughes: Yes. About how to resist interrogation. So after the resistance, it’s then escape. They go through some basic lockpicking uh, stuff that you could find on YouTube, but still you kind of walk out of there feeling like Jason Bourne, which is cool. You got to feel cool for a few days.

56:25 Brian Rose: Okay. All right. So, the resistance is the one I’ll be thinking about a lot. So, you’re looking at a spot on the wall or you’re saying a song over in your head or, I don’t know. I’m not going to

56:34 Chase Hughes: It’s uh, Britney Spears. That’s the big secret. It’s just over and over.

56:38 Brian Rose: Amen. You know, she can do it. Tell me about your background in the Navy. Um, when I read it, it sounds a little uh, dark. Um, but again, I don’t know why I would have that reaction.

56:49 Or maybe I would because I don’t know much about it. And then how you’ve kind of transferred that into civilian life and then do all these things to kind of help people.

56:57 Chase Hughes: Well, for me it started when I was a 19-year-old. I was stationed in Pearl Harbor. My first job in the Navy. I was an enlisted guy. So, my job was scraping rust off the side of the ship.

57:13 That was how I was protecting our freedom over here. So, uh, for a couple of years I was doing that and during that period I got obsessed with behavior, and it was because I was turned down by a girl when I was like 19. And I Googled, like, how to tell when girls like you, and I started seeing all this body language stuff. I printed out this big-ass stack of papers and eventually I started being able to see people’s hidden little fears and insecurities and stuff that they’re hiding.

57:48 And I came to this realization, like, everyone is hiding little insecurities and shame and wearing this uh, mask in front of other people, and we’re all pretending like we’re perfectly okay. But we all have these little hidden fears, and the more I could see it, the more I kind of evolved out of social anxiety, and it kind of got out of, like, wow, everybody’s just as screwed up as I am. So it was very freeing, and that I think made it addictive for me, and then I thought, like, if I could just see behavior, what can I also do with influencing behavior?

58:26 So I was never in for the first 13 years, I wasn’t doing any of this in the military, and my job was, after this paint thing, was a ship navigator. I was a navigator of a guided missile destroyer uh, for quite a while, and I became a chief there. In the second half of my career, I moved into the expeditionary warfare side of the military out here on Little Creek uh, base in Virginia, and I retired out there. But my primary job at that base, for three years I ran the Navy’s underwater robotics team, which was a whole lot of fun.

59:04 Did some cool stuff with those guys. And then I worked at uh, another unit where I was the captain of a spy boat. But in between those operations, I worked in uh, detainee operations only for, like, two and a half years. So that was the entirety of my work there. But I continued studying and teaching this stuff throughout my entire career and eventually wound up starting to teach it towards the end of my career, like the last three years of my career.

59:30 Brian Rose: Okay. You talk a lot about body language and how it’s important, but most of us either misunderstand it or don’t understand it. I was wondering if you could give me just a quick crash course.

59:43 Again, I keep going back to my pickup days. I don’t know what everyone’s going to think about me, but of course, since I’m confident, it doesn’t bother me. Um, but I, you know, these guys, I guess, have gone in on this to use it for their practical reasons. And since so many guys want to be validated with women, I’m having these flashbacks to the body language, and if she’s playing with her hair, then she likes you and blah blah blah. And so, that’s my only reference, Chase.

1:00:08 Chase Hughes: Yeah. So, yeah, I was studying that body language, not to receive validation, but to be anti-rejected or whatever that means, but it was just to avoid rejection at all costs because that hurt. That hurt like

1:00:22 Yeah.

1:00:22 And I just didn’t want to do that again. But if I can give you a crash course that’ll give you more knowledge than most people of body language in like five minutes. Number one, you’re better off being an expert in detecting change than any specific movement of the human body changes. So like we started a conversation and you look like A, then I asked you the weird question about that thing and then you had behavior B. So like we had a shift in behavior.

1:00:53 So if you can spot change, you’re better off if you just learn to spot change. There are a few general rules that I think people should follow when they’re looking at body language. Fear makes our body protect arteries. Number one. So like we have a few arteries.

1:01:15 We’ve got some femoral arteries that are down here. We have some brachial arteries under here. And we have carotid arteries right here. So fear will, like, if I’m sitting here like this and my arms are out and all of a sudden you ask me a weird question and both my arms kind of go like this and I start talking like this. That’s a fear response and that’s something, it’s not a red flag.

1:01:34 And I’ll be the first to say, I’m probably not the first to say, but on this show. Club. See you in the Investment Club.

1:02:38 There is no body language for deception. It does not exist. What we’re really looking for is a little pile of behaviors that indicate stress or fear. So that’s really what we’re looking for. And in a context, if I ask you about chewing gum and your body, like, locks up, and then I ask you, did you, you know, steal $2 million from the casino?

1:03:06 And your body does the same thing. That’s kind of meaningless to me, right? So context is super important. So, first I’m looking for change. Two, I’m looking for clusters.

1:03:16 Am I seeing multiple things happening? And three, context. So, like if all of a sudden I go like this, right, when you’re talking, but just the AC just kicked on, it’s blowing on me and it’s like 50° in the room. That’s some context involvement, right? So, what I want to do is watch for the movement and change because we tend to see these pictures of body language.

1:03:40 We see pictures of somebody like this. We see pictures of somebody like with their hands up in the air. So it kind of teaches our brain over time that body language is this business of still images. And even I thought that for a long time. But what I’m really looking at is like somebody’s hands are on their lap and you ask them this really pertinent question and all of a sudden their hands kind of move back to their groin, which is protecting the femoral artery.

1:04:08 Uh, that’s a big deal. So I’m just looking for that little tiny movement, little three, two inch movement of groin protection, artery protection, and finally is the body opening or closing. So like if as we start the conversation am I seeing space in the body and then is it getting smaller at a certain time when we’re speaking and one micro behavior that I think would be vital to anybody, and this is the first thing that I teach to private equity groups that, you know, they get pitched uh, they’re venture capital guys that get pitched.

1:04:46 I don’t know anything about business, but they get pitched by these guys all the time and they want millions and millions of dollars and they say like $35, 5% of the time they’ll buy something and the guy’s just a total BS artist just lying to them and somehow wasting money. I don’t know what he’s doing with it. But so the first thing I teach these guys every time they call me out to do training is this thing called blink rate. And blink rate is the most reliable indicator of in-the-moment stress.

1:05:17 So blink rate is a measure of how often we’re blinking. Not how rapid the eyelid moves, but how many times per minute we’re blinking. So to give you a little uh, just a little class on this, the average blink rate for human beings is like 12 to 17 blinks per minute. And when we get stressed, it can be upwards of 80 or 90.

1:05:41 Brian Rose: Wow.

1:05:41 Chase Hughes: And what’s funny is we can feel that stress, but we don’t notice the change in our eyes. And since we’re so unaware of that shift and that change, it’s such an unconscious behavior that it becomes super reliable to people like me. Um, the inverse of that, since the high means stress, we tend to think that, oh, when it’s really low, that means comfort. It’s not true.

1:06:07 The low blink rate tends to indicate a level of focus. So, we could be focused on a threat, like an interrogator is getting ready to ask this question and the person getting ready to lie is, like, especially like the psychopath, is just really stops because he’s focused in on a potential threat

1:06:26 Or value, something that’s interesting to us. So, something that gains all our focus, like when I watched the last good movie, was like Interstellar for me. Like I watched that movie, my blink rate was probably a two or three per minute. Yeah,

1:06:41 But we don’t feel the shift. And the cool thing is nobody’s got to count. You don’t have to sit there counting blinks and stuff. If I can start a conversation and I can say, is that blink rate look pretty normal, pretty fast, or pretty slow? That’s my number one job.

1:06:57 And second, what’s the change that I’m seeing? And if I’m just asking them about, like, hey, do you want a coffee? Do you want a water? I’m not looking for blink rate changes because I don’t care. But I want to look for these changes when I ask these important questions.

1:07:13 So, as a speaker, I know you speak on stage a lot. I speak on stage a lot. And we’re kind of sometimes 20, 30 feet from the people, but we’ve got at least, you know, 30 or 40 people in this front little section here that we can look at. And as I’m looking around the crowd, I can look at people in the audience and I will average their blink rate. So, if I see that blink rate going up, I know I need to change the pitch of my voice, change the slide behind me, change the topic, get off the stage and walk around.

1:07:45 I need to regain that focus. My job as a speaker and anybody’s job as a leader is to have low blink rates in people,

1:07:54 Not just to make them relax, but to make them focused on what’s going on. And as a person who specializes in leadership, persuasion or influence, your currency, your number one currency in the world is focus. So our job should be, if I’m doing a good job, I’m going to see a low blink rate in a person. If I’m doing something that stresses someone out, even if it’s not asking about the missing bag of money, whatever that is, or job interview question, I just want to, like, monitor those spots.

1:08:25 If I start seeing, like, rapid blinks all of a sudden, that’s a big deal. Unless there’s some context behind it, and, like, all of a sudden we walk outside and the person’s got allergies or something, that would be a context uh, cue.

1:08:38 Brian Rose: Okay. So, if you’re on stage, they’re not necessarily going to be nervous, but they could be nonfocused and that would mean the blink rate would go up.

1:08:45 Chase Hughes: Correct. Yes.

1:08:46 Brian Rose: Okay. Yeah. What I’ve been doing lately at my um, on stage, like I went to this um, this family office conference. A family office is when you have so much money in your family that you actually run that wealth as an office. And so there was a conference in Dubai and they set me on a podium and I hate podiums, you know?

1:09:04 I like to have the mic and I like to just really start walking around and really get in people’s faces. Sometimes I like to walk out in the crowd. Now sometimes it freaks them out a little bit, but like they definitely get your attention. So the next one I went to in Cannes in France, I told the guy before, I was like, “Give me one of those mics.” And he’s like, “No, there was one on the podium.”

1:09:22 I’m like, “Yeah, the podium is for dummies.” I said, “I’m not using that.” So, I grabbed it and I was pacing the stage, stepped into it, and I was also challenging them to pull out their phones and record a selfie video and put it on LinkedIn and um, and putting them on the spot. And so, now that I think about it, Chase, a lot of them were locked in on me because I think they were like, “Whoa, wait a second. What’s going on here?”

1:09:43 And this doesn’t normally happen. And I thought I was just going to check my messages during this presentation. So, uh, but now I’m going to pay more attention to that. Um, but I’m always just trying to, I’m assuming that people aren’t listening unless I do something to get their focus.

1:09:58 Chase Hughes: Yeah. And you hit one of the hallmarks right there when you were saying people are thinking this doesn’t normally happen. That’s the fastest way to trigger focus in a human being. Um, and as a speaker, that’s our currency. So, we want to do things that are unexpected, that we have like this little script where I, oh, I’ve been to a hundred seminars before.

1:10:18 The guy’s going to come up. He’s going to do the thing and he’s going to do that thing. He’s going to say go buy the book and the thing afterwards. Like, what can I do? And I always think what can I do from the stage that they have never encountered before.

1:10:31 So they have this, oh crap, like this is new. This is different. There’s a lot of focus going on.

1:10:37 Brian Rose: Yeah. I also wear the pink suit sometimes, you know, just uh, just

1:10:39 Chase Hughes: You have a pink suit?

1:10:40 Brian Rose: I actually have a pink suit. Yeah. Uh, and an orange suit and a red suit. So yeah, I don’t. It’s just getting a little out of control over here with the Savile Row tailors.

1:10:49 Actually, my Savile Row tailor almost talked me out of it. He’s like, “Brian, I can’t be making a pink suit.” But I was like, “Trust me, it’s going to be great.” But again, I think Marshall McLuhan, the famous guy that spoke about media, called it pattern interrupt. And I love that expression because I think that’s what you’re ultimately trying to do.

1:11:07 And I think what he was saying by that, and maybe you know better than me, Chase, is that it’s not like you’re going to show a Nikki lady on stage. Look, if I look at naked ladies all the time, then I’m like, “Yeah, whatever.” But it’s the pattern that’s being interrupted with something I’m not used to seeing. Um, I don’t know. I’m assuming that’s stuff you think about a lot.

1:11:27 Chase Hughes: That’s funny you say that cuz I have a slide when I teach corporations about uh, how to capture focus and marketing and sales teams and stuff like that. I have a slide that is just a butt with a swimsuit, but it’s a butt, a closeup of a butt. And like if people see, if you’re on the beach, that’s not a big deal. But if you’re expecting to see boring corporate uh, dry little PowerPoint slides and a giant butt is on the screen, that’s way different. So that interrupts uh, not just a pattern, it interrupts an expected pattern that’s in someone’s head.

1:12:03 Brian Rose: Okay. I think your butt trumps my pink suit.

1:12:08 Chase Hughes: Yeah, I’d like to see this. I need some pics.

1:12:10 Brian Rose: I’ll send you a link. Um, talk to me because now it seems like a lot of what you teach now is ethical influence. Um, you teach people how to train persuasion and confidence. What are some of the things that you talk to people about? I think the private equity thing is really smart.

1:12:25 We actually have a ventures arm and so we get pitched all the time and it’s really interesting because they pitch on Zoom in front of a group of uh, about 40 of us and I ask them kind of hard questions and they have to kind of go in real time and then afterwards everyone gives a judgment and I got people in countries all over the world. I got housewives, I got rich guys, I got people that don’t have a lot of money and we actually get everyone’s input and it’s really interesting to see how they evaluate someone and they’ll be like, “Yeah, there was something off about that guy.” Well, Brian, when you asked him that question, he didn’t answer it, or this is the guy I feel like I want to follow into battle.

1:13:03 And so, it’s definitely important because I mean, I think people still invest in people at the end of the day uh, more than anything. So, I’m just kind of curious how you teach this and what do you teach to do and not to do?

1:13:17 Chase Hughes: So, when I teach uh, the VC guys the uh, the first day, one of the biggest lessons we go over is the first hour that you meet someone, we will always project onto them because when we have limited information, we’ll project something onto that person. And this goes back to, like, the ancient theater days, uh, like the Shakespeare Theater there in London. Uh, like when a big performance would happen, some big emotional moment would happen, the actor would turn around to the crowd and look out at this crowd with a blank expression.

1:13:57 No sadness. It wasn’t like horror or anything, but this blank expression would allow every member of the audience to project how they were feeling and interpret that face a little differently. So, was that a victory? Was that a loss? Uh, because I mean they knew this back then.

1:14:16 So, when I teach these guys, it’s like if the guy triggers something in ourselves, we will kind of project onto it. So our initial dislike or our initial trust may be a projection. So the first thing I teach them to do is, like, let’s get to know your shadow. So we all go in there and I have this little thing that we walk through called an inventory. And we go through that and, like, here are the ways that I will likely project onto a person so that they’re automatically set these trip wires in their head so they know if these things start popping up.

1:14:52 And I think at the end of the day, one of the biggest lessons that we give to these VC people, and sometimes they just, like, I call it renting me. Uh, they just have me sit in the room and I’ll just wear a little, like, country club sweater vest kind of thing and I’ll look like one of the bros in the back of the room. Nobody knows who I am. Um, and I’ll just sit back there and I’ll do check marks and X’s and the guy next to me will kind of look over, and if they have more questions, I’ll be like, “Oh, yeah, he was lying about this financial thing or he was really stressful about this one little thing right here.”

1:15:26 Just ask him one follow-up question about this thing. So, one of the best questions is an interrogation. It starts an interrogation where it’s called the punishment question. And the punishment question goes like this. It would say, let’s say there’s a crime committed and I’m talking to you in the interrogation room.

1:15:50 And I would say, Brian, what do you think should happen to the person that did this? And I would just wait. And at that point, if the person’s an innocent person, that doesn’t cause them stress. A guilty person gets stressed from that kind of thing. Um, and the second question that we translate into these uh, VC people from the interrogation, it sounds like uh, it’s called a bait question, and it sounds like is there any reason?

1:16:24 So, like if I’m interviewing, let’s say you’re OJ Simpson and you’re coming into LAPD the next day and I ask you a question and I say, “OJ, I want you to think carefully before you answer this. I just want to know, is there any reason that one of the neighbors would say that they saw your Bronco outside of Nicole’s house last night?” So, I didn’t say that we had that data, but you are only a guilty person would feel stress in this moment because I’m either a, I’m asking you to lie, like you’re going to either a, be caught in a lie, or b, you’re going to have to say uh, yes, and now you’re going to have to admit that, oh yeah, well, I pulled in but I didn’t see anybody home so I left, and now I’ve got you at the crime scene.

1:17:13 So those two questions, like uh, what if we find out that XYZ is not true, what should happen, like asking those kinds of questions in those meetings, and the second is, is there any reason that someone might find a record out there that indicates that XYZ might not be true or might not be what, as you’re describing it. So the key to those questions is removing ego. We’re not trying to say gotcha, and we don’t want to say is there any reason somebody would say that you’re a POSOS, not doing any of that.

1:17:48 Is there any reason that someone would have any reason to say that this may not be entirely accurate?

1:17:54 Okay. So, keep in mind if you’re ever asking that bait question, the is there any reason question, the more you can kind of be vague, the more that person’s subconscious will fill in the details that you left out and think that you know more than you do.

1:18:11 Brian Rose: Okay. Wow. All right. So, you kind of went through a few interesting points there. I think the first part you said is that we project so much of ourselves on other people that if you want to be good at this, you want to really try to know yourself or go deep into that shadow to just find out what you’re projecting on them versus what is actually them.

1:18:34 That’s important, or that’s what you teach some of your clients.

1:18:37 Chase Hughes: All uh, everybody who goes through this kind of training where it’s kind of high stakes, short amount of time, uh, we go through that’s day one. We have something called the authority inventory that shows us all of our little blind spots and weak spots. It’s not like a it’s not like one of those personality quizzes. It’s just showing you you’re probably going to judge people because they remind you of a little dark spot. And uh, my grandfather used to say, uh, there’s something about that guy I don’t like about me.

1:19:09 And that’s kind of uh, what’s really going on in those meetings.

1:19:13 Brian Rose: It’s very interesting. You know, I’ve definitely contemplated a lot that uh, that statement that if something about someone bothers you, then that’s something inside of you. Um, and you can go pretty deep on some of these things. I had a guest on my show named Dr. John Demartini.

1:19:29 He’s a pretty fascinating dude. I don’t know if you know John, but um, if you dig into his IP, it goes pretty deep. And um, he takes that to the extreme and he says, “Look, if you’re infatuated with someone, um, there’s something in you that is actually that good, and you want to normalize that, and if you want to demonize someone, you know, there’s something there and you want to normalize that because both behaviors are going to cause you to just live a non-congruent life.”

1:19:59 And even events, you know, and this is where I found him fascinating, like tragic event, maybe your child dies, something I can’t even imagine, he’s like, okay, let’s go through this, and then he goes really deep in these workshops and says, okay, um, you know, who is the person in your life that now you are acting as a parent to and what are the people that remind you around that has that person, and he has this fascinating way of, like, normalizing this stuff to where people can kind of move on.

1:20:26 And um, I don’t know if you know much about him, but you just kind of sparked a couple of flashbacks.

1:20:31 Chase Hughes: I’m going to be reading it now. That’s

1:20:32 Brian Rose: Yeah. And then this kind of brings me to the, you know, one of my final questions for you and that is that you are a big fan of psychedelics. And I never saw that coming, Chase. Um, and it’s something that in our 14-year history, we’ve kind of delved into quite a few different times. I remember I think it was our sixth episode back in 2011 where we actually um, planned out an ayahuasca ceremony and did a before and after.

1:21:00 I was terrified at the time cuz I just left the banking industry and nobody on YouTube, well, that was nobody really on YouTube, but nobody was talking about psychedelics. Now there’s people that live stream their, you know, eight, eight gram mushroom trips. But, um, back then it was very hush- hush and I was worried even talking about it would get me in trouble. But, um,

1:21:20 We ended up, uh, going pretty deep on a lot of this stuff and I made a documentary film about going back later and um, I’ve had a lot of the big names on there, from Dennis McKenna, who’s become a good friend and I actually drank ayahuasca with down in Costa Rica. But the reason I guess I’ll ask you about this is because for me it really gets me to understand myself and can really make me look deep inside of myself and find out what’s holding me back and what I’m colorizing the world through my lens to where maybe I can see things more clearly. I’m kind of curious why you uh, mention those.

1:21:53 Chase Hughes: I think um, we’re kind of undergoing this new awakening with these me these drugs. I hate the word drugs. It’s just not we’re classifying uh, multivitamin,

1:22:10 Aspirin, and heroin and mushrooms all in the same uh, weird basket. So,

1:22:15 Brian Rose: It’s a loaded word as well. You know, Nancy, say no to drugs and all that. Yeah.

1:22:20 Chase Hughes: Yeah. And that’s a whole another rabbit hole, the DARE program.

1:22:25 Brian Rose: Oh, yeah. You see it for all the manipulation it’s doing.

1:22:29 Chase Hughes: Oh, yeah. Let’s dive down that someday.

1:22:32 Brian Rose: Yeah. Well, not to mention the war on drugs and then the fact of the role drugs play in politics and money and everything, but that’s our second episode.

1:22:41 Chase Hughes: Yeah. So if you just look at what’s going on in the last few years, not even to mention in the 1950s they used uh, psychedelics as prescription therapy for uh, all kinds of disorders and depression, anxiety, addiction disorders, all of this stuff. And then somehow like that’s made to be illegal. And then now uh, just looking at the research, the preliminary research from just the last, like, eight years of treating veterans with PTSD and addiction disorders and all that, it’s the most effective drug tested for psychological conditions in human history.

1:23:21 And I heard one doctor say uh, in a study that came out recently, I can’t remember where, who published it, but like one dose of mushrooms is the equivalent of, like, 15 years of behavioral therapy.

1:23:34 Yeah.

1:23:34 And there’s something beautiful about it. I did my first, I have temporal lobe epilepsy. I had this brain disease called mesial temporal sclerosis where my brain tissue is dying uh, rapidly and I was having nine seizures a day and losing, expectations without question. And I started this little psychedelic thing and I just went to this place, did this mushroom journey and it was radically different. The mushroom stopped every single seizure.

1:24:55 I didn’t have to take any prescriptions or anything like that. It gave me my life back. I couldn’t drive a car uh, because of these seizures. I would, you obviously, crash. And now like I’m driving, I drive a motorcycle.

1:25:08 I drive my car. Everything’s completely fine. And I think psychedelics are like 90% of that journey. And I don’t think I’d be here without them. And they reverse so much brain disease, so much trauma, and all this.

1:25:24 And most people don’t know that they’re neurogenic. They help us to grow brand new baby neurons in our brain. And we can’t just grow baby neurons just from, like, drinking some cool, you know, supplements from the internet or something like this. This stuff is a miracle. And even things like ketamine, which is man-made, uh, can generate some new neurons, help people with addictions and depression, anxiety.

1:25:49 It’s just such a miracle. And it’s not like these psychedelics are non-addictive. Um, and they’re anti-addictive and they’re non-toxic and they don’t have, like, oh, you can take this two times, it’s going to cure your depression, but your liver is going to fail in a year and a half. Like, there’s none of those kind of side effects like we see with so many uh, prescription drugs.

1:26:11 Brian Rose: When did you have your first psychedelic experience? And um, how often have you gone and what different psychedelics have you used?

1:26:20 Chase Hughes: My first was 2019 uh, in a place where it was legal and uh, it was life-changing. It was like a 5 g psilocybin dose and the doctor there gave me MDMA before I even really knew what it was or what it did. But I needed it cuz like it kind of knocks your ego out. And I had a big fat ego and I needed some kind of, I needed something to kind of punch me through that wall. And that was just life-changing.

1:26:52 Just that one thing. If I had never done it again from that day, it was life-altering for me. And then I’ve uh, since tried DMT just within the last few months with uh, a guy named Danny Gooler who’s working on this project Veil Break and all that with the University of London, and that was, I don’t know if you’ve ever done this but like

1:27:15 Brian Rose: I have. Yeah.

1:27:16 Chase Hughes: Six minutes long and it is maybe one of the most profound experiences I’ve ever had. And the weird thing is you come back with all kinds of unbelievable, I don’t even want to call it knowledge. You come back with unbelievable something uh, and zero knowing. It’s like you get shown a million things that you cannot comprehend but you know it’s badass and you know it’s incredible and beautiful and spiritual and then you come back and you’re like, yeah, I can’t explain any, I can explain nothing.

1:27:50 So I think that there’s so many people out there. I’m a neuroscientist and u, I did uh, med, I did a neuroscience program up north and I did a uh, studied medical neurology at Duke University and there are a lot of neuroscientists out there like, here’s how psychedelics work. I don’t think we have 01% of the surface scratched of how those things work. And I think that us not being completely convinced that we have it all figured out is okay. I think that’s okay for people to say that and I think we need more people saying that it’s okay that we don’t know but we know that it works.

1:28:27 If you look inside the average operating room, they’re using anesthesia. No one on earth knows how anesthesia works. Use it every single day.

1:28:37 Brian Rose: Yeah. You know, we could probably talk another full episode about the psychedelic experience. We had um, Rick Doblin on the show who’s been trying to legalize MDMA since the mid 80s many times. We’ve had the guys from Imperial College London on the show who did a lot of the early research from Professor David Nutt to Robin Carhart-Harris, who then moved out to California, obviously the Dennis McKenna of the world who are kind of legendary. I did a whole documentary uh, film about my experiences.

1:29:02 So uh, yeah, there’s something very powerful. Also, they have a really a storied history of being made illegal because they were probably contributing to social unrest and anti-political things in the US that actually stopped them, as you know, from being used in medicine for 30, 40 years. So, um, and of course, the pharmaceuticals don’t like them because it’s a one shot and you’re done. It’s not your statins or your other drugs, your anti-depressants that will make you a lifelong customer.

1:29:30 Chase Hughes: Uh, yeah. They’re treating causes instead of symptoms. And yeah,

1:29:35 It’s amazing. And I remember the biggest revelation for me was not even verbal. The person who was guiding me through the mushrooms my first time, I kind of opened my eyes. I like pulled the blindfold off, opened my eyes like Midjourney, I was like, “Why does everything look like the cave paintings and Mayan stuff and all the like weird art in New Mexico?” And he just smiled at me.

1:29:58 He’s like, and I was like, oh, it’s like this is ancient. Like, this is our ancestors used. It was very spiritual and sacred. It wasn’t some recreational thing that they bought at a street corner. They treated it with a tremendous amount of respect, and I think we should, too.

1:30:18 Brian Rose: Yeah. I ultimately I think I’m a fan of the ayahuasca experience. I hadn’t been for about 6 years and then I went and then I waited another four or five years because as you said it’s very challenging and not something you want to go do the next weekend per se. Um, because if you do it and do it right with the right dose then um, it can really cause a lot of introspection and the worst thing that you can do is try to explain it to someone because it’s

1:30:47 There’s no words for it and a lot of times it even cheapens it. So, I just can’t, I’ll come home and I’ll be like, “Yeah, I got nothing to tell you.” I’m still trying to figure it out is usually it. But, um, you know, I was that orally active DMT. And for me, uh, Chase, it really gives me, uh, real commandments and lessons and things I really need to think about it.

1:31:07 Um, we actually did a show back in the day in 2013. It was called DMT Before and After. And, uh, I was there with my co-host and we said, “We’re going to try DMT for the first time.” And then we stopped the episode and we flew to Spain and we tried the DMT and we came back and gave our reactions. It ended up being one of our most watched episodes.

1:31:27 But um, for me it was definitely an alternate reality that clearly shows you that everything that we experience is just total nonsense. Um, but with the smoking the DMT, I don’t get those deep lessons that I have to work on for the next year or two. But look, that’s just me. Um, I’m so happy to hear it helped with your seizures. Look, I’ve heard of these things, but it’s hard to believe that actually worked for you.

1:31:54 Chase Hughes: Yeah, it’s hard for me to believe. I mean, just mixing that and methylene blue has been life-changing for me. And I’ve published medical papers on methylene blue and all that, which is a whole another thing.

1:32:05 I’ve never done ayahuasca, but I mean, I’m hesitant because all I hear about is like you got a little Home Depot bucket beside you there and you’re like vomiting in this thing the entire time.

1:32:16 Brian Rose: There is a purging stage that can happen. Uh, you know, they’ve probably been doing that in ceremony for a very long time. Although probably as humans we’ve been doing mushrooms for a long time. But um, I yeah, when done right with the Shipibo shaman from Peru with their icaros being sung in the background and the ceremony that you can get, it’s pretty powerful experience and I really prefer it. Um, yeah, you can purge sometimes and you know that’s a little hard to get used to, but uh, yeah, ultimately I definitely recommend trying it uh, you know, while you’re still on this planet.

1:32:52 That’s for sure. Um, Chase, tell me about the brand new book um, Exit. Uh, what is this as far as a guide to reclaiming the mental autonomy? Um, and what are you trying to get people to learn about this world of manipulation?

1:33:06 Chase Hughes: Uh, I think this book just stemmed out of my desire to do every single thing that I can to inoculate people from manipulation. And while I can’t, like, man, if I could throw it on a USB and give it to everybody, I definitely would. But I think education and just, I can teach you just a few things, and if I teach it to you in the right way, that will set off a trip wire in your brain, whether it’s one person or an entire media organization trying to manipulate you.

1:33:43 It’s going to set off every alarm bell in your head and you’re going to just start, like we talked about earlier, building those walls of cognitive dissonance. We’re kind of building walls the other way of non-manipulation, of sovereignty, of just like emotional sovereignty or mental sovereignty, where I don’t have to be manipulated by that stuff. And I am, I would say that I’m a brainwashing expert. I haven’t watched television in 26 years. Um, so that should be like step one for everybody watching right now.

1:34:18 Now, I’m not saying you have to stop watching TV, but get to a place where you’re no longer seeing commercials, cuz commercials are the beginning of a lot of this stuff, especially for children. Commercials have two goals and two goals only. Make you compare yourself to others and make you feel like you’re not enough yet. That the last word yet. Then I’ll have to invest or buy something or keep going with something.

1:34:39 Brian Rose: Wow. Yeah. I remember when I stopped cable like 20 years ago or something, it was that time quite a controversial decision, and then whenever I go on holiday the worst is when you go to the States and you’re in a hotel room and it pops on and then you see the pharmaceutical ads, that’s always a shock. It’s like gee, this is 2 and a half minute long and it’s really well produced and that’s kind of scary, and then you just see the news as well. I remember I was at a doctor’s appointment in London one time and I caught the BBC, which I normally avoid like the plague.

1:35:10 Um, nothing to do with the fact that they helped cancel us in 2020, but I just looking at it like, man, the just fear-mongering and the murder here and this and I’m like, who can actually believe this? And then I realized that most people do.

1:35:24 Chase Hughes: Most people do.

1:35:24 Brian Rose: Wow.

1:35:25 Chase Hughes: You know what happens? Let me just say one thing about all this fear. Our brains have not changed in 200,000 years. No different, same wrinkles, everything’s the same. We’re wired to be able to concentrate on a tribe of 120 people.

1:35:43 When it becomes 120 million and 10% of those people are experiencing suffering or pain or injury or somebody got robbed or somebody’s shot or somebody wrecked their car or there’s all of these things happen. We don’t have the bandwidth to emotionally tune in to all of that. So the byproduct of being exposed to all of that stuff is pure apathy. And we have apathy for the suffering of other people. Uh, when we should be worrying about our tribe and things like that, things that we can genuinely control.

1:36:20 What the London Real Investment Club actually does for you, it gives you the keys and contribute to, um, and we have apathy because we’re seeing this stuff all over the world. We’re keep people keep saying oh the world’s in such a bad place right now, like, I don’t know, few hundred years ago they were cutting people’s heads off by the millions. Uh, so we’re just more exposed to that negative information and we get this bias that people several hundred years ago had access to what was going on around the world and they were just paying attention to their community and the neighbor and where they could control their life.

1:37:50 So this apathy is not some engineered by some guys smoking cigars around a dark room conference table. It’s just that’s where a lot of the money comes from and that’s how we can sell commercials. I don’t think it’s a dark secret. I just think it’s a byproduct of the algorithms and all that kind of stuff. And we are engineered to have that apathy after a certain amount of time.

1:38:16 It’s inevitable. So the consumption of all that actually turns us into not even the best humans and we then lose the ability to be compassionate for the people in our lives that matter.

1:38:30 Brian Rose: Yeah. Because apathy just becomes a behavioral pattern,

1:38:32 Right?

1:38:34 Yeah.

1:38:34 And with it’s you know we’ve always had the news even when you and I were kids, but the social media is a tricky one because that is the comparison. You know what do they say? Comparison is the thief of joy. In the past, you would see people in the news, but you would never see someone that is your age, that looks like you, that is, you know, uh, that’s flying on the private jets and has the better girlfriend than you, and has all the other stuff. I mean, you flip on your social and you see so many versions of what you could have been, and that’s something that we didn’t have before.

1:39:05 And I guess that’s going to do a lot with your head as well.

1:39:09 Chase Hughes: Yeah. And just really quick, let me show you the evolution of these things so everybody that’s watching right now can fully understand it. And you can use what I’m about to say, explain this to all of your friends. If you just look at Maslow’s pyramid, the very bottom is survival. So when we form tribes and we form these like little town squares and there’s a guy at the town square with the bell, what’s he going to be yelling about?

1:39:30 Not Susie had an argument with Carol because she painted the fence, right? He’s talking about there’s poison in the water supply. They’re coming here. Somebody’s going to die. It was big time news.

1:39:41 So the big announcements that we got every day are about survival. Then we invented maybe telegram and radio. Then it was about sustainment. Then it was about foods might be going away. There’s some sex might be going away.

1:39:57 So it’s like we have like these warnings about food, sex, and all of that kind of thing. Then we have like news and news media. Then it’s like the water supply might be poison. People are going to get sick. All this your kids might get kidnapped.

1:40:10 And then it’s belonging and social. Then we have Facebook coming around to take away that part of the pyramid and start deleting that and warning us about that. And then after Facebook we have this rapid short form content and our brain can’t form long-term memories during that. Uh, we cannot. So like you can’t ask somebody what short form content did you watch two days ago?

1:40:33 Brian Rose: Doesn’t happen.

1:40:34 Chase Hughes: But then so above social is this confidence and self-esteem stuff. And that’s where the self-esteem stuff. So it’s an attack on the entire Maslow hierarchy of needs. And the final thing that can be attacked is that actualization at the top to have some kind of media source that will, whatever’s next, will be the one that attacks the actualization. That’s our ability to achieve our potential.

1:41:00 Brian Rose: Can you go a little deeper on that? The actualization, what and what might that look like?

1:41:06 Chase Hughes: So the top of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, and this is Abraham Maslow. This is the famous psychology thing that everybody in psychology learns. The very top is self-actualization. And that little top of the pyramid is so once we have our like little self-esteem needs met. I’ve kind of like I feel good about myself.

1:41:25 I can I feel like I’m self-driven and self-powered, then I get to self-actualization. This is like I feel this way and now I move up and now I feel like I have legacy. I’m fully fulfilling what I was here to do. I have the two P’s. I have purpose and passion and they’re both happening together.

1:41:45 So that’s the full actualization. That’s the one piece of Maslow’s pyramid that is yet to be uh, subverted. And I’m not saying any of this was done like deliberately. It just, the algorithm works because it’s attacking that level by level. That’s the only reason,

1:42:01 Brian Rose: Right? It works cuz there’s value there somehow, right? Like it wouldn’t work unless it created a reaction and then that’s why it continues to work and that reaction leads to attention leads to value and then it just keeps going, right? Do you know what that tool would look like to actually stop self-actualization? Is that

1:42:20 Chase Hughes: I hope I never see it.

1:42:23 Brian Rose: It might be. I don’t know. And let me ask you something, like we saw everything that happened in 2020 and 2021 and it maybe wasn’t just the virus but also, you know, the fear and then the disinformation, misinformation, censorship and everything that went alongside of it. So obviously we’ve had a little break from that narrative. Um, do you see there being a point in time again in the next 10 years where we will have uh, another element of fear seems more likely to be something biological based?

1:42:55 Cuz that’s a great one. Would love to play the classics like that. And now we’re going to be in a state, Chase, where we have an AI interface as opposed to the internet interface. And back then I could search and be like, “Oh yeah, the BBC. I kind of know what they’re doing.

1:43:11 I kind of know what he’s saying. Rogan usually knows what he’s talking about.” Now it’s like ChatGPT just spits me out the answer that I’ve now gotten so used to trusting and it tells me the directions and it tells me the best recipe and it tells me when to get, you know, my meat on Mondays and so I’m assuming it’s telling me the answer here. I guess how dangerous is the next level which is AI woven in because we didn’t experience that in 2020.

1:43:38 Chase Hughes: I’m no expert, but I will say that if we want to attack some kind of thing on the very top of that pyramid, the next pandemic will be digital and it will be some kind of quantum computer where everyone’s little private browsing history and all those little things that we hide so much on the internet and stuff like that is going to become public and that’s the one thing that will be a pandemic that is undoable. And I think that’s the next way because our tendency is to retroactively act on what happened previously. So like 9/11 was a black swan from hell.

1:44:16 Um, so what we just retroactively just kind of let’s build all this stuff so it doesn’t happen again, doesn’t happen again. Not really preparing for any other of the black swan events. And I think this is the next black swan will be some kind of massive uh, ripping off ceremony of the masks uh, through some digital means.

1:44:36 Brian Rose: I mean, imagine if you know some AI overlord could customize for every single person in the world a threat to you socially based on all the information you’ve told your AI you browsed and get that specific pain point and now it’s different from everybody else. So, like you said, it’s kind of evolved from a biological weapon that would attack low immune systems or certain bodies or all bodies and now you know that exact one thing and everyone’s got one thing or at least something more than anything else and then that could pinpoint it. But I guess it’s hard to predict black swans, but you’re saying it could be something like that.

1:45:13 Chase Hughes: Could be. That’s, I mean, that’s what uh, some of the guys that I work with work on, the US government red cell team that plan. There’s only 12 of these dudes, but they plan these little events of, like, what could happen. And that’s a definite possibility. And I think at the end of the day, if everything collapses, we’re all just going to turn to the Amish and be like, “Hey, we need some advice.”

1:45:36 Brian Rose: Yeah. Can we help you build the barn? We’re coming over.

1:45:38 Chase Hughes: Yeah. I know. Just imagine the I mean, the information and the disinformation and all of those things. I mean, we just rely on so much of our digital devices to tell us what’s going on. Um, imagine if that can be manipulated away so we just don’t know what the hell’s going on.

1:45:55 Brian Rose: And uh, look, I’ve had all the AI experts on. I went deep on this in 23 and I went down a deep dark hole. I won’t lie. And um, when you talk to those guys off camera, they don’t really disagree with that. Um, because we are getting to a place where it’s going to be super powerful.

1:46:11 And they always say, “Well, how is the AI going to kill us?” And they’re like, “You couldn’t even imagine it. You couldn’t even imagine.” Just like the cow doesn’t know it’s taking a bullet in the head to give a burger to some kid in South Korea, it couldn’t even conceive of the fact that that’s what was happening. And something similar could happen with us.

1:46:29 Chase Hughes: And one of the best ways to do it would be to co-opt the information in a way that would probably cause reactions or the lack of information or the disinformation or this. So yeah, we’re plugged into some uh, interesting times uh, going forward to say the least.

1:46:44 Brian Rose: So true. Um, Chase, what’s the best way for people to follow you? Um, pre-order the book or book you professionally. What’s the best way for people to get in touch?

1:46:54 Chase Hughes: Uh, just check out our uh, website. I guess it’s NCI, like Neurocognitive Intelligence University. NCI.university.

1:47:03 Brian Rose: Nice. And you got a YouTube channel where you collaborate with some fellow experts and kind of break things down as well, right?

1:47:12 Chase Hughes: We do. It’s called The Behavior Panel. And I have my own channel that has deindoctrination and deprogramming videos on there all about showing you how to spot psyops. There’s like 23 steps to spotting psyops and manipulation and all of that kind of stuff. Everything you would ever want to know about like being inoculated from mass manipulation is there on my channel.

1:47:34 Just type my name into YouTube.

1:47:35 Brian Rose: I love it. Um, you started the conversation by mentioning Dr. Robert Malone. Do you know him? Because he as a medical doctor actually just recently wrote a book about psyops.

1:47:46 Chase Hughes: I wish I knew him. He seems like a cool dude and just a gen as a dude, not even as the doctor. He just seems like a cool guy and I wish I knew him.

1:47:56 Brian Rose: Yeah, he’s a cool dude. I’ll connect you uh, when we’re done here. So, um, Chase, thanks so much. Uh, this was fascinating. I was kind of hanging on your every word and uh, really gives me a lot to think about and um, yeah, I’m going to be noticing a lot of different things over the next couple days, I think, that I wasn’t before.

1:48:12 So, look, appreciate you and definitely would love to go deeper in the future on psychedelics and things like that. So, thank you so much.

1:48:18 Chase Hughes: No doubt. Thanks, Brian. Appreciate you, man.

1:48:20 Brian Rose: All right. My pleasure. Thanks, everybody. We’ll see you next time on London Real. Take care.