It Could Happen Here - Movement with Purpose: Parkour & Stealth

Episode Date: October 5, 2021

You’ve seen The Office clip, but what actually is Parkour and how can it help you as the world crumbles? This episode we talk Parkour and Urban Stealth and how you can get started. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadowbride. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of fright. An anthology podcast of modern-day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German,

where we get real and dive straight into todo lo actual y viral. We're talking musica, los premios, el chisme, and all things trending in my cultura. I'm bringing you all the latest happening in our entertainment world and some fun and impactful interviews with your favorite Latin artists, comedians,

actors, and influencers. Each week, we get deep and raw life stories, combos on the issues that matter to us, and it's all packed with gems, fun, straight up comedia, and that's a song that only nuestra gente can sprinkle. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search. Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech brought to you by an industry veteran with nothing to lose. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, five-year-old Cuban boy Elian Gonzalez was found off the coast of Florida. And the question was, should the boy go back to his father in Cuba?

Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or stay with his relatives in Miami? Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You suddenly wake up to the loud growling of a tactical vehicle. Must have left your window open. A few streets away, you can hear the troopers doing of a tactical vehicle. Must have left your window open. A few streets away,

you can hear the troopers doing their morning patrols. This is closing in on week four of the all-day curfew. Cops and state troopers have put checkpoints at every bridge and on all major streets for about every ten blocks. Your friends and the city's local liberal majority are now calling this what it is. Your city is functioning as a full-on police state. National establishment media has been more hesitant to use that term, but your fox-watching conservative family from out of state has been texting you about how good it is that someone is finally establishing law and order and taking back the town after months of senseless looting

and destructive riots. You've been mostly stuck in your downtown apartment. You quit your job when the recent bout of protests started up, which now means you don't qualify for the working hours exemption of the curfew. You've got enough money saved up for another month, but you're looking to get a grocery delivery job, which would have the added benefit of allowing you to go outside during the day. Luckily, you've been able to sneak out at night to do rooftopping and surveil the police's, checkpoints, and patrol routes in your neighborhood. You've noticed that the cops rarely look up. You've been feeding your intel into a surveillance database shared on a telegram channel ran by some various activists. After lying in bed gathering your thoughts for a few minutes, you finally roll out and pick out your clothes.

Dark loose pants, a plain shirt, beanie, and a high-vis jacket. Ordinarily, you'd break into your Red Bull stash for morning caffeine, but you've already got plenty of energy today. It's your boyfriend's birthday, and for the past week you've been planning to surprise him. You think there's finally enough information in the surveillance database to plan a trip across town with little to no law enforcement interaction. Between the in-person reconnaissance and hacking into the city's traffic cams, which was surprisingly easy, you've been able to figure out a route using city buses and on foot that should be able to avoid checkpoints and the regular patrol routes.

From what you've seen online, bus drivers won't ask for a work authorization card, and you're hoping the high of his jacket will make it look like you belong. Lastly, before you leave, you grab your small yellow messenger bag and jam in a water bottle plus a tin of a half a dozen cupcakes. Deep breaths. Slowly twist the handle of your door and stare down your apartment hallway. You're on your way. You keep telling yourself, just act like you belong.

After taking the stairs down to ground level, you make your way street side. This part you feel more confident about. You've been able to study the patrol patterns around your immediate area more carefully. The bus stop you're going to is just four blocks away. You can zigzag through two streets to avoid the main drags. As you walk through the sidewalks, you keep your head down, but your eyes are darting side to side to get a lay of the land. Don't walk too fast or too slow. Match the people around you.

Obviously, not many people are out right now, but there are enough to mirror their movement and pace. It feels like it took forever, but you get to the bus stop without incident, or seeing a single cop. Waiting at bus stops always feels like an eternity, but today it's worse. Within a few minutes, the blue metro bus does pull up. The bus driver gestures you on. The electronic ticketing system isn't turned on. You peek up to the driver. The look in her eyes is telling you just to head on back.

At least you know she's probably on your side. You picked this bus, not because it's the most direct route to your boyfriend's place, it's not, but because it gets you close enough while avoiding the checkpoints you and your internet buddies have mapped out. It's a slower, more jagged route, but at least you get to relax for a while and enjoy the ride. And hey, you can get an in-person look at the rest of the city under the curfew and police occupation. The ride's now closing in on a little over half an hour, about ten more minutes until you get off. Your heart's racing. You might actually do this. In your flash of nervous excitement, you look up ahead on the road. And your face drops. About half

a mile up ahead, you spot a checkpoint. Fuck. No, this is wrong. This wasn't on the map. The checkpoint on this street was supposed to be further up the road, after you get off. Your mind flashes through different possibilities. Did the cops change the checkpoint this morning? Wait, did the police find the database map on Telegram and are feeding it false info? You stop yourself from thinking because you realize you need to act now and think later. You jump out of your seat and sprint up the bus towards the driver. You blurt out, I need to get off this right now. Please. The driver looks ahead, looks at you, and tilts her head down and pulls over. Quick. That's all she says to you. You dart out of the bus and into the half-residential, half-retail labyrinth.

And as you're running, you hear sirens. Fuck, they saw you. Your head swivels around to catch a glance. One car from the checkpoint is headed your way. You hope the bus driver doesn't get in trouble, but right now, that's not your problem. You think, first thing you need to do is prevent the vehicle from pursuing you. So, off the big streets. You take a second to tighten the messenger bag around your body, and here we go.

To your right, you see a walled courtyard for a small two-story apartment. Estimate the wall is 8 feet tall. Doable. You turn out the street and run towards the wall, slowly gaining speed. Jump up and plant your foot on the side, then your arms reach up and grab the top. It's a bit of a struggle to pull yourself up, you got some stuff weighing you down, and you're a bit out of practice, but you get up. You hop down onto the other side and keep going for now.

You barrel through some dense bushes and vault a few small railings as you traverse the side streets. Soon enough, you're far enough away from the car, with plenty of obstacles in between you and it, through some dense bushes and vault a few small railings as you traverse the side streets. Soon enough, you're far enough away from the car, with plenty of obstacles in between you and it, that you feel like you can catch a quick breather. Now you have a choice. Hide it out here for a bit, or figure out a way to your boyfriend's. You still got a decent sense of where you are. The destination should be only about ten blocks away now, in a diagonal direction.

You'll get plenty of time to rest at your boyfriend's place, so you figure you should continue on. As you're about to head on your way, two armored state troopers turn the corner on foot. You remember, you're still pretty close to the checkpoint. One look at you, with your hands on your knees as you pant, the cops know you're out of place. Stop, yells the cop. You're being detained. Fuck. Time to book it. Gonna have to think as you run. Good news is, is that they're in armor. Bad news is, is that you're tired and your outfit is blown. You can change clothes once you get to your boyfriend's, so you decide the best course of action now is to make it hard for two people in armor to follow you.

Time to put some obstacles between you and them. You're already mostly out of the retail area, which means it's time to hop some backyard fences. Ferris Bueller's Day Off shit. You make a sharp left turn behind a car and into someone's yard and up and over their fence. One hand grabs on top, one hand goes to the far side, and you flip your body over. Next few fences are shorter. Regular speed vaults will do. The sound of the clunky tactile boots chasing you gets quieter as you traverse through the yards and zig-zigging around blocks. Before you know it, you're on the back street of your partner's place. Only a few more steps and you can see their backyard in the distance. You quick turn your head and look around.

From what you can see, you've lost the state troopers. You scurry through four more yards before you reach your target. You let out a sigh of relief. You jog past the side yard towards the front. You probably should use the front door. Before you knock, you take a look inside your messenger bag. You unclip the latch and inside lies a smushed pile of cupcake crumbs with pink frosting coating the insides of your bag. Well, at least I made it in one piece, you say out loud. After an exhausting trek, you finally knock on the door. It could happen here. Podcast, Robert Evans. Sophie is not here today, so I get to open the episode with atonal grunting, because she was unable to stop me. Welcome to the podcast that this is, talking about things falling apart,

how to, you know, make it not, maybe. My guest today, well, my co-host today first is Garrison Davis. Garrison, how are you doing today? I'm doing good. Good. We have a little bit of a fun update. This actually happened last week, but this will be the first episode we're recording since it happened. Last week, we put up some links to a GoFundMe and a couple of different episodes of Bastards and of It Could could happen here to try to help a woman named ruba who lives in portland um and is a community activist save her house um when we started the fundraiser she'd raised about 28 grand to to you know get basically keep

her home um and it's up to the 50 grand she needed. Y'all did that in about three days. So you've kept a woman in her home and allowed her and her family to stay where they are. And I'm just extremely grateful to everybody who donated, who shared. It's just awesome. You know, this comes after earlier in this year, y'all funded the Portland Diaper Bank. I just continue to be very impressed with how much people who listen to these shows are willing to throw down to help people out. So thank you all. And now I'm going to hand it off to Garrison. Garrison, what are we talking about today?

So today we're going to be talking about and discussing two of kind of my favorite practical skill sets. And I've been training for, I don't know, seven, eight, I think almost eight years now. And it's, yeah, one of my favorite interests. It's useful very practically. It's also useful for fun. We're talking about park parkour which people may have heard me discuss before but also just kind of like stealth in general um and how to be kind of

mindful of your presence among other people um as a big clumsy guy who's worked extensively with you in aggressive situations i can confirm that your parkour is very, very effective because you are a fast little son of a bitch. Very good at getting away from the cops and getting to where you need to be to film things. It was always kind of amazing, as frustrating as it was sometimes when you would dart out ahead of everybody. But can't argue with the results. Yeah. Can't argue with the results. So, and to help us kind of talk about parkour and stealth, I have brought on a friend of mine who is the person who mostly taught me parkour and stealth.

My friend Rick, who has been teaching parkour for a long time. Say hi, Rick. Hi. Hey, Rick. That's right. Rick is very not super social so it's i think it's amazing that i was able to convince him to come on a podcast pretty funny um first off uh rick do you want to kind of just like give your definition of like parkour in general because i know whenever we say parkour everyone just thinks of the office um which i know you find frustrating

but yeah for people who maybe aren't as into it as us, do you want to give a brief overview of parkour as a concept? Parkour is a really annoying concept to actually pin down. But basically speaking, it's movement with purpose. You are somewhere, you want to get somewhere and you're trying to find the best way of doing that when we're training we kind of focus on efficiency safety speed and the the reason behind the movement yeah yeah i think that's thinking of it more as like a movement with purpose or like like

intentional movement um is much better than thinking of it's like like parkour isn't like flips like flips and that kind of stuff is is more of what we call like um free running it's more of like a creative expression it's more of like a kind of kind of like a sport where it's like parkour is more usually i mean there's always going to people that are going to fight you on this in the park in the parkour community but it's generally parkour is kind of more based on utility. So, like, last summer at the protests, I used, you know, parkour in a lot of different ways, both to, like, you know, get somewhere specifically, or parkour is great as, like, a recovery tool. Like, if you get pushed over by cops, parkour can be very useful for, like, getting up very fast. You know, it's, like, all that kind of more practical side of things. And I've used parkour, you know, before I was doing filming at different kind of activism-related type things. It's just, it's a super useful skill to have. practical application in you know conflict-ish scenarios but also wanted to touch on stealth um as you know sometimes you don't need parkour and if you can avoid a scenario where you have

to use it would be kind of great so i've asked rick to kind of prepare a few things on stealth which then will kind of you know bounce off each other and talk have kind of a general discussion of parkour and stealth in general and how it relates to kind of bounce off each other and have kind of a general discussion of parkour and stealth in general and how it relates to kind of conflict scenarios. So, Rick, where would you like to start for a stealth overview? Well, in conflict with other people, there's like three different levels of the conflict, and all of these get trained in different places.

Usually there's the actual like conflict, the combat, which is more of a martial arts or gun training or weapon training of any kind is what prepares you for that. Beneath that is the parkour level where you can avoid getting into the conflict in the first place if you can get away from the situation yeah if you're more of an arm's length away then you can create more distance between you and someone's trying to hurt you and in 99.9 percent of conflict situations that's going to be a better self-defense option than literally any weapon you could carry

yes just give the hell away is always the preferred the preference there's there's a really good comic um it's it's like a it's like a it's like a like a like a comedy comic of like someone someone trying to get into like a knife fight and you're just like nope i'm running away because there's no there's no winner in a knife fight the only way to win a knife fight is to be far away from someone with a knife. Again, the only justified situation I can think of to physically getting into a knife fight is like what happened on the Portland Max train

when someone else can't get away. Yeah, you're stuck in a space. And the two guys who did that died. They died. Yeah. Not that they did the wrong thing. They did the only thing they could. But that's what a knife fight is. So yeah, it's being able to get the fuck away is the best self-defense.

Yeah. I carry weapons with me wherever I go, but I don't want to ever use them. My first response is always going to be look for an escape path. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. A weapon is only for if you can't get away or if someone else can't get

away so pretty much like yeah we're yeah i've always been interested because again i've watched you know garrison hop away from cops over fences where i had to like you know fall over the fence essentially because i'm not nearly as good i'm someone who exercises but like number one is it even possible to like learn this stuff without fucking your 33 year old body up a bunch in the process oh yeah that's the thing i'm scared of who is like over 60 and he's good very good he's actually like one of my high intermediate low advanced students honestly and he started when he was like 50 how do you uh i mean like it just seems like injury i guess because my my my stereotypical view of it is like a bunch of jumping up on buildings and leaping over stuff like

yeah um it seems like injuries would be a pretty common fact. So I guess that's kind of like always been my first concern there. Like, how do you how do you how do you train people to do this stuff with a minimum of risk? Well, that's kind of always the focus of my teaching. There certainly are other instructors out there like the guy who taught me parkour was basically this is a Kong vault. This is what it looks like. Do it. My training, like I sucked at parkour when I started. So my teaching method has been coming at this as a sort of, okay, I'm going to try to break this down into as many pieces as I can. And I'm going to try to keep you completely safe. I'm going to try to keep you completely safe. Bumps and bruises do happen when you're training parkour. That's just unavoidable.

It's learning how to do walking, but fancy. So you get bruised when you're learning how to walk. You get bruised when you're learning every technique in parkour. But I've been doing it for 14 years now, and I've never broken any of my bones. So if you do it right, you should be able to stay safe when training. You definitely, if you can get someone who's more experienced, getting them to break down steps for you is very useful.

Whether that be like a park or a gym in your area or just like a friend that's been messing around, trying to train with somebody is probably one of the most important things is to have someone else there. Both if you one like get hurt you need help but two to kind of prevent to help prevent that from even happening in the first place because there's a lot of like very simple moves that can be introduced in very safe environments i've i've i've been wanting to get roberts down to the gym for like over a year now just to go over like a few basic kind of stuff

that's just really really useful and pretty in and like pretty easy like we're not we're not jumping to like you know doing like roof topping right where we're like jumping from one roof to another we're starting by we're starting by being like here's like a concrete barricade what's the safest way of getting over this if you're under pressure right it's that kind of stuff that's specifically useful in like conflict scenarios right because like when we're when we're facing in a riot line i'm not going to be doing like flips and cartwheels to like get over fences i'm trying to be like what's the safest fastest way i can get over this thing while making sure i'm not going to get like shot with a rubber bullet right that's kind of it's it's it's very different from like what you see on like youtube right youtube is very like showy people are like

trying to like basically when what you see on youtube is people are doing people are doing like a choreographed performance whereas parkour from a utility standpoint is very different from what you see online it's improvisation yeah and that's one of the things that we try to train too when we're training parkour is we just give ourselves an environment and say okay i'm going now yeah and like do it over and over again and try to figure out what's the best way of getting over this specific path. If you can make a designed path, even doing this at a playground or any place with logs,

you can do parkour in the forest and stuff. Be like, I'm going to set this path and experiment with how many ways can I move through this set of obstacles. And you can kind of figure out parkour on your own on in in in that kind of way because because your body knows what it's going to do like you know people have been moving like this for thousands and thousands of years it's only in the past few hundred years where we've like kind of lost this ability or it's like become it's

become less necessary so like we we know how to interact with our environment in creative ways like we we know how to do this um it's just that you know we the past the the past few centuries it's been less important and i think parkour is really fun because you can kind of rediscover interacting with your environment in these you know kind of more wild ways it's something that we all do as children, just like evolutionarily, for some reason, as children, we do this as play. We climb trees and we try to go over fences. It's just that something in our society has made a shift so that when we become adults, it's suddenly not acceptable for us to do this anymore. Yeah. I mean mean i can remember when i was a little kid growing up on the farm we had a bullpen because we kept the bull away from the cows and my my

cousin and i would hop over the fence and we would throw stuff at the bowl and then when it started to charge we would hop back over the fence yeah i mean obviously i'd never do that today because it's mean to throw things at a bull i was six but also i couldn't physically hop over the fence that way today. But I'm guessing within, like, I don't know, even just like a few hours of practice, you could figure out a lot of ways to get over stuff. I could be back to fucking with bulls, is what you're saying. Exactly. You don't need to kiss the bull

fucking goodbye. We can go back to this. We could go, I could return to tradition. Yes could go, I could return to tradition. Yes, exactly, yeah. Welcome, I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows presented by iHeart and Sonora.

An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have

haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists in the field, and I'll be digging

into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean.

He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with.

His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating.

I don't feel emotions correctly. I am talking to a felon right now, and I cannot decide if I like him or not. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world as a fake gecko therapist and try to dig into their brains and learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's pretty interesting if you give it a shot. Matter of fact, here's a few more examples of the kinds of calls we get on this show. I live with my boyfriend

and I found his piss jar in our apartment. I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. I have very overbearing parents. Even at the age of 29, they won't let me move out of their house. So if you want an excuse to get out of your own head and see what's going on in someone else's head, search for

therapy gecko on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts it's the one with the green guy on it what is the degree of this that can be done without again like you know we have we have a wide variety of income levels that listen to this show um what is the degree of this can be done without again like you know we have we have a wide variety of income levels that listen to this show um what is the degree of this can be done without like paying for training you know that like like how is it even possible to like start on this kind of thing if you're in reasonable shape you know on your own without paying someone because that that seems like a recipe for breaking something to me but i again i don't know i don't know shit it is very much about knowing yourself and knowing what you're ready for uh this was something i mean i say that i never broke a

bone in my training but there were a couple times i started pushing myself further than i should have and it would have been really good to have someone there to say, Hey, you're probably not ready for this yet. Let's break this down into little pieces. But if you come at it methodically and you don't endanger yourself too much, what I started out with in parkour is I would just put a piece of tape on the ground and another piece of tape and jump from one piece of tape to the other and went out to parking lots and jumped from just an arbitrary pebble to the curb on the parking lot and found some just railings and learned how to go over those railings safely and gradually just started building up to higher and higher things. You always want to start at ground level when you're training parkour. Don't go up to high places for your first thing. Yeah, I think there's a lot of, like, instructional videos on YouTube, too,

that are not just, like, showing off. It's actually people trying to, like, break down movements. So you can, like, find a specific video, be like, okay, I want to, you know, bring this on my phone, go out into, like, a playground, a parking lot, like, a a wooded area and be like okay this is this is this one vault i'm gonna watch the video and i'm gonna try to replicate it myself that's really the the kind of easiest cheapest way to kind of break that down without having to you know pay someone tons of money um you know if parkour classes aren't the most expensive thing um so that's if you do

have a little bit of disposable income i i i i like parkour classes i did them for a long time but there was a certain point actually that like i couldn't afford classes anymore and luckily i've been doing parkour enough at that point that i was able to become an assistant instructor which means i got like a free I got like a free membership in exchange for, you know, helping out in classes like a few hours a week. So that's what, that's what I did for years when I couldn't afford classes is, uh, is just help is help teach, which I mean, eventually I got leveled up to being like a full-time instructor. Um, so that is kind of the other way is, you know, once you get enough stuff, there are, you know, there's, there's ways

you can like make friends who know more parkour than you you can do you know outdoor training with them which can be free um but if you do really want like a like a gym environment there is there's ways of making class it's not the most expensive thing also there's online groups that schedule meetups yeah every now and then so if you can find an online group in your area, you can go to one of their meetups and ask for advice. Not everyone's going to give the best advice. There are some people in the parkour community who are always pushing their boundaries. They'll be in a cast half of the time. The more advanced people, yeah. They generally. So always take advice with a grain of salt.

Not everyone knows everything and no one knows your body as well as you do. So you, you gotta keep yourself safe above everything else. You can't get better at parkour if you break both of your legs. Yeah, that's always. So a couple of questions here. Number one would be,

obviously I don't expect, you know, like somebody's in Michigan or whatever. I don't expect you to know the best parkour instructor there. But if somebody is looking at going the gym route, are there kind of some hard and fast rules for determining whether or not these folks know what they're doing? Like, is there any kind of advice you have in terms of picking a gym? Or is it just kind of like go into google maps and see uh see where the parkour be that's a little bit tough because um especially since covid there's not many options for parkour gyms out there my best advice would be go and if they let you just watch a class and see what's going on. See how many people have casts. Yeah.

Yeah. Back when I was learning parkour originally, we would have basically two people in a cast all the time just watching the class. Yeah. I didn't know that. The guy that I was trying to keep up with the whole time spent three stints in a cast. Yeah, which is funny because I've never got a serious injury ever. I was always more careful in my training, but like the most I've gotten is like

bruises and stuff. And I got to a relatively high level of parkour like a few years ago. But you only took classes for me and my focus was always on breaking things down and making them accessible and safe true true yeah yeah but there's definitely people who are more who are more carefree with their body and okay with hurting themselves to do something cool yeah and some people get away with that so for folks who either don't have the

financial means to go to a gym or there's just nothing in their area, because as you've said, there's a plague. If people are going to you've given some advice on like how to start trying yourself. Are there any specific online resources you would recommend to folks who are looking to get on unless on their own, dip their toes in, you know, YouTube channels or people who do good like writing breakdowns, anything that you would push folks towards? I haven't been up to date on it recently. A lot of the videos out there are garbage. What I recommend you look for is you look for, first of all, explanation. Second of all, if you can find videos of someone who's training something and they fail to do the move that they're trying to do correctly and they fail to do the move that they're trying to do correctly, they fail and fail and fail and fail and then succeed. That's an honest video. That's one that I would listen to more because they understand the process.

would listen to more because they understand the process. The other videos out there are sort of greatest hits compilations, and you don't get to see the whole process that goes into that. So I don't have a sense. I don't have any specific person or channel to recommend, but when you're going out there and looking for resources, just make sure that the person is putting some understanding into the fact that this is a process of training and it's not just, this is how it's done.

Do it. Now you can do it. There is, there is a, there is like a parkour wiki, which was like, you know, parkour.fandom.com that you can,

you can find like, just like lists of all of the moves and and they give you very simple explanations of them, and they link to some videos. And generally, if you just want to learn more about it, then that can be a good resource, just so you're familiar with all the different types of movement. But yeah, make sure you take every video with a grain of salt and watch other people's explanations and be like,

okay, I kind of like the way this person describes it versus this person. Because everyone teaches differently. Everyone teaches for different body types, for different body performance models. Because you can't just apply the same thing to everyone because everyone's different. But the Parkour Wiki is a decent resource. And then YouTube, especially since the 2000s, there's been a plethora of content, most of it bad,

but, you know, there's lots to at least look for. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonorum. An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America.

From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters... to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search,

better offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel winning economists to leading journalists in the field. And I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough, so join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez,

will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with.

His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzales wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating.

I don't feel emotions correctly. I am talking to a felon right now, and I cannot decide if I like him or not. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world as a fake gecko therapist and try to dig into their brains and learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's pretty interesting if you give it a shot. Matter of fact, here's a few more examples of the kinds of calls we get on this show. I live with my boyfriend and I found his piss jar in our apartment. I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. I have very overbearing parents. Even at the age

of 29, they won't let me move out of their house. So if you want an excuse to get out of your own head and see what's going on in someone else's head, search for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's the one with the green guy on it. All right. Anything else y'all wanted to get into yeah i wanted to kind of branch off of like the parkour discussion into kind of like uh the more kind of stealth-based discussion of of kind of being aware of your presence in relation to other people and rick i know you were talking about like the different like levels of stealth, so you've got the combat training, which prevents you from getting killed or captured in the worst of scenarios. And then you have parkour that you can use to prevent the combat in the first place. And stealth is what you use to prevent the chase from happening in the first place.

It's kind of a tree of, I really don't want to have to fight someone. So I'm going to run away instead. I really don't want to have to run away from someone. So I'm just going to try not to be noticed by them instead. And that's been a lot of what my training in parkour has been focused around is just staying de-escalated as possible with everything yeah because yeah we me and rick have focused most of our parkour training on on stealth um as opposed to being you know super strong or super powerful. And stealth's always a really hard concept to talk about because it's kind of nebulous in nature. Because stealth isn't being invisible, right?

It's not being totally unnoticed. It's wanting to craft the way you're seen in a specific way. Yeah. It's always been very difficult for me to explain what stealth is the most recent definition that i've given for it is that everything that you do everything that you are gives off a certain amount of noise and a certain type of noise. So the way that you dress, you can dress in a very loud way with a high-vis vest, day-glow colors, something that makes you really easy to notice. But if you're in the right environment, that might be the right type of noise to be making to blend into a crowd. Like a three-piece suit is also a very loud outfit to wear.

But if you're on the streets of New York, that's normal. If you come into a park or gym wearing a three-piece suit, it's very abnormal. So that's not the right type of noise if you're trying to blend in there. Yeah, a lot of it's about kind of constructing the way people see you based on what environment you're in and who you're trying to remain undetected from, right? Because I mean, they're like, not even necessarily undetected, but just detected in a specific way. Because people's eyes can glaze over a lot of a lot of stuff if if just like the right puzzle pieces are put into their brain that it's like nothing nothing to see here every everything's normal

nothing nothing to be alerted right because what you're trying to do is prevent someone from being like alerted to your presence that is kind of the main thing so you can be within someone's sight lines but the way that you're dressed the way that you're moving the way that you hold yourself fails to get their attention their subconscious registers that you're there but it doesn't register consciously to them that you're there it's the the gray man stuff that we were talking about with chelsea which again there's a very frustrating chuddy dimension to it but the the original idea before it got taken over as an entire fashion aesthetic was if you're prepared if you're if you're going to make yourself prepared for bad

situations you don't want to wear a bunch of tactical gear you don't want to be dressed in like five combat pants you don't want to be carrying like military backpacks and like the cargo pants with the you know clearly bulging with weapon. You don't want to be open carrying a gun. You want to be dressed however is going to least set you apart from the crowd. And that is, as you said, going to vary. It's not a matter of like wearing all gray or wearing all black. If you're in fucking downtown Salt Lake City, you know, a black hoodie and jeans might stand out more than it does if you're in like downtown san francisco in which case you're going to look like a million other people i mean and generally if you're trying to avoid being seen i recommend against wearing black basically at all times

um especially if you're trying to remain like actually invisible at night you don't want to wear black because black is usually too dark um you you want to wear like darker blues or darker greens um yeah generally black is should be avoided um of course like black block is a whole separate thing because black block are trying to remain anonymous within a crowd context but you know in a lot of cases you don't want to be in black block at protests or you want to be able to switch from black block to what we call like normie block very quickly so like you know quick changes are another kind of form of stealth um that you can like practice like you can you can just practice doing quick changes like in your apartment like how fast can i get from this outfit to this outfit um in like a small space right you can you can practice these even like outside uh but specifically for like black block changing both in and out of is a skill

that needs to be practiced um but overall i think like there's a lot of other ways of being anonymous at a protest besides actually black block like there's a lot of other kind of methods like black box a very specific tactic but it's not a tactic that needs to get applied all the time it's it's very it's you should be mindful that it has a lot of downsides um and based on what you're trying to do there's a lot of other ways to dress that would maybe be better um yeah yeah it's this um yeah it's a little bit like angles of it are kind of what we talked about even in like the last week when we were talking about like storing you know food and canning food and like the value of paying attention to the cycle of like what is in stock and what is not stock in stock during

what seasons it's kind of the same thing at the value of paying attention to how people dress and how people move and like what is a normal way to move about in wherever you live as opposed to like what stands out like it there's a lot of value and a lot of self-defense value and just kind of paying attention to people wherever you live and getting an eye for what will stand out and what won't stand out if you're if you if you are someone for whom being able to blend in is something you see value in you know yeah um rick do you have anything that's kind of on that side of things or any like exercises people can like do to improve their own personal stealth yeah um it's very very situational you have to sort of study many

different environments. The biggest advice that I give people for stealth all the time is pay attention. You have to pay attention to the smallest details. When I'm even just moving around my house, like the bathroom door lock, when you twist twist the lock the button pops out and makes a huge noise i actually place my thumb over it and deaden the sound as i'm doing it and i pay attention to the kind of noise that i make in every situation and try to minimize that as much as possible i pay attention to which parts of my house make noise when you step on them and avoid those places. I basically just pay attention to every noise that my body makes, that my environment makes as I'm moving through it. Also, you have to pay attention and study other people in different environments. You can go to a grocery

store and watch the body language of the moms who are shopping with their kids so that the people that normally you wouldn't pay attention to, pay attention to them because they're doing a good job of blending in if you're not normally paying attention to them and then try to start mimicking their body language. What I'll do when I go out is I don't directly look at anyone, but I'm paying attention to if I'm being paid attention to give myself that own, that a conscious feedback and say, Hey, I wasn't all that stealthy this time.

I kind of stuck out. Yeah. Practicing your peripheral vision is definitely useful for that. I mean, in terms of like exercises, yeah, just going to like parks or other places where there's a lot of people and like people watching and trying to figure out who does your eyes glaze over the most and what are they doing to cause that? I think one thing that me and Rick have talked about before is like every part of your body points somewhere. Whether that be your eyes, your nose, your chin, your arms,

your hips, your chest, your hands, all of these things point in a direction. And if you can figure out which direction you can point them to make people pay less attention to you, that's kind of one of the easier models of understanding how to walk and move in a stealthy manner that I think,

out of all the different ways of thinking about it, I think that's the way that's helped me the most. It's being like, you know, if my head is pointed up, and my nose is pointed out, and I'm moving my arms around a lot, that's, people are gonna like, look at me more. If eye contact is made,

that is like a failure. So, you know, if your head's pointed down, your arms are more slouched, they kind of move with your body, but that's not super exaggerated and it's not super stiff. These are different kind of ways of pointing your body to make you seem more like, um, introspective, um, and less external. Also walking around with, um, earplugs or like, uh, like, like, uh, earbuds, earphones. Those are ways people will pay attention.

Looking at your smart device. Looking at your smartphone. Yeah. One of the, back when we, back when I took classes with you and taught classes we would we would have like a weekly a weekly games class um where we'd have different you know games and related to parkour and you know stealth would always kind of be something i would try to do and you could survive so long in stealth games by just like looking like pretending that you're looking at your phone like not even actually doing it just like walking in like a circle around like

walking in a circle around the arena as people are trying to like tag and stuff and if you can just like walk with your head down kind of slowly you can survive a ridiculously long time because people are looking for people that are like running around and being like and being super energetic and if you're not people aren't detecting you as much. Another thing to practice would be quiet walking, which we kind of mentioned before. It's like learning how to move your foot and interact with different

surfaces that makes your walking basically silent, which is very fun because you can use this to scare your friends. It's very exciting to try to figure out what's ways I can hide in my friend's house to jump scare them. Or how close can I get behind someone without them noticing? There'd be times I can just walk up behind someone and wait, I kid you not, 10 minutes before they noticed I was there.

It's hilarious. I feel even better when I can do that to their pets. Because generally the animals are paying more attention to everything. So if you can successfully sneak up on someone's cat, you're doing it right. Yeah. Oh man. I do really enjoy stealth and I'll be happy to practice it more regularly once the

plague is over. If it's over. Any other kind of stealth notes that you would want to bring up if someone's trying to get into stealth or start, start thinking about detection, you know, more often in their everyday life.

It's very important that you engage in indirect observations. Yeah. I was like this app. You, you were talking about how everything points. And one of the things that we subconsciously notice the most is people's eyes were kind of programmed to notice eyes. So if you're looking directly at someone, they're probably going to notice that you've noticed them.

But if you're using your peripheral vision, or if instead of watching them, you're watching a reflection of them, or if you're watching their shadow, or you're not even looking in their direction, and instead you're tracking them by sound, it makes it so that you have a big one-up on everyone around you. Yeah. Indirect observation is one of the best tools that you can use. If you get really clever at it, now this is harder,

because if you do this wrong, people will pay more attention to you. But you can get good at it to start using your phone camera, or even just your phone screen, because your black phone screen is pretty reflective in nature. So you can use this as a mirror. But yeah, using phone cameras and phone screens as a reflective surface or or just as like a camera uh can be used in indirect observation but you you do have to be careful because if if if it looks like you're filming somebody they're going to pay so much

more attention to you so you have to be very careful with this method but it is possible this is how i kind of this is how i um this is how i've like documented different like um nazis at rallies if I don't want to be like super obvious that I'm taking a picture of them there's ways of doing indirect observation with my phone that I can like get pictures of them from certain angles to be like okay so now I can now I can put you I can add you to my to my folder of Nazis that have showed up um that method you have to be super careful if you're surrounded by potentially hostile people. Yes.

Anyone who's behind you is going to see that your phone camera is on. So it's something that you only want to use if people are on one side of you. Or, you know, you use your body as a shield for certain angles. Yeah, you can be tricky with hoodie and uh increase your odds of success with that but but but most often i would recommend against this method especially if you're just starting out because it is it is a lot more risky um but when it does work it can come in very handy uh but but more often than not using using like reflections like windows mirrors you know like car windows puddles on the ground shadows, all of these different methods of observing someone without looking directly at them are generally much safer.

And they can be very useful for trying to track someone or just be aware of what they're looking at without looking directly at them. Kind of more similar to what I talked about in like the fictional opening we did for stealth is very dependent on what you know is trying to watch you right like how you need to be aware of the ways people are trying to detect

you of course if you're being tracked by a canine unit it's very different than just being yeah than being like chased down on foot. Or security cameras, of course, online tracking, which we're not really getting into today, but being aware of where security cameras are mapped out can be very useful. Learning to figure out where they are without looking directly at them can be useful. A lot of cities have websites that map out where all the cameras

are. I know there's one for Portland that can map out all of the cameras in downtown. And then you can plan a route through downtown that has no cameras watching. There's only very few routes that actually have that, but they do exist.

So learning to move in ways that make cameras less able to spot you um those that's definitely another kind of method of learning about stealth and learning about like how surveillance works never looking directly at the camera but that's that's that's definitely useful which paying attention to where they are yeah which plays into which plays into indirect observation um but i mean this gets more tricky we know when police are using like thermal drones uh this is it's a whole whole other side of things that it's very hard to i mean in the infosec side of thing is hard to combat and

it's yeah yeah there will be a point in time in which it becomes effectively impossible to monitor for cameras yeah there's like there's there's like a hierarchy of worry because yeah if because if like the NSA wants to find you they will but most often they're not like most often people are dealing with their local law enforcement unit most often people are not dealing with the FBI most people people usually aren't dealing with the FBI CIA or NSA if if they want to find you, they will. But if you can learn to only interact with your surroundings in a way that would only concern your local police department,

that's much easier to combat against. Because it's way easier to hide from your local department than it is from the NSA. Alright. Anything else? I think that pretty much covers everything yeah I think that's a good

that's a soad that's a cast that we have potted alright we got any pluggables here to plug at the end before we roll out what me yeah no please don't find me leave me alone don't find

him this is the most visible you've ever been yeah so is there any I don't find me. Leave me alone. Don't find him. This is the most visible you've ever been. Is there any fundraiser charity for someone else that you want to highlight? Not currently. No, you do try to be a virtual ninja. All right. Well, i'll plug something uh one of our fans is putting together a graphic novel about the famed anarchist uh militant of the spanish civil war buena ventura de ruti so if you just go to type de ruti into kickstarter you'll find the the graphic novel kickstarter

um check it out it's cool yeah and i guess other things I'll close with is learn to walk quietly, learn to observe your surroundings, keep these things in mind. Practice with other people if you can. Practice with other people. Don't do this alone. It's really useful to have stealth be a collaborative process because stealth by itself isn't just about you. It's about you and your whole environment.

Yeah, collaborate with the cvs clerk when you rob the cvs uh stealthily that is that is a different podcast i'm working on is is is that how to shop the shoplifting cast i mean i'll yeah that is something i i will pitch very soon um we anyway had trouble getting sponsors for the shoplifting podcast. I will tell you that. It is difficult. If you could actually get CVS to sponsor that. Big shoplifting. I mean, we are giving them a lot of free advertising if it does happen.

Yeah. Anyway. Most people who shoplift also spend. That's true. One of the best ways to shoplift is to buy other things in the store. I'm already giving out advice um yeah that that is how i always shoplifted back when i shoplifted yeah back when i did that 20 years ago that's when that's how i did it as well i feel like if sophie were here she'd be trying to backpedal right now and stop you guys no sophie supports

shoplifting this is a very pro-shoplifting podcast. Anyway, that's the podcast. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening. You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow. Join me, Danny Trails, and step into the flames of right. An anthology podcast of modern day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lord of latin america listen to nocturnal on the iheart radio app apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast hi i'm ed zitron host of the better offline podcast and we're kicking off our second season digging into tech's elite and how they've turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires.

From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech brought to you by an industry veteran with nothing to lose. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from. Welcome to Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get real and dive straight into todo lo actual y viral. We're talking música, los premios, el chisme,

and all things trending in my cultura. I'm bringing you all the latest happening in our entertainment world and some fun and impactful interviews with your favorite Latin artists, comedians, actors, and influencers. Each week, we get deep and raw life stories, combos on the issues that matter to us, and it's all packed with gems, fun, straight up comedia, and that's a song that only nuestra gente can sprinkle. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, five-year-old Cuban boy Elian Gonzalez was found off the coast of Florida. And the question was, should the boy go back to his father in Cuba? Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home, and he wanted to take his son with him. Or stay with his relatives in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or stay with his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.