Shaping Opinion

Psychologist and author Kaleb Gorman joins Tim to talk about the way in which military psychological operations strategies have found their way into the mainstream. Kaleb is the author of an Amazon best-selling book called, “Psychwars: Self-Defence Against Psyops, Propaganda and Mind Control.”

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A few episodes back, we had a great conversation with a former CIA propaganda operative named Joe Goldberg. In the course of my research for that episode, I came across a book written by our guest today, Kaleb Gorman. It’s called Psychwars.

Here’s how Kaleb summarized the book. He says there has always been a psychological element to warfare, but in the 21st Century, the tactics used by military geniuses to control the behavior of their adversaries have now been coopted by governments, corporations, ideologies, and the general public in order to wage psychological warfare against you.

He says he wrote his book to help you recognize and defend against the mass and targeted psyops you encounter.

Now, let’s take a step back from that. If you’re a regular listener to this podcast, you know I’m a communications professional and have been so for several decades. At no point have I ever seen explicit or direct proof that psychological warfare is being used by governments, corporations or the general public on me, you or anyone else. Does this mean it’s not happening?

No.

I read Kaleb’s book, and what he’s saying is much more subtle, and possibly more pervasive than that. Once you learn about the strategies and tactics of psychological operations, it’s actually impossible not to see the proof that yes, the competition for your mind is far-reaching and intense. And those same tactics that were honed in the military and around the world many years ago have indeed become a part of our public life.

Kaleb approached this issue from the vantage point of a trained psychologist. He dug deep, and he breaks it all down in ways that will make you think twice the next time you click on a news story, read a social media post or watch that video online.

So, when I sat down with Kaleb for this episode, I started at the very beginning. I asked him, “What are psyops?”
Links

Psychwars: Self-Defence Against Psyops, Propaganda and Mind Control, by Kaleb Gorman (Amazon)
Psychological Warfare, RAND Corporation

About this Episode’s Guest Kaleb Gorman
Kaleb is a psychologist and writer from Canada. Somewhat of a contrarian. Trying to make sense of the overload of information, culture wars, and mass formations with which we are constantly bombarded. No ideological home but partial to liberal, humanist values. Skepticism > certainty.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.shapingopinion.com

Dr. David Weill joins Tim to talk about those life-saving transplant surgeries, the patients, the system for care and the challenges it faces, and what it’s like to be a doctor of second chances. Dr. Weill was the Director of the Center for Advanced Lung Disease, and the Lung Transplant Program at Stanford. Today he operates the Weill Consulting Group, where he focuses on improving the delivery of transplant care. This episode was first released December 13, 2021.

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The first time doctors were able to transplant a human organ happened in 1954. That’s when a kidney was transplanted successfully. In the decades to come, medical pioneers would master the medical art of transplanting livers, lungs, hearts, pancreases and other vital organs.

While these surgeries are never described as routine, they are no longer uncommon.

In the early years, individual hospitals and certain organizations managed everything from organ recovery, to transport, to transplantation. In between, they had to learn how to allocate valuable, life-saving organs for the most viable patients.

In some respects, not much has changed, and that’s a problem.

Dr. David Weill has spent his career in organ transplantation with a focus on lungs helping those with severe lung disease.

He ran the Lung Transplant Program at Stanford, and he wrote a book called “Exhale: Hope, Healing, and a Life in Transplant.”
Links

Weill Consulting Group (website)
Dr. David Weill, Tulane Medicine website
Supply Isn’t the Problem with Organ Transplants, Wall Street Journal
Exhale: Hope, Healing, and a Life in Transplant, by Dr. David Weill (Barnes & Noble)
Opinion: Of course unvaccinated people should be barred from receiving transplant organs, Washington Post

About this Episode’s Guest Dr. David Weill
Dr. David Weill has been in the forefront of developing and running some of the most successful lung transplant programs in the country. He served as Director of the Lung and Heart-Lung Transplant Program at Stanford University Medical Center from 2005-2016. He also developed the Stanford Center for Advanced Lung Disease which provides care for hundreds of patients with cystic fibrosis, interstitial fibrosis, pulmonary hypertension, and emphysema. During this period, he also directed a rebuilding effort of the lung transplant program, producing some of the best outcomes in the country, while increasing the transplant program volume more than three-fold.

In addition to his medical practice, Dr. Weill has testified before the U.S. Congress regarding occupational lung diseases. He has also published extensively in the medical literature regarding lung transplantation, occupational lung disease and advanced lung disease.

He and his wife Jackie recently moved to his hometown of New Orleans with their two daughters.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.shapingopinion.com

This is a Special Edition of the Shaping Opinion Podcast called “13Q: A Top 40 Radio Story.” In this extended episode (90 minutes), we take you back to when it was all about the music, when radio was everywhere. A time when it was all about the culture, but mostly it was about having fun. In this episode, we talk to the people who were behind the mic and in front of it, telling at least a part of the story of one generation. We do it by telling the story of the last big Top 40 radio station in the form of 13Q, Pittsburgh. It was around for only a short time, but its impact would be felt for decades.

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Cecil Heftel was born in Chicago on September 30th, 1924. He died at the ripe old age of 85 in 2010. later. He did many things in that time, but our focus here is on just one of those things.

Heftel is best remembered as a congressman from Hawaii, where he served from 1977 to 1986. But his story started long before that.

Heftel made a name for himself as an innovator in Top 30 radio when he bought a Denver station called KIMN. That station became #1 in its market and then he sold it in 1960 before moving to Hawaii.

13Q music survey 1974

In 1973, he got back in the radio game when he bought a Fort Lauderdale radio station on the FM dial – WHYI-FM and he re-named it Y-100. That same year, he bought an AM news/talk station in Pittsburgh called WJAS. That’s when things would change. Cecil Heftel was coming to Pittsburgh and winning was the only option.

On March 12th 1973, Heftel rocked the Pittsburgh radio world when he introduced Pittsburghers to something they had never heard before. A Top-40 rock station that didn’t go by call letters, but by a number and a letter. 13Q. And a kind of Top 40 sound…well…you just had to hear it.

This wasn’t your father’s Top 40 radio.  Starting in 1973 and for just a short eight years, 1320 on the AM dial would be WKTQ – 13Q – and would leave its mark on the region’s baby boom generation that was still in school or just coming of age.

Heftel owned and operated his stations from Honolulu, Hawaii. At 13Q, he said he couldn’t find the local people he wanted, so he turned to out-of-towners.  His initial line-up was:

Sam Holman, who used to work for cross-town rival KQV. Holman came back to Pittsburgh from Chicago to man the mic for morning drive.
Dennis Waters came to Pittsburgh from Washington, D.C., to handle mid-days.
Mark Driscoll was recruited from LA to handle the afternoon and evening drive.
Jackson Armstrong, brought his one-man wrecking ball of a show into the studio at 6 p.m.
And two guys came to Pittsburgh via Phoenix. Batt Johnson took to the mic from 10 p.m. – 2:00 a.m., and Dave Brooks held the fort overnight from 2-6 a.m.

The sound, the format, the call letters, the brand and the team were all the work of a radio legend who went by the name of Buzz Bennett. Cecil Heftel wanted a winner, so he hired a winner to put it all together.

Buzz Bennett was born for a life in radio. He was a Baltimore kid who at 13 years old, finagled his way onto Baltimore’s big TV dance show, The Buddy Deane Show. Before long, he was a dancer on the show and helping vet the show’s music.

13Q Radio studios in the Kossman Building in Downtown Pittsburgh, circa 1973.

He parlayed his success as a teenager to the point where he was a program director and a DJ at a radio station in Arkansas at the age of 16. The radio world took notice.

After such early success, he made stops back in Baltimore and then around the country, learning the ins and outs of radio from Top 40 pioneers and legendary programmers, until one day, he became a legend himself. He was an innovator in his own right.

Everywhere he went, his stations won, they won big, they dominated their markets.

13Q would take over the Pittsburgh Top 40 radio mark, knocking KQV Radio off of its perch.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.shapingopinion.com

In this special Columbus Day encore episode, Professor William J. Connell, who is an expert on Italian history, joins Tim to talk about the life of Christopher Columbus. Bill is an Andrew Carnegie Fellow and holder of the La Motta Endowed Chair in Italian History at Seton Hall University. He’s also the co-editor of the Routledge History of Italian Americans.  In this episode, we’ll learn about Christopher Columbus, and as cliché as it may sound, the man, the myth, the legend. This episode was initially published on July 20, 2020.

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Christopher Columbus was an explorer who made four trips across the Atlantic Ocean from Spain, but he was not Spanish. He was Italian. He made those trips in 1492, in 1493, again in 1498, and then in 1502.

The purpose of his maiden voyage was to find a direct over sea route from the western part of Europe to Asia. In that sense, he failed. But as with many explorers, inventors and discoverers, what they find in the course of their failures sometimes leaves a legacy that they themselves never could have imagined.

Christopher Columbus may not have actually been the first non-native person to step foot on what would become the Americas, but one thing is clear. It was Christopher Columbus who changed the course of history when he came upon the New World, already occupied by millions of people, but unknown to Western Civilization.

Dr. William Connell of Seton Hall University has spent a good deal of his career studying and teaching the complexities and the nuances of the Christopher Columbus story.  As a historian, he has kept the first rule of the study of history in mind. You can’t judge the past based on present-day perspectives.
Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus, the son of a wool merchant, was born in Genoa, Italy, in 1451.

When he was still a teenager, he took a job on a merchant ship. He remained at sea until 1476, when pirates attacked his ship as it sailed north along the Portuguese coast.

The boat sank, but the young Columbus floated to shore on a scrap of wood and made his way to Lisbon, where he eventually studied mathematics, astronomy, cartography and navigation.

He also began to hatch the plan that would make him famous.
The Attraction of a New Trading Route
During the 15th and 16th (1400s and 1500s) centuries, Europeans led expeditions overseas in the hope that explorers would find riches and new lands. The Portuguese were the earliest participants in this age.

Around 1420, small Portuguese ships went along the African coast, carrying spices, gold, slaves and other goods from Asia and Africa to Europe.

Other European nations, including Spain, wanted to share in the exotic riches of the “Far East.”

In the 15th century (1400s), Spain expelled Jews and Muslims from the kingdom after centuries of war. Set its sights elsewhere.
Trade Routes
At the end of the 15th century, you couldn’t reach Asia from Europe by land.  The route was long and arduous, hostile armies. Portuguese explorers used the sea: They sailed south along the West African coast and around the Cape of Good Hope.

Columbus had his own ideas: Sail out across the Atlantic to the West in the opposite direction.

Instead of around the massive African continent. His point was that the circumference of the Earth was much smaller than his contemporaries believed it was.

He thought the journey by boat from Europe to Asia should be not only possible, but comparatively easy via an as-yet undiscovered passage.

He pitched his ideas to leaders in Portugal and England but no one took him up on his plan. In 1492 he found a likeminded resource -Spanish royalty Ferdinand and Isabella.

Columbus’s contract with the Spanish rulers promised that he could keep 10 percent of whatever riches he found, along with a noble title and the governorship of any lands he should encounter.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.shapingopinion.com

Catholic priest and exorcist Fr. Vincent Lampert joins Tim to talk about his work as an exorcist, and we separate myth and fiction from reality. In 2005, Fr. Lampert was assigned to serve as an exorcist from his base in the Archdiocese of Indianapolis. At the time, there were only 12 priests in America who were exorcists. Now, there are over 100. 

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You may not need anyone to explain to you what an exorcist is supposed to do. If you’ve watched certain movies or documentaries or read articles and books on the topic, it is pretty self-evident. Exorcists work to drive demons out of people. Not figurative demons but real ones.

Now, the very idea of what I just said will put people into two camps. Those who believe demons are real, and those who believe demons are the stuff of Hollywood and fiction. Campfire stories. Tall tales.

As with other episodes we’ve done on sensitive topics, nothing we say here is designed to change how you feel about the subject at hand. But we will seek a greater understanding of the issue from someone who is on the front lines.

Indianapolis Archbishop Daniel Buechlein appointed Fr. Lampert to his ministry as an exorcist 18 years ago. To fulfill his responsibilities, he trained at the North American College in Rome and assisted with more than 40 exorcisms with longtime Italian exorcist Father Carmine De Filippi.

While Fr. Lampert is based in Indiana, he travels around the globe, waging war against the devil himself.
Links

Fr. Lampert Bio (parish website)
Exorcism: The Battle Between Satan and his Demons, by Fr. Vincent Lampert (Amazon)
The World of the Occult, by Fr. Vincent Lampert (St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology)
For Halloween, We Spoke with a Real-life Exorcist, The Georgetowner

About this Episode’s Guest Fr. Vincent Lampert
Fr. Vincent P. Lampert is the Pastor of St. Michael and St. Peter Parishes in Brookville, Indiana. In 2005 he was appointed the Exorcist for the Archdiocese of Indianapolis. He received his training in Rome and is a member of the International Association of Exorcists. He is the author of Exorcism: The Battle Against Satan and His Demons.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.shapingopinion.com

Former CIA propaganda operative, author and college professor Joe Goldberg joins Tim to talk about his time in the CIA, and then a wide-ranging discussion on propaganda, the media, social media and ultimately about trust. Joe writes best-selling novels that are often based on his experiences in the CIA. But today, we’ll focus on real life.

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Joe Goldberg has been with the CIA in a variety of capacities. He’s been a corporate intelligence director. And he’s been an international political consultant. In that capacity, he has consulted on numerous international presidential, prime minister and legislative elections.  At the moment, he’s a college professor and an author.

As an author, in 2014, Joe published the novel Secret Wars: An Espionage Story. In 2021, he published an Amazon best-seller called The Spy Devils.

While Joe’s interests and activities are many and diverse, they all trace back to the time he decided to join up with the CIA.
Links

Joe Goldberg's Website
The Social Dilemma (documentary) Website
Who Was Walter Cronkite?, University of Oregon

About this Episode’s Guest Joe Goldberg
Joe Goldberg has been a CIA covert action officer, corporate intelligence director, international political consultant, and currently is a college instructor and writer.

His work at the CIA garnered three Exceptional Performance Awards. In the private sector, as leader of Corporate Intelligence at Motorola, Joe received the Meritorious Award recognizing a single individual who has made significant contributions to the intelligence profession. He had consulted on numerous international presidential, prime minister, and legislative elections.

Joe Goldberg is the award-winning and Amazon best-selling author of Secret Wars: An Espionage Story and The Spy Devils thriller series. Devil’s Own Day, the third book in the series, will be published on November 14, 2023. He has been a CIA covert action officer, corporate intelligence director, and an international political campaign consultant. He is currently a college instructor and writer. A native of Iowa, he loves cooking, the Iowa Hawkeyes, and his family. He resides in a suburb of Chicago, most likely listening to Jimmy Buffett music.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.shapingopinion.com

Author Rick Porrello joins Tim to talk about his book that tells of story of the notorious and now legendary Danny Greene, who tried to take down the mafia in Cleveland in life, and may have done it in death. Rick was the chief of a suburban Cleveland police department, and over the years he has written a number of best-selling books about murder, the mafia and organized crime. The book we’re going to talk about today was even turned into a major Hollywood motion picture. That book is, “To Kill the Irishman.”

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When most people think of the mafia, organized crime, gangsters, they have a few eras and places in mind. First, it may be the Prohibition Era from 1920 to 1933, where gangs made millions off of bootleg whiskey and alcohol, illegally, of course.

And they left in their wake a trail of death and blood in the streets of Chicago, New York and other cities. Mobsters like Al Capone and John Dillinger became larger than life celebrities for a time. And they became legends through newspaper and media coverage, books and film.

When you think of the mafia, you may have in your mind the world of Don Corleone and his family at the center of the Godfather films, or all those Martin Scorsese movies about the underworld.

Any number of books and documentaries documented the realities, the myths and the stories of La Cosa Nostra – the mafia – and organized crime figures.

Hardly ever, however, do you hear about how some of these stories center on places like Pittsburgh, Detroit, Buffalo or Cleveland. But at its peak, it was everywhere there was money to be made, and these were some of the cities helping them make it.

And yet, in the end, it may have been one story out of Cleveland that changed everything.

Our guest today has an interesting perspective on all of this. He was in law enforcement for decades. He also had a unique family history.
Links

Rick Porrello's Website
The Rise and Fall of the Cleveland Mafia, by Rick Porrello (Amazon)
To Kill the Irishman, by Rick Porrello (Amazon)
Rick Porrello on Facebook

Dedication
This episode is dedicated to Ray Stevenson, who played Danny Greene in the "Kill the Irishman" motion picture. Ray died suddenly and unexpectedly earlier in 2023.
About this Episode’s Guest Rick Porrello
Author, drummer, and former police chief Rick Porrello has a knack for writing books that attract interest from filmmakers. Hollywood snapped up To Kill the Irishman—the War that Crippled the Mafia before it was even published, and turned it into the movie Kill the Irishman, starring Ray Stevenson, Vincent D’Onofrio, Christopher Walken, and Val Kilmer. A motion picture based on Superthief — A Master Burglar, the Mafia, and the Biggest Bank Burglary in U.S. History is in development. Both books have also generated documentaries.

Rick’s first career was as a jazz drummer. At the age of 18, he got his first big break when he started touring internationally with Sammy Davis, Jr. Despite a skyrocketing music career, Rick decided to trade his sticks for a badge, which had been his dream since childhood. What followed was a 33-year career as a police officer in Greater Cleveland, with the last ten of those years as chief of police.

As an organized crime historian, Rick Porrello’s perspective is an intriguing one. He began writing his first book during family research into the murders of his grandfather and three uncles, all of whom, he learned, were mob leaders killed in Prohibition-era violence. The Rise and Fall of the Cleveland Mafia quickly became a regional favorite and has endured as a backlist title.

When he isn’t hammering out his next book, co-authoring a screenplay, serving as a consulting or executive producer, or drumming with a number of bands, Porrello gives presentations on his books and on his writing and publishing journey.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.shapingopinion.com

Journalist Megan Greenwell joins Tim to talk about her comprehensive reporting for Wired Magazine on the 1973 St. Louis Military Records Fire where in two days, the nation lost the only roughly 18 million records of U.S. military personnel from the first half of the 20th Century. Back when paper was the primary way we kept records, the archives contained the data on millions of military personnel from U.S. military personnel going back to 1912.  Megan talks about the fire, the people still working to preserve those documents, restore them and extract information from them, and through it all, her personal connection to this story.

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Not long after World War II, in 1951, the Department of Defense decided to create the National Personnel Records Center to store personnel records for the military. The DOD joined with the St. Louis Federal Records Center and the General Services Administration to build a facility to house those records in St. Louis.

The military records represented those who served in the American military or in federal civil service, starting in 1912. The National Archives and Records Administration would oversee the data.

The DOD had similar facilities for the Navy and other records in New York, and in Alexandria, Virginia, respectively.  Here’s the thing. In one of those facilities, they installed sprinkler systems for fire suppression. In the other, they did not install sprinkler systems for fear that if the sprinkler system went off due to a malfunction or false alarm, records could be damaged or destroyed.

In the new facility in St. Louis, the DOD decided to go with a design that excluded sprinkler systems, and heat and smoke detectors.

Each floor of the facility featured large open spaces for records storage without firewalls or other measures to contain a fire.

The St. Louis records storage facility sat on 70 acres, and had six floors. It was built of concrete, and sat under a roof that was supported by concrete columns. Walls were of aluminum and glass.

The building was completed in 1956 by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. When it opened, the building contained roughly 38 million military personnel records.

Technology didn’t change much over the next 17 years, at least in how the DOD stored personnel records. Paper.

So, fast forward to 1973. Starting on July 12th, 1973, a fire would erupt at the building and last for four days. By 1973, the building housed over 52 million records. 52 million individual pieces of American history. And as mentioned, almost 18 million of those records were lost.

And that’s where our story begins. Megan Greenwell is a journalist who likes a challenge. So, she decided to dig into the story as any old-time journalist would. Lots of shoe leather.
Links

Megan Greenwell (Website)
Megan Greenwell (Wired Page)
The Night 17 Million Precious Military Records Went Up in Smoke, Wired
The 1973 Fire, National Personnel Records Center, The National Archives

If you have a question about your own or a family member's records or want to explore the process of requesting military records, this is the U.S. Veterans Administration starting point:

Reconstruct Military Records Destroyed In NPRC Fire | Veterans Affairs (va.gov)

About this Episode’s Guest Megan Greenwell
Megan Greenwell a freelance editor and writer with extensive experience in all areas of print and digital media. Currently freelancing, she divides her time between writing, editing, consulting, and teaching. She is particularly passionate about narrative features, exploring new revenue models for journalism, leading teams working across platforms, collaborations between text-based and visual storytellers, and diversifying newsrooms. She also writes features about public policy, sports, and other topics. She is considered a leader within the media industry on recruiting and hiring a dive...

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.shapingopinion.com

Dr. Mark Pickering joins Tim to talk about the disturbing spread of  and interest in human euthanasia throughout western cultures, particularly in Canada, the U.S., and the U.K. Mark is a general practitioner of family medicine. He focuses his work on prisons and other similarly secure facilities. In addition, he is the head of the Christian Medical Fellowship in the United Kingdom. In this conversation, we talk about the myths and the realities of assisted suicide.

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In 1997, the state of Oregon passed the Death with Dignity Act, which allowed the medically assisted suicide for people who were terminally ill. Since that time, over 3,280 people received prescriptions for legal doses of medications under the act’s provisions. The state reports that of those who received prescriptions, 2,159 people actually took the medications and died from the lethal dosages.

Since 1942, the nation of Switzerland has allowed assisted suicide. But according to the government, it only allows this form of euthanasia so long as, “the motives are not selfish.”

Closer to home, in Canada in 2016, the Canadian government legalized medical assistance in dying. The acronym for this is MAID.

The Canadian Supreme Court had decided that existing laws that prohibited assisted suicide were an afront to individual rights.

Here’s how the MAID program started. Medical professionals - doctors and nurses - would administer lethal injections or fatal medications to patients who met a specific criteria.

The individual had to have a serious illness or disability; the individual had to be in what the government described as an “advanced state” of decline that could not be reversed; the individual had to be experiencing unbearable physical or mental suffering; or the individual had to be at the point where natural death had become “reasonably foreseeable.”

Notice that nowhere in Canada’s original requirements did the individual have to be terminally ill.

But that was just the beginning.  Before long, anyone who wanted help with suicide was able to get it. Canadians who were depressed, stressed, or just economically poor or in a state of mental distress could get help with their own suicide.

In 2021, the government relaxed the condition that that natural death must be “reasonably foreseeable.”

After that, the stories of Canadians being presented with suicide as a medical option included some who were just temporarily homeless or in some kind of pain that otherwise could be treated.

Consider the story of Alan Nichols. When he was a child, he lost his hearing. He had had a stroke. But overall, at 61 years old, he was able to live on his own.

Then in 2019 he was admitted to the hospital over concerns that he might be at risk of committing suicide. He was mentally unstable. Not in his right mind. While he was in the hospital, he pleaded with his brother Gary to get him out of the Canadian hospital.

Over the course of the next four weeks, he then was reported to have applied for medically assisted suicide under the MAID program. The only medical condition he listed as his reason for wanting to die was being hard of hearing.

Instead of treating Nichols’ obvious mental instability, the hospital supported his desire to kill himself and provided its own justification. It said Nichols had some vision loss, that he was frail, that he had a history of seizures and in their words, he had a “failure to thrive,” whatever that means.

The hospital framed the process as Nichols requesting to die by lethal injection, and it saw that rationale as valid. The procedure was carried out expeditiously.

When the Associated Press talked to Nichols’ brother Gary, he said that his brother Alan, “was basically put to death.”

Inmates on death row are forced to wait much longer.

Mark Pickering is on the front lines of this issue.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.shapingopinion.com

Author, professor and crisis communicator Helio Fred Garcia joins Tim to talk about ethics and crisis communications. Fred has had a long career at the highest levels advising organizations of all sizes on crisis communications and crisis management matters. In this conversation, we Fred tells his story, and he talks candidly about the kinds of ethical issues and dilemmas those of us in the crisis communications field face every day.

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Before we meet our guest today, it may be worth setting the stage by giving you a little background on what exactly we mean when we talk about crisis communications or crisis management.

Sometimes, people think a crisis is when something goes wrong at work, or when an organization’s social media page gets bombarded with negative feedback. To be sure, these can certainly be indicators of a crisis, but they are not crises in themselves. In other words, a bad day for a company or an organization does not a crisis make.

At the same time, no company or organization is immune from crises. A crisis is when something happens, could happen or may happen where the very operations of the organization are threatened.  Here are some examples:

A bankruptcy filing;
A labor strike;
A train derailment;
A chemical spill;
A boycott of a famous brand;
Sexual harassment allegations;
Major litigation – you get sued;
Or, a viral social media post that totally disrupts the organization.

These are just some examples.  For the past 35 years, I’ve been one of those in the public relations fields who handles such crises.  In that time, I’ve handled hundreds of crises for clients. I’ve seen it done right, and I’ve seen crises handled horribly.

Over the years, I’ve become aware of others in the crisis communications field who’ve built strong reputations for themselves in the process. Helio Fred Garcia is one of those people. When we sat down for this interview, I wanted to know his whole story, and he told me. But my first question could best be described as “inside baseball” from one crisis communicator to another. I wanted to know what Fred saw as the more common myths surrounding crisis communications and crisis management.
Links

Logos Consulting (Website)
The Essential Crisis Communications Plan: A Crisis Management Process that Fits Your Culture, by Tim O'Brien (Amazon)

About this Episode’s Guest Helio Fred Garcia
For more than 40 years Helio Fred Garcia has helped leaders build trust, inspire loyalty, and lead effectively. He is a coach, counselor, teacher, writer, and speaker whose clients include some of the largest and best-known companies and organizations in the world.

He is the author, most recently, of Words on Fire: The Power of Incendiary Language and How to Confront It, published by Radius Book Group in 2020. He is also the author The Agony of Decision: Mental Readiness and Leadership in a Crisis, Logos Institute for Crisis Management and Executive Leadership Press, 2017. Prior to this, Fred wrote The Power of Communication: Skills to Build Trust, Inspire Loyalty, and Lead Effectively, FT Press, 2012.

Fred is president of the crisis management firm Logos Consulting Group and executive director of the Logos Institute for Crisis Management & Executive Leadership. He is based in New York and has worked with clients in dozens of countries on six continents.

Fred has coached more than 400 CEOs of major corporations, plus thousands of other high-profile people in other complex fields, including doctors, scientists, lawyers, financial executives, military officers, and government officials. In the 1980s he worked at leading public relations firms and served as head of public relations for a global investment bank and for a large public accounting firm.  Through the 1990s Fred headed the crisis practice of a leading strategic communication consulting firm.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.shapingopinion.com