Send us Fan Mail

Reading people works far less often than the experts claim. Former professional poker player Zach Elwood explains when a behavioral read helps and why it usually doesn't.

Zach Elwood wrote Reading Poker Tells, Verbal Poker Tells and Exploiting Poker Tells, and hosts People Who Read People. With Brian "Ponch" Rivera he explains why even good readers act on a tell only a couple of times in an eight-hour session, why reads that help at a poker table fail in an interrogation room, and what Tim Levine's research in Duped shows about nonverbal lie detection. He uses Gary Klein's approach to turn gut reads into named factors.

Ponch ties it to John Boyd. Orientation shapes what a person perceives, and a decision meets an environment nobody controls. Elwood's lesson from poker matches it: you can't be results oriented.

Zach Elwood: https://behavior-podcast.com
Poker tells: https://readingpokertells.com

Stay connected with No Way Out
X: @NoWayOutcast | @PonchAGLX

Stay connected with No Way Out and AGLX

X: @NoWayOutcast | @PonchAGLX

AGLX: https://www.aglx.com/no-way-out/

Send us Fan Mail

Deception detection, credibility assessment, and the real OODA loop. Former CIA case officer Kent Clizbe explains why reading the body fails and what he does instead.

Kent Clizbe served as a staff CIA case officer in the 1990s and as a contractor after 9/11. He is the author of Holistic Contextual Credibility Assessment and Willing Accomplices. With Brian "Ponch" Rivera he explains why he stopped trusting deception detection. He says East German and Cuban sources passed the agency's body-measurement tests, and every one of them was a double agent.

His method is holistic contextual credibility assessment (HCCA). It depends on contextual competence, which is real knowledge of the subject's country, language, profession, and subculture. Clizbe walks through a weapons source who was working in a moped factory, his lunch with Wayne Simmons, and his years vetting hires in the dot-com boom. Ponch connects the method to John Boyd: culture and previous experience sit inside orientation, and orientation shapes what a person observes and how he acts.

Kent Clizbe: https://kentclizbe.com
Why They Lie on Substack: https://kentclizbe.substack.com

Stay connected with No Way Out
X: @NoWayOutcast | @PonchAGLX

Stay connected with No Way Out and AGLX

X: @NoWayOutcast | @PonchAGLX

AGLX: https://www.aglx.com/no-way-out/

Send us Fan Mail

Police training, the constraints-led approach, and the real OODA loop. Dr. Pete Blair of ALERRT explains why training has to look like the job an officer will do.

Dr. J. Pete Blair is Executive Director of the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training (ALERRT) Center and Professor of Criminal Justice at Texas State University. With Ponch Rivera he asks why so much training consists of things that are not the thing. He walks through the firearms qualification, the four parts of the constraints-led approach, and why good training looks messy.

From there the conversation moves to John Boyd. Dr. Blair describes how policing learned the OODA loop as a sequence, and the two compare Boyd's full sketch with the perception-action loop of ecological dynamics. The second half covers John Vervaeke's 4P model, the four kinds of knowing, and why Dr. Blair starts training from the role the learner will occupy. His example is how you learned to ride a bike.

Tactical Science on Substack: https://tacticalscience.substack.com
ALERRT: https://alerrt.org

Stay connected with No Way Out and The Whirl Of ReOrientation
X: @NoWayOutcast | @PonchAGLX |

Stay connected with No Way Out and AGLX

X: @NoWayOutcast | @PonchAGLX

AGLX: https://www.aglx.com/no-way-out/