EverydaySpy Podcast - CIA Spy: The Questions To Immediately Expose Any Liar

Episode Date: October 27, 2026

FREE TEST: Find Your Spy Superpower HERE - https://yt.everydayspy.com/spot_20261027 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There's an idea out there that you can tell if someone's lying just by looking at their face. It's something called micro expressions. Yes. Microexpressions aren't really true. They don't work in the field. They work in an interrogation setting because you can control the environment that the person is in. But they don't work out on the street. They don't work around a dinner table.

They don't work when you're on a date because the person isn't being controlled by the environment. So you have to use a different strategy to find out if someone's lying to you. The strategy that we use is we vet the content of what they say against the way that they say it. Okay. So one of the tools that we use just as an example is something called feeling questions. When you ask somebody a feeling question, you're talking about feelings. How did you feel when you broke your leg for the first time? How did you feel when you saw your child?

How did you feel on your wedding day? How did you feel the day that you got a divorce? When you ask a feeling question, it goes into. the creative cortex of the brain before it goes into the logical cortex. Okay. It's different than if I ask you, what's two plus two? That goes right to the logical cortex. If I say, hey, do you remember when you were eight?

That's the logical cortex. When I say, how did you feel when? It goes right to the creative cortex, which is 10 times faster than the logical cortex. So if I ask you a feeling question, I already know you are genuinely responding to my question. But if you're trying to lie, you're forcing the question through your logical cortex at the same time. This is good. This is good. So when you ask those feeling questions and you see the struggle on someone's face, you see the struggle in their body language.

And they're trying to sort through like, I felt sad, but I don't want to tell you. I felt sad. I was with another girl, but I don't want to tell you. I was with another girl. I liked her more than I liked you, but I've got to find a different way of saying it. You can see that struggle, whereas when you ask somebody honestly, and they answer honestly, their whole face responds with the emotion they're feeling. I see.

I see. So the key is to almost baseline with a variety of these feeling questions. Maybe throw a logic in there, one or two, and then you hit him with the actual question and you see what the processing time is. And the question should be a feeling question. Correct. But you want to see what the processing time is. Because an honest response to a feeling question requires almost no processing time.

Okay. It's almost instant in body language and in verbal response. Okay. Right? Whereas what you're really trying to identify isn't the lie? You're not trying to identify if the fact is true or not. You're looking for the struggle in the response. And then once you see it once, that doesn't make them a liar, but it shows that they're sensitive to that line of questioning.

I see. And now you can break the pattern with a different question. or you can dig into it deeper with a follow-up feelings question. And you can really start to hammer them and you can start to look for those signs of deception. We use that with my boys. Then you use that with my sons tonight. So does this connect with, in the research,

I saw here that you've talked about, all relationships are transactional. That seems like that, that connects. So is that your belief that every relationship, love, romantic love, platonic love, relationships with parents, with children, your children, it's all transactional. Our relationship, Andrew, is transactional?

Is it? Oh, no. That we were cool. Why does transactional mean that we can't be cool? Why does transactional have to mean we can't actually feel, love. It doesn't mean that. When you take it through to its logical conclusion, things can be transactional and. Okay. Transactional and. And arguably, it is the transaction of the relationship that makes it more reliable. Because when you transact, your natural instinct is to transact in

order to get something of superior value in return. Yes. Right? So it's this idea that I'm going to invest my time in you because I care about you, yes, but more importantly, it's because you benefit me in some way. And it's the benefit that you return to me that keeps me investing in you. By bringing it to the forefront, by bringing it to the prefrontal cortex, the logical mind, now we can identify that it's happening and we can identify what it is that we value from the relationship, which allows us to optimize the relationship. Okay. With my wife and I, because we both went to the same school of training, now we can both continually optimize our relationship because we can speak transparently about the idea of the transaction, right?

It doesn't mean we don't love each other. If anything, it means that we can love each other more because we objectively know we're getting something from this relationship that we would not get if we didn't have each other. So with you and your wife being transparent, what's an example of a conversation that you've had where you feel like you're getting superior value and she feels like she's getting superior value. So we just got back from a family trip to Vail. We all went to Vail to see the leaves change.

It was one of my few weeks off of the road where I was able to be with the family instead of traveling away without them. And we're up in Vail, and it's in the mountains in Colorado. It's beautiful. My wife is a homebody. So we have a very nice condo,

and she's staying in the condo, and she's drinking her hot tea, and she wants to watch Netflix, but it's fucking gorgeous outside. And the kids, my son, is a carbon copy of my wife. So he's got his hot tea right next to her. Brilliant.

I love it. Very British. Love it. If you haven't discovered your secret spy superpower, then somebody else might be using theirs against you. CIA teaches us that there are only three types of people in the world. Those who motivate,

those who are being controlled by one of the other two. I created a three-minute CIA-style quiz to help you unlock your secret psychological advantage and identify your hidden blind spot. All you have to do is click on the first link in the description below or scan the QR code on your screen and you'll be taken directly to your private quiz. This test was developed to help you weaponize your natural-born gifts and use them to get ahead of 99% of people in power, wealth, and purpose. It was also designed to make sure that you can protect yourself against those who would

use their skills against you. I want you to discover your secret spy superpower and use it for good before somebody else uses their power against you. And my daughter is just looking at me like, what are we going to do? Because I'm not, she's not about to sit inside and watch Netflix. She wants to go to the pool. She wants to go to the

park. She wants to go for a hike. Yes. So I take my wife and I'm like, we've got to go, girl. We got to get outside. And I fight, it's like a struggle to get her, put on your hiking boots, put on some warm clothes. I know you're worried about the time. I know you're worried about what we're going to eat for dinner. Just trust me, let's get out the door. And of course,

I'm getting my son out the door too. Ten minutes after we get to the park, everybody's on cloud nine. Okay. Right? Everybody's happy. My wife is over the moon. She's in all of the aspen trees, whatever else. It's a great day. We get home at about 7.30 at night. We feed the kids real quick, and I'm like, we should watch a family movie. It's been such a great day. You guys wanted to watch a movie earlier, let's watch a movie now. And my wife's like, no, bedtime's coming up. We need the kids to go to bed at a normal time so they wake up at a normal time

so we can have a good day tomorrow. And I fight her. And I'm like, no, it's been a great day. Like, if they go to bed an hour later, that's not going to be a big deal. Right. She is keeping me from making a mistake that's going to damage us in the future.

Okay. I am getting her to have an experience in the present that she would have otherwise missed. And that has always been our chemistry. Even in our shadow cell operation, she kept me from taking reckless risks. And I kept pushing her to find newer and more interesting targets. So I push her risk tolerance.

She pulls back my unnecessary risk taking. And that is something that we give each other. Nobody has ever been able to pull me back off the brink. Nobody has ever been able to hold me back from what I want to do. And even though I can fight and argue with her and I can accuse her of being a wet blanket and being a party pooper and all this stuff,

she takes that criticism. And she already knows it's the right choice. So then the next morning when everybody wakes up happy and I'm like, shit, girl, you were right. She's right. But it sounds like you're saying, Andrew, though, that it's not only acknowledging that, because that was a transaction, you're absolutely right,

but it's also verbalizing that. So is that what your partner is aware of what value you're bringing? Is that why you do that? It's really so that they're aware of the value that you see in them, right? That's the most important part of a transactional relationship

is acknowledging for them what you see is of value. We all see value differently. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting because I can't argue against that, but I will say that that is, is not what society teaches us at all.

I agree. That's a big part of why CIA teaches it to us. Because CIA knows psychologically it's sound. You go on a date. What am I getting out of this date? Do I just get a pretty girl on the opposite side of the table? Do I just get a handsome man and an interesting conversation? Do I just get an interesting man and no interesting conversation?

Am I checking my watch all the time because I'm missing my show to be here with this dude? Right. Right. And then I want to brag about it on Instagram. So I'll take a selfie with him because I want all my friends to see my hot boyfriend. But I know he's empty and I know he's shallow and I know he's a deadbeat in terms of conversation. There's no benefit to you. If the only benefit to you is the selfie, you can get that benefit from somewhere else.

Right. But if you don't ever stop to ask yourself, what am I getting out of this? You don't have any idea how to objectively compare this against someone else. Okay. CIA is ruthless about making high-performance teams. Everybody is psychologically analyzed, everybody is vetted. They literally will assign teams together because they know how much conflict you will have,

how much alignment you will have, and they have empirically categorized what the right recipe is for conflict and cooperation for this operation. I see it, I see it. I believe this is a look at you that I have not seen before. It's true. Which I love for many reasons.

But also, I think this concept is very important. We do have a lot of women who watch. We need to talk. We love our fellas, but we have a lot of ladies out here. And a lot of them have questions around their relationship. And I think this is giving crystal clear clarity on how to look at the relationship. But another question on the transaction, what about the longevity or the future benefit? So what if you're receiving what you feel is a premium today?

But you don't know if that premium will be in place tomorrow or, you know, next year, et cetera. Do you cut that relationship then if you can't project out the benefit? I already know how this is going to sound. I already know how this is going to say, he's cold. CIA made him cold. So CIA teaches us that all relationships. have a natural life cycle. Wow.

There is a cycle of introduction. There's a natural cycle of growth. There's a cycle of peak and there's a cycle of decline. When you're trying to optimize a relationship, you want to take the introduction and the increase, the introduction and the growth, and you want to steepen that curve as much as you can, as fast as you can, to get maximum benefit,

to get the premium. But you're always looking for the peak. Because when the peak happens, you start to see a return, a negative, not a negative return on investment, but a decline in your ROI. Okay. So you go from getting 250% to getting 230%. Right. Which is still more than the two of you alone, but it's not as much as the peak.

Yes. Right. When the reason it's important to see when that peak happens is because that's when you know you need to change something. And if you can have the kind of conversation with your partner where you can say, I'm not getting what I used to get out of this relationship. I'm still very happy, but I used to get so much more than what I'm getting right now. I would like to make some change to get back the things that value me that I value now.

Okay. To get us back on that steep incline again. Okay. Right? Those kinds of what my wife and I call, those hard conversations are invaluable because my previous peak with you might be 250%. And then we have a decline. We dropped the 230.

We have a hard conversation. I tell you what I need now. I'm a 45-year-old man. I need something different than when I was a 35-year-old man. I'm a father of two children who are 12 and 8. That's different than when my children were 8 and 6 or 8 and 4, right? Life changes. I want to be able to tell you, here's what I need now.

And then I need you to see the value in me that you make the change. Okay. And now our peak is no longer 250. Now our peak is 270, 310. I see it. And then we have the same conversation again when it changes again. As aligned as we were at 27, we are not so aligned on the same categories at 45. So we've had to realign on other categories.

And that's how we keep that natural life cycle healthy. Because we all will decline. You can't ignore it. You can't pretend it's not going to happen. But you also sure as hell can't accept it. You cannot accept when you're part. gets bored with you, your partner lets themselves go after they promised you they'd be healthy and they'd, like a partner that's getting fat isn't a problem because they look fat.

They're a problem because when they're 65 or 70, their health may fail. And now you're going to live the last 15 years of your life alone or caring for them. You have to intercept that with a hard conversation and say, if you see the value in me that I see in you, this needs to change. And if it doesn't change, as soon as this relationship is 180, of 200, it doesn't serve me anymore. And then it's time to go. And then it's time to go.

Wow. There's another relationship out there that will give you 250%. I can't argue against it. Really, I can't. Because the way that I see that you're looking at this is a different POV from how I approach it, but I think it's very, very legitimate, right? And what I mean by that is that you're using the transaction as an indicator. And then you're marrying that with a hard conversation based on that indicator,

satisfaction in essence. And then you're marrying the hard conversation. I agree. I think this is the number one issue with relationships is the inability or partners, the inability to have these hard conversations and harder the conversation, the higher quality of the relationship. But even that in itself, people don't want to have. You know, so how do you coach?

How do you tell the person who knows they're not getting. the benefit in the transaction. They know that satisfaction is low. They know they need to have the hard conversation. How do you equip them to have that conversation? You can't have a hard conversation unless you understand the perception and perspective of the other person. There is something that you value about the relationship.

There is something that they also value about the relationship. And there's no guarantee that the two things are the same. So if you're coming into a relationship, all you're thinking about is what you value, you're missing 50% of the problem. You have to look at what they value. If you can't understand what they value, you have to ask them. Okay. Why are you in this relationship?

What do you value? You might be shocked. Even if you think you know and you ask the question, you might be shocked what they answer. Maybe what they love about you is that you say nice things to them. Maybe what they get out of the relationship is a sense of peace and comfort. My wife swears that she gets better sleep with me in the best. bed than without me in the bed. I get horrible sleep with that woman in the bed. But it's so valuable to her. How am I going to say no? I'll just spend a couple extra hours in bed if I need to do, right?

Right. But you have to understand what the value is so you can speak to that value in the hard conversation with them. Hey, if you want to continue sleeping with me in the bed, I need you to come out with me more on date nights on Friday. I know it's easy for you to stay home and I know it's easy for you to turn on Netflix, and I know it's easy for you to stay in pajamas. But I think you're beautiful in a dress and boots, and just let me take you out once a month to start. And that would mean a lot to me. Yes. And now she knows exactly how to fulfill my value, and she knows that I recognize what she values. I even know, she even knows I recognize that she values staying home and watching Netflix, which will do three Fridays a week a month. Yes. Right. But you have to have

that hard conversation. When you can do that, the most powerful thing, whether you want to call it, motivational or manipulation. When you show somebody you understand their point of view, they cannot resist. They can't reject it. I'm walking away from this conversation with many thoughts, many skills. But I am definitely going to commit to better understand the perception, the perspective of everyone I'm dealing with.

So if you're coaching me on how to do that, because I truly want to become a master at this, what should I be doing? Is it literally looking at their body and thinking, what are they feeling in this moment, et cetera? But what's the checklist that I should be going through? So there's, we can get into great complexity if we choose to, but I'll keep it very simple for you.

Because I would imagine that based on your experience and where you are in your life, you already do the big things already. You have to listen more than you talk. That's a challenge for a lot of people. you have to listen more than you talk. You have to ask open-ended questions. Because when you ask an open-ended question,

you are inviting the person to talk more than just a short, simple answer. What's happening is you're giving the other person the impression that they're interesting. Okay. And people love to be interesting. And the more interesting they feel, the more they're willing to share. Yes.

So all that time that you're receiving the information, you are actively getting a picture of what that person person is. You're building what we call an assessment. You can layer into that assessment verbal cues, how fast they talk, how loud they talk, what their vocabulary is. You can layer in physical body movements, body language. Are they leaning forward? Are they looking uncomfortable? Are they looking cold? And then you can start to imagine, oh, here's this person. It's the end of the day, and it's a Friday, and I know they have two kids. They must be wondering about their kids and they, I know they have a long drive to get home, you start really picturing and thinking

these things. And then you can validate your ideas by asking an open into question about the thing that you're assessing. I see. Right. And then do you just allow that rabbit trail to go? Like you just continually, and is that what you would do with targets? Is you would just sit down and just continue to profile them profile? The superpower at CIA is not about guns or tech or gadgets. It's about systematizing natural curiosity. Okay. Just naturally finding something

curious about the whole world around you. Even when you're sitting across from an extremist Islamic kidnapper, you can still be curious about them. You can still be genuinely curious about why they

do what they do, what they ate for breakfast, what they're going to have for dinner, what's their favorite type of coffee. I see that you're wearing this brand of sandal and not that brand of sandal. You can ask an infinite amount of questions because it doesn't matter what they theologically or ideologically believe. At their base between their two ears, they're the same pink computer that runs you. Yes. And it's all about being so naturally, so intentionally curious that you gain what we call informational superiority in the relationship.

This episode is brought to you by Google Pixel. Tired of eating the same thing? Google Pixel 11 Pro has Gemini built in. So you can snap a pick of your fridge and just ask something. Like, hey Gemini, give me a 30-minute recipe using what I have in my fridge. We're going to make a crispy panseared chicken with honey glazed charred sprouts. Brussels sprouts and chicken are a match made in heaven. Ask more of your phone and try the Google Xel10 Pro.

Check it out at store.gougal.com. Results for illustrative purposes.