Transcript for:
CIA Training Insights and Influence Techniques

there's a rule of thumb that CIA teaches us you are either in control or you are under control there is no other option every day you have to choose whether to take control or whether not to take control and understand that if you choose not to take control you're giving control to someone else if you want to be persuasive first you need to understand that people don't care about your point of view but people care very much that other people understand their own opinions CIA taught me that there's a very simple process to rapidly build trust and influence in other people asking two questions and then making one validating statement you repeat the same cycle again the process subconsciously makes the other person think that you are like them and it makes them feel like they are interesting important and they are relevant they have a dopamine Rush that makes them feel good being around you the fundamental need for human beings that's so often goes missed is the need for connection feeling seen feeling heard and feeling present in a moment with another human being and it's a very very powerful concoction when you can artificially create that sense of connection for somebody else it's my breakdown she's going to break it down for you because you know she knows a thing or two and now she's going to break down a break down she's going to break it down hey I just found out something astounding approximately 63% of those of you listening to or watching myam beic breakdown are not subscribed we know you're listening and we know you're watching because of all of the awesome comments you leave telling us how mayx breakdown is helping you lead a happier and healthier life we love that but the best way to support our show is to subscribe it's also the only only way to get latest updates and to know when new episodes drop so anywhere that you listen to podcasts and on YouTube please subscribe hit the Bell icon so that you know when a new episode drops thank you so much and on to the episode hi I'm miambi alic and I'm Jonathan Cohen and Welcome to our breakdown this is the place where we break things down so you don't have to today we're getting secretive we're getting very secretive I'm going to put on my secretive uniform she's costuming up I'm I'm putting I'm Dawning my costume which is sunglasses and a baseball hat pulled low I can barely tell it's you you blend right in well today we're going to speak to former CIA intelligence officer Andre Deonte he and his wife were actually both undercover agents all over the world they ended up leaving the CIA and they have a website everydays spy.com and a podcast everyday Espionage podcast it it's an un believable story and you might think what does my life have to do with spying well have you ever wondered if you should be able to tell if someone's lying to you have you ever wondered if you're being influenced negatively or how you can persuade someone and have positive influence have you ever wondered if there are basic things about the government that will give you a better understanding of why your kids go to school what we eat and how our social structure is organized are there things about this past election that we can understand better in the framework of the kind of intelligence that our guest was trained to have what he explains is that the CIA collects research from leading universities on health optimization on mental optimization and they trained their operatives how to be the best versions of themselves so he has taken that wisdom and shares it with us he also breaks down uh the Arc of the US in on the world stage what's going to happen in the next I think he said between eight and 10 years what is life in the US going to be like and he gives us a description that I haven't heard anywhere else we're also going to talk about underlying forces that influence the decisions that we make in politics in voting and even in dating we're going to do a super fine exercise where I get to figure out if Jonathan is lying or not this is a really fun episode and Andrew Buon is a super awesome hilarious incredibly knowledgeable person he's also going to seduce maim and persuade her to like him even more than she already does let's welcome andon Bo Deonte to the breakdown break it down hello hello I'm wearing my spy uniform today for this interview it looks perfect this is the first time she's dressed up it's the first time I've decided to wear a costume as it were but I will put on my regular glasses um Andrew welcome to the breakdown it's really nice to talk to you absolutely I love that you called it a costume that is the actual professional Espionage term for it legit legit I'm not joking it's called a costume when you wear your spy clothing yeah whenever you try to go undercover in disguise what the TV shows call disguise the professionals call costume like are you wearing your costume or do you say spy costume that is an awesome question we are not witty enough to actually think through that process it's a it's a costume Department we Dawn the costume oh do you have your costume articles yeah that's that's the ter that's the inside lingo can you tell people a little bit specifically about what everyday spy is because I would like to think I'd be a great everyday spy but I took the test from the website I don't think it's really my strength tell us a little bit about sort of what you have expanded your life to include since leaving being a secret operative absolutely you know the most dangerous part about being a CIA officer a CIA spy isn't the mission it it isn't being undercover in a foreign country and that's what the movies make it out to be it's actually very easy to do that job because you've put a lot of planning and training and and practice and you've prepared yourself for the op the most dangerous part of a spy's life is everyday living and for that reason CIA puts a great deal of emphasis into training us to optimize every day to improve our sleep to improve our memory to improve our fitness to improve our relationships to think outside the box to challenge Norms to see our own cognitive biases our own cognitive limitations and then to program or rewire the way that we cognitively look at the world so it's much more dangerous for a spy to accidentally sign the receipt with their true name than it is for them to have to worry about being shot on a high-speed boat as they shoot through you know Venice so everyday spy is my way my mission of trying to share with the world how spy education and spy skills can be used to break barriers that hold you back every day barriers in your relationships barriers in your finances barriers at in your job in your career and overcome them using proven spy methodologies that were given to us when I went through CIA before we get to that I think M has a few questions just on the life of a spy that I don't think she can hold on to can you explain to people who Andrew Bustamante is that's a complicated question because who Andrew bamon thinks of himself to be is very different than what the world thinks of Andrew Buon so I will say that in a nutshell the internet will tell you that Andrew Buon is a former CIA intelligence officer the founder of a company called everydays spy.com and a a content creator for YouTube and for digital courses that reach around the world but if you ask my kids or my wife who Andrew Bustamante is he's a Super Geek he loves his family he really hates to do anything that makes his hair look nice and he would really feel much happier just eating ramen noodles and watching seral television shows there's there's a there's so many aspects to your life I mean your young life is very interesting can you though tell us how does someone become a CIA spy like what is the path it's a great question because there are many different paths but there's not an infinite number of paths there's really only three primary paths you are uh either recruited meaning somebody finds you and invites you in uh and that happens either through you know um college campuses recruiting you because you studied a certain science or you studied a certain language the military will recruit you in uh because they they find you in some military place and you have a specific skill or a specific utility that the CIA needs at any given time so you can be invited or recruited in then the second primary way is that you volunteer you apply online or you submit a job application at a job fair because CIA is at job fairs and then that application goes through a normal process of of uh being reviewed and being determined and then the Third Way is you actually try to do something that's adjacent to intelligence and then during that parallel process you're kind of directed or guided to go into the intelligence world and that third process was how I was pulled into CIA I was actually trying to go into the Peace Corp I was trying to travel the world and help innocent you know uh Starving Children and and teach micro Finance in in Africa that's what I was trying to do and that's just adjacent to stealing secrets and committing sabotage so I was pulled into this incredible Young Life which makes me a little bit nervous for when we started talking about my old life so when you were recruited had you had any desire to to do this or was it like completely out of the blue I actually thought of joining the Peace Corp uh when I was in college and I was a science student and they really needed scientists um so I actually learned a bit about it um at the time but um you know were there things about you that you felt oh I actually would be suited to keep secrets and kill people I don't know it's yes I love that I've never had this question posed before it's actually a really exciting question I I was one of those kids like younger than 13 is what I'm talking about kid I was one of those kids that like wanted to be everything astronaut police officer doctor CIA spy fireman all of it right and I thought that the sky was the limit I could do it all well then I went into the military and I was categorically disqualified from being an Air Force elligence officer and and it was because uh it was because the Air Force didn't need Intelligence Officers there was an attitude in 1999 that intelligence wasn't that important that it was much more important to have pilots and much more important to have you know people who flew airplanes or did uh navigation that was that was the predominant need until 911 and 9/11 happened when I was still in uniform and it kind of changed the attitude about uh intelligence so when CIA picks me me out of the the pool of what could have been a world healer with the Peace Corp when 2007 came along and I was recruited um I had never even considered being part of CIA I thought that if I couldn't do a military intelligence for sure I couldn't do CIA intelligence so I was more excited and giddy that like somebody was interested in me it was kind of like dating right I was like oh somebody thinks I'm cute and that's essentially what made me say yes to go the next step and the next step in the process so before we continue on this trajectory was it a good thing that the government wanted to date you they were an abusive partner but it did turn out well for me how long were you in the CIA in this capacity I served with the National Clandestine Service for seven years and then I left in 2014 and in 2014 I left service but I still had a commitment to remain uh legally uh adherent to what the CIA said my cover job was so it took another two years before I could actually be out and you and your wife were you were like a Mr and Mrs Smith my wife and I were both from CIA we were both in the National Clandestine Service that's correct it's not nearly as cool as the movies make it out to be you're lying it sounds really cool it had cool Parts it had cool Parts like sex nothing is sexy after you have your first child but everything before that was pretty [Music] cool my be Alex breakdown is supported by better help one of my favorite parts of the holidays is seeing people that I don't normally get to see and another is cooking which you know I love to do I also like to stay cozy especially during the month of December I like to really be in my robe as much as possible that's a high goal of mine uh which you have seen me doing on Instagram live just a few weeks ago uh for some wrapping up in a blanket with a mug hot cocoa or watching a movie with family is the best way to spend December therapy is a great way to bring yourself comfort that never goes away even when the season changes I find therapy is an incredibly comforting aspect of my life and something that when I don't have I don't feel comfortable that's the point it's comforting to be heard to have someone hold space for you if you're thinking of starting therapy give better help a try it's entirely online and designed to be 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know a lot of things and have an interest in that world or once you were recruited into that world did you then start acquiring all of this knowledge that you need to have to do that because like I like I lie like a dog like you can tell when I'm lying like I'm not good at Secrets it makes uncomfortable I find it you know morally challenging to keep secrets you know like I I don't are those skills that like I said you were already like oh I could be a a secret person or did you become that once you were recruited so it's it's a mix actually and you hit on a number of really important parts in your question so CIA people come to CIA from all different walks of life like I said some are recruited some volunteer somewhere on Parallel paths and then cross over but just because they're invited to come to CIA doesn't mean they qualify to stay at CIA it's like Men In Black sort of yes I mean I know it's I shouldn't be surprised that we keep coming back to TV and movie references all I got bro I know nothing about the CIA except what television and movies have taught me so if you recall during Men In Black they put him through some they put Will Smith through a series of tests to see how he would respond and one of the most famous tests is when like an alien pops out or a little girl pops out with a gun and he doesn't shoot the little girls like and he knew all the things so he he clocked all the things that like only he could catch correct now if you recall part of that was because the Will Smith character talked about his childhood and growing up and how he learned on the street you know how to see things differently that is very real for the real CIA CIA is looking for people who are just in enough messed up in the head that they can skip ahead in a lot of the training one of the terms that we use is called moral flexibility which is exactly why you have a hard time lying em sorry moral flexibility that just means you can lie it means a lot more than that it means if would you it means if you sat across from a person yeah you wouldn't want to hurt that person but if that person threatened to hurt someone in your family you would have no issue immediately hurting that person before they could hurt someone you you don't know what kind of bleeding heart liberal I am but okay and now you're learning what kind of literal like bleeding heart I am not and not only that but you also have to be able to sleep at night so you have to be able to lie to the face of a terrorist or a child prostitute pimp right you have to be able to lie to their face to get them into a situation where they might get hurt or captured or killed in pursuit of some larger cause to protect Americans and then you know you got them in that situation you go home you kiss your daughter on the forehead you eat a pork chop you go to sleep you wake up the next day and you do it again that's moral flexibility it's not just I'm G to lie on my tax return right it's I'm going to lie knowing that it's going to get somebody else hurt how do they test for that there's a very comp there's a multi-tiered psych olcal aptitude battery that we go through um and it's different types of psychological exams some of them are panel interviews some of them are one-on-one role plays where you have a an a PE people who sit behind an invisible wall who watch and assess there's of course an actual empirical rubric test that we take uh it's many many hours and interrupted throughout the day so it's a lot like your like standardized testing in elementary school and middle school amped up and then each of those tests happen with a Time space in between so there's a time delimiter you'll start on day one and then you'll come back and take the second part of the test on day you know 70 and then you'll come back and take the final part of the test on day 120 and you're constantly assessed uh through multiple different venues and multiple different people along the way when you think about people who lie you know there's a lot of talk on the interwebs about like I was dating a narcissist right and one of the things things that you know is a Hallmark of narcissism is often I don't know moral flexibility uh or you know um an ease with being dishonest and kind of perpetuating lies where where does that fall in terms I'm not saying those people need to be spies but I'm curious from from what you know about moral flexibility how does that apply to kind of normal everyday people who encounter people who lie to them it's a great it's a great point and you know it's hard to talk about it in generalities so I'm going to get a little bit a little bit geeky right narcissism is just one version of something that's called antisocial personality disorder and underneath the umbrella of antisocial personality disorder is narcissism and Socialism or um uh psychopathy and sociopathy right or sociopathy so you got these different categories that we use to describe people who are essentially just antisocial to a level that is considered to be a disorder well here's the truth of it we're all [ __ ] antisocial nobody likes people we like some people we like the people who like us and we like the people who think like us and like our music and like our food but nobody likes a stranger until the stranger proves that they have something in common with the person right it's it's against our very core survival Instinct we don't trust new people we don't like new people so what happens is some of us are kind of grown in our formative years in an environment where we learn to trust secrets and lies more than we learn to trust the people around us well now if you EXA like if you uh advance that life into their early 20s and early 30s some people are able to remain protective self-preservation without creating a disorder that puts them at the center of their world they still have loyalties and obligations and personal values a narcissist goes too far a narcissist has been damaged psychologically to the point where they truly believe they are the center of their universe and they cannot identify their own shortfalls whereas somebody who's uh somebody who just doesn't fit into society right a sociopath still has loyalties and values and they they they value their Church possibly they value their family they value their education they value something more than themselves but they still break the rules of society all of that psychological battery that CIA puts us through it's not to find the smartest person it's to find the few people who are already wired with just the right cocktail of [ __ ] up inness and loyalty obligation and yet still seeking validation from outside cuz once you find that person boom they will do anything for $25,000 bonus every year that that's very helpful my question is are all CIA operatives of this category similar in that sense like can you say oh this one might come from a you know white upper class family in Connecticut and this person might come from the streets of you know Echo Park or whatever but is this generally what the profile is and is that the best way to get the job done or is it the best way for the government to be able to control such people it's a great two-part question so the first I'll answer the first question first and then the second part second right um yes it is a profile that is predictable among CIA field officers now CIA has field officers analysts linguists logisticians it's got lots of different operators but when you're talking about a what we call a core collector a core collector is a person who goes out there and their job is to co collect information direct from Human sources a core collector who's has to be skilled at lying has to be skilled at manipulation has to be able to keep multiple lying and manipulating relationships in order simultaneously right that person absolutely fits the profile that we just laid out M right that they whether they grew up in a white privileged neighborhood or a an inner city African-American neighborhood it's not about their socioeconomic status it's about the psychological imprint that happened to them when they were young did they feel like Daddy loved them or was daddy always gone getting on a coke high because he ran a hedge fund or Daddy was never there because he was gang banging who knows right we don't know why daddy wasn't there but the kid certainly feels like he didn't earn dad's love and now he has to try extra hard to earn that external validation so that's the answer to your first question the second part is is that the best way I would say that we the government doesn't try to think about what the best way is they try to think about what is the most pragmatic way so when it comes to having to constantly Recruit new officers new operatives and bring them up to a basic level of SC of capability before you deploy them all over the world where some will get killed some will get captured some will be spectacular at their job right the government doesn't want to spend five years creating super soldiers but the government also doesn't want to spend three weeks putting somebody through basic police training right so they find this Natural Balance where in about nine months they can take a person off the street and train them to a basic capability for intelligence core collection but that 9-month window only happens if they pull from the profile that you and I just talked about if they went to a different profile it might take months or 18 months if they pulled from a more violent profile it might take 6 months or four months but they found this balance over time I've seen those movies too here's a question does the government know that you're telling people all of the things that you're telling us yes the government knows and they have a they have a mixed reaction to it sometimes I get pats on the back sometimes I get hate mail sometimes I get these reminders in my in my inbox that say just just a reminder from cia's friendly office of personnel that you have a lifetime secrecy agreement and you will be prosecuted under the full confines of the law if we find that you violate your secrecy agreement so that's why I don't tell secrets I just tell fact want some can we talk around Secrets I mean I'm comfortable with lying I'll just tell you something's a secret if you like oh for Pete's sake how am I supposed to talk to you at all you could be lying about everything but instead of facts what you Sher a lot is strategies and the techniques that were instilled and I'm actually surprised that they're even open to allowing you to share these training mechanisms the ways in which that you succeeded in your spy work because it does have number one it kind of pulls the veil back on how they're training operatives and what the skill set is and two it does have some huge implications to people who are not spies which maybe they don't want the to have those skills yeah it's a great Point Jonathan and and you know what happened to me it was my personal experience leaving CIA that put the dots together for me on this CIA doesn't create top secret training methods it doesn't create top secret um life Improvement hacks what it does is it goes out into leading research universities and it pulls cuttingedge research and then it it implements that research into its training rubric so the the ways that we're trained and the ways that we're taught and the tools and techniques that we get for for fighting anxiety for reducing stress for increasing our memory those are not top secret CIA methods those were things that came from Harvard or Princeton or or you know Cambridge and they came to us by way of our training program but they're not classified and because of the government bureaucracy I don't know what you're talking about what bureaucracy classification has a very specific definition and I'm able to skirt that definition so I I'm adhere to my secrecy agreement but I'm still able to pull back the veil like you said Jonathan and that's a very powerful Veil I have questions these are going to be silly questions but I'm gonna ask them anyway go for it did you have your hair like this when you were a CIA operative no this is my peace core hair I'm trying to it's my healing process M so you you had to just look like a a normal clean CLE cut human being it I had to look like the environment that I was trying to disappear into okay so you sometimes had to wear disguises that made you look like you were from different places correct so so I don't know if you can see my giant five head or my very ample nose and I always looked like somebody who wasn't important okay so um for people who aren't watching well this is a great episode to watch just I mean your hair is something to behold I can't imagine people are listening to this instead of watching it but um this would be a place where being sort of ethnically ambiguous or being able to blend into different like like I have a friend and you can't tell if she she could be Italian she could be Greek she could be Eastern European she could be Russian right like that would be an advantage because you could like blend in different places can you give us two very different examples of places you've had to blend in absolutely so a lot of my operations were actually in East Asia and the reason I was so effective in East Asia is because they are incredibly racist against anybody with brown skin in East Asia so if you have brown skin you're like less than Le you're less than the bottom of the social hierarchy so the last thing they would expect of a brown person wow is that they were smart trained or trying to steal Secrets they're too busy looking for all the tall 6ot tall like 6' five Captain America White America American looking people that's your spy James Bond right so I operated a lot in East Asia where nobody knew that I was anything important and I operated quite a lot in Latin America where I looked just like every other Brown guy in Latin America right even though I don't speak Spanish uh at well or I mean your name is Bustamante it's like a fantastic last name it is but it's an Italian Spanish Bustamante that I borrowed from my wife okay another silly question um did you have to have different um facial hair for disguises I did I did and usually it wasn't very well- groomed it was more like as nappy and homeless as you could make it look so one of the things that I'm still getting used to being on YouTube is actually trying to make myself look like I care about my face did you have to use prosthetic beards and things or it was just your natural beard you would grow it out so we we do use Prosthetics this is again I'm going to geek out with you for a second here em um the way that we use disguise we call it costume like we talked about but the way that we use disguise in the field there's three different levels um the most advanced level is also the most dangerous level because it's the least predictable level and that's when we use Prosthetics so I mean nobody thinks about this but if you don't use the right kind of adhesive in the cold it'll fall off in the heat it'll curl right if you don't use the right kind of matching skin um prosthetic it'll look fake you'll blow your cover right away exactly your nose will be like half falling off of your face so what we try to do as much as possible is is not change ourselves with prosthetics and then if we have to use Prosthetics then we use Prosthetics at Great distance from the people who are trying to observe us so for me they would rather dye my beard or shape my beard or even like let me grow a beard you know on vacation for 6 months and then bring it back and get it all nasty and dirty and then let me go out in the field that's easier than shaving me and trying to put me in straight a straight car a straight-haired beard have you ever had to be costumed as a woman no not not something I had to do operationally but I have 100% worn female costumes to see if I could push the skills my own skills in costume design and you could not no it's it's hard to pull off looking like a girl when you're this ugly hey think you're ugly no but I was curious cuz in some places you can cover your face as a woman like I've seen that in the movies who hasn't seen that in the movies or a cartoon it's true it's true and that's uh you know when you're talking about a full cover like a like when people wear a a burka or some sort of hijab when you're talking about that we that's that is a different level of Disguise we don't consider that Prosthetics right we consider that still level one disguise very basic disguise because it's just fabric I mean you anybody could do that correct well the eyes the eyes are the giveaway and if anybody's ever seen eyes are the window to the soul if any if anybody's ever seen a an Arab woman in full garb like she puts a great deal of effort into her eyes [Music] 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know what you're putting in your body especially when you're pregnant with rituals dedication to traceable science and sourcing you always will see for yourself with 25% off your first month for a limited time at ritual.com [Music] breakdown here's another question which is not as silly um and you don't have to answer but I'm going to ask have you killed people not intimately and guess we have different levels of killing I'm sure you're not surprised to hear that M we have intimate killing and we have non-intimate killing intimate killing is when you deliver the death blow with your hand non-intimate killing is when you participate in the demise of a Target the neutralizing of a Target by executing your portion of the job so the government sends you to kill people the government sends all of us in a way to kill people we just have different it's like an assembly line Nobody Does It All We just some people put on the bolt and some people put on the tire and I didn't mean to make this a personal attack on you I'm saying that like when we think about when I think about let's say the Army you know and I have great respect for people who you know who serve our country um and it is a method of our government sending often you know poor kids who they've promised a college education you know sending people to to do the the Dirty Work of a government that also isn't always transparent about why they're sending us places do you see your role as kind of an extension of that bureaucratic killing machine dishonesty yes absolutely and and no you don't have I I love this conversation right now because that is a very real um element that we have to come to terms with after our first or second field tour after you've been in the field for about two years you start to see through the smoke screen and you start to see what's really happening right and what's really happening is you were promised an opportunity and then you were brought in to this very bureaucratic organization where you signed a lot of promises that are legally binding and now all of the sudden you have to go you know fight for a cause that you don't believe in you have to go participate in a coverup that you know is not being disclosed to the American people because you've been told that to disclose it to the American people would also mean disclosing it to your adversaries so we're going to keep it secret from everybody right it's a very difficult world to live in but again we are psychologically predisposed to understanding that there are secrets that need to be kept and there are secrets that need to be shared so it's it's not an easy lifestyle that's why many people who have made it 15 20 years in the agency they come out psychologically flawed for the rest of their life they they can't recover right I mean you you would we now have a larger understanding of what happens to soldiers and I think that this is true even if you feel that it is a just cause you know I want to set aside the notion of like you know participating in Murder assassination what' you call it non-intimate killing you know that's going to do something seeing the destruction of War that's going to do something to you and it's going to change you and it causes trauma but I I think like kind of setting those things aside for the moment and kind of talking the way we're talking right now it's very interesting because you know what is the framework for your or anyone's personal comfort in being hired by a government to do things that you may not agree with where is that line and what's amazing is you you don't ever think of that when you are a good fit for the job you don't think about that line on day one you stumble into that line later on and then you realize oh [ __ ] like maybe I bid off more than I can chew and to cia's credit they're familiar with this buyer's remorse so there's there's a a very a very strong mental health component at CIA they've got staff psychologist they've got you know staff therapists they've got staff uh PT personal trainers and exercise scientists who are all there to help you develop healthy coping mechanisms to deal with what you do every day and when the time comes that you can no longer COPE in a healthy way they just take you off the line and then they put you in administrative jobs where you can't do any damage and then they treat you with you know whatever they can treat you with and whatever you choose to treat yourself with which is why we see such a high rate of drug use and alcoholism uh adultery divorce because lives just fall apart when when people stay in service that long are those Mental Health Providers not incentivized to keep you going and to sort of push the limits of your coping mechanisms that's exactly what they're incentivized to do and that's how they climb up their professional ladder by finding new treatments new combinations new practices that take a field officer from six years of field utility to 8 years of field utility they take them from one or two war zone tours to three or five war zone tours right if you can prolong the utility of an of a a field operator you've essentially increased the productivity of the entire Workforce and it's very it's very clinical very bureaucratic and very mechanical in that way and I don't want to comment on at all on the the role of this organization or the people in it but in a way you're putting someone into a pressure cooker that you know eventually they're going to crack and it's like how do I keep them there as long as possible functioning to do the job as well as I can knowing that I'm just waiting monitoring them to say this eventually is going to be too much they're going to not be capable of doing it anymore and I'm just waiting for that that's kind of that's an intense you just described a lot of people's relationship with God right that God sets us up like I know this is not going to go well on this planet right but let's just kind of like see what happens I mean this is sort of a microcosm if you can call it that it's a macrocosmic microcosm of kind of our existence meaning like I've seen that Twilight Zone episode right where it's like you're you wake up and no one else is there and it's just like you're in this planet of no Oneness it's like what am I doing here what's my purpose what am I supposed to do like guess what that's your lot in life I mean I don't mean to get all existential but it's kind of interesting well well it's also it's to a you're you're right Jonathan and I think what's important is going back to the macrocosmic microcosm that em just talked about what you see at CIA what you just laid out at CIA is exactly what happens in the military why are there VA benefits why is there a veteran status right why are we seeing constant support for homeless veterans and suicidal veterans Etc because the military has learned over hundreds of years and they learned it from the British before them right that you're putting people under a pressure cooker maximizing their utility hoping they don't die in combat before they have an Roi on their training costs and then at the same time you need a certain number of people to quit instead of retire because only the people who retire are going to get continuing benefits for the rest of their life it's Str one of the things that CIA taught me that I that I make a mantra right you know every day is that you know the United States runs like a business everything runs like a business it's a cost benefit analysis it's a return on investment versus diminishing returns that's how the world really really works and CIA doesn't work any different than that I want to get into the pulling back the curtain because through your time at CIA you've seen how the US operates how the world operates from your unique vantage point and I want to get into that um just wrapping up what we were talking about in terms of your fieldwork how much of fieldwork is neutralizing targets versus collecting information versus just hanging out not looking like yourself and seeing what happens and when you're hanging out not looking like yourself usually you're collecting information so it's it's about an I would say honestly it's like 98% collecting 2% neutralizing because once you neutralize a Target they're no longer a viable source of information so you need to string that Target along as long as possible maximize everything you can get from them and only when the calculation becomes that they are more of a risk than a return would you consider neutralizing them do you have to have sex with them you can have sex with them it's an option but there's a lot of paperwork involved and and is that the main deterrent is the paperwork that is the main deterrent to be honest that is the main deterrent just like dating me second to that in the United States we're really funny about sex sex in the United States often times means connection relationship obligation blah blah blah blah blah everywhere else in the world sex is just sex so if you go to bed with a Russian chances are they're going to be way more in a position of power over you than you are over them the next morning wait wait sorry just Russians oh no I mean it goes on it's Russians are just the the primary villain in all the movies right oh got it like like I'm thinking James Bond right like correct yeah but you could make a spy baby what do you do you don't want to get somebody pregnant you can't make a spy baby well they you know they have things now in modern times that can keep you from making a baby the first time nothing is 100% except abstinence that's what I tell my children let's talk a little bit I mean we could go down the the Spy sex route uh and I think that would take the entire podcast it's all I'm going to think about for the rest of the podcast while I listen to you guys I have that effect on women sometimes I'm not going to say also the difference between spies is fascinating but I don't think we have enough time with you to cover all of these topics um I would love to talk a bit about the United States you were very clear that you believe Trump was going to win we're recording this uh fairly soon after the election uh you were right I knew he was going to win too I'm not even a spy yeah but you didn't make any videos going on major podcast claiming I could have made all the videos I could have told everybody how this was going to shake down but go ahead you also said that there was only one person in the Democratic party that could have beaten Trump if people haven't heard that which I think you know much of our audience might not have can you just briefly explain who that person is and and why you think they could have beaten him Michelle Obama is the only Democrat in the country that had a chance of beating Donald Trump and I think that she knew that I am certain Barack knew that and the entire Democratic National Convention must have had a a sitdown fireside chat over bourbons and cigars recognizing that they only had one person who was a viable match for Donald Trump and it's because what we just saw in our election cycle is that it's not about policies it's not about about power it's not about you know democracy and freedoms it's a popularity contest tied in with political um credibility and Michelle Obama has incredible amounts of both political credibility and popularity just like Donald Trump has right and even though it's easy for us to criticize Donald Trump's political uh credibility he was a former president pres he has his name on hotels all over the world that in in the eyes of the average American that is a high level of credibility talk to us about the average American the average American is much more disappointing than any of us want to admit to and that's just the truth of it right the average American I mean whether you're everything you look at whether you're looking at salary or education level or whether you look at hours spent behind a screen versus hours spent reading a book on average when you talk about the bell curve right a true average the average American is not very well informed not very well educated not very physically fit not very health conscious not does not make a very good salary and does not spend a great deal of time engaging in personal enrichment activities so that is the that is the primary bell curve of America and just like we were talking about earlier M it's because that is a very good Cog in a large machine the out the extremes of the bell curve that's where you find the people who are the most vocal the people who are the most accomplished the people who are the least accomplished and also the most vocal right so what we really see day-to-day are the two outliers active on TV active on the internet active on YouTube active everywhere right the people producing are the outliers for the most part the the silent Center is the piece that everybody forgets is the real decision maker for the future of our country let's talk a little bit about the female aspect here though because many people um you know I live in Los Angeles so it's kind of like this with all due respect to my city the streets are littered with traumatized humans right now who like cannot even lift their heads up like it's like a it's like a Wast land here and what a lot of people are saying is the whole country prefers a rapist over a woman and I feel that's too broad of a brush to be using when we try and accurately assess the situation and also I do believe that certain regions of the country my region of the country included tend to be a bit dramatic meaning that's like a really like oh my God oh my it's catastrophic and it's you know all these things but if we're to take a more kind of measured View C can you explain because a lot of people would say I don't think a woman is going to cut it for most Americans I think they want Dad no matter what like dad's always done this job why would Mom plunge the toilet when dad always plunges the toilet and every time he plunges it like at some point we get to poop again right so talk a little bit about the the female aspect of it because I think so many people want to just be like people hate women yeah there's gender is a very real thing and the bias towards paternity in the United States is also a very real thing but race and racial Injustice is also a very real thing in the United States and so are racial biases and yet we still saw Barack Obama take the office for two consecutive terms and have a very successful presidency I mean I don't I think certain people never recovered from the fact that we had a man of color as our president like the birth like the birth like they're people went crazy they didn't give him a moment's rest literally because they were picking on him like he's a secret like Muslim operative like it was crazy like that's nuts remember we're talking about the bell curve what you're referencing right now is an outlier the person who can't sleep at night because there was a African-American or there was a black president that person exists but they're not the silent Center all right so we had a black president so that was good correct and I think honestly I think that the center I think the majority of Americans would welcome a female president I think they would be excited for a female president they just didn't want this one that's exactly it the problem is that the Democratic National Convention has put forth two females to to the ticket for president Hillary Clinton and K Harris right neither of them Frankly Speaking was a woman that the majority of Americans wanted to see be the first they didn't want that they want like think about what Barack Obama was Barack Obama was a man of color who worked his ass off to come from nothing to be the leader of the Free World that's what we want to see in a first a lot of the criticisms though that people did have of Hillary Clinton and a lot of the criticisms people have of kamla and honestly I think a lot of the criticisms people would have about Michelle is things that only women get criticized for and I'm not looking to like bring down the patriarchy so we can have a woman president but I also think like you have to understand the system that you're in and the fact is a woman is going to be judged differently and we have to figure out how you deliver a package that people are going to want Even if we think they shouldn't feel the things they do about a woman about her voice about her suit about her [ __ ] hair like I don't care but a lot of people do I I get you and I don't disagree with you I just what I think that the the measurable pieces of impact here are that when when you stand when you are a minority of any variety and I would include women is a minority if you're a minority of any variety and your platform promotes your minority you are immediately ostracizing everybody who is not part of your minority and men are very very sensitive to being left out they are well not only that but it creates a weird sort of hypocrisy it's it creates a weird sort of hypocrisy a party that says that gender shouldn't matter and then promotes Fe femininity right it it's difficult when you say that age shouldn't matter but then you highlight youth it's difficult when you say that wealth shouldn't matter but then you highlight you know poverty it's just it that it's not about you know um individual it's not about people and their beliefs or value systems it really is about the core way the brain processes information it creates a sense of cognitive dissonance that people don't know how to process and when people don't know how to process they take the easier way out Donald Trump is a very simple thing to process really oh he's a very simple thing to process most people don't like Donald Trump they just chose him because they didn't want the alternative right and they were uh and at some point most of our country is comfortable with all of the things that he says about all the people that he hates and all the people he wants to step on and the violence that he speaks of when he speaks of women I I appreciate your point of view being a person in La it's not about hold on one second oh whoa whoa whoa this isn't about a point of view I'm talking about the things that Donald Trump says that he stands for is what people are choosing it's not about a point of view I think if if you believe that people are choosing what Donald Trump stands for that is your point of view got it I think there are plenty have people out there who are choosing Donald Trump for all sorts of reasons other than what he stands for I agree I agree I I also I do want to just bring one thing you mentioned femininity that actually does not really have a place for me in this conversation maybe you meant femaleness you know that like you're presenting like oh men and women should be equal but like I'm a woman right like that's not necessarily femininity like femininity would imply like you know is like they they said that KLA was Donald's worst enemy because he couldn't pick on how ugly she was which was you know his favorite thing to do about Hillary Clinton no that's totally fair and and I did not know that femaleness is a word but I know that now well femininity implies something different but I think you meant I think you meant if you're going to act like oh we're all equal she should just be a a neutered a neutered female maybe we shouldn't use any pronouns but that's also is offensive to people Andrew the world is a complicated place from an international diplomacy standpoint Point currently active Wars you know there's almost two different roles for the president one internationally and one nationally you know what does it mean to have Trump on the international stage now and where are we in terms of the Arc of American dominance are you concerned that we're at the end of that Arc I wouldn't say that I'm I don't think we're at the end of the Ark I don't think the evidence suggests we're at the end I do think that it's not a smooth Arc there might be you know some fits and bursts some some Peaks and some valleys and we're somewhere in those Peaks and valleys right now um what I will say is that Donald Trump represents a very um what we consider to be a traditional dominant forceful bullish American idea he's not a diplomat he doesn't believe in Alli es he doesn't believe in uh you know equality he believes in superiority and within the government it's important to understand inside the government National Security Arena that is how everyone thinks American Primacy is the term that we use to define the imperative of the future of the United States so whether you're talking to the Army or whether you're talking to the CIA or whether you're talking to the FBI you will hear the term American Primacy it means America must be the prime the number one the only superpower not necessarily because we are the best ever but because if someone else Rises to our level it means that our national security interests will be threatened equality means that whoever was number one is no longer number one it means that there's less control it means that there's more risk it means that there's less opportunity not no opportunity just less opportunity and that is the way the National Security sector works so anybody who has who you know was raised in a family that believes that American Primacy is important anybody who was cultivated professionally or you educationally to believe that American Primacy is important they are going to lean towards that message much more than some of the other conflicting messages that we've seen from the Biden Administration or the Harris Administration especially when the truth Jonathan the truth of what we play out in the headlines is that we don't always tell the truth about why we make the decisions that we make policy-wise why we support Ukraine but don't support you know Israel why we why we label Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorists but Iran labels the US military as terrorists that one's pretty clear to me but I could just be speaking for myself there's all these different pieces that because of the Advent of technology and the spread of social media and the availability of information we're now seeing that people have more access to create that cognitive distance than ever before which countries benefited or had a vested interest in one candidate over the other becoming the US president you know this was a this was an amazing year for intelligence sharing and intelligence Communication in advance of the election 2016 was really the first time that Americans realized that there's election meddling there's always been election meddling it's just that 2016 was the first time that it became mainstream media and then in 2020 it became a topic again but from 16 to 24 you really got to see the intelligence Community what we call the IC create a strategy for how to collect and combat actively foreign meddling and foreign intervention sorry can you explain for for people who may not understand do you that other countries might try to change the number of votes so that a particular person will win no no no we're not talking about anything that has to do with the actual manipulation after the vote it's all about the influence campaigns in in the leadup to the vote got it yeah that's when the meddling happens so that people can send false information misinformation disinformation to sway that big chunk of middle voters because those middle voters might they might choose somebody based on a whim because they watched a movie or they might not know if Puerto Rico is referred to as trash and then they might say Puerto Rico's trash let's vote for that guy yeah you have no idea what the so that's what the for foreign governments are very good at meddling with disinformation and misinformation but the intelligence assessments were were really really clear and really consistent Russia wanted a trump Victory and it's because empirically it's because or at least what's known in open source it's because Trump has made it very clear he wants to end the war in Ukraine he wants to call a ceasefire and he wants to move on that's exactly what Vladimir Putin wants too because that's in in Putin's vernacular that is a victory it's what the ukrainians would want except not by being handed over to the Russians which is presumably what's going to happen I mean it depends on if you're talking about what the Ukrainian people want I don't think the American population has a very clear idea what the Ukrainian people want what zalinsky has made clear is he wants the full return of all original pre- Crimea Invasion Ukraine returned to Ukraine and that was the promise that he made that that definition of victory is a very difficult definition to achieve which is why anything less than that is a Putin Victory so Putin and Russia wanted a Donald Trump presidency because of that primary issue however Iran who is a close Ally of Russia did not want a trump Victory they wanted a Harris Victory because Iran is very very familiar with how to skirt the sanctions and get around the Diplomatic pressures and the economic sanctions when there's a Democratic president because Democratic uh policy is usually open to more abuse than Republican policy there's less saber rattling there's less violence there's less uh you know intense military action there's more soft power action and Iran hates Donald Trump because General because Donald Trump was the commander-in-chief when irgc General Solani was killed so they very much wanted a Harris Victory instead of a trump Victory so I wonder if you can talk a little about good guys versus bad guys um you know nothing is as as simple as that and you know many of us were raised um you know with an understanding for example that Russia is a country that does not have a free press Russia is country where I I happen to know many people who fled Russia and Ukraine they were not allowed to practice not even practice their religion they weren't allowed to have rights as as Jews for example and there was a huge campaign to evacuate you know the Jews of of Russia and the former you know USSR and um you know for many of us we were raised with this sort of notion of like Russia is that's I I mean if I had to say good guy or bad guy like a lot of people would say like that's a bad guy right or you know Kim Jong-un like North Korea like oh that's and I understand this is a lot more complicated and who's to say but you know for for some of us you know October 8th uh of last year brought about a real turnaround in you know individual groups that are terrorist organizations that were now being called Freedom Fighters and you know being celebrated in in many Fringe aspects of this country but what happened to good guy and bad guy and do you understand that for some people Trump making nice nice with a lot of people that many of us believe are bad guys feels problematic oh yeah it makes it's the the the notion of a dichotomy between good and bad is an oversimplification of life and what happens is when we're young and someone and our parents and our community are trying to teach us the basic survival mechanisms to move forward it's very easy to create dichotomies good bad uh Rich poor expensive cheap right hot cold it's very easy to teach a dichotomy but the thing is as you grow and mature you realize that the world we live in is much more nuanced than that so to your point M about Russia being a bad guy do you know why we won World War II because of Russia Russia was our closest Ally and Russia's strategy in World War II that defeated Nazism was the same strategy they used when they invaded Ukraine in 2022 so it's the same Russia in many ways even though it's gone from being the Soviet Union to being just Mother Russia so Russia used to be good now they're bad well I mean if you're a Jewish person Russia was never good like it got worse when Russia came in after Liberation the notion of good and bad the notion of Good and Evil it's transient people had different opinion about Germany and people had a different opinion about Spain and people had a different opinion about Argentina like our opinions about countries change and shift as they relate to this question of American priorities and American interests and that's why we have very famous Statesmen who have quoted right there are no permanent friends or enemies only permanent interests do you think that the world can exist without NATO without the alliances that currently exist I think one of the main concerns about Trump as a destabilizing force and putting America First and and you know creating much more of a nationalism is that you know the world orders that have existed since the second end of the second world war have created some stability yes there have been Wars of course but there hasn't been a next World War and you know people are concerned that the undercutting of these alliances could leave a lot of Chaos yeah and I think that I think that what's happening is we're seeing a blending of of two ideas and people don't realize there's two distinct ideas that are blending into one the idea that we need a new world order I would say that is an accurate idea the world order that was established after World War II for anybody who doesn't recognize it that world order was defined by American Primacy NATO was built in large parts so that the United States could remain in in control of Europe right the United States rebuilt Germany rebuilt France rebuilt the United Kingdom on the back of loans and weapons and the and the proliferation of technology that was American Technology NATO understands that right you've seen Germany and Spain and France take more of an independent streak in the last eight years because they realize they're kind of under the thumb of the United States and that is the Old World Order what we need for a more democratic world is we need more powerful Democratic alliances the actual current NATO alliance is not Democratic it's very dictatorial based on American power and American Primacy Donald Trump in one in one case Donald Trump is saying we need to separate ourselves from NATO that's kind of accurate it's just that he doesn't understand that separating ourselves from NATO by making us less free than Europe is not a good idea are you hopeful or concerned about the next even four six years not even to make it about Trump but about you know the changes that you see happening on the world stage I'm pessimistic about the next 10 to 12 years because I I categorize this as saying the United States don't forget that we're less than 300 years old we're going into middle school right now we're coming into puberty whereas Russia China I mean ethnic group groups that run their own countries are thousands of years old we're only a few hundred years old we haven't figured this whole thing out yet we don't realize that you know the pants that fit us really well Back in 1970 don't fit us so well in 2024 we've gained a lot of weight so I'm pessimistic because it's going to be uncomfortable it's uncomfortable to learn I mean I I make all the boy jokes about Middle School it's uncomfortable to learn that you can't wear sweatpants anymore and you can't wear silk boxers anymore and you know it's uncomfortable to deal with zits and acne and body odor and that stuff's uncomfortable you got to figure out how to live with those realities before you can evolve to the next level the United States has a has a decade or so of discomfort before we learn how to move forward and and evolve in a positive way what do you think that looks like for the middle of the bell curve that we talked about Everyday People Americans living life what does that discomfort look like practically yeah yeah yeah I think the good news is that to the everyday person to the average bell curve person it's small changes it's more expensive beef it's more expensive milk it's um more products that are coming in from countries that you don't know about and less imports from countries that you not that you like it's more expensive plastic because we're not going to take it from China anymore it's more mandatory recycling right it's it's things like that that the average person is going to work through they're going to feel the pain but they're going to feel it in small amounts it's really the bigger corporations the bigger American governments um entrepreneurs who are making you know seven figures that's where they're going to feel the biggest shifts because some years they're going to get taxed at 38% and some years they're going to get taxed at 24% and they're never going to know what taxes is going to look like they're never going to know when their investment on waterfront property in you know Fort Lauderdale is going to be good or bad they're never going to know when the legal system changes right and the Supreme Court justice has changed it's going to be big changes for the for a small amount of people and small changes for the rest of us how about the people who want to get abortions I mean I think that's what a lot of people worry about you know like the things that the Supreme Court actually does get to rule on I that I for sure agree that the people having the Supreme Court determine what rights we do and don't have that's a difficult thing because one person can change right that entire policy and we will continue to see especially as we I don't think the the end of partisan politics is anywhere nearby so we're going to continue to see this jockeying not just of Supreme Court Justices but of all the people who are politically appointed the head of CIA is a political appointee the head of FBI is a political appointee and that's not before we start talking about Health and Human Services IRS you know the education department etc etc we're going to continue to see these mations and feel the discomfort as we figure out how to create a consistent Improvement strategy rather than the constant chaos of adolescence do you think there should be a third party like I've heard people talking about this kind of left and right but like is this a thing I would love for there to be more than two parties the bamal system that we have is not effective it's definitely not effective for where we're trying to go in the future we can't you can't have coalitions like you have in Europe you can't have independent candidates because they don't meet the bureaucratic requirements to even be promoted right and then like if you even if you look at how our system currently works now it's not the American voter who gets to choose the candidates that get to move forward it's some it's some group of people that we don't even vote on so there has to be a change to that process if we want to believe that we will have leadership in the future that truly represents the people right now what we have is a popularity contest between two candidates that we may or may not have really chosen in the first place well and in a country that's extremely large has way too many people to even have us like it's like we're not in 8th grade and we're choosing a class president that's kind of what it feels like you know you're right you're right it's like we're choosing our class president before we even realize right this is like literally the president of this entire nation and I don't know I'm thinking of other Democratic countries in the world that have this many people like it's not a thing yeah it's true it's it's a it's a weird it's a weird place where the United States has found itself and that's a part of our strength but it's also a part of our vulnerability and it's what our enemies try to exploit is our own development process they try to call us flawed and broken and corrupt when we recognize that we're just figuring it out every day well I mean look in the in the global stage like the notion of like we're just trying to figure it out doesn't really fly I mean I'd like to ask one question about this kind of divisiveness and I'm not trying to be a I'm not trying to be a threat Monger here but you know one of the things that that that senoir said you know that he learned when he was in a prison in Israel was that when there is infighting in Israel will be the best time to seize upon the vulnerability of the country and October 7th happened after years of protests and and civil unrest among the Israeli population I I don't I would obviously don't want anything horrible to happen to us and I wonder if we're in this particularly vulnerable place because we're so fiercely in opposition here about kind of core values or at least that's what it seems like does that put us in a vulnerable place like for I don't want to say our enemies but for adversaries in the world I think Americans understand there's a divisiveness that we need to get past if we are going to increase our level of security does that mean that our enemies are going to be able to unravel what we've built because of our divisiveness that's the real question I think right now the answer is no there's no level of sophistication that Russia or or China or Iran or North Korea has to be like hey everybody get off off the floor we're gonna have a big old Kumbaya with Russia so that we can defeat Trump that's not gonna happen my yoga studio is not going to be taken over by Iranian operatives correct correct so I'm not worried about that but I do believe you are totally right that there is a a vulnerability that's inherent in our bipartisan nature right now what I think is also important to understand at least from my experience is that our core values I don't think our core values are as opposite as sometimes politicians make them out to be right I think there are plenty of people out there who are actually independent but they're forced to to identify with one of two camps maybe we need a parliament I've been saying this for quite some time maybe we need a parliament so what my dad says all the time is that all the US problems are I'm Canadian so he says that all the US problems are because we don't have a parliament do we think that this is the US's major Achilles heel or vulnerability right now or is there another blind spot that we should be aware of I think there's two blind spots that we need to be keeping an eye on right the first is we are an inherently conflict oriented country right like we love conflict we glorify War we glorify debate we glorify arguments and we lie about it and we call it Thanksgiving that's too but we love conflicts and as long as we celebrate conflict then what we're doing is we're we're preventing ourselves from ever understanding the real value the genuine value of collaboration of cooperation of Alliance and working together right it's very very difficult it's very very difficult for people to develop more skill for collaboration and cooperation when we are celebrating in media and celebrating in school and celebrating in in salary competition so that is one Achilles heel the second Achilles heal we have I think is when we don't recognize that we are a giant bully that is what the United States is we're a gigantic bully and the people who are our closest allies are our closest allies because they want to be friends with the [ __ ] bully they're not our friends because they think that we're the best democracy they're not our friends because they believe in our ideals they believe they're our friends because we are pragmatically a good friend to have right now and you've seen those alliances break down and change over time as people have seen other bullies rise and now what we're seeing is that the countries that are succeeding around the world they're taking a page out of our book and they're essentially becoming little fifed them bullies on their own that's how China has gained success in the last 20 years right that's what has made Russia successful in its small sphere of influence that is what we continue to see happen in Mexico and what we see even happen in Europe I do agree what I mean I I can't help it when I look at what just happened in this country you know yeah people chose the bully people chose the person who teases special needs people and who mocks people who choose to change their sexual or gender ident like we that that's who this country just elected the fact is like I get it like people want him to get the job done and like even with Israel like I there's some complexity there for people but yeah it makes me kind of uncomfortable that I you know I'm a a peaceloving person who wants to like Kumbaya it you know globally and also I understand that you can't just lay down and be mowed over by people who are burning American flags all over the world so you know to me though it makes me sad sad I'm having feelings it makes me sad and it makes me uh worried for my kids for your kids for all of this next Generation that you know is in this case living in a country with someone who really ran on a campaign of I don't make friends I'm not friends with people and you're not going to feel friendly with the people that I'm going to denigrate as you step over them on the way to the you know the ballots like it's hard I don't necessarily see it as hopeful that the bully won the election but I do see it as hopeful that almost half of the country wanted to take a different approach well wait hold on one second it's not it's not that half the country wanted half of the I mean a third of the country was going to vote Democrat and probably a third of the country was going to vote Republican but somewhere in the middle is where this Teeter Point came where people are where these states flipped it's not like half the country used to vote for her and went for him we're we divided well what I'm saying is I'm I'm looking at the popular vote numbers really is what I'm talking about when it comes to the votes that were actually cast not the Electoral College because the Electoral College is a a machine of all of its own right but when you just look at you know I you know I voted for this person I voted for that person and you compare that Apples to Apples yeah yeah what I was saying is to say that people wanted something different that would imply that half the country used to vote for Biden and was like I want something different I want Trump you're saying that the majority of people have decided that they don't want to continue the administration essentially that we have had yes I'm gonna I'm going to say yes because I think that's I think we're getting at the same thing right but that there it's not like it's not like 80% of our country decided that we want to be bullies right it was it was a empirical process a mathematical process that landed on the current president through electoral votes but there was a huge component of our country that said I don't think I want to do this I think I want to go down this path there's got to be a different path right and that's so that tells me that we're not sold out to the bully cause we're still deciding what our future is going to look like that makes me feel better thank you that's why I was hoping like that's how I see it too right yeah there's so much in your work that in everyday spy that relates to people in their everyday life with amazing tools and skills that they can learn which I uh want to get to but before that I think it's you know one of the things we do on this podcast is you know pull back the curtain a little bit to explain how things are operating in ways that people might not realize you know we talk about that oh you're making decisions in your health and you're having this outcome that you might not realize is because you have these other behaviors that you don't realize are causing this this effect can you describe or give us some examples of things that happen in American life that people don't realize are being influenced by Factor behind the curtain like we recently did an episode on UFOs and now the conversation on UFOs is like oh wait a second yeah there is all this evidence that they exist and there are aircraft and biological and the government knew and the government knew and the government just hadn't you know felt comfortable telling people you know I'm curious about your take on that and your experience if you saw inside the CIA anything that you know maybe you're not allowed to speak about but what else are people not realizing that like [ __ ] isn't as as it appears um you know this is it might be a boring example certainly not as sexy as UFOs but uh but the calculus that I learned at CIA is an economic calculus the United States was built to meet the needs of the Industrial Revolution so the reason that our children go to preschool and stand in line isn't because it's efficient it isn't because it's good for our kids it's because at a certain level the preschool wants to be able to minimize the number of staff and maximize the number of students and that's easier when you make the kids stand in line but it's also part of the overall programming so that a 5-year-old standing in line now will become a law-abiding taxpaying non-argumentative subordinate when they're 35 right and that process C is it's ingrained from everything from our driver's license applications to schools to you know waiting in line to cast your vote right but what's really fascinating is that when you look at the numbers economic analysis numbers you see that most people 80% of people are going to reach and lose their highest income before the age of 55 even though we retire at 7 because there's an incentive in both government and corporations that once somebody starts to push 50 52 54 it's cheaper to get younger talent and to let go of the older person who costs more money so the end result is that in retirement most people are retiring on less than what they ever made at their Peak uh impact their Peak Financial impact that economic engine that drives the United States is what has made us a superpower it's what makes us have the ability to afford the world's most advanced and sophisticated military it's what gives us the ability to have the most advanced intelligence collection capability out there it's what gives us worldwide reach but at the same time it's essentially guaranteeing that not everybody will get an opportunity to reach their fullest potential it's only the outliers who either get opportunities given to them which is why you see the Kennedy family you see the Bush family you see these families that somehow perpetually have opportunities so you it creates this opportunity or creates this uh system where few people will be given opportunities and then the other half that that essentially Buck the system and create their own opportunities are also equally celebrated so it it ends it creates this kind of dir of Hope for everybody else in the middle and as we get older and we face reality we give up on that hope more and more more and then we just kind of fall back on on on fing crossing our fingers and and wishing and hoping that we just somehow don't get ground down by the system it makes me think that if you're not questioning why you are required to do almost everything then you're just becoming another Cog in the wheel and you know but that there's a risk in that right you're called antisocial if you start questioning the Norms of society but if you don't question the Norms of society they don't have your best interest at heart they're not looking out for you it's important to understand that the American government is not there to support the American people the American government is there to perpetuate the survival of the American government right that's that's what it's there for American pracy is not there for Jim and Jill and Jason right it's there so that there's another generation of American Primacy and that was a very hard lesson for me to learn I joined the milit I join the CIA with a very clear image in my head of me doing things to protect my sisters and me doing things to protect my mom and me doing thing to make to make my life better for my future children and then when I was actually inside the machine I started realizing I'm just doing this because there's a senator in Kansas who's trying to get reelection and he made a campaign promise about high fructose corn syrup and now they need intelligence about Cuba and Cuba sugar crop and I'm like this is this is not what I signed up for but I'm inside the machine and I can't do anything about it and it's a it's a twisted world if you choose to see it that way it's a harsh ruthless pragmatic world if you choose to look at it with a lens that's absent of emotion so you need to be somewhat antisocial in order to break out of the system I would say you need to be you need to explore non-conform right non-conformist Behavior you don't have if you're standing in line or if you see your kids standing in line at preschool you don't have to be the parent that goes in there and throws a fit you go in there and you say why do you have a line before they wash hands and then the teacher is going to give you an answer and if you're if you're a conformist you will say oh thank you for the answer but if you're willing to practice non-conformist Behavior you'll say is that the only reason are there more reasons is this really the best process could we let them wash their hands on their own well look the what happens is you have an elite population that can afford to remove their children from the military system of standardized school we did Waldorf we're a waldorf family where the teacher would ring a little gentle Bell when it was time for the kids to come in and if they didn't come in she didn't yell at them she would just do an activity inside and they would eventually follow her like the pi Piper thing right but I ended not I mean I couldn't afford to send my kids to that kind of schooling we did like you know an inexpensive parent in me class learned some of the principles and then we homeschooled because we also were like I don't know that you need to sit in a box and have a bell ring every 50 minutes which is how I was raised and like I turned out okay right like that's what everyone's going to say like we turned out okay but that's what people say is oh this is just the way it is and oh you turned out fine why are you complaining stop like they don't want to think and therefore they don't ever build a better solution and they refuse to acknowledge the ingrained behavior that is then required and actually M I would say that you have a really hard time challenging rules it's only through this podcast that you've started to be like wait a second there are things that are happening here that we not being told about and that that could have a huge impact on our lives so I would say that the school system didn't do that well for you no but I think not to answer for Andrew but you know people who are afraid are easy to control and people who are weak are easy to control and so the fact is and I don't mean to like go into this but like you know I always say this why was why were mushrooms and pot made illegal because stoned people will not go into a country they have no business being in and Slaughter Innocents that's why and when people are in touch with something greater than themselves they don't want to Massacre people on behalf of a government who's making money and making deals behind their back so like that's the structure I mean I've seen X-Men movies I know what happens when people are different they group them all together there's a I would add to your list of you know poor people are easy to control and stupid people are easy to control and you know ignorant people are both easy to control and easy to make and that's the North Korean model they build an ignorance population and that doesn't mean that North Korean people are stupid what you're saying is ignorant meaning not aware of the options not aware and it's I mean I've seen those movies too the one person who's like we don't have to live like this and they lead a revolution right but like that's also that's Harriet Tubman that's like all these great lits Martin Luther King Jr it's all the people who said like the we will not live like this that break out of that there is another way right and and until somebody is able to say there is another way many many people don't ever think that there is another way they think that they're faced with the options in front of them right is are you going to order chicken or salmon at the wedding and people look at the two options and if they don't like either option they choose the option they like the least and I'm like I'm vegan and I hate mushrooms so don't give me a portabello nobody thinks I don't have to eat at all at the wedding nobody thinks I'll just drink beer right that they don't ever think that there's another way Jonathan and I talk a lot about what we think is a it's not even a conspiracy what we think is an overt you know uh plan by the government to make us sick and then sell us pills to make us better can you talk a little bit you know our favorite example is the ultr processed food study that came out and like lo and behold what Europe has known for decades America was finally like hey it seems like something weird going on with ultr processed food and your health and then very quickly after that the government was like that study was incorrect they did the analysis wrong the algorithm was incorrect and ultr processed food is really good for you that's Cuckoo Pants crazy to me and Jonathan is there anything you can speak to about sort of the the food complex that is this country and like we're like you know uh food ink people we're like you know those kinds of hippies so anything you say is safe here but I'd love to know your take on sort of what's going on with the industrial food you know complex in this country you know this didn't really come to my awareness until after I left CIA because you can imagine when you're at CIA you live in a in a in a vacuum and you don't realize how many resources are at your disposal when you're at CIA so working at CIA also means you're working with Navy Seals you're working with army delta operators marso you're you're working with all the most elite Services out there for to your exact point em our institution does not feed Elite operators processed food they don't and they train us they train us us to find whole food sources they train us to sustain ourselves in the field on whole food sources and they constantly build us back without prescription drugs as much as possible and when they turn to using Prescription Solutions for elite operators that's when they take those operators off the line so they understand wait this is this is mindblowing at an Institutional level they understand that optimized oper optimized effort comes with whole food and non pharmaceutical Solutions and they give us all the resources the tools the training the methodologies the staff the support that we need to optimize ourselves because they need us to be optimized and when the day comes that we can no longer be optimized without some sort of processed or pharmaceutical Solution that's when they replace us with somebody else and that's that when I was in the middle of it I just felt like I was king of the world I was getting all this great you know great meat sources and great vegetables and great fruits and you know I was I was I was getting hours dedicated my day for meditation and mindfulness I was like this is like this is easy living it wasn't until I left it I was like oh I see what was happening here I see why you paid somebody $250,000 a year to be my exercise scientist to calculate exactly what my caloric intake should be my exercise output should be to measure my muscles my V2 Max I see why you did that and I also see why the rest of us are stuck paying $115 a month or an hour to some trainer down the street a Planet Fitness and being sold toys with our food and yeah exactly and and that becomes the most available food source is a processed food source one of the things that you speak about is influence on people and people also influencing us knowing when we're being influenced and how to increase our influence both of those one is I'm not going to be able to assert myself get promoted maybe make a relationship I need to my finances might struggle my My overall health might struggle if I'm not able to have control over my own life and the other is um how do I if I have an idea and I want to put it out in the world I want to influence Andrew to like what I'm talking about like can you describe some of the tools and strategies that you've learned to both understand when someone is controlling you and how to influence other people there's a rule of thumb that CIA teaches us that's scary but simple right and and that rule of thumb is that you are either in control or you are under control there is no other option right and it's one of those simple binary dichotomies that you know we all use to to teach people a simple truth there's in reality there are lots of other grad you know gradations between the two but when you take that at face value it's really about understanding that every day you have to choose whether to take control or whether not to take control and understand that if you choose not to take control you're giving control to someone else and when you talk about influence Jonathan it's an it's a perfect example because you hear people talk about influence all the time and there's books about influence and there's there's gurus who teach you how to build influence and business coaches who teach you how to build influence and you also hear the word persuasion and there's YouTube videos about persuasion and there's Tik Tok videos about persuasion persuasion and influence often times people misunderstand them as the same thing when they're two very different things right persuasion requires that you put active energy into someone in person right and that you were using emotional PLO to persuade their way of thinking influence happens when you are not with somebody but they are still recalling your knowledge or your belief or your ideas or your lies or your lies exactly em so persuasion comes before influence and you have to invest in in mastering persuasion if you ever want to be a person of influence because the the influence is the roof on the house but all the other structure of the house is built on persuasion how do I become a better Persuader first you need to understand that people don't care about your point of view but people care very much that other people understand their own opinions so if you want to build persuasion if you want to be persuasive you have to learn how to understand and identify what other people value and then demonstrate back to them their own values if they care about Freedom then you need to highlight Freedom if they care about environmentalism then you need to talk about environmentalism if they care about the future of their children then you need to talk about the future of their children but if you sit there and talk about you know the the incredibly High tax rate that you have to pay when they're worried about how they're going to put food on the table you're not going to persuade them right so if you can learn to meet people where they're at correct it's something that we call perspective if you can gain perspective and let go of your own perceptions then you have a real opportunity to build persuasive appeal which will turn into long-term influence what I love about you Andrew is that you you could have any number of jobs like if I were talking to you right now I'd be like this is the best social media influencer manager I've ever met in my life and then when you're talking about politics I'm like this is the best politician I've ever heard explain Israel to me like when you talk about like you know cost like this is the best prosthetic makeup artist I've ever met you're like that guy you've got this like enormous amount of knowledge about all these different things but they all go together because of your training right and that's what I find to be so exciting about owning and operating my own company and my company is an education company right I'm essentially a giant international school and I love that because I get to offer people the opportunity to learn something new without forcing them or grading them or objectifying them to some arbitrary set of rules right it's an invitation to learn instead of a mandate to learn Are there specific strategies to use to try and uncover what someone values quickly is it just listening to them let me give you a really a really great tool that blew my mind when I went to CIA so I was 27 years old when CIA recruited me I thought that I was a good conversationalist I thought I was pretty good with the women I thought I was like at least a better than average social talent and then I realized very quickly that I was a dumbass right and a big part of my dumbassery was that I spent most of my time talking about me talking about my history my experience my qualifications my ideas right CIA taught me that there's a very simple process to rapidly build trust and influence in other people and that process involves asking two questions and then making one validating statement and then after that that validating statement you repeat the same cycle again and that the process of asking questions and validating other people's ideas subconsciously makes the other person think that you are like them and it makes them feel like they are interesting and they are important and they are relevant and then they have a dopamine Rush that makes them feel good being around you now you're a dating expert what's a good intro like role playing you you got to ask em you're GNA persuade mem you're going to get influence over her I mean persuasion first what's like obviously it's situation dependent but are there like is there a bank that you start with like your go-tos also I'm an actor so it's a little I mean I'm sure you are also an actor I mean that's kind of what you had to do as a spy but um let's do can we do in let's do it so so mem I'm going to ask you not to ask I'm gonna ask you to try to be genuine I don't even know who I am so this will be fun that's all right so so from what you've shared today I already know you're a mom and I already know that you're and I've watched your channel enough to know that you've been through a divorce right so uh let me start with this m I will start with uh what did you do first thing this morning with your kids what was the first thing you with your kids today my kids didn't stay over last night and my other one's in college but do you want me to do you want me to take an example of when my kid was at my house no I want I want to start right where you were of course you do I can see what you're doing okay go ahead I need to meet you where you are right okay my older son's in college and my younger son is at his dad so I woke up alone today what's it like to wake up in an empty house when you know you're a parent um it's it's two things it's kind of a sad kind of a pull my son describes it as there's an invisible string you know that's that's very very long because wherever he is I'm attached to him and then there's also an element of kind of like I don't have to wake up make a lunch and get the kid on the bus by 7 in the morning so a little bit of relief as well I swear that you just described what I wonder about my own future like when my children leave I feel like I'm going to be sad but I also feel like I'm going to be happy should I write you a check for a million dollar is that what happens so what does that mean for your what does that mean for your work productivity does that make it very easy to work or does that make it kind of distracting to work um no I think I'm I'm pretty practiced at it I've been divorced for 12 years so I I have a a rhythm that I've fallen into when I'm alone what does the Rhythm for work look like um well it means that I can take my time you know making my protein smoothie or whatever I'm going to do for breakfast and then um I get to sit down do some emails um you know look at my phone check the news just once don't want to get obsessed about it I I actually also start my day with a protein smoothie I use a protein called true greens have you ever heard of them they're pretty amazing no so what's the protein that you use um I use well they they used to sponsor our podcast I use pury which is um it's a vegan protein powder I also use vegan proteins because first of all I just find that they are easier to digest but also I find that vegan protein are a more viable solution for long-term muscle growth when I'm older that was a cycle of three that was a cycle of three the SEC the last cycle had one question in a followup uh but I could feel the Rapport building it was happening how did it feel to you though M em you know what was happening to you so how did it feel to you it felt like I was at a bar and a guy was trying to get me into bed but that's just because that's my fear about people like trying to connect with you know me also she doesn't like to talk about herself in in when asked questions specifically so like you're putting her in a very awkward position I I definitely I felt like oh you're relating to things you're finding the similarities not the differences so yeah I would imagine that um that it does it feels like a connection it feels like you get me it feels like I want to share more with feels like I'd go on a date with you if you gave me your number so so here's the twisted side of this very effective dating technique I don't want to make a spy baby yet though he needs to have three dates first he doesn't have protein in the morning he never has imagined his children leaving the house all of that was fake no actually the Twisted part here is I now know a great deal about you em but you still don't know anything new about me from that process really right I know that you start your day in the morning I know that you like to move slow I know that have a child in college and a child that's at your husband's house I know that you used to have a protein sponsor for this podcast did I not ask enough questions about you is that why we're not going on a date I grew up on Blossom M if you want a date I will fly to LA and take you to dinner I will just tell my wife I have to do this but but what you're saying is that what you were able to do was establish Rapport establish trust and this kind of connection without you actually having to reveal anything about yourself so that if that's the relationship you need to establish out in the field you haven't really given up anything of yourself correct it's a tool that we call informational superiority now you feel good being around me hopefully but you don't know anything about me so when you meet your friend and you say I met this guy she's like tell me about him you're like I actually don't know anything about him but he's very interested in me and that's what's most important but we've all had that moment we've all had that moment where we realize I actually don't know anything about that person that's me and Jonathan like why are we here that is now essentially Jonathan what we are able to do now is we just created a systematic process to make that happen all the time with clients with customers with possible future dates with in-laws with business partners it's it's predictable because the human brain is predictable in any language and any age so what you've created is a way for to get information for but more importantly for someone to feel comfortable with you that you have shown interest and because what most people actually want is for someone to be interested in them and to have space held for them and reflected back and finding similarities there's nothing people love more than oh my gosh that person understands me and has little Sparks of similarity you're exactly right and you know the way that we talk about it at CIA is that the core need the fundamental need for human beings that so often goes missed is the need for connection and that connection is nothing more than feeling seen feeling heard and feeling present in a moment with another human being and it's a very very powerful concoction when you can artificially create that sense of connection for somebody else because it means that there will never be a lack of people who want to connect with you even though they don't realize they're not connecting with you on a personal level well I mean this is also a dangerous tool to use too much because if you don't know that you're doing it the user of the tool can you know if you're not a spy can cut themselves off and actually you know not form that reciprocal relationship these are you know to be used carefully correct and that's what you're getting at there is really the difference between what we call a trained person and an untrained person uh m talked about narcissists earlier narcissists are untrained they go to the school of on the job training they learn through the School of Hard Knocks they don't learn how to genuinely connect with another human being a trained person learns how to use these skills to gain practical advantages for for operational goals whether that is a goal in your everyday life or a goal in your career or a goal in your personal life but also a trained person understands that they have to accept genuine Connection in order to be optimized as an individual you have to trust somebody you have to connect with somebody otherwise you will never be optimized you will lose that basic core need of human connection I mean I'm fascinated about that because the movie version of the Spy is someone who is isolated you know you have to give up everything in order to join this world I've seen Liam niss do that many times you can't have the relationship you have to be willing to leave at a moment's notice and everyone in your and of course the hero of whatever movie this is finds the one person they don't want to walk away from and they end up changing their life but what you're saying is actually you know fundamental to optimization is that there has to be a break in the character you can't be the Spy 247 or or you won't function correct you have to have it's it's a matter of energy transference and I don't mean woooo hippie La energy I mean actual like National Lab scientific energy human beings are energetic sources and we transfer energy to and from each other there has to be a time when you recharge your energy because so much of your day is spent shedding energy you put energy into your children you put energy into your spouse you put energy into your uh employees you put energy into strangers you put energy into into the Uber driver who's making you nauseous but you don't want to yell at him like you put energy out into the world all the time you must have a way of re recreating or generating energy and one of the best ways to do that is by being around another energy source where you're in receive mode and they're pouring their energy into you um how do you tell if someone is lying to you cuz their lips are moving Jonathan their lips are moving there's a number of ways to do this most of the stuff that you see on Tik Tok and Facebook and Instagram is not right it's not about looking for small facial movements it's actually about things that are much bigger than that one of the best things you can do to find out if somebody's lying to you is you can ask them a question about how they feel right ask them a question that we call a feelings question right for example you must have been so happy when you saw the birth of your first child what happens is you're asking a question that will absolutely create an emotional response I mean is's a lot going on down there if you don't take drugs but sure I mean I was a little terrified but oh you were talking to him I was like I was the one doing it I wasn't really watching but yeah but what ends up happening is you can see the challenge you can see the effort on their face if they're trying to lie lying takes effort even for the most experienced Li liar lying takes a lot of effort so when somebody shows very little effort in their face and their body movements in their in their intonation there's a good chance they're telling the truth or they're a sociopath but when somebody puts a great deal of effort into their lie you can actually see it you can hear the pause you can see the the confusion on their face you can hear them blubber through their words so that's just one actual tool that we use it's not a bulletproof tool but it's one proven tool to actually see if someone's lying to you I'm curious about the pause well I guess I'm curious about two things the first is what does effort look like you talked about pause you talked about um like a facial reaction so I'm curious to hear a little bit more specifically about that and then also how does that differ then when you asked me that question and you you proposed an emotion to me which would be a natural emotion I felt like I paused for a minute because I was unsure the emotion you presented to me wasn't really authentic to my experience and so I I was almost um auditing and trying to say what would my experience be so I felt like I kind of looked up and I had my head tilted for a second and I was like oh actually when he was born it was a difficult birth and I was kind of terrified and I was a new dad and we were did a home birth and I was like holy [ __ ] there's a human being now like I wasn't you know like the the looking at your son in the movie and being like holy you know just just happiness it was like a bit of Terror too and that's a very honest answer and I think your your example is one of the reasons why it's not a bulletproof solution but let's do a let's do a real quick field experiment right here right do me a favor uh Jonathan push your glasses up a little higher on your nose just so that we can see your eyes perfect now M can you see Jonathan yes okay your job your job is to watch his face and make observations that you can that you can describe physically don't tell me about observations about what you feel only tell me objective observations about what you see okay turning off my feelings perfect perfect Jonathan I need you to relax because you're already preparing yourself for an exercise I was like leaning forward a lot okay I'm I'm sitting back go ahead okay I'm gonna ask you the first question I ask you I just want you to answer honestly I'm really good at this also I just want to give you a heads up because I grew up in a very emotionally volatile home and I grew no but I'm I grew up tracking I grew up like super hypervigilant I can pick up off like if someone's uncomfortable about something that like they don't want to talk about I know it from like 50 yards away so I think I'm going to be very good at this game perfect perfect okay so your your job is to watch Jonathan Jonathan's job is to be Jonathan relax I'm G to ask you a question it's going to be an emotional question and your job is just to tell the truth all right what was it like when you met your wife for the first time I have to think about when uh what I'm really thinking uh stop right there I don't need anymore we've got everything we need so what happened yeah I'm so curious tell me tell me what you saw m okay so what I saw is I saw um I saw a miniature like record scratch in his eyes I saw his eyes kind of like uh they didn't freeze but it was like everything stopped and I could see like the Cog like the the wheels start turning that's that's your emotions that's your emotions which what did his eyes do tell me what they did yeah it looked like they um they they tracked a little bit down and then they stopped so you may not be as good at this as you think you are but luckily we have a replay so production team play the replay what you actually see is Jonathan's eyes move up and to his left oh now Jonathan's Canadian primary language is English correct Jonathan yeah so that means that he reads from left to right so what you just saw do is he referenced chronology in his memory trying to find what when did I even meet my wife trying to find the memory and then you could also see his forehead remained flat he didn't Furrow his eyebrows with confusion or effort he just looked up to try to find the memory and then he couldn't resist smiling he couldn't resist it and he was talking about how he he had to think hard and he was talking about how he was trying and normally you might think that somebody who stalling is lying but you could see in his face he was recalling the joy of his wife me they're not married anymore but yes when they first met for the first time though that's that's positive stuff right so you could see all of this unhindered emotions so whatever you were going to say Jonathan had a high likelihood of being truthful I mean this is the most fascinating little exercise I think we've maybe ever done on this podcast and I've watched a lot of your content I don't know if you've done this before I haven't seen it I I'm fascinated also by tracking of ey movements the notion of looking up and to the left as a way to find a memory is is fascinating there's a lot of um neurological and neuromuscular research that actually you can use eye movement to reset body patterns and so to think about tracking that as it relates to how people are thinking is really interesting to me and again it's not bulletproof because if you're talking to somebody who maybe is dyslexic or if you talk to somebody who their primary language is Arabic they're going to learn they're going to reference their chronology differently right so now the second exercise Jonathan you have to relax but your job is to lie your job is to lie right and M your job is to observe the observables always knowing that we have the replay in case in case you don't see something exactly right okay all right Jonathan another feeling question but this time I need you to lie okay okay were you afraid that you would be lonely for the rest of your life when you got a divorce no what did you see him I his eyes didn't move nothing moved did you see how how rigid the whole thing was yeah that's his this is another great replay it's another great replay because you could see the that I was telling you about Jonathan remember how I told you look for a pause if if you were telling the truth you would have answered right away I'm guessing that I asked that question and the first thing that went through your head was yes and the next thing that went through your head was I have to lie no it's it's interesting that I actually had to ask myself I wasn't sure if if I was or not I mean the biggest thing when I got divorced was actually not the idea of not living with my child was the biggest thing that's the first thing that hit me and there was a moment actually when I first left the house uh when it was actually one of the hardest parts was I came back and and I was visiting the house at a time and I hadn't been gone very long and my son was maybe five maybe six at the time and he had climbed into the washing machine uh and was standing in the washing machine because he was too small to like reach in and get the clothes and he liked to do his own clothes and he was in his underwear and nothing else and he was standing in the washing machine and like really proud of himself as he was pulling the wet clothes out and throwing them into the dryer and I thought to myself you only get that moment when you live with your kid you don't get that in a visit you don't get that any other time than when there's just unstructured moments and I remember like that that's what was sort of the Forefront like my my notion of like what's going to happen to me in relationships was like so far out of my Consciousness that like when you asked me that question I had to sort of travel back but also I knew I was supposed to lie so I wanted to answer quickly um so that was it was a tough question it was a really tough question it was just an emotional question and I think your story which is a gorgeously beautiful Story by the way the story that you just told really shows the pause that em and I saw was only probably 3/4 of a second and all of that happened in your brain during that pause so fast and that's what makes it so so viable such a valuable tool because when people lie they still feel the emotion and then they have to put effort into not showing the emotion your eyes didn't move at all you didn't reference a chronology at all right you just stayed locked in on me with a tight jaw until you said no it was almost not human it was like there was an absence of of real human emotion in it and when you told the truth right before that your face told the story for you the smiles and the and the and the grin and the teeth and the me and the eye movement and the head movement like you'll see it in in your own replay how very much effort is obvious to see I have two more questions what's your favorite movie about a spy my favorite movie about spy is the very first Spy Kids and it's because all Spy movies are not real they're all bad but I love Antonio Banderas and I watched Spy Kids with my kids and they loved it so it's just this very fond memory of of a of a spy movie because most other spy movies I watch especially the very serious ones and all I see is just how many things they get wrong and how little of it is true okay my other question in um a lot of spy movies they show like teeny tiny weapons like teeny teeny like like in the kingsman like teeny teen tiny weapons is that a real thing are there weapons that we don't know about that are like so tiny and you can hide them in a button like is that a real thing um yes there are weapons that are tiny that you would never believe exist and and they deliver a lethal action in a number of different ways some of them deliver a lethal dose of poison some of them deliver um some sort of lethal uh impulse that throws off your heart and puts you in cardiac arrest and then there's a whole slew of other things that you know do everything from confuse you or or blind you or whatever else and often Dungeons and Dragons you're like throwing a spell at someone lightning bolt lightning bolt right um but I will also say that more than weapons because we're about collecting intelligence so the really impressive stuff is how small the tools are that we use to collect Secrets how small our thumb drives can be how small microchips can be how small cameras can be how small audio bugs can be right like how how we even have ways of creating audio recording devices that have no battery power wow right and that's just really cool stuff that that is better than the movies in my opinion amazing amazing I have two very short questions one is what is your best tool technique most universal that you would say people who are not spies should learn about um if it's if it's something that I want just the average person to do without paying me a single dollar I just want them to stop talking just if you just talk 10% less you're going to learn like 30% more than you learn right now and it's a hard thing to do but it's very very simple and very memorable just talk less when the moment comes where you feel like you should talk pause and just hold it and then say what you have to say and you're going to be shocked by how much you learn if it's something that people will learn from me meaning they will come to Everyday spy and they will take a course with me the thing I want them to learn is a course I have called op think it's a master course called operational thinking that I shorten to op think it's the best thing we've ever created it has transformed people across the world uh we use it in all of our Executive coaching it includes many of the tips that we talked about today Jonathan from how to ask questions and how to tell lies and and how to identify uh falseness and persuasion and influence all of that in one program so people are going to pay money that's what I would want them to learn if they don't want to pay anything they just want to have a great time on this podcast literally just hold your tongue for 10% of the time that you and see how much more you learn my I'm going to upthink I'm coming back as super spy uh I I mean that sounds amazing my sort of last question for you um is something that you talked about sort of really at the beginning of this podcast and you I'm GNA it's a I have a slight intro to to it the first is you know I'm wondering if people from homes where you have to scan where you're hyper independent where you don't have you know the type of social network or connection end up making better spies and you know I've heard about your story and know that you grew up in a situation that you had to fend for yourself at an early age and I'm wondering if that makes someone more prone to be good at this work but really I wondered about the stress of that life and the constant scanning that has to happen and the persuasion and and having to show up for other people and defend and control yourself you know we we know that having a high level of uh freedom in self-expression is wildly important for mental health and physical health and and not having that creates a level of stress and burden that you have to carry for such a long time and I'm wondering you know having been in the service that long and is it something that you're able to really unpack or is it layers where you're like holy I'm still you're you know are you still finding yourself to like come home to yourself in that way so I I was married I got married at the uh CIA I met my wife at CIA we served around the world we did some incredible things we're still waiting for CIA to let us tell the whole story but fast forward to 2014 when we leave CIA within just a few weeks of leaving CIA we found ourselves hiring a marriage counselor because we were just starting to see the tip of the iceberg of exactly what you were talking about Jonathan we were wired through our childhood through our our unique childhood traumas and the training that we went through at CIA and all the resources that were given to us at CIA to keep us optimized when we left it was the first first time that we started to see the the House of Cards start to crumble and we went to a marriage counselor and the marriage counselor couldn't keep up with us like we're telling to use M's words we're telling Mr and Mrs Smith stories and the counselor is like um uh uh I don't know that I'm equipped for this right so after two or three different therapists nobody was really comfortable working with us but we needed an outlet and you know this is the I've told the story Jonathan everyday spy started because my creative expression has always been writing so I started to write about spy skills that I was using in everyday life I started to write about the difficulties of transitioning from CIA to everyday life I started to write about how embarrassing it was to be an elite operator but a shitty husband like I started to write and write and write and that writing became a Blog and I learned a little bit about a website and then people started reading it and then it just kind of snowballed and there came a time when I started writing courses and I started writing speeches and I started writing scripts and then people said stop writing just talk so I started talking on a stage and then I started talking in front of a camera and then people were like come talk on my podcast and I mean the the rise of my company is not because I'm some good business person it's really just my own therapy to do exactly what you said Jonathan to find and express myself creatively to process the the the experiences that I can't talk about in a way that is hopefully productive for myself for my family for my future it was a great question man thanks for letting me talk about that really really fascinating I mean the whole thing start to finish is really fascinating and we hope people will check out everyday spy it's so incredible and um we're so glad that you are working through your stuff by sharing so much with with us and with everybody absolutely thanks for having me and this was a great conversation this was a great uh a great way to spend my [Music] afternoon we didn't even get to ask him about sex performance what kind of paperwork do they have to have I don't know I like that he was so so Cavalier about you know oh there's ways not to get people pregnant okay but I've seen that movie too where the Spy thinks that she's not going to get pregnant but he gets her pregnant anyway I I love that that's the focus for you is spy babies not maybe this person is seducing me in order to kill me maybe they're trying to steal my secrets I want to talk to his wife maybe she'll come on and talk to us maybe she'll talk to us about these things I'm very curious about his wife they got kids we should talk to his wife please make sure to go to everydays spy.com you can learn so many things it's not just how to be a spy it's how to use the techniques that the most elite secretive powerful influential people in the world have to learn and you can learn it so please check it out and from our breakdown to the one we secretly hope you'll never have we'll see you next time it's break down she's going to break it down for you she's got a neuroscience PhD or two fiction and now she's going to break down a break down she's going to break it down