 Today we're gonna talk about Ben Affleck defending an interview. Greg, why don't you tell us about the video we're gonna watch? Yeah, so a couple of weeks ago, Ben Affleck went on a two-hour interview with Howard Stern. He talked about his breakup with his ex-wife and family, and he had some fallout from it, so here we go. Here he is, Ben Affleck! Dog! Yet another indignity, you know what I mean? I thought, at least I come this far. Thank you for being here. I know you're very busy promoting the Tender Bar. Yeah, it's cool, man. It's like, I love this movie. It's really about stuff that's really close to my heart. I mean, it's about how the heroic work of single moms and how important dads are and about how, like, whatever the kind of constellation of your family is and how flawed you are, sort of, you have to work through this stuff and be present in kids' lives and love them and give them a sense of self-worth so that they can sort of be good, happy, healthy people, you know, and it's been a lot of fun. And the soundtrack is really good, too. This is a good soundtrack, yes. You make it sound so serious, man. I love this movie, too. I didn't read any of that stuff. It is, well, yes. It is so close to my heart, and I had a chance to do an interview with a friend of yours, Howard Stern. I listen to you. It's a really cool, like, long form, in-depth, you know, it's a two-hour interview. And because the movie is about family and all this stuff that's meaningful to me, we talked a lot about my family and, you know, the divorce and alcoholism and struggling with real things and how you have to be accountable and loving and how I work with my ex-wife and how I'm so proud of the way that we work together for our kids is the best that we can for them. And, obviously, I was really happy with it. You know, I entered the interview. It was a great interview. I thought, wow, I should do more honest, exploratory, you know, self-evaluating things. And I started seeing all this stuff come up on Twitter and I was like, well, what is this? And I sort of researched through it and then saw that one of these websites had done the clickbait thing of like, you won't believe what he said. Click on this. Come to our site. Right. And I looked at it and they had literally taken the conversation that I had had for two hours and made it seem as if I was saying the exact opposite of what I said. I had gone on and said, like, how much we respect each other and cared about each other and cared about our kids and put them first and went through our stuff. And he said that I had blamed my ex-wife and my alcoholism and that I was trapped in this space. Just made me out to be like the worst, most insensitive, stupid, awful guy. And I, look, I know people do this. I get it. Me, I'm happy to be sad Batman. I'm happy to be the Dunkin' Donuts and the mean. I understand. You have to get married to Jimmy Kimmel sometime. Really, like, it's about my kids. I gotta just draw a line. Right, of course. You know, I'm really clear. Like, that's not true. I don't believe that. It's the exact opposite of who I am, what I believe. And I would never want my kids to think I would ever say a bad word about their mom because I can't- This really upset you. I mean, obvious. It hurts my feelings, man. Yeah, I noticed that. I saw that online. And it was crazy that they take this tiny little piece and then they end... Wait, are you saying the media sometimes takes things out of context? Occasionally, yeah. For an effect? It feels like it used to be like, you know, okay. You know, you slept with the prostitute. You had to go in the talk show and say like, well, you know, I'm being, you know, the famous... Is that what you're telling me? Wow, this is gonna be some clickbait tomorrow. I know. Yeah, and then you have to think... But now it's like you can have the most pleasant, honest, real conversation and be kind of on... And no matter what you say, someone can just say- They make you regret. The three words, put it up there. And I know we've all read the thing. You won't believe what they said. And you go on it and inevitably you're disappointed. Because you're like, oh, I thought I was gonna read something horrible and scandalous and negative. And this is just boring. But, and even being the subject of that is just sort of the cost of doing business a little bit as an actor. But like, not with my kids. Don't do that. It's wrong. It hurts me. And your family. Stop that. It's your culture. Chase, what do you got? Right here, when he's talking about the movie, every key point that he wants to loop into his talk about all the media issues, he's saying that's what the movie's about. I read the synopsis. It's not that much about that. And when he says the words, good, happy, healthy people. Good, happy, healthy people. I think that's a strong point right there. His eyes shift down and to his left, which suggests that a person is entering some internal dialogue. They're talking to themselves. He tosses his hands and notice the difference between him tossing his hands out and this kind of cradle gesture that he uses before that and you'll be able to spot it when he uses it. And they can sort of be this kind of person. So he starts to use the word sort of, which to his defense, the word sort of has become a filler word in somehow American English. It's just sort of become mainstream sort of. Then he goes into a full shoulder shrug and his face almost goes into a wince. So throughout this whole thing, there's a ton of regulators. He's stopping Jimmy from talking at every point almost. Kimmel starts talking, this huge open arm gesture comes out to make him stop. And there's a ton of other regulators he's using with his body to keep Kimmel from talking. I think it's interesting that he is very expressive with his hands and he's very articulate in expressing himself with his hands. And noting that he punches his hand, his fist into his hand exactly at the word loving. Right when he's saying the word loving, I think that's an interesting point there. But when he says the word ex-wife, that's the furthest his hand travels away from his body throughout the entire thing. And Kimmel starts talking again, you'll see a full stop gesture when our fingers extend all the way, you'll see that from him. And then when he's talking about the Twitter stuff, he's holding the phone, he's holding an imaginary phone, which tells us that he narrates stories really well and with precision with his hand movements. But when he says click bait, it's the same hand gesture as the ex-wife. When he says insensitive, stupid, awful, those three words, same exact hand gestures. So click bait ex-wife and insensitive, stupid, awful, he uses the exact same hand gesture. So we're looking at individual things here, not just some body language from an online article. So finally here, he's explaining, this article is the exact opposite of who he is and what he believes. And we see a blink rate, which is how often a person blinks. And his average for his media appearances is 21. His blink rate goes up to near a hundred. And I think it was 98. And a high blink rate suggests a high degree of stress and I think there is some stress here with him describing that. And secondly here, there's a pepper grinder gesture that he makes throughout this at a few different key points. And one of you guys might cover it, but if you spot what those points are and how they might be related, let us know in the comments and we do read them. So overall, he exerts a very powerful control over the conversation to ensure that his message is out there and he uses his body to stop Kimmel from talking almost the entire time. Scott, what do you got? All right, usually these things follow structure. When you're gonna be on a talk show, you walk out and you give the little wave after you hugged the host and then you go sit out and you adjust and get ready for it. So up to that point, everything's going smoothly. I think he's nervous, he looks a little bit nervous as anyone would be going on a talk show or most anyone would be going on a talk show. When he sits down, he does this big adjustment. Once he sits down, see a lot of adjusting in here. He completely skips the small talk. There's no, there's no, hey, what's been going on? What are you doing? None of that at all. He just gets right into the movie part of it, which is sort of uncomfortable because it seems so soon. But again, he's nervous because he's, you know, everybody thinks he said something horrible about his ex-wife and his kids are watching and all that and he's gotta straighten all that out. He uses these big illustrators, big gestures, but they're very close and they're really stiff. They don't, they don't move very smoothly at all at first. So, and you're right, Chase, when he starts talking about his wife, his hand starts to go, that's when you see it go the furthest. But the more he starts talking about his family, the wider his gestures get and they get a little bit more smooth or smoother. However, you would say grammatically correct. And when he gets mad or he's hiding that anger or that aggression, then you see him get tighter. His elbows get closer to his chest as he's talking about that. He's probably embarrassed, I'm sure, when he starts talking about the problems like with alcoholism, because when he says, and discussing my alcoholism, he doesn't whisper that much, but he does, he gets really, really quiet when he does that by some stickers. Then, then he gets to a point where he starts the whole thing again. It's that uncomfortable thing, everything's really small, then everything starts to get big again and his gestures get really large and much smoother than they were at the very first. When he talks about being in memes, like being the sad Batman and those kind of things, his illustrators get really big, but they get really smooth because that's funny and he understands that's funny. And with the structure of this, everything seems to be going fine. Now, when he gets to the part where he talks about, where Twitter is talking about how bad he is and whoever else is talking about how bad he is, this is when we see that anger being, him holding back that aggression and anger at that point, because that's when he starts that twisting thing Chase was talking about earlier. I can't remember what specific words he's talking about, but that's when he starts those things. And as he goes along, he slows down and with his illustrators, he hits every word for every point he wants to make. He makes a little snake thing and that little chopping movement right there. So that makes sure every point he wants to make gets made in that one section. That's the reason he's here is for this section. Jimmy Kilder did a great job because dealing with someone who's so uncomfortable as he is during this and it's got to be just the worst at that point. He does such a good job of making him laugh and making the audience feel okay about what's happening because it's obvious this guy's really nervous as anyone would be in this situation. So I think he did a good job getting all of his points across and I think he tried to follow the structure. He got it, but he was so focused on what he wanted to say. He couldn't be, you know, hey, I'm here and talking to you all because he rarely looks at the audience except when he gets down to his point and he starts to chop and stuff. That's when it's the first time he really connects with the audience. And he doesn't look at Jimmy Kimmel that often. He doesn't connect with him, doesn't lock eyes with him very often at all. Again, that's from nerves. Doesn't mean whether he said these things they're saying or not or whether he did or didn't but it just shows he's being really nervous. He's really uptight about what's going on at this point. Okay, Greg, what do you got? Yeah, I think any of us who go into this situation where we're defending something we've said we're gonna have some apprehension as we go in and we're seeing some of that in his body language. I'll also say he clearly has in his mind what he is going to deliver at which time. And if you pay attention to that you'll see telegraphing at times what's coming. He starts off by talking and chase him with you 100%. When he starts off talking about good and happy and love and healthy and mom and dad those words are stressed. You have to work through this stuff and be present in kids' lives and love them and give them a sense of self. So that they can sort of be good, happy, healthy people. And he has a specific normal speech pattern he's following. The things that he cares about he speaks more loudly and he emphasizes those syllables a little more. And we see that as a setup. I think as a setup to what's coming next we has to talk about that. When he starts down the path my favorite regulator and you hit some really good ones my favorite regulator in the entire thing is when he takes his hand and he places it on the desk to stop the conversation so he can transition to what he came to talk about. And that regulator is really powerful. When he's talking up until then his hands are in front of his face. He does, when he's something negative his hand does move off to the side but most of the time his hands are in his field of vision which I associate with someone being mostly honest. People who are doing their hands out over here or over there to get out of the picture I usually think something's up here but he's illustrating his thoughts. That structured transition he came to deliver when he puts his hand on that desk. He does kind of an awkward barrier and he leans back when he does it as well. His forehead goes up like a request for approval when he says a friend of yours and he's talking about Howard Stern of course. And then we see it again as he starts talking we see regulators again as he starts to touch the desk talking about it was a long good conversation he's talking about a lot of things that mattered. He shows some emotion and concern and some concern in his brow when he's talking about the relationship and how it ended. What I think this is is the work we did to try to make things happen. When he talks about getting through the situation with her and working on making the relationship work then when he gets to one or other hard place he twists his hands. I think that's work. I think it's his brain working. His messaging still congruent. My favorite two things in the entire video and I could have just stopped here is request for approval that's not true. That's not true. His brow is up, that's not true. And he immediately transitions and goes to the exact opposite with his brow down that's not who I am telling. I think that tells me what his intent was when his words came out of his mouth was not what people have perceived it to be. That's what I see in his messaging. His elbows are open away from his body and he even reaches over for some water which we usually associate with being stressed. I'll leave it at that and say, oh, the last one Chase is I love your body narration thing. He's doing Twitter, moving his hand on the phone, all of that, it's a beautiful thing. So that's what I got. Mark, what do you got? Yeah, so lots happening here because he does gesture a lot. He does really perform and illustrate and draw pictures of what he's talking about. But he's an easy one to baseline because he's been on a whole bunch of other chat shows including Kimmel a bunch of times. So I went back, took a look at some of those. He would tend to normally walk on way prouder, way taller, big smile on his face, lot of confidence. Whereas here, he kind of ambles on a little bit, downcast eyes, lots of shoulder shrugs as he kind of ambles along, kind of moving from this shoulder area rather than his center of gravity kind of cutting through the air. So a lot less powerful than he'd normally be. An eyebrow raised to the audience as he sees them that look of, you recognize me, it's me. So a look of approval, maybe there as well. It seems like he's coming on with maybe a little bit of shame, a little bit of an apology, maybe a bit of sorrow. As Kimmel says later on, maybe an element of regret that he comes on with. So unusual for him. And Chase, I think he has that New York chin boss movement. I can't remember, what is it you call that? Or it was called by some... The researchers call it a shared grief expression. Lovely, lovely, a shared grief expression. I think he has that as he comes on as well. Anyway, so he sits down and not so many illustrators right from the start, but he gets to close to my heart and that's the point when he talks about, as everybody said, moms, dads, families, that he starts to get more gregarious. You see him, this idea of holding up his children when he talks about sense of self-worth. So that thing of he as the father is there to support that sense of self-work. He gives a hit there in a place that we maybe wouldn't want to expect it. There is this twisting gesture that we see as well. It's interesting in watches, the more complicated the watch gets, you call it a complication within the mechanism. And so it is this kind of thing of twists and cogs moving because I think that what he's talking about is how complex, how complicated, how frustrating maybe dealing with this situation of families and mothers and is for him. Interesting that when he talks about the exact opposite, he doesn't do the exact opposite. There's this, the positive and the negative. He flattens out the gesture. He goes the exact opposite. So he does what I would say is a flattening or negation gesture around that. So his opposition to this I think is a negation. He wants it negated what was said. Oh, actually, before that talks about that he was proud of what he said or he was proud of the interview and he goes down and he touches his ankle. Interesting and exposed joint a long way from his body and he goes to his kind of almost self-soothe or protect down there at the ankle. I agree with what everybody's saying there. Worst insensitive, stupid guy and he puts that person over at arm's length. Same place where he's put his ex-wife as well. Same place as where he's put Twitter. So he really wants to say, those bad ideas are at arm's length to me. Quite an emphatic denial, linguistically. A lot of aggression comes up from his well. When you're seeing a lot of kind of lower teeth from him uses the water as a barrier and calms himself. So I think the aggression is growing with him. We see some pointing gestures there. So real aggression. I love his cost of doing business gesture as well. It's a little brush away gesture. So he brushes away. Look, I don't mind the odd Twitter thing. That's the cost of doing business. But then stop that. He goes back to that negate chop gesture. In this case, stop that. We see bottom teeth in anger. Closed eyes as well that you tend to get when you're getting targeted and somebody's going into some kind of violent action. The eyes will close and targeting. Stop that. That's not the right thing to do. Quite aggressive there at the end. So, ambles on at the start. Very regretful, I think, but then gets quite aggressive at the end towards the social media or the media agency that in his mind has created this short form version of what he said, which is the opposite of what he believes he said. There, that's what I got for you on that one. Here he is, Ben Affleck. Yes. By Snoop Dogg. Yet another indignity. He's saying, I thought at least I come this far. Thank you for being here. I know you're very busy promoting the tender bar. Yeah, it's cool, man. It's like, I love this movie. It's really about stuff that's, really close to my heart, it's about how the heroic work of single moms and how important dads are and about how like, whatever the kind of constellation of your family is and how flawed you are, sort of you have to work through this stuff and be present in kids' lives and love them and give them a sense of self-worth so that they can sort of be good, happy, healthy people, you know, and it's been a lot of fun. And the soundtrack is really good too. This is a good soundtrack. You make it sound so serious, man. I love this movie too. I didn't read any of that stuff. It is, it is, it is, it is so close to my heart. I had a chance to do an interview with a friend of yours, Howard Stern. I listen to you. This is a really cool, like long form, in depth, you know, it's a two hour interview and because the movie is about family and all this stuff that's meaningful to me, we talked a lot about my family and you know, divorce and alcoholism and struggling with real things and how you have to be accountable and loving and how I work with my ex-wife and how I'm so proud of the way that we work together for our kids is the best that we can for them and obviously, I was really happy with it. You know, I ended the interview. It was a great interview. I thought, wow, I should do more honest exploratory, you know, self-evaluating things. And I started seeing all this stuff come up on Twitter and I was like, well, what is this? And I sort of researched through it and then saw that one of these websites had done the clickbait thing of like, you won't believe what he said. Click on this, come to our site. Right. And I looked at it and they had literally taken the conversation that I had had for two hours and made it seem as if I was saying the exact opposite of what I said. I had gone on and said, like, how much we respect each other and cared about each other and cared about our kids and put them first and went through our stuff. And he said that I had blamed my ex-wife and my alcoholism and that I was trapped in this marriage. Like, just made me out to be like the worst, most insensitive, stupid, awful guy. And I, look, I know people do this. I get it. Me, I'm happy to be sad Batman. I'm happy to be the Dunkin' Donuts and the mean. I understand. You have to get married to Jimmy Kimmel sometime. Really, like, it's about my kids. I gotta just draw a line. Right, of course. You know, I'm really clear. Like, that's not true. I don't believe that. It's the exact opposite of who I am, what I believe. And I would never want my kids to think I would ever say a bad word about their mom because I would never say that. This really upset you. I mean, obvious. It hurts like hell, right? Yeah. Did you guys see that part where his head goes back and his arms come up and it's when he's transitioning from one thing to something else and he gets all squishy? It's almost uncomfortable. Well, for sure, it's very different from what you see him normally do in these kind of interviews. So different. Yeah. Well, I love the one shins out. I left it out too, because when you talk about showing teeth, there's a profound shins out of frustration or anger there. You can't. He's talking about his kids or something there at that point. Yes. Yeah, he's saying, leave my kids alone. That's not who I am. Yeah, his shins out pretty hard. Yeah. Yeah, I think the most uncertainty that I saw here when we saw a big spike in uncertainty is when he was communicating about how he's raising his kids. That's the highest level of uncertainty there. Where we saw the most shoulder shrugs, the up talk, the request for approval with the eyebrows going up. All of the uncertainty, not all it, most of the uncertainty was probably right there. And I think he had a crystal clear message and he wanted to pull people along into that story. So he starts talking about clickbait and how we can all relate to that. You one of those clickbait things. So he did pretty well in pulling people into the story. Yeah, I mean, that's a tough. My guess is some of his uncertainty there will be about mentioning his kids again, because that's that's the issue. If you go and mention your kids, it's very hard for the media not to mention your kids. You know, you just did it, Chase. I just did it. Well, why? Because he mentioned them. I didn't bring them up. He decided to talk about them. And so, unfortunately, they become part of the media fodder that that's out there. All right, well, let's roll around the room one time and sort of give a wrap up if we do 30 seconds or less and let's see what happens. Mark, you go for a go from Mark to Chase to Greg. Mark, what do you got? Yes, the biggest thing for me is just how different this is from his usual interview usually comes on powerful, confident, big smile, you know, one of those people that you want to be around. And now we've got somebody who is sorrowful, regretful and even touching his ankle as as a barrier gesture of feeling unconfident. So very, very different from his usual showbiz self. Chase, what are your thoughts? Yeah, I think he had a message. He wanted to push forward. He came out and I think he was so determined to do it that he just kind of bulldozed through Kimmel. We could see that with all the body language, the gestures, the behaviors and everything communicates that there was a very sharp message that he wanted to put out there. But I think overall, mostly honest, all the behaviors since we're kind of a lie detection team, this is mostly honest. Greg, what do you got? Yeah, I think when a guy goes out and he's promoting a movie, he's going to make great eye contact. When he has good things to talk about, he's going to make great eye contact. He's going to try to romance the audience, if you will. When you're apologizing or defending something, you've said exactly the opposite. You're going to feel shame or whatever it is. Even if he did not intend for people to perceive it that way, he's now got to do damage control and he's running around doing this now. I think we see that, we see stress in him, but we see honesty mostly. I agree with you guys. All the body language in front of him is about positive things and negative is over here. That's the way we all talk. So I see mostly honest here and I think he's trying to do the right thing and there will be fallout for him and he realizes it. Scott, what do you got? All right, yeah, I agree with all that. And if you set this thing up like if it was in song form because these things are structured, we cut the song in half and didn't worry about the bridge or anything. He comes out with his intro, that's when he comes out and says hi and all that. It's a little bit nervous. Then we sit down like Chase was saying, just bowls right through and it starts talking about the movie. So that's sort of like your verse part there. And they go through and batter out a couple of the things about the soundtrack and some other stuff. And then on the course comes up, he gets in there and digs real hard on the points he wants to make. The reason he's there, really hardcore. And then so the end would be where he brings that to a crescendo and it cuts off with everybody clapping at the end. So I think it was structurally, it was all there, but it was all just kind of squished down into a very short amount of time from him being so nervous. But then again, I think Jimmy Kimmel handled it very well because that's got to be tough to deal with that with somebody who's, they're not trying to take over but they don't know what to do at that point. So his molding that and kind of keeping him in the right lane, that's got to be tough to do. All right, well that's another good one fellas and I'll see you next time. Oh, subscribe. Yeah, be sure and I forget every time. Be sure and subscribe.