From Trump to Nahir Galarza: the non-verbal language specialist who analyzes celebrities and criminals and fills rooms

Franco Pisso fills the halls once a year and he is not an actor. Neither of them is a psychologist. He is a lawyer, specialist in non-verbal communication who analyzes videos of politicians, celebrities and assassins on YouTube and is followed by a public very interested in his knowledge.

The 29-year-old lawyer, who was born and lives in Rosario, is a graduate and professor at the Argentine Catholic University of his city, and accredits on his YouTube profile a career with a master’s degree in public speaking, certification in non-verbal communication at Austral University, in government communication and also a BA in negotiation from the University of Michigan.

However, his first contact with the non-verbal communication, which accounts for nearly 93% of person-to-person interactions, was used as a child when he moved to Florianópolis, Brazil, and ended up at school without knowing Portuguese, with difficulty speaking and to understand. “In the beginning, my mother had to come to school with me. He couldn’t make me understand. They did something similar to bullying me at that time because I spoke badly, because I was Argentinian, because I had to go to school with my mother. Childhood was complicated until I learned to speak Portuguese. And nonverbal communication was ultimately what helped me understand and it started to cross me, I tell it with hindsight because I didn’t even know at that age what non-verbal communication was, or that it existed, ”explains the lawyer.

Pisso considers himself a detail-oriented person. They told him he was a boy, when in Brazil he was a Taewkondo champion. He moved back in with his family at the age of 12 and had to learn to write again.

When he finished high school, like many boys, he enrolled in law, because he was not very clear about his vocation. “In his fourth year he studied a subject, legal oratory, in career with a professor named Juan Pablo Pezzetta, journalist and lawyer, who is a colleague today, because I teach this subject. And this course blew me away. This is what I want to do for the rest of my life, I told myself. I love talking about communication”. Some time later he graduated as a lawyer, then as a university professor, he did a master’s degree in public speaking and from there he began to teach.

With the pandemic, since he wanted to continue teaching, it occurred to him to upload his content to YouTube. It was in a class outside of college when he realized he wanted to share everything he knew about public speaking and communication. A student named Natalie had told him that she had missed class because her sister had decided to kill herself. “When she tells me that, the first thing that comes to mind is what could I have taught this girl to make her understand that her sister, who told her she was happy, was actually sad. Or I told her that everything was going to be okay and that actually there was a lot of encapsulated anger. And I remembered that in the mastery I had included material from Paul Ekman, the producer of Lie to mefrom the first season and who could teach this subject”, he says.

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The series is based on studies by Dr. Ekman, a leading scientist who pioneered the study of the links between emotional states and facial expressions. “It’s worth saying the series which is a whole Hollywood series, that there are things that aren’t true and are for show.’ Recalling Paul Ekman, Rosario’s attorney dug into his books.’When I bring this to YouTube channel, the thing is flying in the air and people started liking it more and more“, Explain.

According to Franco Pisso, communication is divided into three areas, non-verbal communication, which occupies 55%, paraverbal (shades of voice, volumes, inflections, tones), 38% and 7% is verbal language, speech. Hence the importance of non-verbal communication.

With his videos and training, Franco’s goal is to facilitate communication, not only to communicate, but also to understand the other. “To make it easier for you, to this little Franco who lived through it,” he said. “I never shape my videos with the aim of hang the one who lies. These are generally made by those looking for a good CTR, that is to say a good click on the videos”, he assures, opposing this type of practice.

What does non-verbal communication say about this or that?, his audience began to ask. Almost always, the content you upload is in demand. He says he doesn’t usually choose. At the Faculty, he says he studied the gestures of Trump and Biden in the countryside with his students, at a time when the study of nonverbal communication was booming.

The speech therapist is the author of a book called snipers, Secrets to Persuading and Communicating Effectively, in which he offers “an innovative and transformative method for those who want to improve their communication and their results, based on rigorous scientific research”. He is also the author of trampling myths, a more motivating book, where he invites you to banish the ideas that prevent you from realizing your dreams. “We all believe at some point that speeches should be prepared until they are as perfect as possible and that is a mistake. It generates more anxiety than we have,” he says of his second book.

When it comes to analyzing gestures, he has a preference for politicians, celebrities, sportsmen. AND those he likes the least are psychopaths. On his YouTube channel, he dedicated videos to serial killers Charles Manson, Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmmer. He also analyzed an interview in prison with the murderer Nahir Galarza. “These are cases that make me very angry, because I see pleasure through non-verbal communication.and I mark it, in fact, when talking about their victims and their acts, ”says Franco Pisso, who proposes from something as transversal as communication to help others in one way or another. ‘another one.

By mastering this knowledge, some people feel pressure under their gaze. For example, at exam time, he says there are students who don’t look him in the eye. They are under pressure to know if they should lie about something. “The fact that I’m there is an extra pressure that they shouldn’t have, but they do,” he says.

Regarding his closest relationships, he assures that his mastery of non-verbal communication generally does not affect him. He says now his girlfriend already knows as much about these topics as he does.

In his daily practice, he says he uses his ability to read expressions, for example, when he travels by plane, which terrifies him. “As I’m dizzy, if I’m traveling by plane and I hear an unusual noise I press the button to call the hostess and ask her if everything is fine. And when she answers me, I apply these non-verbal communication techniques to find out if they are lying to me.because I really have a lot of shit for the plane,” he admits, laughing.

His audience, which goes to see him live once a year in a theater, is very heterogeneous. “There are 13, 14 year old boys who leave with their parents. 40-year-old traders come. 25-year-olds who are in college. Pensioners who want to understand their grandchildren”.

Just as he receives requests for analyses, he is also offered jobs which he refuses. “They send me videos to find out if the husband or the wife is lying. My advice comes from elsewhere. If you’re suspicious, if they’re lying to you, there’s something there that, who knows, is broken. It is not necessarily non-verbal communication that should clarify a doubt, but rather dialogue, precisely,” he concludes.

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