Interview with David Skyman and Richard House, August 13, 2026 - Part 2

I think it kind of connects into the first thing that I wanted to mention, connecting with neuro-linguistic programming, which is my background.

Because in NLP, there's a number of language models.

There's the Milton model, which is based on Milton Erickson.

I know you've done some research on this, David, so it probably won't be news to you.

But for our listeners, Milton Erickson was an excellent hypnotherapist, and a lot of hypnotherapy comes from his work, from modeling him.

And it's all what's called artfully vague language, and it's the artfully vague language that we hear in all the propaganda and the word salads from the government You know, stay safe, keep a distance, all that kind of nonsense.

And then there's another model, which is called the metamodel, which is intended to kind of break that down.

So I think what I think I noticed about your work, David, is that's what you do.

you take the generalizations and you break them down and you look at facts and say, okay, who did this? When did they do it? Who did they do it with? Who are they connected to? When did they do it? How did they do it? And you go into that huge detail.

And I think if only the population... could understand the metamodel, they'd be able to get into all these generalizations that come every time the government wants to pull one of those generalizations, be able to ask those questions and get behind it and do a little bit of research.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

I mean, the public needs to understand kind of how sophisticated the messaging was.

I mean, sometimes it comes across as quite crude, but actually the thinking behind it is very deliberate and very calculated.

So if you take that slogan, what was it? Stay home, protect the NHS, save lives.

Very simple.

But what you have there is a tripartite slogan, three parts.

And it's known in the advertising world that sending a message in three parts is a very effective way of getting it to stick in people's minds.

Because if you just have two, it's not enough.

If you have four, it starts to get complicated.

Three is enough to establish a pattern.

Three is enough to be remembered.

Yeah.

And it's also a series of positive commands.

So apparently if you use the negative, if you tell people not to do something, that doesn't register as powerfully as if you use a positive command.