Welcome to go Ask Ali, a production of Shonda Land Audio and partnership with I Heart Radio. Rolling on the full. Loafing is a thing I can I've seen you know, We've all seen people do it. I've done it kidding. For me now, the work is to want what I have, even kind of shinny stuff. You know, that's my work. It's it's imperfect. So let me ask you a question about actors because you are Yeah, me too. We are old funny duddies. We go to sleep at ten, we wake up at six, but we go to bed at eight, So there are more funny duddies than you. You are the funny duddiest. Yes, welcome to go ask Allie. I'm Alli Wentworth. I don't know about you, but I feel like we're all immersed in a very fear based culture. I'm scared of everything from global warming to nuclear war to the things I'm streaming on television which all see to be true crime. I think people read little things in magazines and then you somehow put them in a scenario within your own life and just scare the ship out of yourself. So what is our relationship with fear? What does it mean? How do we reduce it, how do we understand it? How do we intuite it? Well? My guest today is the genius of all these things. Gavin de Becker is a leading expert on the prediction and management of violence. Gavin's work has earned him three presidential appointments and a position on a Congressional committee. He was twice appointed to the President's Advisory Board at the U S Department of Justice. He's also a senior fellow at u c l A School of Public Policy and Social Research. Gavin is a New York Times bestselling author of The Gift of Fear, which I encourage everybody to read. His books about violence and safety are now published in eighteen languages and have been profiled in Time and Is Week, featured on Oprah Winfrey Sixty Minutes, and many many others. Please note that this episode contained some conversations about violence that some people may find disturbing. If you prefer to avoid this content, the topics and time codes are in the show notes. Gavin de Beecker, I have never been so scared in my life. And this is complete truth and honesty. And I think I can speak for my husband, George and most of my friends, Because, as you've talked about in your book and in lectures and stuff, you know, this isn't a These aren't l A freeway shootings. It's not some serial killer. I feel like the whole world is on fire, and I'm afraid of of our politicians being killed, of nuclear war, of global warming, of domestic and international terrorism. And you must hear this a lot. But how do I call my nerves? How do I live my life without constantly not being able to sleep because of anxiety and being in perpetual fear of so many things? I love the question because I can fix that in just a few seconds. Excellent with a pill. Now it actually takes a lot of pills, I'm sure. So you know, there is a thing that that governments tend to spray at people, which are worst case scenarios. Worst case scenarios. And the worst case scenario is not a prediction. It's not a uh an organized thought process. It is a creative process where people think, as they have to in government, what would be the worst thing that could happen with a virus, for example, this virus, what's the worst thing that could happen? Now, rarely do they say, here's the best thing that could happen, right, it could peter out, it could the variance could be better instead of worse, that kind of thing. So we see a lot of worst case scenarios, and I think it's valuable for people to know that the words scenario, of course, comes from scene. It is a creative exercise. And when we do that in our minds, you could say, for example, Captain, what's the worst case scenario on the flight fiery crash. That's the worst case scenario. Officer, what's the worst case scenario? Homicide? Doctor, what's the worst case scenario? Sudden death? But we don't live our lives that way, asking what are the worst case scenarios? Rather we ideally live our lives asking what are the likely events. So at home, on your refrigerator, you might have a list of phone numbers. You've got Dr Kellerman, you've got the pediatrician, you've got so and so, But you don't have the Nuclear Emergency Search Team, which is the organization that tracks down radioactive material that might be used by terrorists, for example, and they've got a bunch of helicopters, etcetera. But that's not on your refrigerator because it's actually not likely. And so what I encourage people to do is look at the likely events in their lives as opposed to the worst case scenario events. And this is the opposite of what government does, and it's the opposite of what media does. News media, right, news media. It's only news because it is something that isn't likely in your life. You know what is it that makes news? It is the unusual. It is specifically that which is not typically happening. If we were to be honest with the public and to shout at them about what's alarming, let's say the public health institutions of America, CDC, f d A, etcetera. What would they shout at us, If they were being accurate to reality, they would say, Um, accidents in the home a major killer. Millions of you will suffer these this week, and three thousand of you will die. That's exactly true, accidents in the home. However, because we know that accidents in the home are slightly under our control, because we know that they are not new, we tend to be less afraid of them than of any of the things you mentioned. Uh, the newest virus you know at the moment, for example, while while COVID is a current variant that is not particularly serious for the overwhelming majority of people, people your age and even my age, I'm sixty eight. Uh. The average age of death from the very beginning back in two thousand twenty was one. In Canada. This will be an interesting fact. In Canada, sevent of all the people whose deaths were attributed to COVID they lived in nursing homes. They were nursing home residents. So right away you could say, if I'm not a nursing home resident, um, I have a massively greater chance of surviving this virus than if I am a nursing home resident. And what kills nursing home residents, by the way, everything they're they're generally to die. Right in Los Angeles County, the average term of residency in a nursing home is less than six months. So when you say you've got a lot of deaths and you attribute them to COVID, for example, and the majority of them are in nursing homes, you basically can begin to and this is my answer to your question, exclude yourself from the likely candidates for that outcome. There are two forms of fear anxiety isn't even on the list. By the way, anxiety is not a fear. Anxiety and worry are a different thing, different part of the brain, different part of the heart. But there are two forms of fear. One that's enormously valuable, and that is true fear. True fear is a signal in the presence of danger. That means I see it, I hear it, I feel it, I taste it, I perceive it. It's a signal in the presence of danger lying right there, snake right there. I need to know that information. Unwarranted fear is not based on your senses. It is always based on your imagination or your memory. So I share this example with you. You're at the airport, you're boarding a plane, and you think, don't get on that plane. That I don't I don't feel good about that flight. I don't want to do it. I don't want to do it. So you can you can ask yourself what is the cause of that fear. Is it, uh, something you saw on the news about an airplane crash in Brazil three months ago, in which case it's in your imagination or your memory, or is it because you just saw the two pilots stumbling out of the bar and wobbling their way onto the aircraft. That would be in your environment. That would be something you sense, and that would be true fear. So the difference between true fear and unwarranted fear is the answer to your question, which is could it happened that we would have nuclear war? For example? Could it happen? Is never the question to ask could it happen? We always know the answer. I can give you the answer for every good question right now. Yes, yes you can have heart failure right now, Yes you could it, absolutely. But the question we all ask in our lives is what's most likely? What's most likely to happen. I'm gonna give you one last example in the longest answer in podcast history, I don't think so oh oh, you must have had somebody even more longer. I think my third question is going to have a longer answer, But go ahead. I'm gonna get ready, I'll have a I'll have a brief break between now and then. Um, the in your home, in anybody's home, any viewer or listener of the podcast. Uh. We know that helicopters could land on the roof with intruders who could core through the ceiling and lower themselves with ropes into our apartment or home. That could happen, but we've made the decision that a more likely area of entry is the front door or the front window, so we put locks on the front door and the front window. My point there is that could is simply always the wrong question when it comes to safety, because we have to be able to to act every day and and face life, and life itself is a sexually transmitted, always fatal condition. Everybody dies, and the question we have to ask ourselves is not how shall we die, but how shall we live? And that's the choice. And so we do have to set aside risks. To fly to the moon. As an astronaut, I have to set aside the risk of getting on top of a giant uh, you know, a bag of fuel and lighting the match, which is basically what a rocket is. To build that bridge, I have to set aside the risk of crossing that big expanse of water and the bridge that you drive over, often yourself. Brooklyn Bridge and others. People died building those bridges, all of them, and so it they had to set aside risks and and take risks and and and still act you know, as a parent, we have to you know, we're walking around almost like our hearts are outside our bodies. These these children we care about so much, and yet we have to say, Okay, you can go, you can go on that thing, you're old enough to cross that street, you can ride that bicycle. We know, of course all variety of injury can come to them, as it can come to us, but we we act with courage and almost done. Courage is not the absence of fear. Courage is acting in the face of fear. I know something, I'm doing a podcast. I could make a terrible mistake and be canceled for something I say. But I'm acting anyway, and I'm not unafraid of the mistakes I might make or you might make her who knows what may happen. But I'm willing to act in the face of those fears. That's courage, and that I would say that I do that with my children. I don't want my daughter to go out at ten o'clock at night to a party downtown. But if I don't let her go and she doesn't go out and experience the world, I'll stimately I'm not helping her, even though I saw the the movie Abducted or whatever it was called. I mean, I feel like everything on streaming right now starts with a dead white girl. So you know, my my fears are always with my daughters. Oh my god, something's going to happen. So but I try to override that. Um. I do want to talk about the media with you, because you do. You've talked a lot in your book, particularly about using fear to get people to watch. And I feel like it's everywhere everywhere I look. When I try to escape and watch something on TV, it it makes me scared. And I don't know, should we turn off the news? Should we only watch Seinfeld? Um? How do we find a constructive balance between everything that is we're inundated by on a day to day basis with the media. All right, So a couple of things. One is that I do believe that the news media, and particularly television and particularly local news, is very bad for people when it comes to getting information. I encourage people to choose their avenue for going and getting the information. Meaning the Internet is so remarkable, with all its failings. It's so remarkable that I could say, oh, I'm a little interested today in the homicide rate in Sweden. I can go find that information, but if I wait for the local news to scream it at me and spray it at me, it will be presented in the most alarming way possible. Years ago, I used to joke that, uh, the Channel two News ought to say, welcome to the Channel two News. We're surprised you made it through another day, and here's what happened to those that didn't, and then they would give you the death litany all the ways in which people died. And so you know, years ago there was a big earthquake in l A. And after the earthquake there was all kinds of news media reports, was this the big one? What about if the big one comes? And one of my favorites was on CBS uh k n x T I think was the CBS affiliate in Los Angeles, and it said what would have happened if the earthquake had also caused a tsunami? And they had Los Angeles graphics showing waves going over forty story buildings in downtown l A. And my first thought was, if there had been a tsunami, we wouldn't have to pick up all this glass that we were sweeping around our House. That was the funny part. The not funny part was that they did a graphic and they showed you what Los Angeles would be like if if if, if, if could could could could, And so that is bad for us. That very element is bad for us. And I think one thing that's going on now that is new and particularly destructive, and we see it probably most of all with public health issues is that the government and the news media are aligned. Now, you could say how nice, but of course the history of the value of the news media was to ask tough questions of an Anthony Fauci or a doctor more La, the CEO of Viser. Whenever prior to this time did the news media say, oh, okay, okay, great viser, Sure we like it, Yeah, that's a good enough for us. There'd be questions. There'd be a lot of questions, and there'd be a lot of press conferences, and there'd be people refusing to attend press conferences and people reporting on that. And there is something about public health and pharma that somehow takes the spine and the legs out of the news media. And that's something might include the fact that between seventy and of cable news channels are sponsored by Visor and other pharma companies. That's a problem. Uh. And so it's why is it a problem? Because it does incline you to not want to begin your telecast today with all the failings in a clinical trial if you feel there wordy for example. And so what we're seeing is, I is there more fear because at the current moment we don't have an advocate in the news media or in the government balancing the only thing we get. So, for example, politicians starting with Trump going through Biden um talk about the big story of our lives, which is this pandemic probably the biggest event in world history. And I don't mean because of COVID, I mean because of government reaction lockdowns. When you have billions of people affected in terms of their day to day lives, that's a big deal. So that issue that I'm that I'm zeroing in on, which is that normally you had government saying here's the new thing to be afraid of, and I a politician, I'm going to fix this for you, and you've got to be aware of it. Blah blah blah. Historically, governments throughout human history have used fear to control populations, it's either fear of the other, the bad guys in the next village, or it's fear of internal uh risks like terrorism. But whatever it is, that's what governments do. They use fear to control conduct and behavior. So, if you imagine, to put it in very simple terms, the king and the queen, they're looking over the castle wall, and there's always a castle wall. They're not walking around with everybody else for good reason. And they look over and they see the population is fighting with each other, and that is good news. They high five each other, because the only bad news for the king and the queen is when everybody feels the same way. That's when you get real change. That's when you get Tunisia or Egypt or the Arab sprint. And so at the current moment, the division that we see, and it is profound. It is civil war profound. The division that we see. That division is encouraged by those in power. It is not discouraged. And I say those in power doesn't mean just an administration. I mean a government. Administrations come and go, government stays. And so when you have government doing what governments do they never haven't, which is used fear to control populations. And to and to influence events. And you also have the news media doing it, which they always have, but they were a check in balance prior to this moment. The challenge there is that at the moment we are being hit with fear from government and media and they're not in conflict, they are aligned. COVID is the worst thing in world history. It ain't not even close. Uh lockdowns are good, they ain't not even close. So anyway, my, my, my, My ending to this answer is that fear is worse today for everyone than it was two and a half years ago. In fact, I would add sounds like a politician, but everything is worse than it was two and a half years ago. And so you don't you don't see the King and Queen looking down and seeing this polarized political parties um as a good thing? Now do you know? It's it's like you said, there's civil unrest. Do you think that's a good thing or a bad thing? Well? I think it's a bad thing, But I assure you politicians think it's a good thing. Uh, leaders and and people in the White House that comes and goes. Of course, I'm sixty eight, so you get a fair number of people coming and going in the White House, and it's and you see that it's not all about them people in power, like division among the population period that includes the news media, who would have very little to report. CNN would have even less viewership than it has now. Fox would have even less viewership than it has now if they didn't have the the stridency of their disagreements. Uh. And the and the division. The division is good for business. It is extremely bad for the citizens. However, extremely bad because we are social animals. And yet what's happened in the last two and a half years that, in my view, must never happen again, is the ability for direct communication from power to the individual news media or direct communication from controlled power social media to the individual, and not a whole lot of communication among each other. So all we're left with is our controversies. Whereas when we're allowed to be together, concert, beach, shopping, uh event, we are at our best. So that's their thing, that's okay, But you don't give them the central position in our lives, top of the news, top of the White House all day, twenty four hours. When you do that for any one topic, we suffer. It could be a war, it could be crime. Anything that you make one topic. That's not what life is like. There's a lot more to come after the short break and we're back. I read your book a while ago, but I remember thinking, yes, I'm somebody that sees a serial rapist on the news and I'm convinced he's out right outside my door, when in fact it's a guy in you know, northern California who's three thousand miles away from me. But yet I kind of and I think a lot of people do this. You make it about you, You put yourself in that scenario, in that creative, you know, image that you have. UM. But I want to talk about spousal homicide because you say you can actually predict the violence that is imminent. Yeah, pre incident indicators. But I do just want to say quickly because you said, I say it's it's predictable. Yes, I think it's the most predictable serious crime in our lives that that never happens. Where everybody says or the victim says, well, I had no idea that was coming. Bob just came home and killed me. That's not what's going on. She's been afraid, she's been concerned. There have been police calls, there have been visits. You know, he had usually witnessed violence in his childhood. He uh, he made threats, He used weapons as an instrument of power. He glorified weapons. He broke things in the house, which is called symbolic violence. He you know, tore up the picture that she was in. He tore up the wedding gown. Um, she showed up at work wearing sunglasses. On and on and on and on. It is never uh that. It's the example I use as you have two wolves on a mountain path somewhere and they meet each other face to face, and one the ears go back, and the tail gets big, and the hair goes up on their neck, and a low growl starts, and then one attacks the other. The victim wolf never says, oh, I had no idea that was coming. All the signals have been exchanged, and human beings are no different. Do you think you can predict violence not only in a spousal homicide, but can you predict violence in so many different other scenarios? Like could you tell me if there's gonna be a lot of civil unrest? It's true different each kind of prediction, and there are many that society makes. Is this employee gonna work out well for me? Is this boyfriend going to turn out to be a great guy or a dangerous guy? Is this pilot gonna do a good job? Etcetera. And what people often say is, well, you never know about people. And who says that is the principle of the school that hired the teacher who molested the kids, Oh, well, you never know about people. Um, going directly to your question. The years ago, when I used to give speeches, I would ask the audience, is there anybody here who is at this talk today and had had to have childcare arranged in order to be here? And several hundred people would raise their hands, and I would say, is there anybody here who's not fully comfortable with the child care that they've arranged? And a bunch of people would raise their hands, and I would say, go home. Yeah, you know, this is not where you want to be. But when I interviewed people in the audience, invariably the people who told me I am absolutely comfortable with my child care, they say, we love her, we consider her a member of our family, we trust her completely. They don't say, well, you never know about people. They have a strong feeling of certainty about it. And when you have a strong feeling of certainty in either direction, that's meaningful. The prediction you asked me about, can we predict social unrest, Well, it couldn't be easier to predict because we already have social unrest. We've had sixteen thousand, thousand demonstrations since the beginning of lockdowns in the United States, so you already have. You'd have to describe Los Angeles as a being in a state of social unrest, between homelessness, between crime. It's not all organized social unrest, like they're all standing in the same place holding the same sign. But the universal pre incident indicator for violence, there is a universal pre incident indicator. It's always present, and that is misery. Yeah. The person who comes to school uh and shoots up his former students or former teachers, the person who comes to work and shoots up as co workers. These are people in misery. They are alienated, they are in need, they are suffering, and so that is always present. Otherwise, human beings don't don't kill each other. There are very minor exceptions to that, which includes soldiers and police officers and people who we accept all right, that's a killing we brought into But the the pilot in the Middle East who kills a group of people on the ground with a missile, and the terrorist who comes to New York City and flies an airplane into a building, they're making the same kind of rationalization for killing. One is not a monster and the other one a saint. Both are deciding, based on the narrative in their heads that this is justified. So justification is the key. January six justified in the in the minds of the people who showed up to demonstrate outside the capital uh Minneapolis. All the fires and riots and looting, justified in the minds of people who were reacting to the death of George Floyd. And so justification is a key component. Um. I think about a lot of our politicians now, I would guess there are a lot more death threats on our congressmen and women and our senators than ever before. That's true, that's true. Okay, that's what I thought. Um. And yet yet the government doesn't pay to have them have any security. That's that's that's that's not correct. The security is now provided to more public officials than at any time in our history. It used to be that the Secretary of the Interior had a driver, but he didn't have bodyguards. Now every member of the cabinet has bodyguards assigned in the In the Senate, you have the Speaker of the House has a full time protective detail. Vice President, vice president's family, President president's family, former presidents, former president's family, Secretary of State, on and on and on. But can we provide it to thirty five members of Congress. No, we can't do it. I mean, what do do you want to do? You want to spend billions of dollars protecting people who go into public life. And one of the risks of public life, be it the small town mayor or the president, is that you're going to uh, You're going to encounter people who are angry, people who are hostile, mentally ill. People that goes with public life. Now, I support protection for presidents, even though mayors get attacked more often than presidents. Oh yes, and a bunch of mayors have been shot and killed. And there you know where they live, and they live in your town and you're piste off about what happened with your building permit and you show up at the mayor's house. Um, and so. But but I don't think we can we can solve that problem with bodyguards. Uh, look what we're already doing a few billion dollars now being spent after January six on on fences and all variety of physical changes for this very small facility. It's only a few acres the US capital. Um, do we need to do it? Well, we have had one event in our history that would tell us that we need to do it, But it doesn't. It's not a good direction to move in because what happens is when every federal building is bulletproof, and every federal building has a you know, five yard space around it with ballers that you can't drive a truck toward it, etcetera, etcetera. Um, it's a different kind of future, and it is letting individuals. We had the you know, the bombing in Oklahoma City of the Federal building. Now, teen children died that in that bombing because there was a child care facility there. But nineteen children die every week killed by a parent in the United States. And so we have to sort of balance, and unfortunately politics doesn't balance very well because politics talks about what's got our attention. You said the rapist in the park. You know, those stories are so interesting Because I'm here in such and such park, Candlestick Park, where yesterday the serial rapist was arrested, and I'm interviewing a woman. I'm terrified to go in the park. Wait a second, back up, he was arrested yesterday. There's one less rapist. It's better than it was before. And yet, as human beings, and as you said, you do naturally we put ourselves in that circumstance and we think, I don't want to go to that park. But when we do that, now the park becomes less occupied. Look at New York City. New York City is safe and was much safer years ago because we occupied it. We were out there on the streets, we were out there in the parts, we were using the space. As soon as we stop using the space, the only people left are criminals and victims. That's what happens in city and LA has its version. In l A, we have something called fort Apache architecture. Fort Apache is a is a concept that says that in the Old West you used to scurry through the Indian territory to get to the next fort, and you'd only be safe if you were in the fort. So we surrendered all the land outside the forts Los Angeles, the Beverly Center, big center, tiny little door to go in, the Bondaventure Hotel downtown, big glass building, tiny little door to go in. When you go in, wow, beautiful atrium, plants, fantastic, but outside ship. And so when we do that, we go through our gated to state, We get in our car, we drive through the dangerous park, we pull into the Beverly Center, and then we're okay. But what we're doing is surrendering two criminals all the other space, two criminals and poor people ultimately who suffered the most and who are the predominantly the victims of homicides and crimes. So we need to be brave. We need to do what Israel does. Israel has a bus is blown up, and the next day people are lining up to ride that next bus on the same route. What does America, doing the same circumstance, put our guards on the bus, make the bus bulletproof, change the bus, don't take the bus, of course, and uh and you know next up people who took the bus and their funerals and blah blah blah. So yeah, it's a it's a challenge. Look, it's a challenge, but we've never what's changed in world history? You asked me about the King and Queen? And do people still like division? They love it? Yes, politicians, please more. But what's changed is over a thousand years ago with the King and Queen. Is this electronic business we're on right now? What's changed is the ability to speak globally and influence news globally. Facebook takes off hate speech, for example. Ain't that great? But do we want Facebook deciding what's hate speech or what's got to be said or what's I don't not at all. I prefer that the solution to speech we don't like is speech we do like. I prefer that method, and that's how you and I grew up most of our lives. Of Course, people are going to say ship you don't like. Of course they are, and they usually suffer for it. And it's time for a short break. Welcome back to go ask Ali. So. I didn't know the difference between intuition and fear until I was living in Los Angeles and I was attacked by a gang and they robbed me and they threw me up against the car they were preparing to gang rate me. They were lining up, they were came my clothes off and then started screaming at each other in Spanish and then tried to push me in the car. And I was in a complete submissive state. I was going to do exactly what they told me to do, and I was shut down. I mean it was a survival thing of just completely shutting down, leaving my body. And at one point I looked over at this guy that I was with when we were both attacked, and he mouthed to me, don't get in. And it hit me on such a visceral level, and it immediately my instinct was if I get in this car, I'm going to be killed. And I turned around and I ran as fast as I could. Two of the gang members chased me, couldn't catch me. You know, long story short, I tried to I stopped some cars. My friend was being stabbed but survived. But this experience taught me that I that a part of me that I wasn't even aware of, which I call my gut, said to me, in its most survivalist way, run basically run. And so that's what I you know, that's uh, I don't know how you I mean, you could term it better than me, but it's almost like survival. It's my my survival gut or that voice or tendency. It's not really fight or flight. It's more, um, you've got your hyper instinctual about a situation. It's true, and it's it's really at the center of my work is intuition. And when I was writing Gift of Fear, the the word I learned the origin of the word is in tear, which means to guard and to protect. And you mentioned your gut. The gut actually has neurons. It has more neurons, more brain cells in effect than a dog has. It has a great deal of intelligence, and it has intelligence that's unfiltered when when it's up here we filter it. Oh, I don't want to be that kind person. I'll just get in the elevator with that scary guy and so we get into a steel, sound proof chamber with somebody we're afraid of. No other animal in nature would do that. So I think that when I'm a big believer in listening to intuition, and intuition says, in effect, shut up and do exactly what I tell you, and I'll get you out of here. And sometimes it's counterintuitive, Like you were told, always cooperate with people or they'll kill you. Know, very often that's exactly the opposite of true. And so the the the experience you just recounted to me reminds me of a woman I interviewed where she said, uh that. She said it was like an animal uncoiled inside me, and I was a passenger on my own legs, meaning the thing was happening, and the there's a woman I interviewed who was attacked with her six year old daughter. She'd put in the car and she had to get around the car and get into the driver's seat. And she as she got into the driver's seat, the guy was upon her and he was trying to hold her legs, and she heard the in her mind car key, and she thought, I don't want to be the kind of person who sticks a key in this guy's eye. But amazingly she had already done it, and the car door had already closed and she had already driven away, and then she said, um, gee, at least I didn't, you know, stick him in both eyes. And then she realized she had done that too. Boom boom, And so intuition had handled the whole situation. So I'm a big believer in intuition, and I believe that it is our nuclear defense system. Nature has made such a huge investment in human beings, every one of us, with these millions of neurons and this remarkable system that we are, and this shared collective genius and the individual genius that there's no way your daughters were built as the most recent model of human being without a defense system, and they have a nuclear defense system. And that is intuition. Intuition is just the communication method by which you get the signal for your survivor. So how does intuition speak with us? It speaks with us through gut feelings, through um, through hunches, through suspicion. Uh, that is an interesting word to suspicion, because suspicion people think, oh, I don't want to be suspicious of somebody. But all it means the words suspice are the root. It means to watch. It just means watch, just means pay attention. So fear is one of the signals of intuition. It's the one that's hardest to ignore because we feel terrible and and it gets our attention. But there are many signals of intuition, hunches, gut feelings. Curiosity is a signal of intuition, like why did I and then you get the idea and you don't go in that underground parking lot. So the key is to listen to it, to listen to intuition and give it a voice and let it, don't prosecute it, and send it on its way. That's what we do a lot. Oh, I don't want to be like that. I'm gonna get in this elevator or this is a this is a very sophisticated hospital, the Sisters of Mercy. For Christ's sake, I should listen to the doctor, not if you think you should, not if you have a strong feeling that says whoa, whoa, wha, not this guy. And there's a bunch of stories in my book of people who did listen to doctors who were doing surgery on their kids and regretted it because they had the feeling not this doctor. Is it okay to take your kid, get in the car and go home. Yes? Is it okay to stand in line at the at the clinic or hospital for some treatment and feel I'll change my mind? Yes, you can do that. You can do that, and I do want to be sure at some time that there is that I tell everybody there is a Gift of Fear master Class series that's available for free at Gift of Fear dot com. I'm not charging anybody for it's it's ten episodes long. I'm very proud of it. It's interviewing a lot of people who prevailed through violence, and um, and I can. I can plug it mercilessly because it's free. Um. Not everybody reads books, and not everybody has time to read books, and so Gift to Fear is a great book. It's out there. Uh. But the Gift of Fear master Class series is I really aimed at younger people who could absorb it in in video form, and it's Gift of Fear dot com. That's it. End of the plug, which is great. It's a perfect way to end the podcast before we go. You know, I ask in my podcast lots and lots of questions to my guests, and then I get to turn around and you get to ask me anything, my my cupcake recipe, whatever you want. So what would you like to ask me? Thank you so much. It's not about cupcake recipe. I have no interest in baking, but I love banana bread that my wife makes. That's a plug for our banana bread. My question for you has to do with the news media also, but in a in a very specific sense. How do you deal with disagreement with your um, your husband, with George? How do you deal with disagreement when you see something differently, when you feel differently about it, how do you deal with it? Well, when we first got married, how we dealt with it was I thought, well, he's a Rhodes scholar, so he probably knows better than me. That didn't last very long. And now I think, I mean, I think that our fundamental beliefs are the same. I don't you know, we're not a James Carvill Mary Matlin. You know, we don't fight over politics. I would say that George is incredibly receptive to conversation, UM, but we we rarely disagree. There are times where I'm more of an alarmist about things. You know, I just a week ago, you know, I was hearing from people, Oh my god, you know, nuclear war missiles North Korea, Uh, you know Putin And people are like, you know, we're gonna go live in Portugal or we're gonna go to Malta. And I was eating dinner with George and I looked over at him and I said, so, what are we going to do in case of a nuclear war? And George just looked at me and he said, We're going to die. And I said, oh, shouldn't we be planning anything? Is No, I think it's better we just die. And then I was like somewhat calmed, and you know, finished my meat loaf. But so we do listen to each other, you know. And if I have a very and I've had very strong opinions, um, he knows when that tone and that passion comes out of me that I'm serious. And usually I'm right. When I get to that heightened state, I'm usually right. That's intuition. That that's intuition usually and and true for my wife and me too. And I just want to say, you said your values are aligned, and that's at the core of this issue of public division, because in fact, if we knew the values of those terrible people we judge, um, we would find they are also aligned. The reality is that the people in those countries, and the people in the South, and the people who voted for Trump, and the people of this. The people of that all care about their kids having a good life, all care about the people they love, all care about being heard and recognized, all care about being part of something vastly more, as I write about in Gift of Fear, vastly more we have in common than we have in contrast. And thank you for the answer, by the way, that was a great answer, and I really appreciate and I'm glad you guys talk about everything. That's a great way to do it. Because all forbidden speech in relationships is toxic, All forbidden topics are toxic because we don't actually have a dialogue and we don't get anywhere. No, I always say to George, our whole country needs to be in couple therapy. Really, yeah, it's very true. So anyway, Gavin, thank you very much, Thank you for listening to go ask Ali. You can watch his free master class on personal safety at Gift of Fear dot com and learn more about Gavin and his company at g d b A dot com. For more info and what you've heard in this episode, and for link to Gavin's book, The Gift of Fear, check out our show notes. Be sure to subscribe, rate, and review go ask Alli and follow me on Instagram at the Real Ali Wentworth Now. If you'd like to ask me a question or suggest a guest or a topic to dig into, I would love to hear from you, and there's a bunch of ways you can do it. You can call or text me at three to three four six three six, or you can email a voice memo right from your phone to Go ask Alli Podcasts at gmail dot com. And if you leave a question, you just might hear it. I'm go ask Alli. Go ask Alli is a production of Shonda land Audio and partnership with I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from Shondaland Audio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Welcome to go Ask Ali, a production of Shonda Land Audio and partnership with I Heart Radio. Rolling on the full. Loafing is a thing I can I've seen you know, We've all seen people do it. I've done it kidding. For me now, the work is to want what I have, even kind of shinny stuff. You know, that's my work. It's it's imperfect. So let me ask you a question about actors because you are Yeah, me too. We are old funny duddies. We go to sleep at ten, we wake up at six, but we go to bed at eight, So there are more funny duddies than you. You are the funny duddiest. Yes, welcome to go ask Allie. I'm Alli Wentworth. I don't know about you, but I feel like we're all immersed in a very fear based culture. I'm scared of everything from global warming to nuclear war to the things I'm streaming on television which all see to be true crime. I think people read little things in magazines and then you somehow put them in a scenario within your own life and just scare the ship out of yourself. So what is our relationship with fear? What does it mean? How do we reduce it, how do we understand it? How do we intuite it? Well? My guest today is the genius of all these things. Gavin de Becker is a leading expert on the prediction and management of violence. Gavin's work has earned him three presidential appointments and a position on a Congressional committee. He was twice appointed to the President's Advisory Board at the U S Department of Justice. He's also a senior fellow at u c l A School of Public Policy and Social Research. Gavin is a New York Times bestselling author of The Gift of Fear, which I encourage everybody to read. His books about violence and safety are now published in eighteen languages and have been profiled in Time and Is Week, featured on Oprah Winfrey Sixty Minutes, and many many others. Please note that this episode contained some conversations about violence that some people may find disturbing. If you prefer to avoid this content, the topics and time codes are in the show notes. Gavin de Beecker, I have never been so scared in my life. And this is complete truth and honesty. And I think I can speak for my husband, George and most of my friends, Because, as you've talked about in your book and in lectures and stuff, you know, this isn't a These aren't l A freeway shootings. It's not some serial killer. I feel like the whole world is on fire, and I'm afraid of of our politicians being killed, of nuclear war, of global warming, of domestic and international terrorism. And you must hear this a lot. But how do I call my nerves? How do I live my life without constantly not being able to sleep because of anxiety and being in perpetual fear of so many things? I love the question because I can fix that in just a few seconds. Excellent with a pill. Now it actually takes a lot of pills, I'm sure. So you know, there is a thing that that governments tend to spray at people, which are worst case scenarios. Worst case scenarios. And the worst case scenario is not a prediction. It's not a uh an organized thought process. It is a creative process where people think, as they have to in government, what would be the worst thing that could happen with a virus, for example, this virus, what's the worst thing that could happen? Now, rarely do they say, here's the best thing that could happen, right, it could peter out, it could the variance could be better instead of worse, that kind of thing. So we see a lot of worst case scenarios, and I think it's valuable for people to know that the words scenario, of course, comes from scene. It is a creative exercise. And when we do that in our minds, you could say, for example, Captain, what's the worst case scenario on the flight fiery crash. That's the worst case scenario. Officer, what's the worst case scenario? Homicide? Doctor, what's the worst case scenario? Sudden death? But we don't live our lives that way, asking what are the worst case scenarios? Rather we ideally live our lives asking what are the likely events. So at home, on your refrigerator, you might have a list of phone numbers. You've got Dr Kellerman, you've got the pediatrician, you've got so and so, But you don't have the Nuclear Emergency Search Team, which is the organization that tracks down radioactive material that might be used by terrorists, for example, and they've got a bunch of helicopters, etcetera. But that's not on your refrigerator because it's actually not likely. And so what I encourage people to do is look at the likely events in their lives as opposed to the worst case scenario events. And this is the opposite of what government does, and it's the opposite of what media does. News media, right, news media. It's only news because it is something that isn't likely in your life. You know what is it that makes news? It is the unusual. It is specifically that which is not typically happening. If we were to be honest with the public and to shout at them about what's alarming, let's say the public health institutions of America, CDC, f d A, etcetera. What would they shout at us, If they were being accurate to reality, they would say, Um, accidents in the home a major killer. Millions of you will suffer these this week, and three thousand of you will die. That's exactly true, accidents in the home. However, because we know that accidents in the home are slightly under our control, because we know that they are not new, we tend to be less afraid of them than of any of the things you mentioned. Uh, the newest virus you know at the moment, for example, while while COVID is a current variant that is not particularly serious for the overwhelming majority of people, people your age and even my age, I'm sixty eight. Uh. The average age of death from the very beginning back in two thousand twenty was one. In Canada. This will be an interesting fact. In Canada, sevent of all the people whose deaths were attributed to COVID they lived in nursing homes. They were nursing home residents. So right away you could say, if I'm not a nursing home resident, um, I have a massively greater chance of surviving this virus than if I am a nursing home resident. And what kills nursing home residents, by the way, everything they're they're generally to die. Right in Los Angeles County, the average term of residency in a nursing home is less than six months. So when you say you've got a lot of deaths and you attribute them to COVID, for example, and the majority of them are in nursing homes, you basically can begin to and this is my answer to your question, exclude yourself from the likely candidates for that outcome. There are two forms of fear anxiety isn't even on the list. By the way, anxiety is not a fear. Anxiety and worry are a different thing, different part of the brain, different part of the heart. But there are two forms of fear. One that's enormously valuable, and that is true fear. True fear is a signal in the presence of danger. That means I see it, I hear it, I feel it, I taste it, I perceive it. It's a signal in the presence of danger lying right there, snake right there. I need to know that information. Unwarranted fear is not based on your senses. It is always based on your imagination or your memory. So I share this example with you. You're at the airport, you're boarding a plane, and you think, don't get on that plane. That I don't I don't feel good about that flight. I don't want to do it. I don't want to do it. So you can you can ask yourself what is the cause of that fear. Is it, uh, something you saw on the news about an airplane crash in Brazil three months ago, in which case it's in your imagination or your memory, or is it because you just saw the two pilots stumbling out of the bar and wobbling their way onto the aircraft. That would be in your environment. That would be something you sense, and that would be true fear. So the difference between true fear and unwarranted fear is the answer to your question, which is could it happened that we would have nuclear war? For example? Could it happen? Is never the question to ask could it happen? We always know the answer. I can give you the answer for every good question right now. Yes, yes you can have heart failure right now, Yes you could it, absolutely. But the question we all ask in our lives is what's most likely? What's most likely to happen. I'm gonna give you one last example in the longest answer in podcast history, I don't think so oh oh, you must have had somebody even more longer. I think my third question is going to have a longer answer, But go ahead. I'm gonna get ready, I'll have a I'll have a brief break between now and then. Um, the in your home, in anybody's home, any viewer or listener of the podcast. Uh. We know that helicopters could land on the roof with intruders who could core through the ceiling and lower themselves with ropes into our apartment or home. That could happen, but we've made the decision that a more likely area of entry is the front door or the front window, so we put locks on the front door and the front window. My point there is that could is simply always the wrong question when it comes to safety, because we have to be able to to act every day and and face life, and life itself is a sexually transmitted, always fatal condition. Everybody dies, and the question we have to ask ourselves is not how shall we die, but how shall we live? And that's the choice. And so we do have to set aside risks. To fly to the moon. As an astronaut, I have to set aside the risk of getting on top of a giant uh, you know, a bag of fuel and lighting the match, which is basically what a rocket is. To build that bridge, I have to set aside the risk of crossing that big expanse of water and the bridge that you drive over, often yourself. Brooklyn Bridge and others. People died building those bridges, all of them, and so it they had to set aside risks and and take risks and and and still act you know, as a parent, we have to you know, we're walking around almost like our hearts are outside our bodies. These these children we care about so much, and yet we have to say, Okay, you can go, you can go on that thing, you're old enough to cross that street, you can ride that bicycle. We know, of course all variety of injury can come to them, as it can come to us, but we we act with courage and almost done. Courage is not the absence of fear. Courage is acting in the face of fear. I know something, I'm doing a podcast. I could make a terrible mistake and be canceled for something I say. But I'm acting anyway, and I'm not unafraid of the mistakes I might make or you might make her who knows what may happen. But I'm willing to act in the face of those fears. That's courage, and that I would say that I do that with my children. I don't want my daughter to go out at ten o'clock at night to a party downtown. But if I don't let her go and she doesn't go out and experience the world, I'll stimately I'm not helping her, even though I saw the the movie Abducted or whatever it was called. I mean, I feel like everything on streaming right now starts with a dead white girl. So you know, my my fears are always with my daughters. Oh my god, something's going to happen. So but I try to override that. Um. I do want to talk about the media with you, because you do. You've talked a lot in your book, particularly about using fear to get people to watch. And I feel like it's everywhere everywhere I look. When I try to escape and watch something on TV, it it makes me scared. And I don't know, should we turn off the news? Should we only watch Seinfeld? Um? How do we find a constructive balance between everything that is we're inundated by on a day to day basis with the media. All right, So a couple of things. One is that I do believe that the news media, and particularly television and particularly local news, is very bad for people when it comes to getting information. I encourage people to choose their avenue for going and getting the information. Meaning the Internet is so remarkable, with all its failings. It's so remarkable that I could say, oh, I'm a little interested today in the homicide rate in Sweden. I can go find that information, but if I wait for the local news to scream it at me and spray it at me, it will be presented in the most alarming way possible. Years ago, I used to joke that, uh, the Channel two News ought to say, welcome to the Channel two News. We're surprised you made it through another day, and here's what happened to those that didn't, and then they would give you the death litany all the ways in which people died. And so you know, years ago there was a big earthquake in l A. And after the earthquake there was all kinds of news media reports, was this the big one? What about if the big one comes? And one of my favorites was on CBS uh k n x T I think was the CBS affiliate in Los Angeles, and it said what would have happened if the earthquake had also caused a tsunami? And they had Los Angeles graphics showing waves going over forty story buildings in downtown l A. And my first thought was, if there had been a tsunami, we wouldn't have to pick up all this glass that we were sweeping around our House. That was the funny part. The not funny part was that they did a graphic and they showed you what Los Angeles would be like if if if, if, if could could could could, And so that is bad for us. That very element is bad for us. And I think one thing that's going on now that is new and particularly destructive, and we see it probably most of all with public health issues is that the government and the news media are aligned. Now, you could say how nice, but of course the history of the value of the news media was to ask tough questions of an Anthony Fauci or a doctor more La, the CEO of Viser. Whenever prior to this time did the news media say, oh, okay, okay, great viser, Sure we like it, Yeah, that's a good enough for us. There'd be questions. There'd be a lot of questions, and there'd be a lot of press conferences, and there'd be people refusing to attend press conferences and people reporting on that. And there is something about public health and pharma that somehow takes the spine and the legs out of the news media. And that's something might include the fact that between seventy and of cable news channels are sponsored by Visor and other pharma companies. That's a problem. Uh. And so it's why is it a problem? Because it does incline you to not want to begin your telecast today with all the failings in a clinical trial if you feel there wordy for example. And so what we're seeing is, I is there more fear because at the current moment we don't have an advocate in the news media or in the government balancing the only thing we get. So, for example, politicians starting with Trump going through Biden um talk about the big story of our lives, which is this pandemic probably the biggest event in world history. And I don't mean because of COVID, I mean because of government reaction lockdowns. When you have billions of people affected in terms of their day to day lives, that's a big deal. So that issue that I'm that I'm zeroing in on, which is that normally you had government saying here's the new thing to be afraid of, and I a politician, I'm going to fix this for you, and you've got to be aware of it. Blah blah blah. Historically, governments throughout human history have used fear to control populations, it's either fear of the other, the bad guys in the next village, or it's fear of internal uh risks like terrorism. But whatever it is, that's what governments do. They use fear to control conduct and behavior. So, if you imagine, to put it in very simple terms, the king and the queen, they're looking over the castle wall, and there's always a castle wall. They're not walking around with everybody else for good reason. And they look over and they see the population is fighting with each other, and that is good news. They high five each other, because the only bad news for the king and the queen is when everybody feels the same way. That's when you get real change. That's when you get Tunisia or Egypt or the Arab sprint. And so at the current moment, the division that we see, and it is profound. It is civil war profound. The division that we see. That division is encouraged by those in power. It is not discouraged. And I say those in power doesn't mean just an administration. I mean a government. Administrations come and go, government stays. And so when you have government doing what governments do they never haven't, which is used fear to control populations. And to and to influence events. And you also have the news media doing it, which they always have, but they were a check in balance prior to this moment. The challenge there is that at the moment we are being hit with fear from government and media and they're not in conflict, they are aligned. COVID is the worst thing in world history. It ain't not even close. Uh lockdowns are good, they ain't not even close. So anyway, my, my, my, My ending to this answer is that fear is worse today for everyone than it was two and a half years ago. In fact, I would add sounds like a politician, but everything is worse than it was two and a half years ago. And so you don't you don't see the King and Queen looking down and seeing this polarized political parties um as a good thing? Now do you know? It's it's like you said, there's civil unrest. Do you think that's a good thing or a bad thing? Well? I think it's a bad thing, But I assure you politicians think it's a good thing. Uh, leaders and and people in the White House that comes and goes. Of course, I'm sixty eight, so you get a fair number of people coming and going in the White House, and it's and you see that it's not all about them people in power, like division among the population period that includes the news media, who would have very little to report. CNN would have even less viewership than it has now. Fox would have even less viewership than it has now if they didn't have the the stridency of their disagreements. Uh. And the and the division. The division is good for business. It is extremely bad for the citizens. However, extremely bad because we are social animals. And yet what's happened in the last two and a half years that, in my view, must never happen again, is the ability for direct communication from power to the individual news media or direct communication from controlled power social media to the individual, and not a whole lot of communication among each other. So all we're left with is our controversies. Whereas when we're allowed to be together, concert, beach, shopping, uh event, we are at our best. So that's their thing, that's okay, But you don't give them the central position in our lives, top of the news, top of the White House all day, twenty four hours. When you do that for any one topic, we suffer. It could be a war, it could be crime. Anything that you make one topic. That's not what life is like. There's a lot more to come after the short break and we're back. I read your book a while ago, but I remember thinking, yes, I'm somebody that sees a serial rapist on the news and I'm convinced he's out right outside my door, when in fact it's a guy in you know, northern California who's three thousand miles away from me. But yet I kind of and I think a lot of people do this. You make it about you, You put yourself in that scenario, in that creative, you know, image that you have. UM. But I want to talk about spousal homicide because you say you can actually predict the violence that is imminent. Yeah, pre incident indicators. But I do just want to say quickly because you said, I say it's it's predictable. Yes, I think it's the most predictable serious crime in our lives that that never happens. Where everybody says or the victim says, well, I had no idea that was coming. Bob just came home and killed me. That's not what's going on. She's been afraid, she's been concerned. There have been police calls, there have been visits. You know, he had usually witnessed violence in his childhood. He uh, he made threats, He used weapons as an instrument of power. He glorified weapons. He broke things in the house, which is called symbolic violence. He you know, tore up the picture that she was in. He tore up the wedding gown. Um, she showed up at work wearing sunglasses. On and on and on and on. It is never uh that. It's the example I use as you have two wolves on a mountain path somewhere and they meet each other face to face, and one the ears go back, and the tail gets big, and the hair goes up on their neck, and a low growl starts, and then one attacks the other. The victim wolf never says, oh, I had no idea that was coming. All the signals have been exchanged, and human beings are no different. Do you think you can predict violence not only in a spousal homicide, but can you predict violence in so many different other scenarios? Like could you tell me if there's gonna be a lot of civil unrest? It's true different each kind of prediction, and there are many that society makes. Is this employee gonna work out well for me? Is this boyfriend going to turn out to be a great guy or a dangerous guy? Is this pilot gonna do a good job? Etcetera. And what people often say is, well, you never know about people. And who says that is the principle of the school that hired the teacher who molested the kids, Oh, well, you never know about people. Um, going directly to your question. The years ago, when I used to give speeches, I would ask the audience, is there anybody here who is at this talk today and had had to have childcare arranged in order to be here? And several hundred people would raise their hands, and I would say, is there anybody here who's not fully comfortable with the child care that they've arranged? And a bunch of people would raise their hands, and I would say, go home. Yeah, you know, this is not where you want to be. But when I interviewed people in the audience, invariably the people who told me I am absolutely comfortable with my child care, they say, we love her, we consider her a member of our family, we trust her completely. They don't say, well, you never know about people. They have a strong feeling of certainty about it. And when you have a strong feeling of certainty in either direction, that's meaningful. The prediction you asked me about, can we predict social unrest, Well, it couldn't be easier to predict because we already have social unrest. We've had sixteen thousand, thousand demonstrations since the beginning of lockdowns in the United States, so you already have. You'd have to describe Los Angeles as a being in a state of social unrest, between homelessness, between crime. It's not all organized social unrest, like they're all standing in the same place holding the same sign. But the universal pre incident indicator for violence, there is a universal pre incident indicator. It's always present, and that is misery. Yeah. The person who comes to school uh and shoots up his former students or former teachers, the person who comes to work and shoots up as co workers. These are people in misery. They are alienated, they are in need, they are suffering, and so that is always present. Otherwise, human beings don't don't kill each other. There are very minor exceptions to that, which includes soldiers and police officers and people who we accept all right, that's a killing we brought into But the the pilot in the Middle East who kills a group of people on the ground with a missile, and the terrorist who comes to New York City and flies an airplane into a building, they're making the same kind of rationalization for killing. One is not a monster and the other one a saint. Both are deciding, based on the narrative in their heads that this is justified. So justification is the key. January six justified in the in the minds of the people who showed up to demonstrate outside the capital uh Minneapolis. All the fires and riots and looting, justified in the minds of people who were reacting to the death of George Floyd. And so justification is a key component. Um. I think about a lot of our politicians now, I would guess there are a lot more death threats on our congressmen and women and our senators than ever before. That's true, that's true. Okay, that's what I thought. Um. And yet yet the government doesn't pay to have them have any security. That's that's that's that's not correct. The security is now provided to more public officials than at any time in our history. It used to be that the Secretary of the Interior had a driver, but he didn't have bodyguards. Now every member of the cabinet has bodyguards assigned in the In the Senate, you have the Speaker of the House has a full time protective detail. Vice President, vice president's family, President president's family, former presidents, former president's family, Secretary of State, on and on and on. But can we provide it to thirty five members of Congress. No, we can't do it. I mean, what do do you want to do? You want to spend billions of dollars protecting people who go into public life. And one of the risks of public life, be it the small town mayor or the president, is that you're going to uh, You're going to encounter people who are angry, people who are hostile, mentally ill. People that goes with public life. Now, I support protection for presidents, even though mayors get attacked more often than presidents. Oh yes, and a bunch of mayors have been shot and killed. And there you know where they live, and they live in your town and you're piste off about what happened with your building permit and you show up at the mayor's house. Um, and so. But but I don't think we can we can solve that problem with bodyguards. Uh, look what we're already doing a few billion dollars now being spent after January six on on fences and all variety of physical changes for this very small facility. It's only a few acres the US capital. Um, do we need to do it? Well, we have had one event in our history that would tell us that we need to do it, But it doesn't. It's not a good direction to move in because what happens is when every federal building is bulletproof, and every federal building has a you know, five yard space around it with ballers that you can't drive a truck toward it, etcetera, etcetera. Um, it's a different kind of future, and it is letting individuals. We had the you know, the bombing in Oklahoma City of the Federal building. Now, teen children died that in that bombing because there was a child care facility there. But nineteen children die every week killed by a parent in the United States. And so we have to sort of balance, and unfortunately politics doesn't balance very well because politics talks about what's got our attention. You said the rapist in the park. You know, those stories are so interesting Because I'm here in such and such park, Candlestick Park, where yesterday the serial rapist was arrested, and I'm interviewing a woman. I'm terrified to go in the park. Wait a second, back up, he was arrested yesterday. There's one less rapist. It's better than it was before. And yet, as human beings, and as you said, you do naturally we put ourselves in that circumstance and we think, I don't want to go to that park. But when we do that, now the park becomes less occupied. Look at New York City. New York City is safe and was much safer years ago because we occupied it. We were out there on the streets, we were out there in the parts, we were using the space. As soon as we stop using the space, the only people left are criminals and victims. That's what happens in city and LA has its version. In l A, we have something called fort Apache architecture. Fort Apache is a is a concept that says that in the Old West you used to scurry through the Indian territory to get to the next fort, and you'd only be safe if you were in the fort. So we surrendered all the land outside the forts Los Angeles, the Beverly Center, big center, tiny little door to go in, the Bondaventure Hotel downtown, big glass building, tiny little door to go in. When you go in, wow, beautiful atrium, plants, fantastic, but outside ship. And so when we do that, we go through our gated to state, We get in our car, we drive through the dangerous park, we pull into the Beverly Center, and then we're okay. But what we're doing is surrendering two criminals all the other space, two criminals and poor people ultimately who suffered the most and who are the predominantly the victims of homicides and crimes. So we need to be brave. We need to do what Israel does. Israel has a bus is blown up, and the next day people are lining up to ride that next bus on the same route. What does America, doing the same circumstance, put our guards on the bus, make the bus bulletproof, change the bus, don't take the bus, of course, and uh and you know next up people who took the bus and their funerals and blah blah blah. So yeah, it's a it's a challenge. Look, it's a challenge, but we've never what's changed in world history? You asked me about the King and Queen? And do people still like division? They love it? Yes, politicians, please more. But what's changed is over a thousand years ago with the King and Queen. Is this electronic business we're on right now? What's changed is the ability to speak globally and influence news globally. Facebook takes off hate speech, for example. Ain't that great? But do we want Facebook deciding what's hate speech or what's got to be said or what's I don't not at all. I prefer that the solution to speech we don't like is speech we do like. I prefer that method, and that's how you and I grew up most of our lives. Of Course, people are going to say ship you don't like. Of course they are, and they usually suffer for it. And it's time for a short break. Welcome back to go ask Ali. So. I didn't know the difference between intuition and fear until I was living in Los Angeles and I was attacked by a gang and they robbed me and they threw me up against the car they were preparing to gang rate me. They were lining up, they were came my clothes off and then started screaming at each other in Spanish and then tried to push me in the car. And I was in a complete submissive state. I was going to do exactly what they told me to do, and I was shut down. I mean it was a survival thing of just completely shutting down, leaving my body. And at one point I looked over at this guy that I was with when we were both attacked, and he mouthed to me, don't get in. And it hit me on such a visceral level, and it immediately my instinct was if I get in this car, I'm going to be killed. And I turned around and I ran as fast as I could. Two of the gang members chased me, couldn't catch me. You know, long story short, I tried to I stopped some cars. My friend was being stabbed but survived. But this experience taught me that I that a part of me that I wasn't even aware of, which I call my gut, said to me, in its most survivalist way, run basically run. And so that's what I you know, that's uh, I don't know how you I mean, you could term it better than me, but it's almost like survival. It's my my survival gut or that voice or tendency. It's not really fight or flight. It's more, um, you've got your hyper instinctual about a situation. It's true, and it's it's really at the center of my work is intuition. And when I was writing Gift of Fear, the the word I learned the origin of the word is in tear, which means to guard and to protect. And you mentioned your gut. The gut actually has neurons. It has more neurons, more brain cells in effect than a dog has. It has a great deal of intelligence, and it has intelligence that's unfiltered when when it's up here we filter it. Oh, I don't want to be that kind person. I'll just get in the elevator with that scary guy and so we get into a steel, sound proof chamber with somebody we're afraid of. No other animal in nature would do that. So I think that when I'm a big believer in listening to intuition, and intuition says, in effect, shut up and do exactly what I tell you, and I'll get you out of here. And sometimes it's counterintuitive, Like you were told, always cooperate with people or they'll kill you. Know, very often that's exactly the opposite of true. And so the the the experience you just recounted to me reminds me of a woman I interviewed where she said, uh that. She said it was like an animal uncoiled inside me, and I was a passenger on my own legs, meaning the thing was happening, and the there's a woman I interviewed who was attacked with her six year old daughter. She'd put in the car and she had to get around the car and get into the driver's seat. And she as she got into the driver's seat, the guy was upon her and he was trying to hold her legs, and she heard the in her mind car key, and she thought, I don't want to be the kind of person who sticks a key in this guy's eye. But amazingly she had already done it, and the car door had already closed and she had already driven away, and then she said, um, gee, at least I didn't, you know, stick him in both eyes. And then she realized she had done that too. Boom boom, And so intuition had handled the whole situation. So I'm a big believer in intuition, and I believe that it is our nuclear defense system. Nature has made such a huge investment in human beings, every one of us, with these millions of neurons and this remarkable system that we are, and this shared collective genius and the individual genius that there's no way your daughters were built as the most recent model of human being without a defense system, and they have a nuclear defense system. And that is intuition. Intuition is just the communication method by which you get the signal for your survivor. So how does intuition speak with us? It speaks with us through gut feelings, through um, through hunches, through suspicion. Uh, that is an interesting word to suspicion, because suspicion people think, oh, I don't want to be suspicious of somebody. But all it means the words suspice are the root. It means to watch. It just means watch, just means pay attention. So fear is one of the signals of intuition. It's the one that's hardest to ignore because we feel terrible and and it gets our attention. But there are many signals of intuition, hunches, gut feelings. Curiosity is a signal of intuition, like why did I and then you get the idea and you don't go in that underground parking lot. So the key is to listen to it, to listen to intuition and give it a voice and let it, don't prosecute it, and send it on its way. That's what we do a lot. Oh, I don't want to be like that. I'm gonna get in this elevator or this is a this is a very sophisticated hospital, the Sisters of Mercy. For Christ's sake, I should listen to the doctor, not if you think you should, not if you have a strong feeling that says whoa, whoa, wha, not this guy. And there's a bunch of stories in my book of people who did listen to doctors who were doing surgery on their kids and regretted it because they had the feeling not this doctor. Is it okay to take your kid, get in the car and go home. Yes? Is it okay to stand in line at the at the clinic or hospital for some treatment and feel I'll change my mind? Yes, you can do that. You can do that, and I do want to be sure at some time that there is that I tell everybody there is a Gift of Fear master Class series that's available for free at Gift of Fear dot com. I'm not charging anybody for it's it's ten episodes long. I'm very proud of it. It's interviewing a lot of people who prevailed through violence, and um, and I can. I can plug it mercilessly because it's free. Um. Not everybody reads books, and not everybody has time to read books, and so Gift to Fear is a great book. It's out there. Uh. But the Gift of Fear master Class series is I really aimed at younger people who could absorb it in in video form, and it's Gift of Fear dot com. That's it. End of the plug, which is great. It's a perfect way to end the podcast before we go. You know, I ask in my podcast lots and lots of questions to my guests, and then I get to turn around and you get to ask me anything, my my cupcake recipe, whatever you want. So what would you like to ask me? Thank you so much. It's not about cupcake recipe. I have no interest in baking, but I love banana bread that my wife makes. That's a plug for our banana bread. My question for you has to do with the news media also, but in a in a very specific sense. How do you deal with disagreement with your um, your husband, with George? How do you deal with disagreement when you see something differently, when you feel differently about it, how do you deal with it? Well, when we first got married, how we dealt with it was I thought, well, he's a Rhodes scholar, so he probably knows better than me. That didn't last very long. And now I think, I mean, I think that our fundamental beliefs are the same. I don't you know, we're not a James Carvill Mary Matlin. You know, we don't fight over politics. I would say that George is incredibly receptive to conversation, UM, but we we rarely disagree. There are times where I'm more of an alarmist about things. You know, I just a week ago, you know, I was hearing from people, Oh my god, you know, nuclear war missiles North Korea, Uh, you know Putin And people are like, you know, we're gonna go live in Portugal or we're gonna go to Malta. And I was eating dinner with George and I looked over at him and I said, so, what are we going to do in case of a nuclear war? And George just looked at me and he said, We're going to die. And I said, oh, shouldn't we be planning anything? Is No, I think it's better we just die. And then I was like somewhat calmed, and you know, finished my meat loaf. But so we do listen to each other, you know. And if I have a very and I've had very strong opinions, um, he knows when that tone and that passion comes out of me that I'm serious. And usually I'm right. When I get to that heightened state, I'm usually right. That's intuition. That that's intuition usually and and true for my wife and me too. And I just want to say, you said your values are aligned, and that's at the core of this issue of public division, because in fact, if we knew the values of those terrible people we judge, um, we would find they are also aligned. The reality is that the people in those countries, and the people in the South, and the people who voted for Trump, and the people of this. The people of that all care about their kids having a good life, all care about the people they love, all care about being heard and recognized, all care about being part of something vastly more, as I write about in Gift of Fear, vastly more we have in common than we have in contrast. And thank you for the answer, by the way, that was a great answer, and I really appreciate and I'm glad you guys talk about everything. That's a great way to do it. Because all forbidden speech in relationships is toxic, All forbidden topics are toxic because we don't actually have a dialogue and we don't get anywhere. No, I always say to George, our whole country needs to be in couple therapy. Really, yeah, it's very true. So anyway, Gavin, thank you very much, Thank you for listening to go ask Ali. You can watch his free master class on personal safety at Gift of Fear dot com and learn more about Gavin and his company at g d b A dot com. For more info and what you've heard in this episode, and for link to Gavin's book, The Gift of Fear, check out our show notes. Be sure to subscribe, rate, and review go ask Alli and follow me on Instagram at the Real Ali Wentworth Now. If you'd like to ask me a question or suggest a guest or a topic to dig into, I would love to hear from you, and there's a bunch of ways you can do it. You can call or text me at three to three four six three six, or you can email a voice memo right from your phone to Go ask Alli Podcasts at gmail dot com. And if you leave a question, you just might hear it. I'm go ask Alli. Go ask Alli is a production of Shonda land Audio and partnership with I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from Shondaland Audio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.