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Welcome!   Today there is a ton of stuff going on in the world of Technology and we are going to hit a number of topics from being aware of fake sexual harassment claims being used to mask malware to the advantages and disadvantages of future military technology, and why everyone should be using multi-factor authentication -- so stay tuned. For more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com --- Related Articles: Don’t Take The Bait - Fake Sexual Harassment Claims Can You Detect A Phishing Attempt? Vulnerability in Popular Anti-Virus Program Bots Losing Panache as Cybercriminals Hire In Third World Not If, But When -- Don’t Think You Are Not A Target Big Tech Has Your Private Medical Records -- Through Hospital Partnerships    Future Defense and Military Tech Best Practices in Authentication Still Mostly Ignored By Businesses --- Automated Machine-Generated Transcript: Craig Peterson 0:05 Hello everybody! Craig Peterson here. Welcome. Welcome, you are listening to me on WGAN and online at Craig Peterson dot com. Thanks for joining me. Today we are going to be talking about some of the most important things that are happening in technology as we do every week and more particularly what's going on in this security realm. We'll talk about how you can detect if it's a phishing site that you have gone to, New malware from TrikBot here, a brand new one. Some complaints here about McAfee. Every piece of anti-virus software McAfee makes has vulnerabilities. We'll talk about that major, major security problem. We've got an accounting fraud here and how it's getting harder to detect and Why we have breaches? You know, I talked to so many people, I have a lot of customers, a lot of business customers. And they're sitting there saying, Well, you know, this is all inevitable. So what should I do about that? We'll talk about that. Google, you might have heard of project Nightingale. We'll get to that today as well. Defense firms are on track to make some very, very scary hardware. We'll talk about that as well as some of the myths of multi-factor authentication. And there are a lot of myths out there about all kinds of this security stuff, frankly, but let's start with our friends at Microsoft. I bet you thought I was going to say Apple, didn't you? Well, we had a big patch day, Patch Tuesday, and it fixed 13 critical flaws this week, and one zero-day vulnerability. Let's start by explaining what a zero-day is. In this case, we're talking about a zero-day attack, which refers to a vulnerability that is undetectable by any current antivirus software or anti-malware software that has seen this particular problem before. Now you noticed that made a difference a distinction between anti-virus and anti-malware, right? Because anti-virus software behaves in a certain way. Anti-malware behaves well, frankly, a little bit differently. So what are the pros? What are the cons? What's the difference between antivirus and anti-malware? Well, as a general rule here, anti-virus is a subset of anti-malware. Anti-virus is something that we're doing now will probably continue to do forever. Still, it does not catch me. Most of the nastiness that's out there today, anti-virus is you know, at best release Some people would say zero percent effective, but I give it the kind of the benefit of the doubt. And it's about 20% effective. So if you have antivirus software, it's only useful about 20% of the time against all of these different types of attacks, it's probably close to 10%. If you pull in the human element into all of this, anti-malware software behaves a lot differently than antivirus software. Some of it is whitelisting, where it knows this is a legitimate piece of software that was not modified. So it allows it to run that on one side. These are quite difficult to keep up to date because you have to continually monitor what's going on in what the software upgrades are. What the checksums of that new version of the software are, their libraries, are they all legitimate all those DLL files and everything else they're using. It gets pretty darn complicated from the whitelist listing side. And there's a couple of companies that do whitelist. Some of them, frankly, do better than others. Craig Peterson 4:07 Some of them, in reality, isn't even really doing whitelisting when you get right down to it. And then there is the next level up, which is the anti-malware software. And anti-malware is software that looks at the behavior typically of what's going on. And there are there's software out there right now malware this designed to fool the anti-malware software to so it looks at it and says, Okay, this just installed Wait a minute, started opening a bunch of files. Wait a minute, is writing to a bunch of files. Wait a minute, and it's changing all these file names. That's the type of behavior that would be typical of ransomware. Good anti-malware software looks at the behavior of a program as it is opening all kinds of part the TCP/IP packets, that are trying to use a network to get to all of these other computers that are out there on the network. What is it doing? How is it doing? Why is it doing all of that? That's good anti-malware software. So it will do all of that it looks at checksums, it looks at just all kinds of things. And it typically has about a 10% performance penalty on your computer, and it can be a little bit higher than that. But it's they're busy looking at everything, examine everything trying to figure out what to do. So we have anti-malware software out there, as well as anti-virus. Those are the two significant types of software you'll put on to your computers. And frankly, anti-malware like well we use has multiple layers of software, and it ties into external databases and, and Cisco Telos to get updates and everything else. So that's what we use us what we do. So, in this case, we're talking about a zero-day Hack against some of this Microsoft software. So what does that mean? Well, that means that we're as of right now, none of the antivirus software knows how to detect this as a virus, none of it. That's zero-day, it's day zero. So tomorrow will be zero-day plus one, right? So day one of this out in the wild. And Microsoft, with their Patch Tuesday, decided they would plug 73 security vulnerabilities in their software products, including 13 of them, given the top level of a critical security vulnerability. And I guess it's kind of fortunate that this month only one of the flaws is known to be exploited. And this is a CV, that's what they're called that scripting engine vulnerability and Internet Explorer, and the sooner they get rid of Internet Explorer entirely, the better off everybody lives. Everybody's lives will be IE; they built it into the kernel so that they could have more control over it. You might remember the lawsuit against Microsoft saying, Oh, you can't ship a web browser that's integrated right into the kernel. Because now, you make it so that none of the other web browsers can work on internet XP on Windows, which was right in the very beginning. And you're blocking us out of there, and thereby it's anti-competitive, you know, it's all true. Now, IE because it's inside all these versions of Windows, these vulnerabilities can affect users who are no longer even using Internet Explorer at all. In other words, you don't have to launch the browser. You don't have to go out to the internet. You could get nailed on it right away. Okay. Now Microsoft Office is using the same rendering engine that has this vulnerability that internet access Laura has, and it can be embedded and in fact, triggered by an active x control on a booby-trapped web page. Active x is one of the worst things Microsoft could have ever done. It's right up there with some of the vulnerabilities and flash and Java. You know, are you kidding me you allow a web page to run code on a machine. And they at least they have markers on it, but it can be Mark now was safe for installation. The whole thing's crazy. I still don't understand Microsoft, and what they're doing here. Craig Peterson 8:36 So bottom line, make sure you do your update. I checked right before I went on air, and there aren't any significant problems that have been found with the updates here for November from our friends at Microsoft. They're often are. We also had this week, and some more patches come out from our friends, my friends, and yours from Intel. Now Intel makes a lot of the computer chips that are inside our computers, mainly for using a Windows machine. But Macs use Intel chips to, although they don't have to, I don't know why Apple went with Intel, you know, my guess was it was less expensive. And Intel also had some outstanding power performance numbers saw, you know, I can't blame them. But we have a bunch of patches that came out from Intel, that make all of their CPUs almost every processor they've made in the modern era is entirely vulnerable. Craig Peterson 9:39 And that's a terrible thing, including vulnerable not just on your desktop, but vulnerable in all kinds of operating systems and data centers. So, if you think hey, listen, I went ahead, and we moved all of our stuff to the cloud. They are just taking care of because it's in the cloud. Microsoft knows what they're doing. The answer to that is, well, they kind of know what they're doing. But they're stuck with this Intel vulnerability. There will be more patches coming out according to the people that found these vulnerabilities in every model of Intel CPU, Major, major, vulnerabilities. According to these people, there are more than Intel hasn't passed on yet for whatever reason. It's really, it's kind of crazy, frankly. So we got Microsoft patches for some major ones. This week. We've got Intel patches, some major ones this week, we've got Adobe patches that are out as well. So make sure you do the upgrades. I'm not going to go into all the details here. Man Adobe light set of patches this month only 11 security vulnerabilities from Adobe and Adobe Bridge, animate illustrator, and Media Encoder. Two months in a row where there are no patches for Flash Player. I'm not sure what that's about if they keep happening with flash player or if something else is going on. All right, stick around. We're going to be right back. You, of course, listening to Craig Peterson here on WGAN, make sure you visit me online at Craig Peterson dot com. We've had a few pop-up-trainings already. I'm doing some Facebook Lives and getting information out, and you'll only find out about them if you're on my regular email list. Craig Peterson dot com slash subscribe, and all of today's articles are up there as well. And there's a sign up right there too. So make sure you sign up to find out about all of the latest that you need to know. Craig peterson.com, when we come back, we're going to talk about chick bought something new going on out there trying to get us to do something we just shouldn't be doing. Stick around. We'll be right back. Craig Peterson 12:02 Hey, welcome back, everybody. Craig Peterson here, little beach music. I was out for the last week and a half out at a conference in Phoenix, Well I guess isn't exactly near the beaches is it, but it was sure nice and warm. And then I got back home, and you know what's happening up here in the northeast? Yeah, a little bit of cold weather. Some of it's a little too cold for my liking. You know, it just came on so fast. We were like in the 60s and 70s. And then all of a sudden it's like the 30s and 40s. I don't know what's going on. Well, let's talk about this TrikBot. It is a new malware that's out there. I've spoken to many times here on the show about what the FBI has been warning businesses, which is the business email compromise. You probably heard of that before bc we're talking about something that's cost businesses. Well over 10 billion, I think it's over $14 billion now. And we're not just talking about a little waste of time. No, we're talking about these guys and gals going right after our business bank accounts. And the way they do it is they're kind of sneaky about it, they get and get you to, to basically for the money, right to wire the money to do other things that are going to hurt your business. You may not realize it at the time, and they're just trying to fool you. Right. So how do you fool someone? And I know I know you can't fool an honest man. I've heard that so many times in the past, and there's a lot of truth to that. But here's what they're starting to do now. And you might have gotten one of these. I have had several listeners reach out to me. I and quite a few saying hey, I just got this email chain that, you know it's it's got a video of me visiting this, this nasty website out there right so you guys are probably heard about that one before it's been around a little while. Well, now what's happening is they are sending an email that appears to come from the US Equal Opportunity Commission. This email is saying that wait a minute here, and we have a sexual harassment complaint against you. Now I understand as a business owner, how this can be kind of crazy. And I owned a building, a business office that I had my business running out of, little more than 20 years, maybe a little longer. Ago now. And that business office, I put in doors, and all of the doors were floor to ceiling glass because I didn't want anybody saying that I was harassing somebody or doing something illegal. Now, of course, I, you know, we didn't have microphones and cameras and things. But I just wanted everyone to feel reasonably comfortable that no one was going to corner anybody. And, you know, I think I was kind of mostly successful about that one of these days or forever sitting down having a beer, you might want to ask me what happened there. But anyway, this is something called Trikbot, and it's a banking Trojan. And it's going after employees of large companies. And it's trying to scare these employees into thinking that the US equal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission EOC is coming after them. And they are trying to get them to and are being reasonably successful in having them handing over sensitive information. And they're using a bunch of different social engineering techniques, including malicious payloads or redirecting them to fraudulent sites they control by emails that look like coming by somebody they trust, etc. Okay? Now, these spearfishing emails, and I'll read you the text in one here in just a minute here. But they, what they end up doing is dropping a malicious payload on to your computer. And as part of this campaign, these malware operators use the information they've collected from people, such as their names that company they work for job titles, phone numbers, to customize these phishing emails to make them a lot more convincing. Now think about your business and your business's website and other information that you're making available to the public. Digital website has, who the officers of the corporation are. Craig Peterson 17:04 Now I know that all of us for our businesses, we have to file with the state chapter file with the IRS and various other things. But when it comes to the state, those records tend to be public. So people can go online, they can find out who the President is, who the officers of the corporation are, who the Registered Agent is, etc., etc. Right? And so now a bad guy can go online and find out almost anything they want to find out about a smaller company because it's right there on the website. Now is that easy or what? Now let's go into one of these pieces of email. Everything from the email subject This is from bleeping computer dot com. Everything from the email subject and the message content to the malicious attachment. Each of these mouse spam email Males comes containing the potential victim's name. Now I'm looking at it here. It's got a form, and it seems like it's legit. It has the logo of what I assume is the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission because it looks official enough to me, and the title at the top is the U.S. Equal Opportunity employment commission harassment complaint. Then the complete submission of a complainant form has initiated an intake interview with an EOC officer. Okay, this is what they're sending out right now. It looks very, very legitimate. And they use the name of the victim with a grievance raised against you. That's a subject for each of the phishing emails, and they're trying to get you to pay attention. They also have a customized email body to instill a sense of urgency. So it'll say, dear name of the victim, private and confidential. One of your co-workers has lodged a complaint with the EEOC. Now on top of it, all the malicious attachments, drop TrikBot payloads also have customized names. And again, it's the name of the victim-dash harassment complaint letter, and it's got a phone number on it. The entire purpose is to get you to open that attachment. And by adding this personal touch to the phishing emails, they've been increasing their chance of people opening them. Now, you know, I do a little bit of marketing for some of the courses that we offer and, and for some of the other services, you know, like the security services that we offer the businesses, so I've studied some of the marketing stuff that's out there. And I can tell you right now, most people, if you get an email that looks like that are not opening it. If you're concerned about a particular email and you have listened to my show for the last 20 plus years. You're very, very worried about it and legitimately so. Craig Peterson 20:10 So I'm not sure just how effective this is, you know, spam emails right now have an open rate of about, well, it's less than 1%. Legitimate emails have an open rate of, you know, as much as 15 to 20%. So I don't know how well they're doing. But when they're sending out 10's or hundreds of millions of emails, we're talking about some pretty darn serious stuff here. A lot of potential victims. These are highly targeted and regularly updated. That goes into some of the problems with antivirus software we will talk about later on. And that is if it hasn't seen that before, it's going to get tricked. This spear-phishing campaign delivers the malware payload. It's evolving. It's a banking Trojan. The purpose is to get you to give some banking information out. And apparently, it's been pretty successful. By the way, it's been in the wild since October 2016, one of the most aggressive pieces of malware that are out there right now. Stick around. When we come back, we'll be talking about McAfee's antivirus software and what's going on with that. Especially as it relates to some of the malware that's spreading out there in the world, right now. Make sure you are on my email list. So you keep up to date with everything that's going on. Craig Peterson comm slash subscribe. I'll let you know about the pop-up-trainings. I want you to pay close attention because I'm not going to hound you about this stuff. And we've had a lot of people attending them. They're free. Usually, they have two-hours worth of content and questions and answers. Stick around. We'll be right back. Craig Peterson 22:05 Hey, everybody, welcome back. Hey, did you see this? It was an announcement by one of the investment firms saying that Tesla might be missing the boat when it comes to electric cars? You know, we've all thought Tesla was the leader in the in that isn't so many ways right and built their battery factory. They've been just doing all kinds of amazing things, but it looks like they might be losing a little bit of an edge when it comes to the overall electric car business. Because now you've got Ford and GM, the major US manufacturers, I think Chrysler as well. I know Ford and GM both have some major stuff going on, as well as the Japanese firms like the Nissan LEAF. That's been all-electric for a long time, although Nissan stops making the thing some of these us manufacturers are definitely in the middle of it all. And you probably heard me a couple of weeks ago talking about some of the real risks when it comes to Tesla electric cars, particularly in the event of an accident. It's a scary thing. Frankly, it's a frightening thing being involved with the MS for all of those years to think about it. Well, we spoke a little bit in the last segment about this TrikBot malware using fake sexual harassment complaints as bait. We started off the hour talking about Patch Tuesday, and 13 critical fixes for Microsoft software, this critical fixes out for Adobe software, you got to apply these patches. According to the stats I've seen. There are, on average, about 65% of Windows computers that do not get updated at all. If this is you if you're one of those people, I urge you to spend a few minutes, let's make sure that the machines are updated. I know some people that say forget about it. I'm just going to replace my computer when it's just so far out of date. I know some people have done that with cars, too. I had a good friend I haven't talked to in years. But he was telling me that his dad did the math, back in the day, many many years ago. His dad did the math, and he figured that if he paid for oil changes throughout the life of an engine just wasn't worth it. So he said, Hey, listen. What did an engine cost back in the day it was a couple of grand for a boxed engine, and he was a mechanic he could quickly put in a new engine. And if I pay for oil, filters and my time to change the oil I will pass the break-even point at about 30,000 miles. So, in 30,000 miles, it was cheaper to replace the entire engine, than to pay for years of oil changes. Can you imagine that? So I did some quick mental math, and I agreed with him. He said, Listen, it's not as though I don't have oil in the engine. The engine will run off this known oil in it. But all I do is add oil when it needs oil added, and he never changed his oil. And at about 50 to 80,000 miles, you'd have to replace his engine. So he figured he was ahead of the game. Nowadays, with these new engines and filters and oils and the oil is just so thin. Nowadays. They're saying 10,000 miles give or take between oil changes, so it's not anywhere near as bad. Plus, some of the cars today will tell you, hey, I know Need an oil change? So you don't even have to keep track of the miles, you know, used to be 3000 miles. Do you remember you might not be old enough to remember, but the oil did not have the cleaners in it now, nowadays they have been detergents because your engines would get all sludgy? And what a mess ever take one of those apart, even just the head of the engine, the mess that was in there, we don't have those problems nowadays. Well, some people have taken that whole idea of, hey, it's cheaper to change the engine than it is to change my oil. They've taken that to the extreme. But you know, it is not like that when it comes to computers. You can't just have the laptop sitting on your desk or under your office and leave it there for years to come and say, Hey, listen, when it breaks down, I'll replace it. I'm not going to bother doing upgrades of my software won't work because it's running Windows XP, or whatever some old version of Windows, I'll go out to one of these, big-box retailers, and buy another computer and throw this one away. Craig Peterson 27:14 That is a very, very bad idea. Craig Peterson 27:16 And I suspect that's where some of the 65% of people come in, that are not maintaining their computers. Now you have to keep them because unlike your car, your computer is continuously under attack. So, that means you have to not just upgrading and updating windows but all of the software that's on your computer. You know, I talked a little bit earlier about Internet Explorer, and only Internet Explorer alone having it on your computer will cause other programs on your computer to get infected and allow hackers access. It's just plain old, not worth it. Well, let's talk about Anti-virus doctrine. Oh, you remember I said antivirus software? Yeah, I convinced myself that it's, it's about 10% effective at no more than that guaranteed. And we can go through all the numbers again, if you want to buy me a beer sometime we'll sit down and go through all the numbers, and how virus software does not work. Craig Peterson 28:19 Well, Let's talk about some software that doesn't work. McAfee antivirus software. In an article from ZD net, has a code execution vulnerability, a severe security flaw that can bypass the self-defense mechanisms built into McAfee antivirus, very, very big deal. Safe breach labs, their cybersecurity team. It is one of the groups that go around and test software, tries to find vulnerabilities, and then lets the manufacturer know so they can take care of it. But they're saying that this particular vulnerability can be used to bypass McAfee self-defense mechanisms and could lead to further attacks on a compromised system. Now, this vulnerability exists because of a failure by McAfee's programmers to validate whether or not these DLL's it's loading have been signed, let alone appropriately signed. Remember, I even mentioned that in the first segment today. These self-defense mechanisms are essential, and they need to be in place, even though the antivirus software is going to be at best 10% effective at least you would have 10% effectiveness right. So because they can bypass the self-defense mechanisms and leading to further attacks on a compromised system. It needs to get fixed right away. See an arbitrary unsigned DLL that gets loaded into multiple services that run is NT authority, backslash system. Craig Peterson 30:06 Now, the only good news is that attackers need to have administrative privileges to take advantage of it. However, I rarely walk into a business where everyone isn't running with, with, frankly, administrative privileges. The companies do that, and I understand why they do it. It's a bad thing to do should never do it. Right. But I know why they do it. They do it because, oh, it's just so much easier if I have to install software right or to call the IT person. And the IT person is the Assistant to the owner. And she's always busy. He's still running around doing stuff. I don't have the time, and I can't keep asking for permission to do things. So, everybody gets administrative authority. There are three main ways and which is why vulnerability gets exploited according to the Safebreach lab. Anti-virus software might not detect the binary, and it loads it without any verification against it. Impacted software includes McAfee total protection, anti-virus plus AVP from McAfee, and Internet Security up to and including the version 16.0 point 22. You must get the latest software. So, if you have McAfee update, pronto. And as I said, you should update, anyways. And don't use antivirus. I recommend getting a robust anti-malware stack of software. Craig Peterson 31:39 So what are people doing? Vendors doing? They're just renaming their stuff is anti-malware stacks. Yeah, yeah, that'll fix the problem. Your listening to Craig Peterson on WGAN stick around. We'll be right back. Craig Peterson 32:02 You know, it's funny how you get used to the weather, whether it's hot or cold. You're listening to Craig Peterson here on WGAN. And online at Craig Peterson dot com. You'll find my Facebook page by going to Craig peterson.com slash Facebook. And I've started posting some stuff up there. Well, I do that actually, every day. My wife is the one that's putting the articles up that I come up with every week, every day. But you are also starting to find I'm doing Facebook Lives and YouTube lives, and just you know, I'm getting a little better at some of this stuff. And there are a lot of possible angles here. By the way, you know, I mentioned I was at this conference, and I was learning a little bit more about marketing and product development out there. Product development is what I kind of love doing, Right. We can do it quickly. We know what we're doing. We know how to do it. So we're trying to figure out how can we produce a very inexpensive product that is going to help a lot of people when it comes to security. And I think we've got the answer. I don't want to be, you know, mean and nasty about this, but we're working on it. And we should have something in a couple of weeks from now, that I think is going to change lives. I think this is going to be earth-shattering. If we do this the right way, it is going to change everything for anybody that decides that this is for them. So we'll be talking about that in a couple of weeks from now. But it's an idea from another industry that in fact, it's the tennis, tennis training business, and I think it's like the world's most perfect idea. Here when it comes to us, so we'll be talking more about that. But you can find that you can find information on the articles that I have every week, you can see all of that stuff you can find out about the free pop up classes, the pop-up-trainings that I've been doing, you can find out about some of these Facebook Lives and YouTube Live. All of these are free training. I'm just trying to get this information into your hands. You know, the Whats, the Why, and the Hows, all of that stuff. And there's only one way to get it. And that is to sign up, go to Craig Peterson dot com slash subscribe, and I will make sure that we send you every week just a quick summary of the stuff that's going on. I'm going to have a special sign-ups for these pop-up-security-trainings, So no, I'm not going to send you a lot of emails unless you ask me to write by default. We got a great article from Joan over at darkreading.com. Dark reading dot com is one of those websites, one of many to which I pay quite a bit of attention. They do have some great, great content. In this article, they're talking about fraud and how it has changed. You, I'm sure, are familiar with our friend, the Nigerian prince, and all the things he did and how he tried to get his money out of the country. And all he needed was to use your US-based account, and you could keep some of that money. You remember that right then, it's just full of misspellings. It was just terrible, and there are reasons for the misspellings, there are reasons for the way they do things. No doubt about it. Well, things have changed. Now economics have changed. And they are swamped, making a whole lot of money. And they're doing it in different ways. They've done it before. You know, we've got tools now to detect and mitigate some of these attacks. And the easiest way to do that we have some software that all the email flows through, and it's looking for patterns look, make it look like it's a bot that sending out these emails. And when we put those this particular filter in place, in fact, it's and AI bought itself. That right the Battle of the AI that's coming to, but you know, the amount of spam these things dropped by 90 plus percent. It's just it's dramatic, how much it helps. Craig Peterson 36:58 Well, what has happened now is the bad guys have found that labor is getting cheaper and cheaper in some of these developing nations out there. And they're able to get people in Venezuela, for instance, where they are starving to death where they are picking through garbage because of their socialist government. And man, I saw this thing the other day, it just shocked me, they were using a sharpie to write on people's forearms a number, so they knew when they could get food. Yeah, when they could get food from the grocery store. That's how bad it is in Venezuela. So you have to wait in line. You have to obtain a number one thing. God is not a tattoo. It's a sharpie, but you have to get a number there on your forearm, and then you can get Food. And if you can't wait, and if you don't get enough food for your family, you're going to have to go through the garbage. It's just absolutely insane. Well, cybercriminals are hiring workers in Venezuela now, where the hourly wage has gone way down compared to other currencies. I am not sure if you remember, but Venezuela used to be the wealthiest nations in Central and South America by far and is now one of the poorest countries in the world thanks to their socialist government. Well, the hourly wage is so low that it now makes economic sense to pay people to manually carry out the fraud to write these fraudulent emails to research to get the stolen account data instead of using bots like they have been doing before. So, here's a quote straight from the article. "attackers are giving people a script and saying here's a quota you have to hit, criminals are always trying to figure out what is the lowest hanging fruit as merchants and companies evolve with defenses, these attackers evolved, humans just happened to have become the flavor of the month." So, these human-driven attacks are increasing quickly and exponentially. Now, the most recent fraud report that came out covering q3 2019. So. just this last month, found that attacks carried out directly by humans, both loan perpetrators who are trying to get money to support their families in third world countries, and organized criminal groups increased 33% over the previous quarter, nearly one in every five fraud attacks are manual now rather than automated. Craig Peterson 39:57 Now, of course, their goal is to look as legitimate as possible. Having humans involved does increase your chance of success. And so many people worldwide speak English because English is the international language of business. And it's causing a problem. This quarterly report that came out from our coasts looked at 1.3 billion transactions spanning account registrations, logins, and payments in the financial services, e-commerce, travel, social media, gaming, and entertainment industry's overall fraud increased 30%. In q3, and bought driven account registration fraud is up 70% as cybercriminals test stolen credentials, in advanced of what in advance of the US holiday season. Isn't that amazing? But now every third attack on financial services is manual. Attacks are coming from fraudsters now with access to stolen identity information. They're using the latest tools. Over half of the attacks that originate from Russia and China are now human-driven. It is changing everything. The data highlights that the entire attack incentive for countries across the globe is economically based. We've got some substantial economic things happening here in the US. If a nation's currency is worth only a fraction of the US dollar, then the incentive of a criminal in that country to defraud an American business is very high, because they've got that multiplier based on the value of their currency compared to the value of the US dollar. So, it's incredible what's going on. You've got to watch it. You got to be careful that There are a lot of bad guys out there that are looking to get their hands into your accounts. And we've got this shopping season right in front of us now. So what I would suggest to everybody is, check with your bank, depending on your bank, some of the banks and doesn't matter if it's visa or if it's MasterCard visa sent tends to be pushing this a lot more than MasterCard is. But whether it's Visa or MasterCard, you're going to find that they have virtual card numbers that you can use. And the idea behind these virtual card numbers is that you have a one-time card number that you can use when you are buying something online. So, instead of having your regular credit card number that you're using, that's sitting there in a merchant database, that may or may not be configured appropriately or secured. Remember, a secure server doesn't mean that their servers secure; it just means that your data going to it is protected in transit. Instead of giving them your real credit card number, and having that stored in a potentially insecure database, now all you have to do is give them that temporary credit card number. Go to your bank, and you can usually check on the website before you start buying stuff online for Black Friday. And we're going to have some Black Friday deals to or Cyber Monday, or you know, whatever it is for Christmas, for Hanukkah, for whatever you're celebrating. We have birthdays to over this holiday season. Get your bank to give you access, and this will be online access to get a different virtual credit card number every time you do a transaction online. It's cheaper for them to do that than It is for them to issue new credit cards when compromised or stolen. It keeps happening. All right, stick around. We will be back. We got one hour to go. We're going to talk about Google's project Nightingale and see if that's scary enough for you. We are concerned here about some of the defense firms, multi-factor authentication. I will run through how you can tell right what's the best way to do it. And how to detect a phishing site. We'll get to all of that. In the next hour. You're listening to Craig Peterson on WGAN and online, Craig peterson.com. Stick around. We'll be right back. Craig Peterson 44:52 Hello, everybody, Craig Peters on here on WGAN and online at Craig peterson.com. Hopefully, you join me there and sign up for my email list. I get you in my newsletter. You can do that by just going to Craig peterson.com slash subscribe and subscribing to my newsletter. Every Saturday, we are here and talking about some of the latest in technology and security. The things that frankly you don't hear about, at least not the right answers in the general media out there. It's just amazing to me how many things they get wrong, again and again, and again. I try never to attribute to malice what can be easily attributed to incompetence. Is that a terrible thing to say about some new people in the media? You know, if you get right down to it, they have so many things that they have to know about and be semi experts on to write some of the articles, so I guess I really can't blame them for well for least Some of that. Well, let's talk about the chaos here for a couple of minutes. We are in the new normal. Now I'm not talking about with President Obama said the new normal was, which is people high, you know, unemployed, high levels of unemployment and stagnant economy and stuff. I'm talking about a recent survey that was conducted by a security company out there that showed that 86% of 250 top security officials who participated in this survey believe that cybersecurity breaches are inevitable. Now that opens up a whole can of worms because it's unavoidable, does that mean there's nothing you can do about it? I think by definition, it does. It is inevitably going to happen no matter what you do. So why do anything? Many people have done nothing. Remember, in the last segment, and if you've been listening in the previous hour, I talked a little bit about how 65% or so of computers never were upgraded. That's, that's a bad thing, right? And nowadays, when we get right down to it, and we're talking about these 250 professionals, people that know what's going on. We're talking about people who realize that the complexity of today's cybersecurity in businesses makes it so that it's almost inevitable. Now, when we think about cybersecurity, and we're thinking about companies. Obviously there is some truth to this for home users and, and that's why we did this security summer you know, I had that hundred and 50 pages of cheat sheets that we gave away to everybody. Who participated in this. And it was designed to help you understand what you had to do in different circumstances. And hopefully, you got all of those I start, you know, they were all sent out well, by the end of September, because, you know, summer doesn't end until September 21. So I little extra time as my team and I delved into that labor of love out there. But there are a lot of pieces moving parts to this puzzle, and it makes it very, very difficult. Nowadays, we're making our lives even worse because of cloud adoption. We're using cloud services. We're using hybrid environments spread across physical machines, different locations, different teams, various cloud providers, and now businesses are using something called containers. I remember when I first heard about them, I was thinking about, well oil container on Okay, so we're talking about the types of things you put on a truck and then put on a ship right or, or you can rent while you are making the improvements like I did in my kitchen. Craig Peterson 49:11 I got one of these little containers, one of these small pod containers, and loaded it up with all of our stuff while we were working on it. Yeah, that's not what the containers at the businesses are using. These dedicated containers perform a specific purpose, like running a website, or a database or something else. It's just getting very, very difficult to keep track of it all. And frankly, that's why we're seeing some of the major breakdowns. Now we do not see in these in breakdowns like Equifax. What was that? It was, Oh, yeah, a username of admin with a password of admin rights. Stuff like that is just plain old, stupid, but because of everything so complicated and were not tested thoroughly, they broke in. Now, if you are in a business-like, for instance, a shipbuilder, you are thinking about failures. Because if you're out in that open ocean and you get a rogue wave that comes in, hit you on the side, your ship is going to flip over. Now obviously, you don't want to name your ship, Concordia. Another one just ran aground this week over Norway. Of course, the big Concordia running the ground was in Italy, and what a mess. But shipbuilders realize that ultimately, ships are going to fail. There is going to be that rogue wave, or it is going to run aground or the propulsion systems going to go down. And the extremes are like submarines where you have all the compartments, and the idea is that a breach might occur in one compartment, but the other compartments will not. So we're spending billions of dollars, and we're likely preventing a lot of bad stuff. The number of high profile breaches is just increasing and causing devastating damage to us as consumers. It's going to last for decades. And why? Well, like so many other industries, people in the security business are not preparing to fail. And companies are not preparing to fail. It's like what I teach in my backup course, the three to one backup methodology, and I should do another pop-up-training on that. Frankly, you've got to have multiple copies of backups numerous generations of backups on various types of media, in numerous sites, because of Smith's commentary. Now, you might not be familiar with Smith's commentary, but Smith's commentary on Murphy's Law is that Murphy was an optimist. And of course, Murphy's Law is, if anything can go wrong, it will. So shipbuilders have engineered the systems, they have segments in the halls, they have multiple hulls, double triple hulled ships so that if it's carrying oil or something else, if there is a penetration to the hull, the ship won't dump oil or whatever, into the ocean. It's been done this way since the 15th century. And it's been done in today's modern vessels as well. Even the Titanic had some of these things in place, although it had some other problems. I don't know if you've seen some of the more recent studies, by the way, on the Titanic. It's fascinating. But it looks like what happened was, there was a fire in the Titanic's hold coal fire that they couldn't put out. And they had been smoldering and caused a weakening of the ship's hull. And that's why when it hit that iceberg it tore open. But that's another story here. So let's talk about some principles here security principles that they use in shipbuilding that we need to look at in modern IT. Shipbuilders assume that at some point, the ship will suffer leak. So how do you protect against that? How can you fix that? Well, they create holes that prevent a single leakage from sinking the whole ship. So, in the same way, you have to assume there might be a breach in your corporate environment and segment your network so that it doesn't spread. There's a lot of details we could discuss, and maybe I should do some Facebook lives on these things. Craig Peterson 53:52 Your staff who's responsible for maintaining the ship's hull is monitoring for leaks. They're watching for leaks, and they're regularly patching. They're painting they're scraping right to get rid of the rust and to make sure that there isn't a major flaw in the ship's surface, or you know, hull, they're trying to keep the ship safe. So, in the same way, our modern security teams have to be vigilant about monitoring and patching. To prevent these cracks in the perimeter, as well as the interior. We just last week had a client who had an internal breach. They were using a VPN to allow our remote office to get into their primary network. That remote office was breached and was used as a launching pad to get onto their primary network. And then once on one machine on the main network that they could breach, they now we're able to spread within the main network. We got to watch this. The ship's most sensitive equipment is in the engine room. And in the tape game you know in the case of a business you got to venture critical IT assets are considered ships that staff lookouts 24 seven to make sure there is a good watch, we need to do something similar with our data. Keeping the crew from accessing the bridge is an important safety measure. We got to make sure that our user identities get set up correctly and their employees, contractors, remote users can only get data they should be getting to. And we could go into attack after attack after attack. But the bottom line is when you're designing your security, you have to anticipate a breach. You've got to patch everything, keep it patched and up to date. And you've got to segment your networks. And if you need to be secure, the newest types of networking are called zero trust networks where nothing can talk to anything else on the network. Unless it's explicitly allowed because we can't trust it. So the very least segment out your Internet of Things devices, make sure your sales guys are on a different network than your accounting people. Right? Break it all down in the business space. When we get back, we're going to talk about us in the consumer world and Google's Project Nightingale, man, is this a scary project, but you know, heck, it's Google, but not can do anything wrong right here listening to Craig Peterson right here on WGAN. Craig Peterson 56:43 Hello, everybody. Welcome back. Craig Peterson here after the top of the hour. And we are talking about the latest in security and technology. What's going on out there? We cover in some depth here some of the things that you need to understand. Some of these things are specific questions that I've gotten from you. So if you have a question of any sort you'd like me to answer on the air or maybe answer directly, email me. It is ME at Craig peterson.com. I am glad to do it, or you can drop it on my Facebook page. Now I have to say that I get thousands of emails a day. So sometimes it can take me a while to get around to it. So don't feel bad if I don't answer your question right away. But I am pretty good about answering most of the questions that people ask and particularly if you email them me at Craig Peterson, dot com that's so that's what I monitor kind of the most. Some of my team helps you track that too, which is a very, very good thing. Mountain View, California dateline. It is a scary story. And you know, we just had Halloween, but here's what's going on. You might not be aware of it. HIPAA is a law put in place, oh, decades ago now, I think maybe even as much 20 years ago. The most significant part of HIPAA is this whole concept of portability. Now, you may not realize it, the bill was certainly not advertised as being this way, but it is this way. Here's the problem. Before HIPAA went into place, what was going on if you had your medical records, and those medical records had to be kept private, they could not share them with anything and what HIPAA did was. It defined the rules for sharing, among other things. Before HIPAA, your medical records were considered private and kept secret. After HIPAA went into place, your medical records could now be shared anywhere almost in the medical community. And of course, with portability, the idea is, well, you've got your medical records, you want to go to Florida for the winter. So you want the doctors in Florida to be able to have access to your medical records, which is all well and good. It makes a lot of sense. However, other things going on in there still are. If I want the medical records of every patient in hospital x or health plan, why? And I say, Hey, listen, I'm going to buy the company. I'm thinking about buying the company. I'm thinking about purchasing that hospital. The hospital has the right to give me all of your records. That's the bottom line. Scary. And that's been happening. Our medical records have been shared and traded like trading cards. So, one of the largest health systems here in the United States is called Ascension Health. And you might have heard of it before, mainly if you are at all involved in the Catholic nonprofit health system. The Catholic Church has taken care of millions of patients for free, much of the time, you know, no charge to the patient. But the Catholic Church has been behind many of these medical hospitals and medical treatment that has been out there that we have used for generations, frankly, and you know, good on them. It has been wonderful. And they've kept costs under control reasonably right. By right by where I live. There's a Catholic medical center that is renowned in the region for its cardio care. And like many other hospitals that are out there, they will also provide charitable care for those people who can't afford it. So Ascension partnered is with Google Now ascension is, again, the largest health system here in the country. And it partnered with Google. And Google now has access to detailed medical records on 10s of millions of Americans according to a report by the Wall Street Journal, and It is code-named Project Nightingale, I'm sure you can figure out why they call it at night and Gail. And it has enabled at least 150 Google employees to see patient health information that includes diagnosis laboratory test results, hospital records, and other data. Now, remember before HIPAA, man, you could have sued and won if your medical data got shared without your knowledge, let alone your permission. Now, some of the negative results of those HIPAA regulations are coming to light, where the largest health system in the United States, Ascension, shared your medical data with Google. That is a very, very big, big deal. Now, this is reported by the Wall Street Journal, and it's according to internal documents and the newspapers other sources in all the data amounts to complete medical records and contains patient names and birthdates according to The Wall Street Journal. Now, this is a move by Google to try and get a strong grip on the medical business, the sprawling healthcare industry. In November, Google announced a deal to buy Fitbit that has gone through. I'm sure you've seen that. So now, it has access to all the sensitive health data that amassed from Fitbit. How much information have you been giving them? They've got all kinds of health records. They've got what have you put into those things? And we have Google, Microsoft, Apple, and many others competing to get access to all of our medical records and to be the storehouse so that when you go to Florida today, your records are there because you shared them on purpose. Neither Google nor Ascension, according to The Wall Street Journal journal, neither Google nor the country's largest health system Ascension has notified patients or doctors about the data sharing 2600 hospitals, doctors' offices, and other facilities across 21 states and the District of Columbia. So Google's ultimate goal is to develop the searchable cloud-based tool, but here's what I found particularly interesting, and that is about transforming care. In a statement from Ascension, the VP of strategy and innovations, Eduardo Conrato said, "as a healthcare environments continue to evolve rapidly, we must transform to meet better the needs and expectations of those we serve, as well as our caregivers and providers." So what are they doing? Here? Well, it turns out that apparently, they're having the hospitals enter in your data to these healthcare records, uploading them, analyzing them, and helping the doctors come up with diagnosis as well as prognosis frankly. They're hoping to improve outcomes, reduce costs, and save lives ultimately, and you know what they probably will. But the issue at hand here goes back to the HIPAA act of 1996. And should we be able to control our medical records? That's the big question. It looks like the answer to that is no and has been for 30 years. Thirty ish years not quite 25. All right. When we get back, we're going to talk about Rola robots of the killer variety. What is going on with some of these government contractors out there? Man is a scary show, isn't it today well after compensate next week, you're listening to Craig Peterson here on WGAN and Tune on Wednesday mornings at 738 with Ken and Matt, and I'll be online there too. Craig Peterson 1:06:38 Hey, Craig Peterson here. WGAN. Online Craig Peterson dot com. We are nearing the end of the show here. We only got two more segments together. But that's enough time to cover a couple of these articles I want to get to today. Let's start with this one first here, which is the Robots. You know, I have long been concerned about robots as have many other people. Some people much smarter than I have been very concerned about them. Take a look at what ElonMusk has been saying. That's part of the reason he wants to move us to Mars is artificial intelligence and robotics. Think back wow, even to the like the early 1990s with iRobot. And, and that Russian author, I can't remember what his name was, but it's been a concern for a very long time. Now, things changing rapidly. In an article from QZ.com, a new report is out from Pax, a nonprofit based in the Netherlands that's campaigning for peace around the world. And of course, Pax is the word for peace in many languages, and they're warning about this new potential trend that's coming out. I don't know if you've seen some of these moves. Movies where there are swarms of drones. And those drones swarm in on something. There was a recent one, and I think it was Angel has fallen with Gerald Butler. And the President is tagged by the attack by this swarm of drones. We had the same thing happened. I think it was only one or two drones in South America trying to take out a president down there. Well, our militaries are looking at some of this newer technology to conduct war. And you know, frankly, they have to because the bad guys, the other guys, whoever our ultimate future opponents are, are looking at this as well. China has spent a lot of time on it. And if you look at something like these drones, you could easily have killer drones out there. These drones have to have an ounce of high explosives in them, get close to a combatant, and explode themselves in Kill the combatant. That's all it takes. We're worried about what's being called this third revolution in warfare. The first revolution was gunpowder. You know, you could argue right bows and arrows and various things, but the gun powder was a considerable revolution in warfare. And then you had the atomic bomb, which was not too long afterward. The Chinese invented gunpowder. But now activists and military leaders are calling for international regulations kind of like what we have with the Geneva Convention where we defined how wars get fought. They want to govern all-new weapons systems that have a type of artificial intelligence in them, a type of machine learning. They don't want life or death decisions to be made on their own by these intelligent systems. And they're looking to ban them outright. Key governments, including the US and Russia, have resisted it so far, and I understand right. Craig Peterson 1:10:18 But what are you going to do? nears we can tell militaries have not yet deployed killer robots on the battlefield? At least offensively? What are you going to do with a robot that makes life or death decisions and gets it wrong or gets it right heaven forbid, either way, where you've got a robot out there that it doesn't have to think twice about pulling the trigger to kill someone because it doesn't think twice about it. It's almost like having some of our troops sitting in Virginia, flying a killer drone in the air that's over a site 5000 miles away. And just pulling the trigger and off that missile goes. That is not a life or death decision made by that missile. That is a life or death decision made by a human that has to pull that trigger. That's frankly a very, very big deal. The big difference between the two. Now this organization called PAX has identified at least 30 Global arms manufacturers that don't have policies against developing these types of automatic life or death, killer weapon systems. And apparently, they're doing it at a rate that's outpacing regulation. Now, this is normal when it comes to technology. I've talked about this so many times. Technology always leads any regulation, and it's still in front of the laws. It's still outpacing the regulatory ability of governments, but we're talking about companies that include Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon. We've got some Chinese state-owned conglomerates like a Vic cask, Israeli firms IAIL bit Raphael, Roz tech of Russia, Turkey's STM. It is a very, very big deal. So what are we going to do about it? It's, it is a very, very good question and courts are trying to address it. You will see this article if you're interested in it up on my website as well at Craig Peterson, dot com. Still, activists don't believe that the military use or some degree of artificial intelligence is problematic in itself. The problem or the systems that are designed with AI to select and engage targets, right? The terminology that's used is acquired, identify, and engage targets. And they're able to do it at least three times faster than any human. Today, we use those types of systems, but a human still has to authorize it. So I'm I'm concerned about this packs is more concerned about the potential deployment of artificial intelligence and offensive systems, the systems that are used to go after people that will select and attack targets on their own without human oversight. I think that all makes sense. And the question is, are we going to get regulations are we going to have a Geneva convention that covers this type of technology out there? Who's accountable if an autonomous atomic weapon broke existing international law or some of these future laws or regulations, and we're talking about lives on the lines? We're not talking about weapons destroying weapons. So I'm very, very concerned, defense firms. According to courts, they're not building these weapons in a vacuum. The PAX guys are saying companies believe that's what militaries want in the Arsenal's and I'm not sure the wrong about that. Google and Amazon have both face public criticism about what they have been doing for the military. Although I have to say both of them have been to face about it, notably Google who is developing artificial intelligence at three facilities in China with the involvement of the Chinese government. And they're not doing it here in the US and yet at the same time, they won't do minor things that are designed to help protect us in that it states you know, Google I just don't get it. Understand this stuff. But there's a whole list here of weapons that are existing now. These little loitering munitions, kind of like land mines that sit in the area they wait, like maybe loiter in the area for hours before they attack a target, small or cheap that can be easy to produce. Craig Peterson 1:15:17 And there there's just a whole lot of them. They've got STM This is a Turkish state-owned defense company that produces an AI-equipped loading munitions got facial recognition, kind of like again Angel has fallen can automatically select an attack targets using coordinates pre-selected by an operator they're looking to use Turkey is Kamikaze drones and Syria. There's harpy a fire and forget luxury munition manufactured by Israeli aerospace industry ranges 62 miles tail off for two hours. What's next, right, what are we going to do? All right, stick around. We're going to talk about the mess of multifactor authentication. How did he tech, a phishing site when we get back? You're listening to Craig Peterson, right here on WGAN. And of course online, Craig peterson.com. Stick around. We'll be right back. Craig Peterson 1:16:25 Hey, welcome back, everybody. Craig Peterson here, Happy Saturday weekend. Whenever you're listening to this, of course, we podcast this show as well. And with more than 20 million podcasts, there's bound to be an episode that you're interested in as well. You can listen to that by just going to your favorite podcast streaming site that you'd like to, and you can sign up under iTunes or Spotify. I'm on TuneIn. I'm kind of all over the place, and we've had a lot of good Great people downloading it, which makes me happy as well. You will find all of that. The easiest way is to go to Craig Peterson com slash iTunes, I should put a special page up that just gives all the podcast info, but for now, slash iTunes. And I'd really appreciate it if you would subscribe because that's what really helps drive up our numbers. And that's what helps get people to notice. And in fact, if we had a whole bunch of people sign-up at once or you know, over a week, then the algorithms would notice that, and they would get promoted a little bit more. So I would love it if you do that. But you know, that's up to you. Again, Craig peterson.com slash iTunes. Hopefully, I've earned a five-star rating from you. Or you can just with the TuneIn app, which by the way, you can listen to WGAN on the TuneIn app as well. And you can listen to me on Wednesday mornings at 738. with Matt and can on the TuneIn app so even if you're on the road anywhere in the world, you can listen to this station you can listen to me, and my podcast is also here on tune in. All right, an app, and a website. We got some how's here, you know, I talk a lot about the what and the why. And I give you some how's as we go through the show and a lot of the How is really left for trainings when I do courses and trainings. But we got two articles that I really want you guys to understand a little bit better. And one is from sigh where ones from dark reading. And we're going to start with this first one which is which is the myths of multi-factor authentication. Now without multifactor authentication also called two-factor authentication. In one employee, employees leave, they can quickly get back on if you don't change their passwords, but if you take their token, their physical token back, then life's a little safer. If people lose passwords, if you are a home user, and your password is stolen or compromised, someone can log into the websites. So let's talk about what this is. The best type of basic security is something you have, along with something that you know. So something that, you know, that would be an example of, for instance, your username and your password. So you put them together. And that's something that you know, your username and your password. And then something that you have might be, for instance, a token a digital token. I don't know if you've seen these. We use the type with a lot of our customers that aren't very, you know, technically advanced, that have had like a little six-digit number that keeps churning Gene on the token. So when they go to log in, so for instance, they will use this for a defense contractor or a doctor's office where they have to keep information safe. And when they log in, they're going to put it in their username, and they're going to put in their password. And then they're going to look at their token. And they're going to type in that number that changes every 60 seconds or so. Now you can do this type of two-factor authentication in several different ways. You can do it with your cell phone, a lot of people do it that way, where you get a text message from the website, giving you a code that you can type in. Craig Peterson 1:20:46 Now that's cutesy, Don't you love that I get my code on my phone. That is eminently hackable. One of the articles that I found this week, but I'm not going to share with you guys because it's you I don't have enough time. But it's, it's all about this guy that just lost $20 million in Bitcoin because he was using two-factor authentication, but he was using his phone, and then somebody sim-jacked them. And that's where a cybercr

There’s a new chapter in the history books for Kentucky Peerless Distilling Company. A thriving distillery that had been lost during prohibition is now reemerging right in the heart of downtown Louisville. Corky Taylor, CEO of Peerless, joins the show to share his story. After being bored with retirement, Corky decided to risk it on building a distillery and fighting with a team of lawyers to reclaim their original DSP-50 designation. We talk more about their rye, the recent bourbon release, and some stories from when he was roommates with the Allman brothers. Show Partners: The University of Louisville now has an online Distilled Spirits Business Certificate that focuses on the business side of the spirits industry. Learn more at uofl.me/pursuespirits. At Barrell Craft Spirits, they explore whiskey in an entirely new way. The team selects and blends barrels of whiskey into something greater than the sum of its parts. Find out more at BarrellBourbon.com. The 2019 Kentucky’s Edge Bourbon Conference & Festival pairs all things Kentucky with bourbon. It takes place October 4th & 5th at venues throughout Covington and Newport, Kentucky. Find out more at KentuckysEdge.com. Central Kentucky Tours offers public and private bourbon tours for groups from 2 to 55. Learn more at CentralKentuckyTours.com. Receive $25 off your first order at RackHouse Whiskey Club with code "Pursuit". Visit RackhouseWhiskeyClub.com. Show Notes: Denny's Bourbon Menu: https://vinepair.com/booze-news/dennys-bourbon-menu-pancakes/ Sweet spot for aging bourbon: https://www.winemag.com/2019/08/12/ultra-aged-spirits-ripping-you-off/ Can liquor go bad?: https://www.bustle.com/articles/99585-does-alcohol-go-bad-yep-so-heres-how-long-you-have-to-finish-off-your-favorite This week’s Above the Char with Fred Minnick talks about marketing to children. Tell us about growing up in Hawaii. Where does the name Corky come from? What is the history of Peerless? What happened during prohibition? What made you decide to bring the brand back? Why Louisville? Tell us about getting your original DSP number back. Was it hard to make such a big investment? Why was it important to wait to release your own product vs. sourcing? What differentiates you from other brands? What systems are you investing in? If you were younger, would you have focused as much on quality as you are now? Tell us about the bottle and the price point. Why does rye age quicker than bourbon? Is the price of the rye going to go up when it is older? Tell us about the small batch and single barrel. What is your definition of small batch? Were your recipes trial and error? What other ryes do you like? Who are you teaming up with for barrels? How did you chose your Master Distiller? What's your connection to General Patton? What about the Allman Brothers? 0:00 Hey everybody. Are you interested in looking at the distilling process and pairing that with key business knowledge such as finance, marketing and operations, then you should check out the online distilled spirits business certificate from the University of Louisville. It's an online program. It can be completed in as little as 15 weeks. It's taught by both of you have all business faculty and corporate fellows. So you're getting real experience from real experts at the most renowned distilleries, companies and startups in the distilling industry. And all that's required is a bachelor's degree. Go to business.louisville.edu/onlinespirits. You know, 0:35 you play League baseball or be three core keys on two teams, you know, so to be so everybody's name. 0:43 It was the new john back then. Yeah, they will. Everybody says, everybody looks. 1:00 Welcome back. It's Episode 216. of bourbon pursuit. I'm Kenny, and we've got some news to run through. And we've got some exciting news that's coming from old forester there. 1910 old fine whiskey we talked about on the show with Jackie's I can before and it exceeded the expectations that old forester ever would have known about. It was their fourth and final expression of the old foresters, whiskey row series, and it's sold out across the nation, but it's now being announced that'll be back on shelves at the end of the month. You know, the idea of pairing bourbon and food and even infusing bourbon and food is nothing new, but some might wonder, have we gone too far? Well, the commercialization of bourbon continues as a Denny's. You know that place with moons over my hammy is announcing a new bourbon themed menu for fall. It's called Big bourbon flavors. The menu features a range of bourbon inspired dishes to enjoy throughout the day. So for breakfast, you've got the apple bourbon pancake breakfast that has two flaxseed multigrain pancakes with a caramel apple walnut bourbon sauce. And for lunch and dinner. You've got two classic bourbon dishes, the bourbon bacon burger, which is topped with a bourbon sauce. And then you've got the bourbon chicken sizzling skillet, which sees a grilled chicken breast coated in a bourbon glaze. And as with any rare bourbon release, this is a limited time offer and you can read more about this with a link to vine pair calm in our show notes. What's the sweet spot for Bourbons age? You know if you follow along with the podcast you would know after hearing all kinds of master distillers and master blenders that ages and everything and heck, we know that when we go on barrel pics, and we have this notion that higher age is better but there's a reason why you're gonna end up seeing barrels of stuff that has been rejected for last year Craig 23 that just gets dumped into standard Evan Williams tanks. And there's a new article by wine mag calm that interviewed four roses master distiller Brent Elliot, about that sweet spots, and bread said that the majority of barrels speak and around the fire 10 year range. And in this range is when all the immature character of the white dog is gone. And there's a light and bright and delicate balance of the flavors from the grains and the fermentation that had developed in the barrel. And with the barrel to create that perfect balance. And beyond the 12 year ranges, we're going to start seeing fewer and fewer of those actually, quote unquote improving each year. You can read more about bourbon rum, scotch and army sweet spots, which surprisingly, Armagnac was at 50 years old, with the article from wine mag in our show notes. Do you have an old dusty bottles still sitting on the shelf? And more importantly, have you opened it? Well, I guess this kind of goes for any bottle of bourbon that you have open. And you're now wondering, how long do I have to drink this before it goes bad or maybe just changes completely. According to researchers at Bacardi they presented their findings at the annual Tales of the cocktail convention in New Orleans, and everyday factors such as temperature fluctuations, light exposure, and oxidation can lead to rapid fire beard aggregation. And this can really severely alter both of the color and the flavor of alcohol stored in glass bottles. Bacardi flavor, scientists conducted a series of experiments on the effects of temperature fluctuations on its rum and found that temperature changes can degrade an organic molecule called Turpin. And this alters the flavor of the alcohol to by exposing various glass bottles stored to UV radiation. It actually intended to try to simulate the effects of sunlight. And researchers found that over a period of 10 days of exposure, bourbon lost 10% of its color while scotch lost 40%. But color is never just color when it comes to alcohol color changes are indicative of flavor changes to and researchers concluded that whiskey has an almost indefinite shelf life if you leave it unopened and stored in a cool space. However, once you open it, the rules of the game start changing in order to best protect the flavor profile from oxidation. If you have a bottle that is less than half, you should drink it within a year. And if you have less than a quarter of a bottle left, you have about three to four months before it starts to get questionable. You can read the entire article from bustled calm in our show notes. Are you a Patreon supporter of ours. But we had recently launched a new Discord server where everybody can come and chat daily in real time. There's a lot of talk going on about the podcast on a daily basis. And for me seriously, it's almost hourly because I'm giving updates of what's coming in through email and other kind of news that we necessarily don't always talk about on the podcast, but there's just loads of bourbon talk. So come connect your discord account to your Patreon account, and you can join in the fun with us. Now for today's podcast, you know we look back and peerless has just been a fun distillery to watch when they first launched their two year ride at $100 or more across the country. It's a major push back from whiskey geeks know until they tried it, it gets better and better every single year. This whiskey is just one aspect of the story because Corky talks a lot about how they rebuilt this brand. It's just a fantastic story here. It's always appealing to hear kind of how someone fights hard to restore history by fighting to get their original DSP. And no expense was spared when it's actually coming to the bottling and really what the end result of their whiskey is. So this is going to be a fun distillery to watch as they grow. And if you didn't know they just released their first bourbon to the world at four years old. All right, now here we go. Let's get in a quick word from Joe over a barrel bourbon. And then you've got Fred Minnick with above the char. 6:38 Hi, Joe from barrell bourbon. Here, we explore whiskey in an entirely new way. My team at barrel craft spirits, selects and blends barrels of whiskey into something greater than the sum of their parts. Find out more at barrellbourbon.com. I'm Fred Minnick, and this is above the char. I'm going to say this now and repeat it a lot. In this episode, do not market to children if you're an alcohol brand. Now with that said, we live in this beautiful bourbon lifestyle and sometimes friends by friends, baby gifts that have bourbon logos on it. Let me give you an example. A few weeks ago, a good friend brought me a baby bib with a distillery logo on it. It was for my than seven month old son and it was quite cute. And I really appreciate it. It was It was lovely. My wife laughed about it. Even my son thought it was cute. But I didn't really think anything of it from a marketing perspective because my friend actually made it this was not created by the distillery. My friend made this special embroidered baby bed. And then I started reviewing some cigarette testimony from the 1990s. You know, that's what I do. I like reading old transcripts and lawsuits to find nuggets of history and factual information. Well, this was a time when the anti smoker leagues were really dissecting the tobacco industry for having built in their schools and creating cartoon characters as the mascots for tobacco. Now the alcohol industry has always done a very good job of avoiding this, you know, marketing to children and they've really enforced that heavily within the trade. But in recent years, whiskey fans have actually gifted one another bourbon related things to celebrate newborns and even make you know, children t shirts with whiskey logos. For the most part, these are innocent homemade gifts from one friend to another. When a friend has a kid the natural instinct is to buy that friend a gift. And if your friend is a bourbon fan, you might be inclined to buy or create a bourbon one z. We may like it and think it's cute, but the rest of the world could see it as marketing bourbon to a child, which is very bad. You see, we are in this weird place in our society with how we perceive alcohol. Many of us look at bourbon as the great bourbon lifestyle and our children see our bottles all the time. And here is talking about master distillers. So for this audience, you and I, getting a bourbon baby bib is one of the greatest, most thoughtful gifts you could possibly imagine. But this is potentially a very slippery slope. If the wrong person sees my son wearing that bib, they may think it's from a brand and report it to the federal authorities. It could lead to an investigation and severe consequences and social media circles which are already cracking down on alcohol and tobacco related posts after all advocacy groups will go to the ends of the earth to protect children and they absolutely should, again, do not market to children at all, especially if you are a bourbon related brand. And nobody wants to market to children in this industry. Nobody. So as we give to our friends and celebration of their children just be cognizant of what it might look like to an outsider. And while bourbon is a long way from Joe camel, we don't want to portray our lifestyle and the wrong light. And that's this week's above the char Hey, did you know I have a second edition of my book bourbon curious coming out soon. You can find it on Amazon and Barnes and Noble search bourbon curious again that's bourbon curious until next week. Cheers 10:20 welcome back into a another episode of bourbon pursuit and here we are the second time at down one bourbon bar doing our live streaming podcast. So Happy Monday to everybody that's out there. You know hopefully we're starting to shake things up to start the beginning of the week because a lot of news kind of happens on Monday so 10:38 yeah, especially after spring break, you know, the wall everybody's having a case of the Mondays today. 10:45 I don't want to do anything 10:46 but every every comes back looking super tan though. Oh no. Yeah, 10:49 not me. I still got white farmers tan. You don't Tandy Corgi I do 10:55 if I'm in the sun. Yeah. I hear either more. Yeah, 10:59 well, yeah, this is our room now you know the Kenny and Ryan. This is our studio 11:03 so it's slowly turned it into that we got the the phones are going off the hook if anybody can hear me Yes. Good. I've got a telephone going. Yeah. So 11:12 all in for your sport. We have one a day bourbon will take your questions live. Actually, that's not a real number. Please don't call. Yeah. But you know, today is going to be a pretty fun and interesting episode because we are sitting here with Corky Taylor Corky is the chairperson, CEO as well of, of peerless distilling company. You know, this is something that you know, honestly for us it had taken a while for peerless to kind of get on the map for us even though it's kind of in our backyard. We all the time we have people that say oh, we want to go on the podcast, we're going to podcast but they don't really hit a national awareness and I think it's time now that peerless is started to break that ground and they are starting to kind of venture out and away and make themselves a nationally recognized brand at this point. 11:57 Yeah. And internationally as well. I was just talking to Cordell my good friend corps de before the show and he was telling us and tell me that how port peerless is now in 45 states and it just one like I think the British craft Producer of the Year and, and globally so I mean, that's pretty big stuff you know, coming out of you know, peerless. So I'm I'm super excited being Kenny actually Corky pride. I remember we came there last year for my birthday. We had a group of 10 and you gave a great tour. It was actually a pursuit undercover Volume One Yeah, yeah. Exactly. We were we're behind the scenes, I brought my own whiskey thief. And you know, and I was it was a lot of fun. It's a very cool place if no one's been to but excited to revisit the story and share with our audience you know, Corky background and the whole peerless brand and what they're doing to make their name in the whiskey game. 12:50 Absolutely. So I guess we should we should probably introduce our guest so today we do have Corky he is the chairman and the CEO of peerless to ceiling company so Corky aloha haha. Right. Yeah, that was one thing that I learned from you at the last Legends Series is that you grew up in Hawaii. I did. My father was in the military. So we spent I spent the first 13:13 eight and a half, nine years growing up in Hawaii. My dad was stationed over there. So actually, at one time live right on Waikiki Beach. So surfed on Waikiki Beach. And then we moved to Schofield and chapter so and then when I was older, I served 13:31 was that a huge lie down? It was 13:34 why I went 13:35 straight from Hawaii to military school now lived in Tennessee. Oh, that was a major lead. And you know, I used to serve the North Shore, Sunset Beach where the big I wouldn't serve from the 25 foot waves. But I still surfing the 10 foot waves. So but now, our family moved back to my dad's hometown, Henderson, Kentucky. 13:57 Well, what what can give us a time frame of that like the when you were growing up in Hawaii? Like what age? What age range was this? 14:03 I was about five years old. When we moved to why my brother was actually born in Hawaii on Maui. Then we moved back when I was 13 years old Henderson so 1314 right in there. 14:16 Was he given when your brother was born? Was he given like a an official like Hawaiian name that you didn't get because 14:23 he was actually named after my great grandfather? He's 14:25 not Hawaiian. 14:28 Polynesian name. Yeah. 14:29 Yeah, no, no, he was named after actually my great grandfather that started peerless. So he was he was Henry, they call it we call the man but he was Henry named after my great grandfather. So 14:42 we'll kind of talk about your name a little bit too so Corky Taylor, and this the name Corky, because it is a little bit different, right? So kind of how did this name of offer what does it come from? And I'm going to just guess it's not your actual given name, or no, it's not 14:53 okay. No, I'm, I'm Roy M. Taylor. The third course my grandfather was you know, always Roy My dad was Roy to until and then general Pat named my father a so he went by aces, you know, the whole time and I was with him. And then since they that they didn't really want to call me Roy. So I, I got the name Corky day one. So the only time I was ever named Roy was first day of school. So they'd say Roy Taylor, and I'd kind of raise my hand up, you know, no, it's Corky. So that was I could go into the year by Corky so it's I've always gone by Corky. 15:31 That's a great it's not too bad. 15:32 It was a military name. I mean, there was a lot of visit. He's something about it. I don't I don't know. But I had I had played darn it 15:39 the neighbor. 15:40 No, not really. So it was you know, you play Little League baseball and or be three core keys on two teams, you know, so it'd be so everybody's name. 15:51 It was the new john back then. 15:53 Yeah, they will. Everybody says Korea everybody looks 15:58 good. So I kind of want to kick it off and start talking a little bit about the story in the history of peerless. So before we talk about the whiskey and the bourbon that you're producing now kind of give the story of your family and how this really evolved. 16:13 Okay, how it had evolved, was obviously through my great grandfather. He was he was born in Poland. He was a Polish Jew. He moved to New York City to Manhattan. When he was five years old. He was selling papers on the corner when he was seven 810 12 years old. And when he was he saved up some money when when he was 19. He said I'm going to get on a riverboat. When I run out of money, that's where I'm going to get off. Why didn't get off in Louisville, Kentucky. I have no idea he got off in Henderson, which was a good thing. Walk up top of the hill head zero money. And he asked the bar up there called buckets. Can I sweep the floor and can I live in the attic until I get myself squared away. And about two years later, he ended up buying the bar. But what he really wanted to be was a banker, and that's what he was. He went from Henderson to St. Louis, for a short period of time because there was a lot of Jewish people from St. Louis. So they kind of took him under his wing. He became a banker and st move back to Henderson open First National Bank and an 1818. And he bought a small distillery from the worship family Mr. worship and passed away he bought a distillery. They were making about eight barrels of bourbon a day. And within two years, he was he had some weeks he was making 200 barrels a week. So he took it to a pretty good at one time, he was probably two or 222 stories in the state of Kentucky. He was probably in the top five or 10. during that era. 17:43 He looked as it purely investment or was it like something I enjoyed? 17:48 Now I think he looked at it as an investment. Yeah, I think he was pretty money driven. He built one of the largest breweries outside of the Mississippi, the Henderson Brewing Company, and a way to distributor just beer during that era was all by river boat. So your head his own river boats and went to Cincinnati to local down to St. Louis and he built that into a pretty good says brewery. But his love was Chicago. That's where all his buddies were. He couldn't do this today. But back then he said on the board of five different banks up in Chicago, but he owned the Palmer house up in Chicago is probably one of the most famous some people never heard of it. But it's the longest running Hotel in the United States first hotel to have a light bulb. Telephone elevator dishwasher. and air conditioning. 18:33 No iPhone, not the first off 18:36 iPhone. No, I think it's but but they invented the brownie. So that's what they were famous. Okay. I like brownies. Yeah, yeah. 18:44 So I guess kinda helped me through the the timetable here now was your great, great, great or great, great, great grandfather. Okay, so was this last during Prohibition or like it was okay. So you want to talk about like, how that that sort of 19:00 had it. He headed up to prohibition and he had about 63,000 barrels of bourbon he had to get rid of. He was having if you had 50,000 oh man owns borough, because they had huge warehouses or some big distilleries and, and owns burn, they had big fences with Abby on him. So he was able to had a lot of barrels. And it took him about three years to get licenses to distribute alcohol during Prohibition. So 19:26 so nobody was coming there. Day one trying to bring cameras. Yeah. And Whoa, I 19:30 think they probably were, I mean, all he is, the distillery and Henderson was pretty wide open. And that's reason why he would sneak at night over on 17. train cars don't want to keep barrels over and keep them hidden. So the government, you're right would have gone in there with access, crack them open, pour them out. So he thought he could get a license eventually. And it took him about three years to do so. So then he got a license of sable to distribute, where he distributed a lot of his alcohol and we found sad, Rocky words up in, in Chicago. It's worth distributing. That's breakthrough. But they were that it was a I guess he knew about my great grandfather. And before I got up there, he told us that my great grandfather sold the Walgreen or buys from a with Walgreens got one on every corner, right. But he sold them a little less than 40,000 barrels of bourbon during Prohibition, which was a big deal back then. So they partied pretty hard in the Palmer house. For years, not his quitting one of these two week parties. This went on for like 10 or 12 years term, prohibition but he was able to get rid of all his and he shut the distillery down. He shut it down before that. 20:44 So it was more like a like a liquidation sort of thing is what he was trying to get out of. 20:48 Yeah, he was he'd already sold his skills and 1917 probation came along in 1919. So he must have known something was coming on. So in 1917, he sold his still united distillery up in Vancouver, British Columbia. And what he did, he hired Mr. Sherman here in town that owns Vendome. They're the largest still building in the United States, probably the world hired Mr. Sherman brought his family, the Henderson his wife and four kids stayed there eight months broken down, went up to Vancouver, about a month on the train, set them up, spent eight months up there came back here. And that's where they got some of the money to continue and to build Vendome with. So I went in there and 98 years later, and they told me was your great grandfather that helped put our great grandfather and business. 21:38 So they were like, well, you need to still so we're gonna go ahead and just bump you up near towards the front of the line. This is this is your repayment 21:43 dad wouldn't really it. 21:47 So talk about the the idea now, you know, the family legacy of distilling, and having your own whiskey had been lost for a few generations. And and now you were at the point of just saying like, screw it. Like, let's let's start making whiskey again, like what was the what was that real determining factor that wanted you to start pushing towards that as 22:09 he had a legitimate story? Yeah. People are like my great grandparents. You're like, You're not even related. 22:16 It's not even clay. 22:17 Yeah, exactly. I'll tell you what, I had a big company and I had a financial services company. I sold it group at a New York fifth floor Rockefeller Center. I walked on a beach in Sarasota, Florida for a year and a half most depressed I've ever been in my life. I said, I've got to go back to work. So I came back. I had a home here in Lowell. And my youngest son Carson was a builder. And so let's let's do something I don't care what we do. Let's do something. So we had a lot of history with my great grandfather and my grandfather, running a distillery. So he said, Let's build a distillery, we went down to Vendome and walk through the door. And so we want to order a still and started looking for buildings here in town. And Carson was a builder. So we found this building, down on 10th Street did kind of lend itself to do what we wanted to do and or distills. And he started the building took us almost two years to the day to build the building or to convert the building to a distillery and 23:15 YG to that building, and that location. 23:18 Well, I just felt like that if I kept the building, and maybe when our bourbon came out in six to seven years part a little bit would be heading that direction. It was pretty pretty much gone news greatness, but there's not many places left and that into town. So I thought in 678 years, local would be heading that direction. So it was in a kind of a rough area and then it's starting to get better as we go along. And I'm going to get the park built in on river to be better yet, but I just thought it would it would work out and it had a loading dock he was about to write says we wanted so it's worked out. I think it's worked out very well for us. 24:00 Why not up? Sorry. 24:01 No, no, I was about to say I mean, do you see that as more of like, like levels having a Renaissance period because you had a choice you could have you could have gone to Bardstown you could have gone back to your hometown. 24:12 Why not be the ones bro because you know, those the dollars making a great name for themselves? Sure they are there? 24:18 Yeah. Well, Henderson, Henderson, my hometown. I mean, that's, you know, I feel like it's where everything started in Henderson. But I felt like that I like global I knew local was coming along with the bourbon Renaissance with bourbon ism and what was going on, and that was be even being talked about four or five years ago. So I felt like, you know, with brown form and being here and, you know, just a lot of things going on at downtown local, I just felt like that, I'd go ahead and take the chance. And in 567 years, it would kind of hit our direction. I'm not too far off. I mean, a lot of it has to do with luck, you know, you have to have a lot of luck doing it. But as luck would have it, I think that we're in the right place at the right time. And we made a decision that we're making our own product, I don't source anything at all. So I knew our Bourbons not even out it won't be out till June 22. So we're actually, you know, waiting a little bit over four years for it to come out. I'm holding off, I can bring it out today if I wanted to, but I'm bringing it out on my dad's birthday. That's the only generation we skipped. We skipped the third generation on the fourth, obviously Carson's a fifth. So an honor my father, I'm bringing it out on his birthday. Very cool. 25:41 So I mean, back to the global thing. I'm assuming that you are as I mean, you're going to pay a little bit more money up front to actually sit here and have your home base and being headquartered in Louisville, then then trying to go and you know, be in Owens borough or be in Bardstown or something like that, you know, did you look at this and saying, you know, this is the this is where the population is going to grow. This is where the tourism is going to expand more argument. We don't have to convince people to come like we're already just like, another.on, the map of the Louisville bourbon kind of experience, if you will. 26:11 Absolutely. I mean, with the convention center, right here, I mean, you know, you know, what's going on here with, you know, the farm machinery shows the big shows are here in local, the convention center. At that time, I didn't know it was going to be torn down and start all over. But that's okay. We got through though that two years, so did everybody else. But during that era, they were building like an unbelievable amount of hotels in this town. I think when I started, they were building like 10 hotels, and then it come with another couple years and there's 20 new hotels. So those people are going to do something they're going to go places and I wanted to be in local so people could come in and take a tour of our distillery and know the family the history because I really believe we have about as much history in the bourbon industry is any distillery in the whole state of Kentucky and it might be a might be saying a mouthful, but when you go back Red 27:09 Nose gonna have a sponsor that when you 27:11 said, 27:13 Right, right, no or any names. Well, okay, well, 27:16 Jim Beam is known as DSP number 230. We're number 50. So Oh, 27:23 I want you to I want you to also tell that story too. Because I know that you were you also thought to have your original DSP back as well 27:31 fought fought it in the word for I spent, I spent a year and a half. Getting that number back. I mean, we started from my great grandfather. I can't tell you how many attorneys in this town I went through and, and what we had to do to get that but I was bound and determined that we had DSP number 50. It took us a year and a half to get almost to the day, a year and a half to get that number. First time in history. The government's ever gone back to give a DSP number back a family. So we were able to get it and finally I called the fella when it when we got an asset. Okay, what would my number have been if I could just fill the paperwork out the way you want me to? 20,232? I said, 50 looks better up on 28:18 the building. It's hard to market out there like I have all this history. But we're DSP to 1000. Like, yeah, right. 28:25 Yeah. So the new numbers in the 20 2000s. Yeah, you know, and there's a number of them in this town that are 22,000. So, but no, I mean, when you mentioned Jim Beam there to 30 were 50. When you mentioned buffalo there 113. wild turkeys, 139. makers is for 44. I know them all. So number 50 is a big deal. It doesn't it's not such a big deal sometimes in the United States, and we do tour center. Okay, we're number 50. But you bring somebody in here from Japan, you bring them in from Scotland, from Ireland, and they see number 50. There are like, Oh, my gosh, you have got to have a lot of history with your family to have DSP number 50. 29:07 When you're going through that process at a point where you just like this is this is too much. Yes, we've we've dealt with TTP, we've dealt with the laws we've we've gone through and I don't even know, they know all the laws and all the restrictions. So at some point, did you ever think like, let's just give it up, it's going to be it's going to take way too long to get this 50 back? 29:26 You know, I did, but you have to keep in mind, we were going through the construction era, that time we were we started and it took exactly two years to go through it. So I started that process. Even before we started, when we first bought the building, and we had to get some thing we had to get permits, you know, it takes time to do. So I was I was working on 50 from day one. So yeah, I I just felt like that I'd finally get it. So and we are severe. Yeah, yeah. So we never really, you know, 30:03 I just thought I'd get 30:04 you're a financial guy. So like, when you're looking at a bird, you know, starting a distillery in in the investment it takes and the return on investment and like, like, were you like, this is this is like, what was your mindset going into this? Like, I know, you want to bring your family's history back and like that. But talk about pulling those triggers like even though your brains probably like this doesn't make much sense. Like 30:29 now I did. You know, when I first we weren't going to be and we're not we're not that big. Today, we're we're a small distillery. But when when Carson and I got into that we were thinking along the lines of a smaller about half the size we are, but then I guess my financial background kicked in, and I started figuring, you know, I've got to do X amount to make this many barrels to make this many bottles to be in so many states, this is what we need to be. And then we wanted to make it where we had complete control of what we were doing. So my mindset was, we've got to make it a certain size, we have to make it this way. And I think we had it down to a pretty good sense. People asked me Well, were you aware of the construction costs? Well, Carson having a financial background or a business background on on building, I pretty much knew what it was going to cost us to build. And you know, putting barrels away, you know, where we waited, and we waited for a rye whiskey to come out and a little over two years. And now we're waiting over four years for our bourbon. So people don't do that, you know, they go and they source it, they put it in a bottle. This is my product, you know, same old game everybody plays, but I just couldn't do it. I just, I had to, I had to do what I wanted to do and keep it and make it keep it and hold it and put it out when it's ready to go. 31:56 Why was that so important to me. 31:59 Because I'm building a distillery to stay. I'm not I'm not building this distillery to sell. We're building it. As a family. We're building it for people who work with us. And we call them family. So you know, I'm the fourth generation Carson's a fifth, he's got boys, it'll be the six. I don't do that anymore. You all know all the distilleries in the state of Kentucky, you know, so there's only one or two owned by the family. Everybody else is owned by this one. That one, we can go all over the world and talk about that. But I think in order to have respect from the big distilleries, a big what I call the big seven and to be have the respect from other distilleries around the United States, I had to do it my way. And that's make my own product. When it's ready. It's ready. And as luck would have it, that's kind of what's happening to us. 32:54 So So talk about how to say you say what you want to do it your way and your own product. How did you define that or come up with like, this is my set of these are my standards these are? This is my ethos. And don't give us some like, Oh, we source all our corn from you know, 50 miles away 33:10 else's story. You know, I think there's there's gotta be a what 33:13 is what makes when you look at a bottle of peerless What do what, what do you tell people to see in that bottle like What's in it? Well, not just whiskey. 33:24 Whiskey, we, we understand, everybody makes it the same run through the same stills I put it in a barrel, they still at 160, they put it in a barrel at 125 they watered down they put it in a bottle at 92 proof that wouldn't we we wanted to have complete control over everything that we did. And in order to do that, we had to have the right computer systems, which we did our it all our own software, we had to have a right drain opera, we had to find out what would make it the best product, it was a 1964 change from from going into barrel at 110. Proof 225 proof. So they did that for cost. But going into barrel, and 110 proof actually makes a better product. So I put it in a barrel at 107 proof because it might creep up a little bit. And then I take it straight from the barrel right to the bottle, we don't add one drop of water to it. When you take it from the barrel once its age to the bottle. So the bottles that you see right here are probably 100 and 808. Point 108.2. We wanted to give it the best flavor profiles we could possibly give it. The other. The other main reason why I think that we're making as good a product as we are is we're sweet mash. everybody's familiar with sour mash, you hold the mash back, you pull it forward, you know, that didn't away we're a military family. I want it I want this place clean up. The joke is I want a battleship clean. I want that place spotless when we when we make a product, we steam clean, we clean everything, you won't see a hose on the ground, you won't see a pressure gauge spewing, you won't see any of that everything we have is control we could cook Exactly. It was a certain temperature we ferment exactly at a certain temperature, everything is controlled. And I think that's reason why we've received accolades that we have, since we started and we're going to continue, we're not going to be cocky enough to think that we're doing it exactly right. We're doing it better every day, everything we do, we're going to we're going to get better equipment better systems to make sure that we're on top. 35:44 What kind of those better systems are you investing in? Today? Well, 35:47 we're we're, we have a continuous still. But there's you know, there's just so many ways to make that still run better run hotter, run faster. So basically pumps and gauges and things like that, that we have just exactly. complete control over so you know, we're we don't make a lot of product, we only make 1012 barrels a day, that's probably all we'll ever going to make. I don't have any aspirations of building a distillery that's going to be line up to Jim Beam or Maker's Mark and making 1000 barrels a day we're going to make, you know, we might make 1215 1618 barrels a day someday, but not today. So we just want to have control. If you can have control if you're the size distillery we are today, when you get way up there. You just you're just making product. Yeah, and don't miss it. And all bourbon coming out of Kentucky is a good product. We just want to have the best. 36:52 Do you think, you know, the decision to you know, like you said stay small, like really focused on quality? Do you think you would have made it that same decision younger in your life if you were like, start the distillery like younger and like oh, we gotta you know, make this as big as big as best, big, fast and best as possible and turn over like, like whereas this is more like a passion project. I'm sure it's giving you returns but it seems like more like you know, this is really 37:18 you know if how to stay down in Henderson. We're all my buddies are and where the some of the big buildings are. And maybe I would had aspirations of building a bigger distillery and coming out of my great grandfather's buildings or done something. But, you know, coming into Louisville, Kentucky and wanting to do it in in the city where I could I could benefit from from people taking tours and visiting us. I think and then in the timing on bourbon bourbon, it's only been hot for the last probably 810 years. I mean, you go back 20 years. I mean, everything was vodka. You know, Jen was way before that. So vodka was so hot, how the flavored vodkas, bourbon really hasn't been that strong for the last I'd say 10 years. 38:09 Now, no one cared about it. 38:12 Now they know that they care about Yeah, but they make great stuff in Bardstown. Yeah, 38:17 so I think that you know, I talked to the all the big guys and they say that the bourbon industry will be good for the next 14 to 20 years. So that's good to hear because every business has a cycle. My father was in the head of Ford dealership and every five years you know is going to go down is going to come back. So at least bourbon industry I think will be good for the next 1520 38:40 Why do they think that? 38:45 The 2019 Kentucky's edge bourbon conference and festival pairs all things Kentucky with bourbon. It takes place October 4 and fifth at venues throughout Covington in Newport, Kentucky, Kentucky's edge features of bourbon conference music tastings pairings tour and an artisan market. Kentucky's edge 2019 is where bourbon begins. Tickets and information can be found online at Kentucky'sedge.com. 39:10 If you're making plans to visit the bourbon trail, the one thing you're thinking about is how do I get around to all these distilleries? We recently use Central Kentucky tours for a barrel thick and the hospitality and information was top notch. Heck, even Ryan learned a few new things about Bardstown Central Kentucky tours offers public and private tours for groups from two to 55 with pickups in Harrisburg, Lexington and Louisville and everywhere in between. So book your time with him today at Central Kentuckytours.com. 39:39 There are more craft distilleries popping up around the country now more than ever before. So how do you find out the best stories and the best flavors? 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Use code pursuit for $25 off your first box. 40:39 So at least bourbon industry I think will be good for the next 1520 Why 40:43 do they think that? 40:45 Well, I think it's a lot of reasons i think i think they feel like that it is because it's getting to be a war worldwide drink. I mean, the Japanese love it. They even they even in the UK, they like it Australia likes it can it is drinking our product. So but the main reason is, I think women like the flavor of bourbon. They they like it. They're getting away from vodka. And I think and then I think you've got a mixologist and all the big cities are getting back to mixing the drinks. The Manhattans, you know are made with. They were made originally with rye whiskey. Now they're coming back and making with Rasul that helps us in the big cities of New York, Chicago, San Francisco, LA. So I think there's a lot of reasons but I'd say number one would be that women like bourbon, they liked it, they liked the flavor of it. And it'll hopefully it'll be a good thing. It's number one drink in the world today. 41:44 Let's keep it number one. 41:45 Yeah, it will if it's, you know, obviously we do we do our part. 41:50 Yeah, keep writing keep keep keep keep it going. Great. So the other kind of question I want to kind of talk about is is the bottling and as well as the price point, right? Because this is something that most consumers out there if they've never heard of it, they might see it on the shelf and they're gonna be like well what's that's really up there for for two three year old products are kind of talk about the cost of the bottle that goes into it because I know that you put a concern amount of effort that goes into the shape the topper and everything like that, and how that kind of falls into the ending retail price as well. 42:21 Yeah, so probably the craziest thing I've ever done, but I'll explain. We're here for what we what we, Carson and Chris Edwards and are they designed the bottle we wanted to have what we thought was one of the best bottles made in the United States and again, I wanted this bottle to be made in the United States we found a company down in right outside of Atlanta, they only make perfume bottles, they make our bottle when you pick it upside down and says Made in USA. So we wanted to have the right bottle the cap actually cost more than the bottle. So it's we wanted to have the heaviest cap, the heaviest bottle. One it has a design on it. And then the label we actually won. On December 5 repeal day in New York City, they have a contest who has the best bottle who has the best label and who has the best cap in the United States. And last year we won all three It's never happened before. So we feel like we have the right and then to put the pot product in or to put a two year old product in there. And and and retail it out for 119 or hundred and $20 was a push. But we don't make much product. We felt like it was a good product. Evidently whiskey advocate thought it was a pretty good product too, because we're ranked the 15th best whiskey in the world with a two year old product, but the number one rye whiskey in the world. On April the 18th of 18 we're ranked the number one rye whiskey in the world jack daniels Rakim and second whistle pig came in third. So it was a big gamble on our part. We have won the accolades, accolades January the 30th check and I went to New York City and whisky magazine gave us the award for the number one craft distillery in the United States out of 900 Caleb Kilburn our distiller master distiller just got back from London March he went to our March 28 we got that we want to have the number one craft distillery in the world so we must be doing something right we are getting but now we do have different price points so a lot of our rye will be more in the $89 our bourbon will come out about 1600 dollar it's still a high end but we don't make much 44:38 well oddly enough I don't know if people know that that rye whiskey actually is more expensive to to mash and to create than it is to actually make a bourbon whiskey. So 44:47 kind of talk about comes up the tanks Glen all that fun. Yeah, 44:50 it does anyway in rotten rice, you know, it's 1313 $14 a bushel and corns $3 and 68 cents so, you know, it just costs a lot more money to make Yeah, 45:02 but why is it that that rice seems to age a lot quicker and have a better approachable taste to it at a younger age and say a bourbon does what really think it counts for that. 45:13 You know, I that's probably a question more for Caleb than it is for me. I don't know why it why it ages that much faster, but it's twice as fast. I mean, so to have our now we're going to have we have a three year old out. We're going to have a four year old out probably in the next three or four months. So on a go forward basis. We won't be a two year old raw. All of our Robbie for four to seven years old and then we'll come out with a Henry Craver eight year old so it'll be hitting on a four year old here probably in the next three or four months. So we'll be strictly over for four to five year old right. 45:53 What's this Henry Craver thing you just brought up that that kind of piqued my interest that you're talking about that? 45:57 Well, we're going to honor my great grandfather we're holding about 20% of what we make for Henry Craver bourbon. So we'll have a deer will always have the peerless product out. But we're going to have a Henry Craver eight year old product and probably an eight year old rye whiskey as well hold a little bit for him for an eight year old. So we're it's more an honor my great grandma. It's all about our family, our heritage, what we're trying to accomplish here as a family. But I think our eight year old bourbon should do well for us. 46:36 Yeah, that was always one of the things that I remember. I remember when this when the two year old ry first came out and yeah, it came out with $100 price tag and I know people were talking to like, oh man, like how can they do $100 on a two year rye whiskey? And I think one of the big things that was the question that was came up was well, when the rise three years and that's four years and as five years so on and so on, like, is the price going to keep going up? Is he gonna go down as gonna say the same? Like what's what's your the long term game there? 47:04 Well, I'll tell you what the short term game was for a long time. Okay, let's go the short term, the short term, if I had to ask $39 and 95 cents a bottle, I would have just been everybody else. I'd have been Jim Beam Maker's Mark, you know what we'd have just been? We've gotten lost in the shuffle. So in order to get everybody's attention, which I think we did, we were getting $129, which everybody went Holy cow, I've got to try that. Yeah, I got I mean, $129 for two year old bottle. Let's try it. And it just so happened to taste good. So was it a gamble? You damn right? It was God. But, you know, as it turns out, the way there's come down the pike, we do realize we've got to get to a four year old, then you don't have put an age statement on the bottle once it's four years old. So it'll be five, six years old. And I think it'll get it'll get better every year, our three year old is better than the two year old. But it's, it's hard to say. I mean, if you're number one in the world at a two year old, what the hell? 48:09 Where do you go from there? 48:10 Where do you know where do you you know, 48:12 what, how much close up shop. Let's start off. 48:16 But now we know. We want to make things better all the time. We want to do a better job. We want to be proud of the product we put out. Can we want to be more cost effective? It was it was a big deal to come out over $100 with a two year old but it got people's attention. We would have never, ever gotten the accolades we got if we hadn't asked $129. Right. 48:39 Who was who was the biggest like, advocate and then like the person that was against it, like with inside of the family or inside of the company that was like this, the price point we're going with, and then somebody was like, I don't know about that. Or you just kind of like headstrong with it saying we got to do this. 48:55 You know, I don't I think everybody pretty much agreed. I mean it. We don't make much product, where I'll make it real simple. We go where the money is. The money's in New York City. The money's in Chicago, the money's in San Francisco, la Houston, Dallas, Atlanta, Miami. So, London. So if you only make 1012 barrels of bourbon a day, 49:23 you don't need to Henderson 49:24 you don't think 49:26 we got it in Henderson but only bet three places exact, you know, you don't we're not going to go down to Bardstown and put it in the bar down in Bardstown. You know, 49:34 they'll bitch like, they can't even pay for a $40 bottle. Yeah. 49:38 So So I mean, you know, if you if you if you have the history that we have, and we go to the places where the money is it and they like it, they have to like it, then we're taking a gamble, but not going with its it's going to work? 49:57 No, absolutely. And I think it seemed to work. So the doors are open, the money's still coming in, you get product and would you say 48 for how many states have 45 states the five states across the country. 50:08 And so that was kind of like the one of the big reasons we kind of want to talk to us because yeah, you're starting to get this this national presence around you. And I kind of want to also talk about like so what are the difference in the two bottles we have in front of us today? You have the two years small batch and we have a three year single barrels that would exactly and it's it's a three year single barrel and we we've, I don't course all the distilleries have a reputation of selling single barrels but for the size that we are I think it's kind of hit pretty good for us to where we are selling quite a few single barrels. I mean, last year we I think we sold over 50 which was big for us and this year we anticipating selling well over 100 and for a small distillery that's that's a good thing and that's how it helps marketing when you're 50:54 it's almost like it's almost like a month worth of inventory at this point. Yeah. 50:59 Yeah, you know, so you get in some of the big bars and you get in some of the big liquor stores in the country and they've got 30 cases your product in the center out you know, they see it and so it's kind of help us with that as well. 51:13 What's the Nashville on this this route these rye whiskey? 51:16 we don't we don't I can't tell you. 51:19 That's that's so good. 51:21 So everybody Asad now, you know it just we just we don't want to do that. Because everybody else to school disclose their we're not going to disclose our How do you like it? 51:32 I love it. 51:34 It's it's great for two years, or 32 or three? That's the two years. 51:39 That was about three. Okay, cool. This is 51:43 nice weather. 51:44 No, I mean, both great. I mean, to me taste. It tastes like a Kentucky right, like more of a lower. Rob. Like a closer to 51%. Rob, but I'm not going to prod you to give us that. 52:00 Drink the rest of it. I'll get you some of this three. 52:02 No, but I will say you know a little bit about what you said about the mash bill. No matter where we go in the country. They basically call it a bourbon drinkers rye whiskey. Yeah. So we do have enough corn in there to gives it a little bit sweeter, sweeter taste, and I don't think you quite get that burn that you would within different raw. And then we have the three different profiles. We only blend six barrels. 52:29 Three. What's 52:31 your definition 52:33 six barrel? Yeah. So we take try to take three different flavor profiles, fruits and florals, Carmine vanilla. And in the obviously the oak and pepper is the original rice with we blend those and we do it, you know, we pick our barrel. So if we can continue doing that, it's not ready, it's not ready, we put it back for another three months, six months or whatever. So we want to make sure that the barrels we put out again being small, we can do that. Obviously, we're not going to blend 500 like the big ones stood. And the other thing it's really important to to try to stay. What we feel like will be a quality product is all of our Rick houses are just going to be one floor five. So the temperature from the top to the bottom is that four degrees, you go in these big warehouses could be 40 degrees temperature from the top floor to the bottom floor. So we like the idea one floor, more control better product. So the things that we do on a continuous basis, we hope will be a better product for us. 53:45 Where did you so when you're developing, you know, Corky thing your own way whose whose recipes? Are these are like was it just trial and error? Like we're waiting on someone else to like figure it out? Or? 53:58 You got it? trial and error? Yeah, we you know, a year 54:04 trial. That's the fun part. Right. 54:06 Yeah, you know, sorry, we knew, you know, kind of what we wanted to do with flavor profiles. We had a pretty good idea what some other products close to what, you know what their mash bill. So we just came up with a magic pill that had enough corn in it that people would still think it's a good quality bourbon. And a lot of people that drink this still think it's bourbon. 54:29 It I mean, it could I mean, you can taste the right of it. It's very close. Like you said, it's a bourbon drinker bourbon, it's like you're not a barbarian bourbon bourbon drinkers. Right? We'll get there. Yeah. So talk about like, what, what are some of your favorite products that kind of like, made you determine that this is what I like, you know, some similar similar products out there that were like, this is kind of a whistle, whistle pig. 54:55 And when when we, when we looked at it, we knew who who our competition was going to be. And it seems like since we came out, whistle pig, no matter where he goes, God is going to be our competition. So, you know, but but there there's is 810 1214 years, right? So and, you know, so we we had pretty good idea that that's, that's our competition, but we wanted to make it our flavor, flavor profiles. So we couldn't sit around and wait 14 years. So we had to figure out what what we could do. And Caleb Kilburn is a is our master distiller he's been with us since day one, and he does a great job for us. But we got Chris and Tommy and Aaron Carson. So we're, we're kind of all on it trying to figure out, you know, what we can do to make it better. And obviously, going from the two year to three years better than when it come out with a four year it's going to be better and five year and then kind of hold it about two. I don't think Brad needs to be with some pig does a great job. They've got a great product, but we're not going to be up at 1214 years. Yeah, we're just not 56:10 well, who knows? That 20% you're holding back save another 2%? And then you know, you'll you'll find out later on. 56:16 I am afraid here. Yeah. 56:18 Yeah, that's me tough sell, sell, sell, 56:21 sell the other about the the flavoring aspect or not flavoring. But you know, how you how you embody and invoke the flavor of the whiskey is all done a lot through the barrel itself? It is and are who are you teaming up with to get your barrels? Or is this another? I'm not going to tell you? 56:37 No, no, no, you know, we we strictly do business with Calvin Cooper each. We like the quality of their barrels that they make. Personally, we like them. They're there, they become good friends of ours. They, you know, when we got in this business barrels were hard to come by there was a barrel shortage. So we went to some of the big barrel places and they'd say, Well, you know, we can help you with four or 500 barrels, we can give you 1200 a week, you know, we can do this or, you know, and we went to Kelvin and, and talk to them. And they said, we'll take care of you. And I'll be with Calvin Cooper each. As long as there have to always be with them. I'm not gonna I won't, I won't leave. I won't 57:20 leave. It's amazing how rich these barrels are. I mean, for three year old property, it's crazy. I mean, talk about how did you get hooked up with Caleb and why did you choose him to be your master distiller? 57:34 Well, there's, there's flavor man, the epicenter has a school, that that only lasts about six days, but it helps you gives you an idea how to become a distiller or to build a distillery. Caleb went through the school, my son Carson went through the first class. Caleb was in a second said, Mike. So we've had a number of them go through the school. And then they said, somebody said, you got to take a look at this young man, he's still a junior in college. So he came over and talk to me said, you know, I'd like to, you know, work with you. And this is even before we laid out to the story, and I said, Sure, you know, once you start shoveling gravel over there, and oh, by the way, I got a bunch of nails in his would pull nails. And he did that for the first summary was their second summer. I think he he shoveled gravel, and helped us pour concrete so and then he was able to lay out the distillery the way he wanted it laid out the kid, I say he's a kid. He's not a kid. But he's, he's literally a genius. I think he's he's very, very smart. He understands the mechanical. He understands the whole system all the way around. He's gone into big distilleries. He's followed him around, he went to the school. He's sharp, and he does a great job for us. He's helped work with Tommy and, and Nick, Chloe, and help them along. So we we have three people that can really do what we want to enter. But Caleb is the he's the lead lead pony there. So 59:07 is he like another son to you? 59:08 party? Emily, he really is. Yeah, no, he is. And you know, and I feel like a lot of men are there. You know, we're basically a big family. We don't we only have about 20 employees. Maybe we got a few part time that are you know, working in the retail part of it. But you know, we're most will have is 22 employees in there. So we're always going to be that's us distillery. 59:30 So before we kind of wrap things up, I know that I kind of want to touch back on the the history of you and your military background, because I know there was you have a title to General Patton as well. 59:42 Is that correct? My my father was General patents chief aide. So if you saw the movie Pat and the man at work was right with General Patton in real life was my father. I've got general patents gun and he carried all through the war. You saw the movie Pat, and he said pearls were for women and average for men have got to go the average handle 45 that was his shoulder harness. So my father owned it for 30 years. He passed away young and have a heart attack. I've owned this gun for 43 years. My sons alone and my grandsons, they'll own it. So the gun that General Patton carried all through the war will never leave the Taylor family. 1:00:19 And then and then so you also have like I mentioned that that military tie. When military officers or personnel come through the distillery I think you've had a few of those kind of moments as well with with some of those individuals, have you not? 1:00:33 Oh, yeah, they do. Because if you go down to the patent Museum, down in Fort Knox, there's, there's a picture about a 10 foot tall picture general Pat, and that's my father standing right next time. So all the army generals, McCaffrey just just retired two star General, he wanted to have his retirement dinner darkness story. He brought eight of the top army generals and United States Army we're in our distillery that night. So he wants us to bring the gun in so people can see the generals in the army. And the Colonel's. If there's a general or a colonel down at Fort Knox, or somebody visiting from Leavenworth or from other places, they come see me and they want to know the history about my father. And which is, which is a pretty interesting history. I mean, the story that everybody likes to hear is when I when my father sent me to military school down in castle heights, and my two roommates were the Allman Brothers. So Greg, and my roommate started that in military school. And it was a wild damn time. I'll tell you that. So we every time I've listened all in, but brother, yes. Wild. So we, we, and that's to back up just a little bit. You mentioned Freddie now. Yeah, well, Freddie. Freddie and I spoke at the convention center one time and Freddie's father Booker sent him to Castle heights. kind of straighten your career and dad, my dad said me to Castle, I straighten my rear. I work for Fred. It didn't work for me. So, so Freddie for all these years, he said, you know, the Allman Brothers went to Castle heights. So I'm 70 years old. Freddie's probably 62. So he'd been telling these people that the Allman Brothers went to Castle i. So we're speaking here to Convention Center. So Friday, you didn't know this, but I went to Castle IT can imagine what he said. Yes. No muffler. Yeah. So as I said, And oh, by the way, the Allman Brothers were my roommates. Well, he busted a good on that when he said my goddess, but Freddie, you never saw the Allman Brothers. I'm 70 year like 62 they weren't a said no, they weren't here about God. But I knew they were there. I said, I know they were to they were my roommate. So we laughed about that. And so when he does see me, so I know you're the only brothers roommate. 1:02:53 That's pretty awesome. They didn't initially I try to get you to pick up another guitar. You start playing with them or anything. 1:02:59 You know, that was that was when they were 1415 years old. They were they were Yeah, they had a guitar in the room. But they never know. I mean, they might on Sunday afternoon they play the guitar you'd sing but I mean, I didn't know what the hell's going on. You know, they weren't writing Jessica 1:03:13 they know they know they weren't they weren't a ramble man. 1:03:17 We we got a little trouble we we found out the first day we were there The girls were to Dairy Queen on Sunday night so we come busting out of there for the Dairy Queen Sunday night come back at one captain's always standing there raising like we care we want to get kicked out Yeah, exactly. 1:0

Neuroscience experts, practitioners, research and methods for making brain-friendly organizations and healthy individuals. Subscribe to Mind Your Noodles!   This is the fifth episode of the Mind Your Noodles podcast. In this episode Charles Green, author of The Trusted Advisor discusses neuroscience utility and ways to build trust in your organization.    Show Notes [00:00:06] Mind Your Noodles Podcast - Episode 5 [00:01:58] Dale Carnegie. . . Deeper [00:05:07] The Philosophy of Trust [00:06:13] Neuroscience - Does It Applies to Organizations? [00:08:29] The Argument Against [00:11:49] A Descriptive Analogy [00:40:48] Forget Neuroscience -  What Should We Do? [00:44:49] Women are Trusted More Than Men [00:46:15] Nurses Most Trusted [00:52:00] The Power of Story   Transcript Tripp: [00:00:06] Take care of The brains that take care of you. with the Mind Your Noodles podcast will keep you up to date on the latest neuroscience research and practices to keep your brain healthy. And strategies to help your organization be brain friendly.   Tripp: [00:00:27] Hi I'm Tripp Babbitt with Mind Your Noodles and our guest today is Charles H. GREEN He is an author who has written many books one which is one of my personal favorites which is the trusted advisor which I believe was written in around 2000 or so. So maybe we should just kind of start there Charles a little bit about you and you've written that looks like three books. You had a field book and then you also had a more recently the trust based selling book. But like I said the Trust Advisors is I'm sure one that's held by a lot of people whether they're in sales or consulting or really any field where you're you're having to deal with people on a daily basis. I'll let you take it from here. Yeah   Charles: [00:01:16] Well that's that's basically right. The whole three books share the common theme of trust in business. A trusted advisor you right came out 2001 that was the first trust they signed in 0 5 and The Trusted Advisor field book. I think about 2013 and the trusted advisor is kind of the one that you know I made my mark with. That's that's the core branding. Not that I check it frequently but as of this morning it was rated about number 7000 on Amazon which was compared to all millions of books it's up against Harry Potter and it's continued to have that level of popularity. So I'm I'm quite happy to have a book that's performed that well that's excellent.   Tripp: [00:01:58] It's it's well written and you know it's interesting I was looking actually on Amazon about you know different reviews people had on it and I thought some of some of the folks out there kind of gave it a good explanation at least for me. Hopefully you like it as a compliment to which is it's it's kind of a deeper Carnegie's Win Friends and Influence People.   Tripp: [00:02:22] There's a lot more to it.   Tripp: [00:02:23] There's a lot more that you can apply into settings maybe that's not a good explanation but I don't know that I thought when I read that I thought Well that's thoughtful and a few other people kind of jumped on that comment.   Charles: [00:02:38] Yeah I think it's fair and I take it as a as a compliment. I think another thing that people find when I am my people in my organization give workshops or keynote is a common takeaway from people is sort of. It's not like I didn't really know that. I guess I kind of knew that but I never put it all together in a coherent thread like that. So I don't claim novelty but I do think it's knitted together a whole bunch of very common themes so I think it's a good company. Thank you.   Tripp: [00:03:09] Yeah. And I have to say also you practice what you preach to as we exchanged e-mails over a few series of days not only did you spend time with thoughtful responses to some of the e-mails that we shared but also the way that you used a a compliment being very specific which is one of the things out of the book I thought was was you know it's just interesting how some people will that they write something but then they don't really live it. But I could tell that you really live the the books that you wrote.   Charles: [00:03:44] Well I've had 19 years to practice it and you know there is no upper limit to to perfection in an area like trusting or being trustworthy. So it's a constant struggle. But yeah over time you can get better at it.   Tripp: [00:03:59] Absolutely. One of the things I want to kind of interject in this conversation as you know we when we were exchanging e-mails you were talking about W. Edwards Deming and you know he's had different influence on people you know Pixar Bama companies Paula Marshall that make the apple pies for McDonald's and and different folks. And I was you were familiar with Deming which not everybody has but I have a tendency to be people at least my age and up I have a tendency to know who at least who Deming was. What your knowledge of that. Dr. Deming and his work.   Charles: [00:04:37] Gosh it's it's not deep and it's it's old I haven't looked into this material in years but what I'm left with is a tremendous amount of respect. He was obviously somebody who had a great idea somebody who was devoted to it somebody who was very good at explaining and had a great deal of impact. So you know I do not claim any in-depth concrete knowledge about it but you know the core message is brilliant and very well said from what I recall.   Tripp: [00:05:07] Yeah his his his last book The New Economics basically addressed looking at an organization as a system theory vague theory of variation theory knowledge and psychology. We're kind of the cornerstones of of his particular work and you know I remember when I. First read the trusted advisor was kind of a combination of things that it kind of brought back come some epistemology type things in my head. And it also brought in some of the psychology piece even though you don't really overtly mention that it seems to be some of that underpinning the writings of that book. Is that a fair assessment.   Charles: [00:05:50] Absolutely. It's very much there. And I think what we what we intended. I was one of three authors on that book and what we intended was to let those kinds of conclusions reveal themselves to the reader so rather than preaching you know here's how you should relate to your kids or your spouse. We said let's let let's let that one emerge to the reader. And it is pretty obvious. It's definitely there.   Tripp: [00:06:13] Ok. So I'm just going to kind of jump into one of the reasons that I came across you and your work again was there was a post that you made or a comment that you made it was very strong. And it's because we're covering off in this particular podcast about neuroscience and it's an application to organizations. One of the things that that you kind of addressed very directly was you didn't you don't necessarily see it that way and some of the people that I've already talked to like Dr. Zak different folks you know are bringing this into organizations and it gave me pause when I read your comment and I thought you know if this is going to be a podcast this podcasts really needs to be about perspective and you offer a different perspective on the usefulness of neuroscience philosophically as you mentioned in your in our emails and our communications back and forth but what kind of give me would set the foundation here for what it is that you see and why you. You have have some such strong feelings about it maybe and this is a few years ago. So to be to be fair this is maybe you've changed your mind or maybe you've dug in deeper I don't know. So I just you whenever somebody gives me a strong reaction and not just the reaction of Oh that that's baloney or something like that but more a thoughtful response I say you know like I said it gives me pause and I want to understand what it is that you see and to be fair to the audience as we start to look at you know neuroscience. Does it have application to organizations right.   Charles: [00:07:59] Well I mean good for you for seeking out you know different perspectives to answer a little question there and probably Doug and a little bit deeper. I think my background I got a graduate degree MBA Harvard Business School many years ago my undergraduate degree was in philosophy. As a matter of fact in my class at HP as eight hundred people only two of us had a philosophy degree and I was one of them. And so that's kind of a schizophrenic background.   Charles: [00:08:29] You know those two. And and in my career I think the value of a degree in philosophy early on in my career was somewhere between none and zero. It's just not what it was that even a mistake. In fact the more more my career progressed the more I began to see the applicability of it. And this subject is really a good example. Feel free to interrupt me here as we go through the tour Tripp. I guess basically I approach the issues of neuroscience as applied to leadership and business from the perspective of philosophy of science and that deals with things like what is an explanation. What is causality et cetera et cetera. Let me just say upfront I'm not an expert in neuroscience as we've already seen I'm not an expert in Deming but I do know a few things about business and I do know a few things about how to talk about the intersection of business psychology management leadership and all those things. And what has struck me about the subject of neuroscience applied to business it's not unique to that field.   Charles: [00:09:41] It happens when you get people who are deep into the let me call it hard science and I know that at the microscopic level physics is always sort of the paradigm of air quote you know good science there is a temptation among people who are really skilled deep in the hard sciences to want to apply the same kind of principles techniques perspectives into the quote softer areas I'm going to be using a lot of air quotes here.   Tripp: [00:10:09] Oh that's OK.   Charles: [00:10:11] And I think it leads to a couple of problems and I'll call them philosophic but they're they're very real. One of them is the notion of explanation. So for example and again I'm not deeply familiar with either Zen. Or Iraq. But I'll I'll sort of key off.   Charles: [00:10:30] Zak wrote an article in Harvard Business Review about a couple of years ago and you can see very much he says I'm going to describe how neuroscience causes certain factors in management behavior. Right there. Anybody who had training in philosophy when you see the word cause you should know red flag. I go back to David Hume and anybody with philosophy signs you can't prove causation in the sense of the word that we normally mean by proving that I would fault the editor HBR are they shouldn't it like that. You could have said what he intended. In a much cleaner way. So there's that little issue you can't really prove causation. Much more importantly though in casual language hard scientists tend to say things like well we can explain management behavior by delving into the neuroscience of it and I'll speak very broadly. You know the neuroscientists people in this case are measuring levels of oxytocin or they're doing brainwave scans and what they're saying is this explains people's behavior or management behavior or leadership behavior. So my problem lies right there. I would argue it doesn't really explain hardly anything in any useful way. And let me give a humble example.   Charles: [00:11:49] If I were in the room with you Tripp I would put my right hand out in front of me six inches above the table top with my fingers lightly flexed and raised my hand by one foot. So it's a foot and a half off the table. Now let me suggest there is an infinite number of ways to describe what I just did. You could say I raised my hand you could say I was acting out the toast that I gave as best man at a recent wedding. You could say I was flexing the muscles. You could say that my brain was sending certain signals via complicated biochemistry that then triggered certain muscles and so forth and sort you could say I was giving a signal. There's an infinite number of ways to describe what I just did. And it's not that one of them is more accurate or more right or more truthful it depends on the situation. If I actually were at a wedding and what I did was you know raised my hand with a glass in it in a toast. That's what you'd want to say. You know Charlie toasted the group.   Charles: [00:12:53] It's useless to describe what I just did in biochemical terms and yet I think people well schooled in the hard sciences tend to believe well the more deep we can get into the physical explanations of the better the explanation. There is a name for that is called the reductionist problem in philosophy and it's the belief that always the deeper you can get the better the explanation is.   Charles: [00:13:17] Well that makes a lot of sense in chemistry. I makes a lot of sense in physics. You know it's when I when I grew up you know the ultimate source of reality where atoms which could be broken into neutrons protons and electrons didn't know anything more you know. Science has advanced since then. Science advanced past Newton and we would now say the ultimate reality is not explained by Newtonian physics you got to get into quantum mechanics and so forth and so the fact in the daily world that's useless. And you know if I swing a bat and hit a ball Newton is just fine to describe that. If I walk into the pathway of a street I'm likely hit by a car and Newtonian physics is perfectly adequate to describe that. So it's only in certain settings where we're very careful if we want to talk about the nature of ultimate reality in the universe it's very appropriate to bring in all these other perspectives and to bring it back home here. If you're going to talk about things in management leadership and business things like recognizing excellence giving people discretion sharing information building relationships these are all sub topics that Zak wrote about in his HP article I would argue that the choice of the neuro chemical language to describe that is pretty much useless. We don't need neuroscience to talk about the notion of leadership or motivation. In fact it's it's it's beside the point it's distracting.   Charles: [00:14:48] So to me defaulting to that micro level of explanation for all explanations is a fairly low level of explaining our sorry. Description is a fairly low level of explanation and description by reducing things to the lowest physical common denominator becomes really useless and useless.   Charles: [00:15:08] So that's the essence of my concern with it we're using one language to describe phenomena which are frankly practically speaking far better described in other languages. So it's akin to saying well should this concept be better expressed in German or in French. Well when you're talking about leadership it doesn't matter. There's certain area. That might be very important but most management and leadership subjects I suggest are very well dealt with with fairly much common language and not by default to some supposedly superior notion of biochemical language. So let me stop there and see if that makes sense.   Tripp: [00:15:46] Yeah. No i i i falling as best I can. I did it not I don't have a philosophy of real depth as far as that.   Tripp: [00:15:55] I've read some of the stuff that Dr. Deming read you know where as he was going along and getting associated with the pistol melody portion of it but there's a few things that you I wrote down as as you were talking in the first one was this this kid the concept of causation versus correlation you didn't mention correlation but just just to mention it you know just because more murders in the summer doesn't mean that summer causes murders you know type of thing.   Charles: [00:16:22] Yeah correct.   Tripp: [00:16:24] And so there's a difficulty which kind of leads me to the second thing I wrote down which is anytime we're doing dealing with science we're in essence and Dr. Deming used something called PDSA which is plan do study act. We know that we're kind of in a scientific setting and just because we have one instance of something happening doesn't prove anything forever. It just means in that circumstance and that's kind of when as you were talking about you know the hand above the table I'm sitting there thinking OK you know from a scientific standpoint we can't draw conclusions about things based off of even multiple experiment experiments of metaphor. One of Dr. Deming is famous saving sayings was no theory has ever proven.   Charles: [00:17:09] Right. So it's he's philosophically exactly correct.   Tripp: [00:17:13] Okay. Okay. And so you know from that standpoint I gather that you know and I and I as I hear you talk and I'm kind of putting the pieces together and there is a third thing that you mentioned in there and I kind of remind me of you know Frederick Taylor versus what Deming taught. So you've got kind of this Taylor mystic thinking during the Industrial Revolution about you know pound whatever you can out of people pay Papa those types of things and Dr. Deming came in and redid all that and now actually was that kind of same transformation from Newtonian you know thinking to quantum physics. I mean it was a whole new level of of thinking and I guess where I get kind of stuck you know as I hear you talk and you say I have some of that logic associated with it. And again probably not the depth you have  I know I don't.   Charles: [00:18:08] Believe me I've forgotten 90 OK.   Tripp: [00:18:10] I'm still working on the two percent you that you know. So the.   Tripp: [00:18:16] But logically there are certain things that I as a read them kind of makes sense and I don't know if it's a familiarity thing or what it might be. But for instance when Dr. Zak talks about the fact that you know you raise as you become an executive you know you raise up through all the levels and you get this power and the testosterone starts kicking in. And in essence you lose empathy. I find that useful from a scientific standpoint does it apply to everyone. Probably not. But. But is it something that would be useful for people to know. I think so and I've and I've heard others that are in kind of the neuroscience field kind of support kind of what Zak's saying. So you know I'm hearing that. So are you countering that type of thing or is it is it something else that that you're you're taking from an argument perspective from an art.   Charles: [00:19:15] It is something else. I don't disagree with that finding. OK. And sort of empirically obvious to me as a manage. Kids huh. But you know hey more more proof. What the heck. That's that's fine. What I'm here arguing about is an example I'm looking at Dr. Zak's article in front of me just to refresh my memory. And he in this article in Harvard Business Review he says quote I identified eight management behaviors that foster trust. These behaviors are measurable and can be managed to improve performance. Close quote. And those eight behaviors are. He calls them behaviors no one recognize excellence. Number two induce quote challenge threats unquote. Number three give people discretion in how they do their work. Number four enabled job crafting. Number five. Share information broadly. Number six intentionally build relationships. Number seven facilitate whole person growth. Number eight show vulnerability. Now those are all you know we understand in plain English we understand what those mean and what he's done what he says he's done in his research. Remind me to come back and comment on the research. OK. But what he what he suggested is that. They've been able to measure different levels of oxytocin in association with these kinds of phenomena. I have no problem with that whatsoever. I'm just saying. Who needs that to talk about. Give people discretion you know share information broadly intentionally build relationships and be vulnerable.   Charles: [00:20:44] Poets have said as much every management consultant I know would say as much people 30 40 50 years ago who were very well respected in business sent as much without any need for any benefit from oxytocin or or neuroscience.   Charles: [00:21:01] What I'm arguing about is the utility the value brought to this set of observations by the field of neuroscience it seems to me pretty minimal. It's like I knew this. This is second grade stuff. Not that it's not important. Believe me. I mean he's absolutely right and picking on these issues for example show vulnerability. That's huge. And in the work that I do and trust that's one of the leading things. My question is why did I need to know that proven through some biochemical study. I don't. And not only that it's it's worse if you actually bring it in demand. What do you do with that observation to say you know chemicals are associated with a certain vulnerability. It's akin to in my experience when some people say well can you make money with trust. You know how do I know it's going to be profitable. Never mind wonder. That's the wrong way to talk about trust. People who ask that question frankly are not going to be persuaded by however much data you could throw at it anyway. And I think the same is true here. If if somebody is questioning why should I be vulnerable citing the evidence of oxytocin levels is very unlikely to convince them. So what's the use of it. If you're a professional advisor a management consultant a financial advisor it's just not a very powerful argument. You know more powerful arguments are well so and so over here in out or think about the Oracle of Omaha you know. Here's what he did. Storytelling is more useful. Drawing on analogies is more useful surveys are more useful way down the list it is let me describe the chemical reaction that happens in people's heads when this issue comes up. So it's really an argument about utility and role and relevance.   Tripp: [00:22:46] When you say utility I think application is that.   Charles: [00:22:49] Yes.   Tripp: [00:22:49] OK. So. So in essence it's kind of like it's not showing us really anything new it may be showing us that the science says that it's something that that's there but it's not telling us anything that we didn't already know.   Charles: [00:23:06] Yes OK in a nutshell that's it. OK. Telling us anything we didn't already know. And furthermore it's not particularly useful in explaining things that even the people know. Okay. So yeah.   Tripp: [00:23:18] Okay. Yeah. I you know I sit there and as I reflect on you say I'm Deming's thinking and I'm trying to pull together some of the or you know theory of knowledge piece or philosophy piece with the only psychology piece which which you do definitely write to you don't see that neuroscience as an advancement on the psychology piece or giving us key insights about how people behave and why they behave that way.   Charles: [00:23:52] That's correct. And it is nothing to do with truth. I mean a description of a phenomenon like me raising my hand a biochemical description of that is 100 percent as accurate as a poetic description or a an argument from me understanding something in context. It's not a question of right or wrong. It is a question of relevance and impact and power.   Tripp: [00:24:13] Okay. All right. So I did so and I'm just going to kind of kind of go back through things because you're giving me a different way of looking at things this way. As your as your email did there.   Tripp: [00:24:25] There's also a gentleman by the name of Orin Clark. I don't know if you're familiar with him. He wrote a book called Pitch Anything.   Tripp: [00:24:33] So he's a guy who's a who is basically in the world of getting money for ventures basically. Right. So might be for movies some might be for business. It could be anything but he is basically that that's his common role and when it thinks he discovered and he was one of kind of first turned me on to all this is you know here are the reasons and there's a lot of it could be an interesting read for you. I'd be curious does that. Oh I don't get. Yeah. What what you're thinking is I. But he kind of pulled in you know the three parts of the brain. He talks about the crocodile brain the bad brain the neocortex and. And that when you're when you first meet somebody you know it's kind of like a fight or flight thing like that first e-mail I say to you you know do I want to write you know what I want to take this on or do I want to you know which. Which way do you want to go and how do I present. I think a lot of the strategies they had in the Trusted Advisor help mitigate some of those issues associated with that because the whole thing is about the things you've already talked about authenticity and those types of things. But he in essence took that process of pitching you know for money and different things and took parts of what I hope. I don't know that he would even say it was neuroscience but but things he learned from Malcolm Gladwell and folks like that.   Tripp: [00:25:57] And he started to say hey there's something here. When we pitch you know we need to be aware that for. For instance he talks about a lot about being the alpha versus the beta. That you get into what's called a beta trap meaning you have low status associated with it with where you are and you don't want to be there. You know how can you set up a situation where you're you don't have you know low status. So I see a lot of the strategies and maybe that's the wrong word to use that you talk about in the trusted advisor that kind of parallels some of things that that he's talking about in there but he's using the neuroscience or my words not his to kind of explain you know what's happening in the brain and why you need to be presented in a different way. And so I found that useful from my perspective because it's kind of like OK people are taking something and that's what made me start to dig deeper into this I'm reading every book I can find on neuroscience now just to you know what are people concluding. And you know interesting as I shared with you Dr. Zak and you know David Rock apparently at odds with each other. So I'm not sure of why but yeah.   Tripp: [00:27:12] So so there's I almost feel like we're in this world and where we got these kind of rough rocks if you will and they're all bouncing against each other and eventually all kind of smooth out into something and maybe it won't be. Maybe the path that you say you were not really learning thing we're new we're getting more reinforcement about kind of what we already knew anyway from interactions with people and in organizations.   Charles: [00:27:38] Yeah. Well again the I I was not aware of the conflict between Zak and David Rock. I'd be curious to find out what that is.   Charles: [00:27:48] But I'll bet you 9 to one. They both are in agreement or disagreement with what I'm talking about.   Tripp: [00:27:54] Yeah. But but again as I told you my my main thing is when people offer a perspective and you're obviously a just pick created and someone who's a een applying this for a long period time this person's got some something to say. And again that's why I wanted to have you on. You're very thoughtful in your in your approach to things and and you know I think people should hear. But you know what you have to say.   Charles: [00:28:18] I think you know just to stay on a little piece that you mentioned there you're really talking about persuasion and influence. Anybody who's interested in that. I find the most persuasive person in that area is Robert Cialdini who writes with I mean he's he's got legitimate scientific background but he writes more in the terms of pop psychology. Mm hmm. So he is first book called influence the science of persuasion lists. I think it's seven different factors that lead to human influence and some of them are pretty well-known. They're like act now supply limited or all your friends are doing it. It's telling to me and what I've taken from him and exploring the notion of trust. The first factor that he mentions and in his later life I see him mentioning more and more doesn't sound like that at all. It's the notion of reciprocity as in if I do X for you you will respond in like terms. It goes back to fight or flight. If I approach somebody in a friendly manner it improves the odds that they will react that way if I approach somebody in a an antagonistic fearful manner. You know you get back what you put out. And in fairness to Zak he actually mentioned his reciprocity yes at the front of his article as well he should. I think he's absolutely correct about that. The question I'm raising is having raised that which is the more powerful way to get that notion across to people in my own work. And again I spent 20 years in management consulting and another 20 doing this trust work. I have found it's far more important. For example are far more useful if I'm in front of a room and I'm trying to explain this notion of reciprocity a walk off the podium walk into the audience go up to some person smile at them lean over and extend my right hand in a gesture that we all know was a handshake.   Charles: [00:30:10] Well guess what. Every single time you do that that other person is going to reciprocate and they're going to shake my hand. Why. Because then it's just hard wired into the human psyche. I mean you can make a very good book on that ninety nine point nine times out of 100 that's going happen. You reciprocate now and so Zak and I agree on that. My question is who's more persuasive in standing in front of a room and explaining saying here's what's happened to the neurochemistry in your brain when I extend my hand. Or me saying let's look at a few examples. When you go into a sale and you do X or you do Y or when you're making a political speech do X or Y and when you look at this historical story that we all know from from literature what's going on here X or Y. Those are persuasive practical ways of getting a point across to human beings. And while there is nothing untruthful you can describe human beings one hundred percent in mechanical chemical ways. But depending on what you're trying to do that explanation is next to useless or it's terribly important. I mean let me be clear if we're trying to develop medicines pharmacological solutions understanding ways to improve brain surgery understanding certain psychological therapies I think the neuroscience stuff is critical. It's cutting edge. It's great. We should celebrate it and get more of it. But when you apply it to some of these other areas of inner human interactions you know and the utility is way down the list compared to things like storytelling examples engagement and so forth.   Tripp: [00:31:43] Okay. Yeah. And actually that's one of the things in pitch anything with a working class a part of the pitch is as a story to in order to ticket people's brains engage.   Tripp: [00:31:54] But I've got one thing I was gonna mention is I didn't actually read Robert's holding his Pre suasion book. I've not read the older and I have it the psychology influence of persuasion. There's a lot of great stuff in there.   Charles: [00:32:06] Oh definitely.   Tripp: [00:32:07] It's a very useful you know type type of book. There's another book I'd be curious on your thoughts about so called Decisive. And again it it it's written by Chip Heath. Oh yeah. And he talks about the fact that you know things like when you're going to make a decision.   Tripp: [00:32:30] People kind of narrow their focus in this kind of backs up some of the things Malcolm Gladwell talks about too as well especially if there's pressure on you. You have a tendency to narrow your focus and and by virtue of the fact that that your focus has narrowed narrowed that becomes kind of an either or type of condition when you're looking at making decisions as opposed to looking at multiple options. And he also then this into confirmation bias and you know he talks about you know things of that sort.   Tripp: [00:33:00] And and to me it starts to crossover and I think you know the fact I guess I guess this is what I kind of what I've concluded especially after going through some of Oren Klaff stuff. And even Danish stuff is you know the story has to be compelling. And one of the things his psychology seems to be old news and forget about philosophy philosophy is like all right.   Tripp: [00:33:28] Since the beginning a man right. You know associated with it and that's not to discount its importance in understanding although I have to say some of the philosophy books you know that are written are seem to be written for each other as far as philosophers go.   Tripp: [00:33:43] I mean I guess I can't get anything out of it.   Charles: [00:33:45] So right yes.   Tripp: [00:33:47] So it becomes very difficult and even Deming when he read Mind and the World Order you know he's he basically said started Chapter 7 and 8 it's that because there is the with. Yeah.   Tripp: [00:34:00] So because it's a little bit difficult to get something out of it I think people today and you know they're looking for that fresh thing and Oren Klaff really hits this hard.   Tripp: [00:34:12] I think even Sodini hits it hits it pretty hard is it has to be that that the newness of something gets people's attention.   Tripp: [00:34:20] And even if it's kind of the maybe not the right thing that they're looking for answers associated with Why is this happening and they're looking for fresh work even if it only supports what's actually already known right.   Tripp: [00:34:35] It hesitancy then to get people's attention.   Charles: [00:34:37] And I think that you know part of why the field of sales will never fall short. Everybody's looking for the newest band you know is like a breath short kind of reason going to be first in line. I mean what you just Yeah right is. I would call that kind of a universal attribute of people were looking for the newest shiny object.   Tripp: [00:34:55] Yeah. So it's in our nature you know like like say you like you like putting out your hand. Most people are gonna know that that's that's for a handshake.   Tripp: [00:35:03] It's kind of the same thing and so I'd say you know from one perspective because I've read you know and I've got many many more books so they want to read that you know associated with the subject neuroscience it's new. And people are saying what can I glean from this and maybe what they glean from it is the old lessons that we learned in philosophy that were then again really reinforced by psych. What did we learn anything really new there or was it just something that we conclude. I think and I don't I think it's too early to know whether neuroscience is going to have any any offering you know associated with that it's just there's too many I know for you kind of the podcast I don't know I think.   Charles: [00:35:45] I think that you know what we just said about newness and the attraction and the ability to let people discover new that's true. I don't think that's going to happen in this area. OK. I just by its nature I mean you know applying neuroscience to management and leadership is based on hope the thought the idea that if you can describe things in chemical terms it's going to lead to something you know terribly useful. I just don't see that happening much at all.   Tripp: [00:36:17] And I don't know how much of a play you know does it offer anything actually new I think is kind of where you go through its new science but does it offer anything new for the perspective that. But but if that's kind of a key that will help people.   Charles: [00:36:36] It's not it's not just new. It's also useful. Yeah I get a I'm I could I could given a new. Yeah this is you know neuroscience is new and fascinating just because of that. But is this going to be a useful again. I don't see it as any different than saying Oh maybe if we translate this into Latin IT'LL BE NO IT'S LIKE IT'S NOT GONNA BE USEFUL it's the same stuff.   Tripp: [00:36:59] Mm hmm.   Charles: [00:37:00] And I think it's it's a distraction. And by the way this is the neuroscience just through neuroscience. Let me not just pick on that. I do a lot with tech companies. You know Google LinkedIn etc..   Charles: [00:37:11] And as you can imagine the people who are adept in those areas they're super deep into analytical left brain explanatory deductive logical thinking and so forth. Those people tend to discount the more conventional wisdom soft skills stuff and so on. And in some ways that you know that the passion to describe for example I get a lot of requests.   Charles: [00:37:33] How do you measure trust. And my argument is Don't even go there. You know that then the compulsion to measure something is itself reflective of not really understanding the boundaries of usefulness. You know it's like if you had a conversation with your spouse and you said you know I want our marriage to get better why don't we set a baseline. Let's agree seventy nine point one on a scale of one hundred and then let's measure every week how I'm doing on improving our marriage if any spouse that I know of is likely to say get out of here. Don't treat this that way.   Charles: [00:38:12] And so the neuroscience is just one more in in an over inclination to reductionist thinking a little bit over belief that you know we'll discover the cures to all things if we can just get the the artificial intelligence stuff right and we can just scale. I mean look at what Zuckerberg is accused of continually thinking things are going to solve all these problems by just doing more connecting more people in more ways.   Charles: [00:38:38] Meanwhile there's issues and they come from exactly that kind of thinking well.   Tripp: [00:38:43] And you will find any argument from a Deming philosophy perspective. You know he would say the most important figures are unknown and unknowable. All right. So so so there's so yeah.   Tripp: [00:38:55] So from that from that perspective I would agree but maybe we are trained to measure something that that can't be measured can we gain new insights from neuroscience and how do we conduct or maybe a structure the way that the organizations I guess is kind of the question you're. But your response to that is you know kind of a definitive no no. That we're not going to get anything from it.   Charles: [00:39:22] Well again let's let's be clear. I would give ground I'd cede ground on whether we're gonna to learn something new and that's OK we'll say we're going to learn something new meaning in this case a different way of describing phenomena.   Charles: [00:39:33] The practical utility of that is really more of what I'm getting at. Yes. So if you can I would argue that about half of what we call trust. You can definitely measure about half a foot falls into the unmeasurable but even in the measurable. What do you do with the fact that you're going to measure it the default business response is let collect data on it. Let's break it down to the most discrete component that we can. Let's set goals and let's reward people for achieving those goals. Now if you're talking about something like reliability or credibility and you can you can somewhat do that. You can track people's performance against promises that's useful. But if you try to track people on are you achieving better vulnerability or even worse yet. are you benevolent beneficent towards your clients. Do you have your clients best interests at heart. Well if you start measuring how people have their client's best interests at heart and you start rewarding. For doing it you've just ruined everything. How do you reward people for being unselfish. It's self-contradictory. It causes people to mistake the measurement for the thing that it is supposed to be measuring and to behave in perverse ways. So I think that the ultimate question really is is it useful. And I guess that's my concern. It's not terribly useful.   Tripp: [00:40:48] So let me ask you this then Charles as far as what would be useful what's put us put neuroscience to the side here for a minute if we're to advance the thinking that's going on you know from a management perspective where would our time be best spent.   Charles: [00:41:07] Right. Well that's a great question. And let me answer it within the narrow purview of trust which is what I've focused on for 19 years now. It's a great example because trust also suffers from a lot of vagueness and lack of lack of definition.   Charles: [00:41:26] You've seen it all. All your listeners have seen hundreds of examples of headlines as saying new study shows trust in banking is down. Let's just take that kind of thing. Trust in banking is down and we all go out. I believe the study. I believe the statistical accuracy and relevance of whatever came up with. But what does that mean. It could mean one of at least two things it could mean that financial institutions like banks have become less trustworthy. You know just look at the news on Wells Fargo and. Or alternatively it could mean something very different which is that people over time and become less inclined to trust banks. That's a very different thing.   Charles: [00:42:03] The first one is a violation of trustworthiness and norms on the part of it would be trusted organization like a bank and they're in the right responses to that regulatory using the laws to prosecute hiring firing people and so forth. On the other hand if the problem is people become less inclined to trust banks that's a PR problem. That's a communications problem. Very different to go slightly analogous to that. The staff will tell you that in the United States in the last 20 years violent crime has gone down. That's a factual statement reduction in violent crime. At the same time fear of violent crime has gone up. So that's a case where it's the perception that the problem not not the crime itself. And if all you're doing is saying you know if you're a violent you know you're violent crime is up. Oh my gosh. That doesn't tell you.   Charles: [00:43:00] And I think it's like that in trust. So here's my answer you break it down it's practically humanly meaningful components and there are two there's a trustor and a trustee and the result of those two interacting is trust or lack of trust. The characteristics of a trust door to the person who initiates the trust interaction and they're taking a risk. That's the essence of of trusting the person who is trusted or wants to be trust dead is we call them trustworthy or not trustworthy. And the result of their interactions becomes a certain level of trust. So trust is a noun properly belongs to the result of the interactions. Trust is a verb properly refers to the person taking the risk and trustworthiness an adjective properly refers to those who would be trusted. Now you can actually do something. You know my little book The Trusted Advisor I think part of what made it popular was we had a simple for factor equation for describing trustworthiness. And most of our audience likes equations you know and that's their language. And we initially intended it just as a conceptual model for anybody interested it's credibility plus reliability plus intimacy all divided by self orientation. Two of those factors are kind of measurable and behavioral namely credibility reliability and the other to intimacy and low self orientation are much more interior psychological you know quote soft unquote kinds of things. It happens by the way that we have about eight years after we wrote the book it suddenly dawned on me Hey this a book a great many great self-assessment tool. So we pulled five questions together for each of those four factors. Five comes forward is 20.   Charles: [00:44:49] I don't know why I thought 20 was a good number and just seemed to forget and we put it up on the web and wait for the crowds to roll in. Well they trickled in but we've now had over a hundred thousand people take it and we can draw a couple of very clear and very interesting conclusions. I named two of them. Number one women score as more trustworthy than men. Not only that but almost all the outperformance of women on this score is due to their performance on one of those four variables. It's not credibility it's not reliability. It's not self orientation. It is intimacy. And by the way. If you sort of step back and say what would you guess. That's exactly what you guess. In fact I've given a talk about that Dana. Roughly 300 times and two hundred and ninety seven. Literally only three exceptions over the years I've been doing this. Which is about 1 percent only with only three exceptions. When I asked the group the crowd what do you think. They said women comments. And that's right up there with handshakes. Women I mean people say probably women and then asked the Guess Which factor. They're also pretty good at guessing intimacy. Now one more data point. There are lists surveys done by other you know by survey professionals Pew. Gallup Yankelovich who asked most and least trusted professions over the years and across different countries and very consistent results at the bottom of the list.   Charles: [00:46:15] You can guess politicians lawyers used car salesmen top of the list. People have a harder time guessing it's not lawyers it's not doctrines it's not teachers it is nurses nurses with with one exception in the past 20 years and then exception with the year 2002 where firemen were number one. That was the year after 9/11. Unsurprising but with every. And then the next year I went back to nurses. Nursing is an eighty nine percent female profession and if you had to pick one of those four attributes as defining the nature of successful nursing whether it's a male nurse or female nurse it's probably intimacy you know the job of a nurse is to make you feel completely comfortable sharing saying anything you know we are literally and figuratively naked in front of nurses. So it turns out when we ran a regression equation on the data that we had collected you know which of those four factors really is the most powerful describing trustworthiness it's intimacy and we you know we basically define intimacy as the ability to make other people feel secure and comfortable sharing things with you. Now is that is that scientific. Oh it's just the model that we came up with to heuristic we describe. you know what's going on.   Charles: [00:47:29] I don't argue that that has any more physical reality relevance than any other model. It just seemed to work pretty well and I still think it does. It's a common sensical definition and for what it's worth that's what the data show. And that also seems to get pretty general common sense affirmation. So what do you do with all that. That one's pretty clear. I can tell you what to do if you're an accounting firm if you're a law firm. If you're a tech support in a tech company you almost certainly need to get better at your intimacy skills. But what does that mean. That means having conversations in a certain way. It means having a certain amount of personal courage to bring up difficult subjects and to lead with it. It requires a little bit of internal development like you know get over your fight or flight take the risk of not all that bad. That's the kind of stuff you can do something with as opposed to 90 percent of what's out there on the subject of trust which is at the level of trust in banking is down or you know trust in Bolivia is slightly lower than Uruguay. Not that there's anything wrong with those descriptions but I don't think they give you a practical notion and that's kind of the same. The flip side of the argument I was having in neuroscience. What do you do with that right.   Tripp: [00:48:42] Well you know if it's history and probably so it can start to win this down a little bit. But you know in our emails back and forth you mentioned Alfie Kohn. Yeah. And you know so this gets into Debbie Deming philosophy with the four things you talked about earlier. Systems thinking theory variation theory knowledge and psychology and and one of the things that we find over and over again in organizations. No I can't say we did any at a depth of study but you know Dr. Deming worked with a number of and I've worked with many companies over the years is that reward systems drive wrong behavior.   Tripp: [00:49:20] Yes they do have an influence on an individual but right within the organization they will drive the wrong behaviors associated with it. So you know one of the things that that's coming from the neuroscience side is more what I would leverage to help support that thinking.   Tripp: [00:49:40] And that's that's kind of where I grasp on to it I think you know from a Deming perspective is you seen this stuff in there and then basically saying Yeah it does drive that. So in essence the wrong behavior. And here are the things and fundamentally you're right. I mean if I if I if I sat back and I looked at it it's not anything that people haven't written before but the fact that it is kind of new research that it gets people's attention to be able to say geez if if psychology is telling me that and philosophy is telling me that and systems thinking and telling me that in neuroscience maybe I shouldn't be doing that.   Tripp: [00:50:19] And yet even with Dan Pink's you know presentations Alfie come before him with you know can't. Contests and Punished by Rewards to books that really.   Charles: [00:50:29] Great books.   [00:50:30] Yeah. That that he wrote back in the Deming days right. Oh. When Deming was around. They still stand. And they science still stands but people just seem to ignore it. So.   [00:50:42] What does that tell you.   [00:50:43] It's in the culture. Like you said it's the handshake. You know everybody knows that it works. It does work. Nobody can refute the fact that rewards don't work. But it's how they're used and when they're used you know and associated with that. And you know Dr. Zak is a little bit familiar with Deming. So he I get a little concerned when I first started reading this book because he was with you like everybody else that I've written about neuroscience had kind of gotten into this. How do we make better a performance appraisals which is another thing. Deming railed against. Well. The answer is you don't do performance appraisals.   Charles: [00:51:17] Right.   Tripp: [00:51:17] I can give feedback without doing that. And you know so whether it's the reward systems or the performance appraisals some of the things that railed against all the science has pointed basically that we're we're doing this wrong and they talk about something that that compromises trust in an organization when bad behaviors are running. I've got to believe at least and maybe you have a different view on it is that were were designing systems or organizations in such a way that is self-defeating trust it just in the way that they're structured.   Charles: [00:51:58] Let me give you a quick story to that point.   Charles: [00:52:00] I was in first of all stories are very powerful because they help people come to conclusions without thinking they've been bamboozled into doing it. They want it allows them to put their own spin on it. I was standing I was giving a talk to the Top 40 or 50 so people at Accenture some years ago and before me was the CEO guy named Bill Green at the time.   Charles: [00:52:21] No no relation. And Bill Green had just finished outlining some huge reorganization for all of Accenture and somebody raised their hand and said Hey Bill have we lined up the incentives properly so that if I'm sitting in Australia get a call from our guy in Bulgaria I'm going to be incentive to do do the right thing and answer him. And Bill Green got visibly angry got up out of his chair on the stage. Any any leaned out any point and he said I never want to hear that question in this company again if there's ever any conflict between doing the right thing and the incentives. You do the right thing and we'll fix the incentives later.   Charles: [00:52:58] Now in that moment I mean it was a very impressive you know 40 people who were the leaders of Accenture got that message loud and clear in that moment. And that goes to how you actually do this stuff. You don't tweak the cheese for the rats in the maze. You do it by by leadership of living you know walking the talk all that stuff. You do it by repeatedly invoking a few principles and applying into very specific situations. So I think that the role of role modeling is particularly apt in and when it comes to trust. And my quick answer and then we're running out of time. My quick answer how you create this in an organization is don't do the incentives routine. This is higher level human stuff. What you do is you pick a few concepts a few principles and you relentlessly apply them. It doesn't have to be leaders who just have to be influential people who sign up by saying I think I know what we mean by transparency and right here this is an example.   Charles: [00:53:56] I think I know what you mean by collaboration and right here. This is what that means in this situation. So done right. There is room for tweaking and you know the various not nudges and all that kind of thing but the objective should be to create what I call a trust based organization which is an organization within which people individuals behave in trusting and trustworthy manners toward each other and towards all their stakeholders. It's not a characteristic of the organization. The key is not organization design. The key is certainly not metrics and rewards. It's creating an environment in which people behave in a trusting and trustworthy manner towards each other as individuals. And from that grows the culture and from that you can then say well this company is trusted.   Tripp: [00:54:42] Brilliant. Well said that's a that's not only a great example. But that's that's a probably a good way to conclude this although I do have one last question I ask everyone. It's when I people actually make fun of me for which is Is there anything that I fail to ask that you wish I would have. Or is there any clarification of anything that you've said to this point that that you'd like to take the opportunity to to shall offer.   Charles: [00:55:09] I'll offer one quick thing. The question you didn't ask is What's the one single thing people can do to increase trust and and actually as a simple answer we could spend another hour unpacking it. But it's basically listen and it's not listen to find the data it's not listen to verify your hypothesis. It is. As a sign of respect it functions just like the handshake. If you really listen to someone and something is very clear about this they will listen back. So if you want to be listened to if you want people to buy from me if you want people take your advice. The key is shut up and listen and allow the natural human response of reciprocating. And then they'll listen to you and everything gets better. So the key is listening.   Tripp: [00:55:49] Excellent. Very good. Well we certainly appreciate you sharing your time Charles. And like I said.   Charles: [00:55:56] My pleasure Tripp. Thank you.   Tripp: [00:55:57] Oh it's been I mean you've opened my mind quite a few things in this conversation. I'm sure you do that on a regular basis and people will appreciate that.   Tripp: [00:56:09] So thank you very much.   Charles: [00:56:11] Thank you.   Tripp: [00:56:18] Thank you for listening to the minor noodles podcast. We are currently offering a PDA titled Five surprising findings from neuroscience to help you understand your organization. Just go to Mind Your noodles. dot com forward slash five findings.   Tripp: [00:56:41] No spaces. Also if any listeners know of. companies or people applying neuroscience to their organization we are interested in talking to them. Just have them email me at Tripp to our IP. at minor noodles dot com.  

Before Yael Shy wrote What Now: Meditation For Your Twenties and Beyond, she founded MindfulNYU, the largest campus-wide mindfulness initiative in the country. It's hard to imagine a time when Shy struggled with meditation, but to hear her tell the story of accomplishing this big goal, being mindful wasn't always easy. Shy had reservations about meditation when she was first introduced to the practice in college. But a few factors during Shy's years at NYU led her to feel she was lacking the tools to cope with her stress; anxiety from 9/11, a break-up and her parents' divorce made Shy hunt for a solution. Everything changed when she decided to go on a meditation retreat. "It transformed my life," Shy explains. "It helped me see the roots of a lot of what my anxiety was built on." From that retreat, Shy grew her own practice. In 2009, she co-launched MindfulNYU as a small group that met to meditate. Every week, that group's numbers increased and today it's become something special. Mindful NYU offers classes every day of the week, offers sub-groups, retreats, workshops and yoga twice a day every day. I've never really committed to a regular meditation practice. Sure, I enjoy five minutes of meditation at the end of a yoga class, but I'm not one to throw down a meditation pillow on my own. The growth of this community at NYU makes me wonder - What don't I know about this practice that seems to be so eye-opening for everyone who makes it a habit? The biggest misconception about meditation, Yael says, is that it's about being Zen. "It can be excruciatingly difficult to be with what is, even if you don't like it," Shy said. "Even if you want to escape with all of your mind, it's a commitment to come back. Because that's where there's a chance for healing and freedom." The analogy Shy uses is one in the gym setting. In the same way the gym doesn't always feel great when you're there - we've all had those workouts that level us or make us think we're weak and over-exhausted - you know that you're ultimately getting stronger with every workout. Although meditation can be difficult when you're doing it, you're strengthening a different muscle by making the commitment to sit through the tough stuff, notice your thoughts and when your thoughts stray, set the intention to come back. Practically speaking, she also knows how hard it is to show up for meditation. A regular practice can easily be interrupted by life, but Shy offered a two tips to establish the habit for yourself. 1. Create a checklist: Because we're wired to want to see the fruits of our effort - and meditation doesn't easily lend itself to that kind of sense of accomplishment - create checklists for yourself that help you feel accomplished. That comes down to the logistics of meditation (i.e. where you sit, when you'll sit, how you build your schedule in a way that gives you time for it every day). 2. Understand why you're meditating before you start The second piece of the equation is to write down why you think it's important to meditate. Write that down on a piece of paper when you're invested in spending the time. That way, when the thought comes to mind that something else is more worth your time, you'll have your handwriting ready to help you remember why you're committing to the practice. Listen to the episode of #WeGotGoals and redefine how you see meditation for yourself. And if you like what you hear, be sure to rate it and leave a review (then hop on over to Amazon and grab a copy of Yael Shy's book). --- JAC: Welcome to #WeGotGoals, a podcast by aSweatLife.com on which we talk to high achievers about their goals. I'm Jeana Anderson Cohen; with me, I have Maggie Umberger and Kristen Geil. MU: Good morning Jeana. JAC: Good morning KG: Hi, Jeana. JAC: Hello Kristen. JAC: Maggie. You talk to Yael Shy. MU: I did. I got to speak with Yael Shy, who is the author of What Now: Meditation for your 20s and beyond. And she's also the founder of Mindful NYU, which just happens to be the largest campus wide mindfulness initiative in the country. And we got to talking about what is mindfulness and how do we define that in this day and age where it really is important, but we talked about like the should of feeling like you should meditate and what are those expectations and really what you can get out of making a commitment to do it. KG: I know I'm not alone when I say this but in theory I would love to have a meditation practice, it sounds very relaxing. But in reality I always find that I want to do something else. I want to be more active. And it just seems a little boring to be honest. And I know that’s something that Yael has dealt with when trying to bring this to campuses because sometimes it just seems like I don't want to do it task. Can you talk a little bit about how Yael views meditation and how she's sort of reconciled that to make it more accessible to everybody? MU: She came up with this really cool analogy for me to hear where you go to the gym all the time because you know you're doing something good for you but you don't always have a good time when you're at the gym. Sometimes you really hate that five minute plank that the instructor asks you to hold. And it can get really uncomfortable and really agitating and frustrating. And she equated meditation, like the actual time that you're sitting down to do it, as that potentially agitating and frustrating. But you have to have this belief and this understanding within you that you're doing something good for you that will benefit you down the line. And so that put it in perspective for me is because I think I have this really not so realistic perspective of what meditation is, that it's a Zen environment and everyone who does it is incredibly happy and just calm. But that was a cool point for us to talk and sort of jump off talking about goals with, because she did mention saying like just because you meditate doesn't mean you are Zen and calm and have no direction and goals. It's just a mindset and frame of how you approach those goals which which she then continue to talk about in the podcast. JAC: And she had one key piece of advice for people who want to start a meditation practice. Can you talk a little bit about that. MU: She gave some really sound advice about lots of steps within our interview to take to make sure that you can hold yourself accountable. But the one piece that really stuck out to me was something I've never thought to do before, which is to write down for yourself why you're doing this. So in the moments when you aren't sure that it's worth your time or that you know there's something more fun to do. You can look at that piece of paper and you can read what you wrote about what that meditation practice, and why you're setting that as a goal for yourself to stick with it. JAC: And here is Maggie with Yael. MU: Great, so Yael, thank you so much for joining me on the #WeGotGoals podcast. It is so wonderful to get to talk to you. YS: I’m so happy to be here. Thanks for having me Maggie. MU: Absolutely. So Yael,  you are about to launch a book called What Now: Meditation for your 20s and beyond. And you're also the founder and director of mindful NYU which is the largest campus wide mindfulness initiative in the country. That’s huge. I'm very interested how you came upon mindfulness and how it started at NYU which is in the middle of the biggest craziest busiest city in the world. YS: Yes, so I came to mindfulness meditation from I was actually a student at NYU many years ago and I was feeling the stress and the crazy of the city. I was in a very difficult place in my life. I was in college and it felt like the first major time in my life I was asking a lot of questions like, what is important in this life? If everybody dies then why am I alive? And it was this  really formative moment. And at the same time I was just broken up with my parents were getting a divorce. It was around September 11th and I had some you know PTSD from 9/11 that was happening like, in my neighborhood. And it was just like a very difficult time, a lot of suffering a lot of anxiety. And I just felt like I didn't have any tools to work with any of it. And so I ended up going on a meditation retreat that really transformed my life and helped me to see a lot of the roots of what my anxiety was built on. And a lot of the roots of my suffering. And it certainly didn't solve everything in one retreat but it led me down a path where meditation and mindfulness have really completely transformed my life. And so now at the Center at NYU, which we created in 2009—a student named Elizabeth and myself basically got it going as just a little sitting group that grew and grew, and now has meditation every single day of the week and it has advanced practice, it has sub groups for our LGBTQ community and our people of color community. It has retreats and workshops and yoga twice a day every day and just a lot going on. So it’s really blossomed into a really thriving place. MU: Incredible. That's amazing to have done in not a lot of time because meditation is a buzzword and I think people have certain reservations about it. And I think that it's pretty incredible that you sort of cut through that clutter and just made a statement like this is important and people are getting on board. MU: Yes well, and I kind of get it. I've had a lot of the same reservations. I did have when I first started meditating I had no connection to it at all. When I went on my first meditation retreat I had no idea what I was getting into and I thought meditation was boring and I thought yoga even was like pretty boring. It was not in my frame of reference. And over the years it's just really to me it's a buzz word for meaning, learning to open up to life to be with what is and to be with oneself and in a way that helps me to really experience life in a richer way and to have more compassion for myself and for others and that connects me to this larger vitality that is life. Whereas like the everyday can sometimes feel dry or meaningless or just disconnected. Meditation to me feels like a way to connect in. So that's really how we teach it and what it means to me. MU: And I I want to say that I get that but I am also like in that camp of I know I say I should meditate more but I don't do it. It's like I want to roll out my mat and do it and then I don't. One thing that really sticks out to me that that you say is that essentially what meditation is is being here in the present and happy or just content with what is which is really interesting in the context of this conversation around goals because it almost is counterintuitive because goals is all about not where you are but where you're going. So I'm I'm interested in your take on goals in general. 08:16 YS: Yes. It’s such a good question and such a good insight. I wouldn’t say that meditation is about being happy or even—others might say this, but I'm not sure I would say it's about being content with what is because sometimes what is, what's going on in the present moment, is extremely painful or really difficult to be with. And in meditation, like, we make the commitment and we make the effort to be there anyway to bring our attention there to breathe through it to soften with whatever is going on, and you know it could be emotional pain it could be physical pain it could just be like a really scary moment. And to really try and drop into what is happening but it might be excruciatingly difficult. And so I guess I would just kind of readjust that to just say, to be with what is even if you don't like it and if it's like I want to escape this with all of my mind and all of my being. It's a commitment to keep trying to come back because there in the present moment, being with whatever is happening, is I think our chance for healing and our chance for freedom in that in that moment. But then to go to the question of goals and kind of connect it to goals. For a lot of people I think their kind of resistance to meditation—and I have this as well—is, oh, it’s going to make me be kind of like a lump like a lazy happy with what is kind of person. And I'm never going to accomplish the things I want to accomplish. I'm never going to amount to anything if I just like sat there and breathed and was happy all the time. **And I don't mean to be flippant about it it's a real struggle of like how much do we need to push ourselves and drive ourselves forward and how much do we just need to be still and to not be doing any action and to just be rather than to do? And on the one hand I do think that it's a slightly false split because the goals that I've been able to accomplish like I would say starting the meditation center or like writing my book, I had to actually create this idea in my mind before actually doing it so I had a goal or a kind of direction I wanted to go in and I thought about it and I shaped it and I dreamed about it. And all of the stuff that one does with goals that you're excited about and at the same time I think what the meditation practice has helped me do—and I’m definitely not always successful at this but it's helped me to hold that end result with a loose hand so that if my goal was to finish this book by January, which it was originally last January, and it did not get finished by January. It's not like a tragedy of epic proportions. It’s not like frustrating and painful it might be for a minute but it's the idea is that once you set the goal, if things come in that change and the world has a role to play in sending you deviations or sending obstacles and those obstacles and deviations might be exactly what you needed to produce something even more beautiful than you had originally thought. And the only way you can know that is if you're holding your goals with kind of flexibility and looseness and remaining light on your feet. And so that's sort of how I operate in relation to goals, like it's almost like, you know you you set an intention in your mind I'm going to go to the store today and you're walking in the direction of the store and you know what you want to buy when you get to the store. And then somebody stops you on the way to the store and you can just you know be angry or try and get away from the person to get to your goal or let's say that person stopping you would tell you that there's a much better store in a different direction and that's the way you need to go. MU: That's super interesting for me to hear because I definitely resonate with that line that you walk between being too flippant about just not caring about your choices and then being ok with what happens and unfolds and just being with what unfolds. I think that is something that I learned or that I was conditioned in college to go after a big goal and to have huge aspirations and to work really hard and stay up really late. So I think that you working in the realm of a university has probably lots lots of rich territory to explore. Would you agree? YS: Yes absolutely. My students constantly are in various stages of both the excitement of that realm, and being like, you know I'm chasing my dreams or working towards my dreams and I'm exploring new territory and it's all there, that like pregnancy of possibility. And I think just like you know anyone else I think it's a time of like a lot of pressure and a lot of stress and some people don't exactly know what they want to be doing and that’s its own sort of suffering just not knowing what your should be. And or just feeling like, I have a student that's on them premed track and it is just one crushing week after another. He's struggling to make these grades better, just working so hard and still struggling so much. And so it's really both sides of the equation, it’s everything at that time when you're really in a university setting, I think, trying to really figure out who you are and what your future is going to look like. MU: Can you speak a little bit about all of the different types of students that come in that maybe have the really stressful tracks versus the less stressful tracks. Because it runs the gamut I'm sure. And how do you speak differently to people that have it in their head that they're going to go through med school and law school and it’s, the odds are against them versus those who are already open and primed for meditation. YS: Well it's interesting. I think the Buddha had a line that said meditation is sort of like playing a stringed instrument. If the strings are too tight on the instrument and you start to play it the strings are going to snap. If they're too loose and you try and play it, there's going to be no music that can come out. You know, you can't play anything. So what you want is to exactly tighten the strings to just the right level that you can play music and it's sort of the same with ourselves in our bodies. It can be true in each person just like it's true, different types of people that were sometimes going too hard and clutching too tightly to a world that we can't control and we have to learn to loosen or we're going to snap. We might have already snapped. And so it’s just this practice of like constantly practicing letting go, constantly practicing softening and easing and being kind to ourselves and relaxing. And then the other side is the other place where we've all I'm sure been to some degree or another where you're just too loose and you're not—you really need to tighten up a little bit of a discipline so that you can go to a place that you know is better for you. Like the equivalency would be to people—I’m like this constantly where a couple of weeks will go by and I'll be like I haven't been to the gym in like a month and I know I feel better after going to the gym. I know it's so good for my health. I just, am too, I've loosened up to a degree that it's not good for me and I know I can do better. And then it's time to not beat myself up about it but just tighten the strings a little, to build it into the schedule and to follow that path. So I think the teaching changes based on the person but it also is based on the moment that that person has been at that time. So you started this meditation center, you started Mindful NYU and you have now written a book. These are all really big goals would you say that these are the big goals that you would really want to say aloud that you're proud of? Is there anything maybe more personal or something different that is something that’s happened for you because of or through meditation? YS: Well to be totally honest with you these things are wonderful and I do feel like they're the fruits of the practice for sure. But I actually think maybe the biggest goal that I had that was even bigger than like a goal it was like the biggest dream of my life was to meet a partner actually and to like be with someone like a life partner. And for years—I got married very late. I met my now husband. You know not very late but a little later in life. I was 33 and I just never thought it was possible. For so many years I didn't date anyone. I was so closed and scared and carrying just so many blocks to love and to intimacy and then that I believe is like a direct correlation to meditation and to therapy that I could work with those blocks and work with all of that pain and fear around dating and all of that and then to find someone and someone I love so much that I'm currently married to and that we have one baby and another baby on the way. And so I think like that was probably, if I had to point to one piece of evidence, like if you had met me ten years ago and met me now that that would be the most major thing that has changed, that I think I've let love into my life in a bigger way. MU: That is so awesome that simply doing less can lead to so much more. YS: Yeah, well, and the process is not easy and I want to kind of like support people that like you mentioned people that they like oh I want to meditate. And I just haven’t, or I’ve tried. And it's so hard. I feel like it's just a failure because I was really in that boat and I know that it is really difficult process and takes a lot of like continually coming back and learning to really forgive yourself over and over again. But it really bears fruit at least it has for me and for a lot of the people that I know. MU: You bring up a very good point because when I think about how I say this in my head and I know a lot of people do because there is more focus around your whole health and wellness. Today the people that do say I should meditate and I want to meditate more but because I believe we are pretty goal focused people in terms of tangibility—what can we say we've done and see that we've accomplished. Mindfulness isn't something you can really see and check off the list. And so people that maybe meditating regularly is a goal or mindfulness is a goal that almost flips it on its head, like how do you accomplish that versus even how do you use that to accomplish your goals? And so in your experience what are the things that people get tripped up on or where can people practice and sort of start to feel the success? And I'm sure it's different for everybody. So that's a hard question YS:  But it's a really good question and a fair question because we're wired to want to see the fruits of our action. It makes perfect sense. And so I think that the where people get tripped up, it is different for everybody but I think it seems to fall into two main categories. One is the logistics of it, the feeling like I have no time when am I going to do this. And that is really a question of how can you build it into your schedule and into your life that will make sense and that will fit as much as you can into your day. So for instance when I had lapsed on my meditation my regular meditation for a while I said to myself, okay where can I put it, actually physically put it into my calendar as if it was a meeting so that it would pop up and I had to go, and it is isn't meeting it's like a meeting with me and the world that is my time to say hello to myself and to open up to the world. And so first I started there. Then I asked myself, what can I do to make that time the most easy. So I place my meditation cushion in exactly the place where I needed it to be every day at that morning for meditation the night before. And I would get my slippers next to the bed, so all I had to do was put my feet in there and walk over to try to make the situation as easy as possible to make this thing happen and then I had to write out and articulate for myself, why do I think this is important? So that I can hold that really close because those times when it was I was so tired or just felt like there’s a million other things I could be doing. I had to look at that and say I believe this is important because it leads to greater wellbeing and greater happiness in general. I know that is true and therefore I'm going to go do it. So I sort of had to do this a lot of this work and that's what I really recommend doing, just to logistically build it into your schedule and build a habit out of it. Then the other place where I think people including myself get tripped up or resist meditating is that it feel I want to say hard. But the reason why it feels hard is often because the voice that comes up in our minds when we're trying to pay attention to our breath or pay attention to our emotions and we, our minds wander away which they naturally do. The kind of judgmental and cruel voice that comes in can be really really harsh and can say like you're failing you're not good at this, you're not a good meditator. Fill in the blank of how your own critical voice sounds. You know you'll always fail at everything whatever it is. And that for a long time prevented me—I just couldn't handle it because I could only stay present for let's say a few seconds out of an hourlong meditation and then I just felt like such a failure afterwards. And not only do I feel like a failure, I felt like I had to sit with this voice that was like yelling at me about it and I just didn't want to do it anymore. And so from that side I think really trying to redefine meditation that it is not about clearing away your thoughts and it's not about going, you know, staying focused on your breath which is a nearly impossible task to do because we're not in charge of our minds our minds wander. And so instead of that, to really redefined meditation as it is this process of the mind wandering away and us waking up to look at the contents of our mind. Oh it's interesting. I'm thinking a lot about you know this thing I'm planning I must care a lot about that. OK that's what I'm thinking about coming back. I’m thinking about what that person said to me and I'm really hurt by it. Come back and feel the hurt. You know whatever it is that you're thinking about, these are not, your thoughts are not the enemy. It’s a matter of continually bringing your attention back now and that’s the practice. Going away and coming back going away and coming back and really strengthening that muscle of being with what is there, what’s there in the present. So those are sort of my two big tips. There's a lot more in the book to help surmount a lot of the obstacles because I'm telling you I was never like a star meditator. I've never gotten to a place where my mind is completely cleared and so I try to write the book from that place from the place like fidgety anxiety difficult stress place and still sitting through it. MU: I like hearing the exercise of it being like a muscle to exercise because I can relate to, the more pushups I do the stronger my arms get. And then I have to take the time to get through some of the the bad workouts to get to some of the more fruitful ones. YS: Exactly. And I think it's sort of we've sort of done a disservice in the public way of talking about meditation as just this like really relaxing activity. It can be relaxing but in my experience it can also be extremely agitating and just understanding that the same way the gym does not always feel good when you're doing it, sometimes meditation can really be difficult and agitating and just really believing, same thing with therapy that that going through this process will bring more healing more love more connection. MY: Yes absolutely. So one last question I guess then it's even though we talk about holding goals with a loose hand if you're looking ahead after the launch of your book or beyond that, what do you have in your mind that you'd like to go after? YS: Well my next baby is due in March. So I think from now till March I kind of have a shorter term goal of working hard to try and get the book out there and to let people know about it and to talk about it and write about it so that it can get out there and help as many people as possible and sort of has its own life and after March I think I'm setting my goals on just like keeping the kids alive just keeping myself and my husband like as sane as possible in this crazy crazy process. And beyond that, I’m not really sure. I’m kind of I'm waiting to see him opening up to what feels like the right next step the right next project to be working on. But I'm not really sure yet. So have to stay tuned for that. MU: Well we will be looking forward to hearing what you do next. And people can buy What Now: Meditation for your 20s and beyond, starting now. YS: Yeah, it’s out there, it’s on Amazon it's anywhere your books are sold. So definitely check it out. MU: Awesome thank you so much Yael for joining me and for talking about meditation in a very accessible way. It's been it's been a treat. YS: Thank you so much, thanks for having me. CK: This podcast is produced by me Cindy Kuzma and it's another thing that's better with friends. So please share it with yours. You can subscribe where ever you get your podcasts. And if you get a chance leave us a rating or a view on Apple podcast we would be so grateful. Special thanks to J. Mano for our theme music; to our guest this week, Yael Shy; and to Tech Nexus for the recording studio.