EverydaySpy Podcast - How To Manipulate People Like a CIA Spy | EverydaySpy Podcast Ep. 28

Episode Date: December 8, 2023

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And this is something CIA taught us, too, that human beings need to feel connection. And I think it's important because what we were taught is that people need to feel connected. We were never taught that people actually need to connect. So a big part of what a case officer's job is, is to actually simulate the feeling of connection. And if you can control someone else's experience, if they can feel like they are connecting to you, even though you yourself are protecting yourself, separating yourself, not actually connecting, to the other person, that feels very genuine. And that feels very authentic and intimate and powerful.

It's been three weeks since I've been home. Yeah. It's been a long time. And then I was only home for two days prior to that. And then it was another three weeks that I was gone. And even this time, I'm only home for like six days before I leave. Yeah. And it's the holidays, man.

Like this is, we are happy Thanksgiving. Happy Thanksgiving. We had a fantastic Thanksgiving dinner yesterday. Thanksgiving lunch that I made, which was soup. I'll take it. Anything that you cooked, I would have eaten. Except salmon. I think that was the word.

We did that last Thanksgiving. I know. Thanksgiving salmon was the year before. And I had regrets. But what I am struck by is that, you know, these long stretches, that I'm gone because I'm filming with History Channel, these long stretches that I'm gone, they get harder each time. That's interesting.

The first time that I filmed this time away from you guys, right, was last year. And I basically spent, what was it, I was on the road for like 26 days home for two weeks and then on the road for like 60 or 70 days after that. Yeah. So in those two stretches, they were long stretches. Yeah. But like I didn't feel the compounding absence of my family. family. Yeah. But what I'm feeling this time is every time I'm gone, I'm not gone long enough

to cross the threshold into basically like being a bachelor again. Yeah. But I'm also not home long enough to cross the threshold into feeling connected and in tune with the family. That's really interesting. So I'm always in this weird transition zone where I'm like, I miss my family and I'm not of, and I don't have the freedom of being single on the road. Yeah. Or I'm at home and I'm just making a mess out of everything at home, screwing up your schedule and the kid's schedule and I don't know where stuff is in the kitchen anymore. And like, it's just, I'm always out of place.

And it makes me feel for all the people out there who make a career out of travel. Yeah. My mom spent many years traveling. She spent 12 years traveling five days a week when I went off to college. Yeah. And I mean, she's just one example. You've got salespeople who travel, executives who travel. You've got media people who travel.

It's a very real thing that many people make a living out of being gone. Yeah. And then this time while you were gone, we have a friend whose husband's a submariner. And for all the feeling, sorry for myself that I do, she called me because one of her children was really sick and her husband was on a sub completely out of touch. Like she had no way to tell him that the son was sick. She had no way to communicate with him to say that she needed help or to even update. And I thought, oh my gosh, how lucky am I that even when you are in the most remote parts of, you know, the western United States, I can at least, you know, usually get enough of a signal to touch base, have a sign of life, give you a little update. Yeah.

Right. So for us, this time has actually been, I think, a little bit easier because I knew what to expect. last time I was super depressed when you were gone. But this time I had a better plan in place. I was like, all right, Andy's going to be gone. I know what it looks like now. And so I have better coping mechanisms. We had talked about already when you come home. I think, you know, we had discussed before you left this time that when you come home, you don't change anything. So everything, you know, we make space and time that's special to dote on you because we want to have that connection time with you for the short periods of time that you're home. But otherwise, you don't get to come home and

be like, why is it this way? No, no, no. You don't get to ask any of those questions until you're fully back. That's fair. It's fair. And one of the reasons that it's so interesting to me is because what I'm realizing is that the feelings that I'm having on the road are not just mine. The other folks in the crew with me, the camera operators, the sound people, the production people, everybody feeling the difference between last season and this season. We're all feeling that absence, that grind of like, I don't really fit here, but I also don't fit at home. Yeah.

So I think what's happening is everybody's feeling a little bit lonely. Yeah. Even though we're all together, right? So there's 16 people on the TV crew, five camera operators, two drone pilots, four, five production people, one sound person. two cast. I don't even know what all that adds up to yet. And then some other people that I'm sure I'm not counting for appropriately because they

don't speak TV. But my point is you've got 16 people traveling and living as a pod. Yeah. Everywhere we go, working 12-hour days together six days a week. Yeah. We should not feel lonely. Yeah. And yet I'm almost certain that we do.

Do you think that it's different this time because you have shorter sense of together and that is it arguably better to have longer stretches? I don't know if better or worse is the word I would use. I think what's so fascinating to me isn't that, I mean, of course it sucks when people feel bad and I don't like feeling lonely. Yeah. But the twisted part of my brain is like, this is such a cool social experiment. Because we're all over the place.

Yeah. Forced together. Yeah. We didn't choose to be together. we were brought together based on a mix of availability and cost structure and skill sets. And now all of a sudden, boom, here we are, go make a TV show. And there are people who don't get along on the set. And there are people who do get along on the set.

And there's people who pretend to get along on the set. But what's fascinating is seeing how our social norms adapt or refuse to adapt when we're all put together. And then you layer on to that the fact that this is the holiday season. Yeah. And it's like Thanksgiving travel and Christmas travel. And the weather is getting horrible. Yeah. Like it's getting colder.

It's getting snowier. I mean, it just becomes harder and harder to be out in the field shooting a show outdoors. And we've all been through this before because we did it for the first season. And the first season was such a slog. Yeah. I kind of don't know what any of us, me included. I don't know what any of us were thinking when we said yes to doing this for a second season. Yeah.

But the social element of it is what's so fascinating to me. How is it? A good rhetorical question, but also one that I'd love for us to explore. Yeah. How do 16 people feel alone when they're all together all the time? Yeah. How can we feel so isolated when in fact we are inundated with people? Because you're not there to connect with each other.

You're there to do a job, right? So it's not like you spend, you know, 12 hours sitting around the campfire, learning about each other's families and history, you know, and connecting on the things that make you, you know, human beings. I mean, you're working the whole time. I mean, it's a grind from what it sounds like, you know, tons of work, different hours of the day. Sometimes you guys start at 6 a.m., sometimes you guys start at 1 and then end at 1.

you know, it's just, it's, I don't, it must be difficult because you're constantly being pushed. It's like, it makes me think of when you have two working parents in the home and the kids go to school and the grind of the week where the kids and the parents don't see each other, especially if you have parents who work different shifts. My mom used to work a night shift and my dad worked a day shift when I was growing up. And so they would, you know, high five each other, you know, when one came home from work. and the other one left. And, you know, that kind of grind doesn't lend itself to human connection. And so you can be living in the same house with these people and feel pretty isolated, feel pretty alone. I mean, there's nobody to talk to because everybody's busy doing something else. There isn't that downtime with the intent of just connecting. And this is something CIA taught us, too, that human

beings need to feel connection. And I think it's important because what we were taught is that people need to feel connected. Yeah. We were never taught that people actually need to connect. Right. So a big part of what a case officer's job is, is to actually simulate the feeling of connection. Yeah. Because what people need is to feel like they have connected. They don't actually need to successfully, truly authentically be connected. And if you can control someone else's experience, if they can feel like they are connecting to you, even though you, yourself, are protect, yourself, separating yourself, not actually connecting. Right.

To the other person, that feels very genuine. And that feels very authentic and intimate and powerful. Yeah. Because they feel like you are connecting. Yeah. And it's really interesting because I do think you're right. I do think that what's happening is, you know, with the group that I'm traveling with, we are not connecting.

And part of it is we're not connecting because. we don't have the time and the space. Like last year, when you're 75 days on the road, you have to connect. Yeah. Like time breaks you down. And eventually somebody gets sick, gets hurt, right? Has something happens at home and they need support. Like something happens.

We can all be strong for 14 or 15 days and basically pretend that we don't need anybody. We can all do that. But come like 25 days, 50 days, it's much harder to pretend to be an island. of your, you know, in and of yourself. But my point is that we're not trying to connect. We're at CIA, every operation, every time you were with a target, every time you were with a partner, every time you were with a liaison service, every time you were in any kind of operational role. Yeah. You always turned it on. Yeah. And the thing that you would turn on is that simulated connection, make other people feel like they are connected to you. Yeah. And I think what becomes

challenging at the CIA is that it's a little bit blurry because sometimes it is a purely simulated connection, but it's really easy for that to become a real connection. And then that creates security risks and you have to be careful. And then you're walking around the agency, looking at your peers, because you know everybody's turning it on. We're just trained to do it. So then there's a little part of you that's wondering how much of this connection is authentic. Right. Right. And how much with my peers, how much of it is authentic and how much is because they know that I'm on my way up and they want me to swoop them up with me, you know. So yeah, I think it is very, it's an interesting scenario there because we know that everybody's trained to do this thing. But it does remind me

we or like about a week ago before you came home we were already we're already looking at your travel schedule for next year yep we were we had just gotten off the phone and we had just kind of penciled in like this this is what it might look like next year and I literally thought to myself I was like I'm just going to move to Japan with the kids while you're doing this thing that you might be doing and I'm going to rent a friend And, you know, I grew up in Japan, so it's a comfortable, it's not like a completely foreign place to me. So I'm like, you know, we're going to, I'm going to learn Japanese. We're going to move there.

I'm going to just start renting a friend because there's this service in Japan. Yeah. Because it's a historically kind of closed stoic society where you can pay somebody to come and, you know, it can be used for a lots of things. Sometimes people, you know, have a, like, I need you to pretend to be my boyfriend and meet my parents. I need you to be my date to a wedding. you to pretend to be my mom at my wedding because I'm estranged from my family. But it's also, I need you to just come hang out with me at a coffee shop so I can talk. I have somebody to talk to. That is so funny. So that's actually a phenomenon in the United States now, too. That's in the

U.S. That's in Canada, I'm pretty sure, too. So it's funny because I started researching because I thought, well, for sure they've got to have them here. And there is, I think, a website or something called rent a friend. And, but then I started looking through all these forums, Western forums, where people were really kind of shit talking, renting a friend. And I thought, what a fascinating, what a fascinating perspective to look down on people, like especially in this age when we know that people are less connected. So to look down on the fact that it's okay to have a simulated connection with somebody because really what a lot of people want is the simplicity, right? When you rent a friend, it's simple.

They come. There is no baggage. There's no judgment. Judgments. There's no her feelings and, you know, did they like me or not? And it doesn't matter because they're serving a purpose for you. And that's what they have chosen to do, right? And the fact that you're paying the money, I don't think that, and personally, I don't think

that lessens the experience, right? Yeah, you know what's funny is I love what you're talking about right now because renting a friend, if they're good at what they do, it's basically the same thing as renting a case officer. Yeah. Right? Like it's somebody who's going to come over and they're going to make you feel good about you. Yes.

They're going to ask you questions. They're going to talk to you. They're going to do the things that you like to do, whether it's backgammon or parcheese or watching a movie or talking shit about a reality TV show. Yeah. Whatever it is, if you like it, they're going to do it with you because you like it. And through that process, you are getting all the needs that you need to have filled. Right.

Filled by a person who just happened to be hired for the purpose of making you feel that feeling of connection. Yeah. And what's really wild is there's a level. of discretion that's built into it. Yeah. So you already know that your other friends and your mother-in-law and your kids and everybody else, they're not going to hear any gossip from this rented friend. Right.

Yeah. You don't have to have a history with somebody to feel seen by them. Yeah. Right? You can feel seen by somebody you've just met. And that's kind of the point. You know, and the exchange, I mean, every relationship is an exchange. you know, most relationships that we think of, there's an exchange of, you know, I listen to you,

you listen to me, I do this favor for you. Like, I have you over for Thanksgiving, you have me over for Christmas, whatever. I spend time with you, you spend time with me. Exactly. So what is the difference between the exchange being, I pay you money and you come and I feel seen. I have a sounding board. You know, I can talk about my aging parents. I can talk about my, you know, I'm lonely. I can talk about, you know, you can, I can talk about the fact that I'm lonely and I'm, I'm awkward dating, you know? I mean, you can complain about your kids. Yeah.

You can complain about your spouse. Yeah. I mean, you can vent all sorts of things and the other person's job, literally their job, is just to listen, smile, maybe offer some comforting words, maybe offer an alternate perspective. Yeah. Depending on what kind of friend you hired, I'm guessing there's probably a friend profile, so you know what kind of person you're hiring. Yeah.

Interesting. You know, when I think about what you're talking about, it does make perfect sense because if I, if I on the road, if I needed to connect with somebody, like I wouldn't, I would never be able to connect with the people I work with. Because even if I was willing to be authentic and genuine and transparent with them, there's no guarantee that they're going to be the same thing with me. And there's no guarantee that what I say to Bob isn't going to become gossip with Jane, you know, Bill and Buster before the end of the trip.

Yeah. So it, wow, all of a sudden paying someone, how much does a friend cost? I have no idea. Whatever the number. Paying someone $15 an hour, $25 an hour? Yeah, whatever it is. Yeah, like what would an expensive, what would an expensive friend be if you knew that you could basically like confide in them and feel connection for two or three hours?

And what's fascinating is this sounds horrible. When I'm with my real friends, half the time I'm like, I want to be done hanging out now. And I just kind of want you to go home because I'm done. Like I feel what I needed to feel. I feel connected. I feel like the conversation was great. And now I want to get on to the next thing I have to do. But how do I awkwardly but friendly tell you please go home?

You really are like the master of like, hey, it's been fun guys, but you got to go. I don't know if I'm the master of it. I just say it. Right now I just say it. That's why I don't have many friends. It's true. You have a very thick skin. Very thick skin.

But I mean, there's also so many other things. Like if you, you know, if you feel, if you're shy, you're very introverted, you feel awkward having conversations. It's a safe space for you to practice being social. If you are young and you would like to date or something, you know, it's a safe space for you to kind of go out and practice, you know, not the full dating cycle, but practice, you know, having conversations or what's it like or, you know, there's so many things you can do and it's safe. That's what I like about it, right? There's there's no baggage. There's no, you know, there's no worries there. You know, they're there for you. Are you going to move to Japan when I'm gone? I hope not. Gosh, if the flight was shorter. And if you're going to rent a friend. And if our daughter ate anything other than string cheese. Oh, that's true.

Yeah, she was not going to do well. No. She's not going to do well on your mom. I don't know how I'm going to get her to eat the food there. So if you need to rent a friend, I understand. I would support it now that we've had this conversation. I'm kind of like, oh, you know, it does kind of make sense. Yeah.

Go get your, go get a massage together. Go get your toenails done together. There's going to be a lucky-ass friend, too. Like the person that gets called by you to be like, hey, come hang out with me for two and a half hours so we can get a massage and get our nails done and go eat good food. Yeah. Somebody to go get fell with. That's a very lucky friend. I would love to be that friend.

I know. I would prefer to be you obviously. Except I'm working. Yeah. That sucks. So then while you're not running away to Japan, not yet. I would also like to highlight that one of my favorite countries has been in the news lately. Yeah, Argentina, which, and the reason it's my favorite country is not because the Medialunas

or the Cortados, those are excellent. It's not because the beef, which is excellent. It's one of my favorite places because it's always a disaster. Argentina is always, always going through some kind of ridiculous chaos that's politically driven. It's like on a two to five year cycle. It's just constant. And they're such close, they go back and forth between being allies with the U.S., not allies with the U.S., trading partners with the U.S., not trading partners with the U.S. And it's just been, it's comical, and that's a big part of why I like it, because you go there and you're kind of like, what's going to happen in Buenos Aires this week?

You never really know. Yeah, I do find it. I mean, I also love Argentina. I spent a summer there, and it was just magical. Although I do, I did wish there was more variety in vegetables. But I mean, like the beef and the wine was so amazing. That's your variety right there. Right, right.

Yeah, and lots of potatoes. But I do, you know, I loved it there. I love the people. The culture is so amazing. And it is fascinating to watch what happens over the years politically. I actually had a one of my law school instructors. There was a period in the 70s when there's this giant book about it when there was dictator and people were just disappearing. And he was actually an American teacher there. And he was

actually kidnapped and tortured during that regime. Oh my gosh. And it was so fascinating to learn that history and to meet him and talk to him. And so to watch how the country has evolved over time has been really interesting. But just like you said, they're so unlike the other Latin American countries. And they just had their presidential election. They just elected a new president. And And he's so fascinating to me. He's making news everywhere, which is what's so interesting. Argentina doesn't make news. Yeah.

It doesn't. Not unless you're looking for that. True, true. But here, the new Argentine president who honestly looks like a sitcom TV character. Do you think so? Absolutely. The sheveled hair, kind of round face, mildly portly body. Like the dude looks like a sitcom comedy plucky character.

He's so different from the other, a Latin American president. Yes. So tell us how. Tell me how. So what got me was I'm like, oh, Argentina had an election. You know, I'm reading about the president. And I'm, the article is like, yeah. And he wants to privatize half the government agency.

And I was like, what? That is exactly the opposite. Of what all the other American presidents do. Yes. You know, Venezuela, Chavez came in. Everything became, you know, state-owned suddenly. Ecuador, Brazil, Peru, Chile, every, like, the whole thing. the theme of Central and South America.

Has been. Has been for the last, maybe 10 years. Oh my gosh, longer than that. Yeah. This shift, what they call the pink, I think they call it a pink wave or a pink tide. It's basically going socialist. Yeah. Right?

Take everything that's privatized. Make it public. Massively increase, like the social structure, massively increase government. Right. And subsidize the lives of everyday people. Yeah. And that's driven Latin America into a just a dark, dark place. And it's made all sorts of problems for them.

It hasn't. They haven't been able to fulfill the promises that they said it was going to do. Yeah, because they're catering to the lowest common denominator, right? When you're literally like Chavez did in Venezuela, like Maduro still does in Venezuela, when you buy votes simply by giving people eggs and milk and bread, you're not on a rising trajectory as far as a country goes. But Argentina isn't doing that. Here, this new president is starkly going in the opposite direction. And what's fascinating is he's not conservative or liberal.

Yeah. Right? He's essentially libertarian. Yeah. Yeah. And that's one of the reasons I find it so fascinating is because there are a lot of people in the United States who feel the same way. About libertarianism. Yes.

Yes. Smaller government. And one of the most interesting, one of the interesting ideas that came out of what I was reading about what the President of Argentina wants to do is, you know, by privatizing, by creating a smaller government, you're lowering taxes because you have a smaller government to support. And so just the entire concept, this entire concept, I was really excited because if he can get the government to move in the direction that he wants, we get to watch this experiment. Well, the good news is... Does it work? The good news is, I mean, if he has his way, he's basically firing half of the government. It's fascinating.

Right? Because what he wants to do is take everything that's public and privatize it. To privatize what the government controls means you don't need government jobs. Right. So he's going to create, theoretically, a huge amount of demand in the workforce for openings for new jobs. Yeah. And he's going to fire half of his existing government in order to save the costs because without public services, you don't have the right to tax the population.

Right. Because you don't, and you can't spend the tax base that you have because you're not actually running any services or functions. So they won't be able to tax people, which means they won't be able to pay their own people. They won't be able to pay government staff. So they'll fire staff and put new workforce into the public sector. Right.

And then, or into the private sector, pardon me. And the private sector will then like rise up and start creating more business. efficiency, more services efficiency, more infrastructure efficiency. And he'll, I mean, the way he's talking about it, it's going to be fast and drastic. Yeah, I mean, that's the theory. And Argentina's the perfect place to do it because they're always in chaos. Well, you know, I grew up. I was raised by very liberal parents and I was very progressively liberal throughout college.

and I was raised with this idea that private industry is bad, that corporations are evil and they don't care about the little person and they just want to make, you know, the 1% doesn't care about you. But the truth is that businesses are more efficient than government, and you have to weigh the pros and cons of what they're able to do, and it's not that private industry or public domain are bad in and of themselves because it's all about the people running them. Right.

So it just comes down to who's behind whatever services we need. And if people in the private industry can do it better, then, yeah, it's going to work. If people in the private industry really don't care about the little people, then, yeah, it's going to fulfill all those bad things that people think about corporations. Well, not only that, but I mean, there's the truth is that whether the 1% cares about us or not is irrelevant. Because the foundation, the population is what business needs. Right. Business dies without customers.

Customers are simply people who choose to spend their money on whatever consumer goods or consumable goods, they choose to spend their money on, whatever they choose to spend their money on, whatever they choose to buy. you can be a jackass company and be the only company that offers a certain good. Think Facebook when I first started, right? Nobody liked Zuckerberg. Lots of people still don't like Zuckerberg. Most people don't like Facebook, but it's the only Facebook out there. So it's the only thing people use. It's the same kind of problem.

I have a friend who hates X. Oh, really? Hates X. Former journalist. Yeah. Hates X, formerly known as Twitter. hated Twitter, hates Elon Musk, hates all the misinformation, all the dissent, like, dude, all he does is just bitch about the X platform.

That's funny. Why? And guess where he spends all this time? That's really funny. On the platform. And I'm like, why do you complain so much about it? Yeah. And use it.

Yeah. And he's like, well, because the fact is it's still the only place the journalists, like independent journalists can go now to air their stories and get seen and get discovered. That's interesting. then you can't hate it that much. Yeah. Like if it's, if it is the tool that serves the need, yeah.

That's why people use it. So you don't, you don't need the point I'm making is that we don't need to hate corporations. Right. Because they don't care about us. They shouldn't care about us. What a corporation should care about is producing a service that's so good or a product that's so good. Right.

That fulfills a need that people have. Right. And then as long as they provide the service and other people have the need, all that's left is price. Right. If it's too expensive, people won't buy it. If it's too cheap, too many people will buy it. So it's all about finding the right price for the right people and making it work from there. And that's why like I know Nike doesn't care about me.

And I know new balance doesn't care. All the shoes that I wear when I exercise or run, not a single one of those CEOs actually cares about me. I don't really care about them either. But I do care that what I put on my foot keeps me safe in the gym and gives me ankle support and arch support and whatever else. Right. And I think in theory, if, so it's like when you move out of your parents' house, right, when you are living in your parent, because I always knew the government as parent. Which is growing up, I thought.

I see the government is a warden. I always growing up, I thought you need a big government to take care of people, to take care of the people who have nothing else, who have nobody else to turn to. because I grew up when the welfare system was really expanding. But in theory, just like when you move out of your house and suddenly you have to cook for yourself, you figure out how to cook for yourself. And maybe you do it even better than the way your mom cooked. Right.

Maybe you don't cook everything on high heat. Sorry, mom. She still cooks everything on high heat. I know. But she had a lot going on back then. So I'll give her grace for sure. But so in theory, if the government shrinks and there are still needs, right, there are still public service welfare needs, then in theory, people will come up with new ideas to fulfill those

needs. And the market will force them to do it in an efficient, cost-effective way. Exactly. So just like, you know, maybe your business will still be profit-driven because you have to to make profits to survive, but you'll find a creative way to take a portion of those profits and help the people in your community. Maybe the help will be more localized, which a number of people have been saying that having such a big government and such a large federal welfare system is really ineffective because

every community is so different and there's no one-size-fits-all solution. So if you start really privatizing, then you can really start, you know, instead of fixing everything with a sledgehammer, you fix it with a scalp, and the community itself can come together and better address the needs of their community. Yeah, it reminds me what we have here in the United States with the food movement especially, where you have these very liberal people and very liberal communities that criticize factory farming, but at the same time they want a large government. And the large government wants factory farming.

Yeah. Because that's how they can have massive control and regulation over all the food that goes to the population. So you have these two groups that stand at total odds over what they value, but they still are somehow on the same side. Right. It doesn't make sense. It's like hypocrisy, right? So all that to say, Argentina, you've got two fans. I'm so excited to see how it goes.

And we wish you and your new libertarian president and future libertarian government. We wish you absolute success. Oh, yeah. Because if you are a success case for the United States, maybe we will. find her way out of this ridiculous bipolar or this ridiculous polarity. Yeah. This, yeah, bipolar is exactly the right word. Ridiculous world pool that we live in right now, right? We're just, oh, we're ridiculous. Just spinning the same ideas over and over again. What's the point? There's nothing new right now. Let's impeach another president because that's what we're talking about right now.

Yeah. Let's keep doing the same thing that didn't work. Exactly. So if for anybody who can be a ray of sunshine. Yeah. To the end of a polarized government. Argentina, we salute you. And keep up the great wine and steak, please. Don't change that. Don't change that. Don't change that. You keep shipping the mouth back over. Now, we always try to have a conversation around a question from someone in our spy tribe, somebody who leaves a comment on the podcast or reaches out to us via email through the newsletter or through social media. Do you have a good question for us? Yeah, somebody asked, and I think it's very appropriate this time of year, somebody asked how you and I go about making decisions together, particularly when we disagree. I don't know how to answer that question publicly.

So we disagree often. Oh, yeah. We disagree often. And I don't know that either one of us, I think you, if there's one of us that has true Trump power, like true, they. the ability to just totally trump the other person's idea. I think it's you. Because, and you... But I try not to.

I know you try not to, but I feel like you're the one who can do it. I don't feel like I... I don't think I am ever in a position where you'd give me an idea and I'm like, straight up, no way. But there are plenty of times where I give you an idea and you're like straight up not happening. I think it goes both ways. I just...

My example is always when I was like three weeks away from my... due date and I wanted to go see a meteor shower that was two hours in the boonies in the middle of winter and you're like, no, babe, we're not. That's not what I said, though. That's not. So this is a fantastic, perfect case study. You are literally getting ready to have a baby. Yes.

In the final few weeks. And for any woman or man who has been in the final few weeks before a baby is delivered, like people get loopy. People just start having really bad ideas. So here you are. You're just ready to be done. You're like, I don't even care anymore. And it was our first child.

So we had never even gone down this rodeo before. And you're huge. Yes. And you're so pregnant. And you're walking every day to try to get this baby out. I remember. I was like so swollen. My like shoes didn't fit.

Yeah. But but you were going through this phase where all you could think about was like life was ending. Like my life is going to end. Like whatever's inside here is going to come out. And then just all baby time. Yep. Just put me in handcuffs and lock me in a cage because I'm never going to have a life ever again.

And it was so irrational. But at the same time, I was like, oh, my poor wife feels like she's going to go to jail. And I'm so excited about having a baby that, of course, I'm not carrying. And of course, I'm not feeling the discomfort of. But there was a meteor shower. You're exactly right. There was a historic, like, once every hundred year meteor shower in Virginia that we were going to be able to see.

But you had to be in a dark sky area at like 2 o'clock in the morning. And I'm pretty sure it was cloudy all day. Yeah. And the forecast was for clouds overnight. And you came to me and you were like, babes, this is, this is all I want before I go to baby prison forever. I just want to see the meteor shower. Can we just go see the meteor shower? And I'm sitting here and I'm like, there is no way in hell that you are actually going to be good tomorrow.

If I drive your ass two hours into Poh-Dunk, Virginia. I wouldn't have even made it. At 2 o'clock in the morning to look at a sky full of clouds. I was like, this is not a good idea. But I never said no. Yeah.

Yeah, you have a way of not saying no, which is good. I was like, this is going to go really bad here in a second. I've been practicing not saying no or saying things in better ways. But I do think that something we do is we take our time making a decision. decision and I think that's really important.

That's fair. Right? So one of the processes that I know we use is I, at least I use, is I make a pro, this is is funny now that I think about it. I make a pros and cons list and then you go through and you wait, you put numbers to weight them. Do you remember when we make for really big decisions? And then because sometimes I'll feel like I'm leaning one way, but then once we've waited

all the pros and cons that I've listed out, I'll realize that really it's. The decision goes in the other direction. So I think by I'm a really emotional person. And all of my initial ideas and reactions come from the emotions. So I think you do a great job by giving me time and space to come back to the problem and think about it. I mean, it's not like weeks of time, but even just a couple of days, you know, a few hours to let me just kind of, you know, you say your piece, I say my piece.

you know, if we come back to it, if there's still no resolution, then we can do a pros and cons list. I like to write out all the ideas. I come back to it back and forth. And I think that's, for me, that process really helps me distance myself or let my emotions calm down. So then, you know, I mean, we were doing this yesterday trying to plan vacations. And I think, you know, I had these grand ideas at the beginning of the day. And by the time we went to that, literally as we were falling asleep, I was like, you know what, babe? Like, I realized. I need to pull it back. And so let's just do that.

And the decision was made, but it took me all day to get there. Well, the decision wasn't made, but a new way of looking at the decision was made. Correct. That goes right to your point. You're right. We take our time making decisions. Yeah. So to the question, to the original question that was asked, we definitely have it

so that one person does have the power to totally veto an idea. Right? So you do have the power to be able to. veto, but you use it rarely, which makes me trust when you use it. Yeah. And then there's certainly an element of always watching out for the other person's best interest. So like with the meteor shower story, I would have loved to have seen a meteor shower, but I was not going to love what you were going to feel like the next day being, you know, 10 months pregnant after staying up all night to try to see a meteor shower. Not to mention the fact that neither of us was going to like it

if in the middle of the media shower, you went to labor. Yeah, and I think something else that we do is, which touches on the meteor shower, and we've done a lot since having kids, is we ask ourselves the question of, why do we want to do this? Because we've had a number of ideas. We're like, this is a great idea. And then we're like, why are we doing this? And if the answer is, well, we're doing it for the kids.

And then the next question is, is this the best thing for the kids? Right. Are we doing it for ourselves? Are we doing it for them? What's really... If we're doing it for ourselves, should, we include them? Right. If we're doing it for them, do we both need to be there? Right. And yeah, you're right. So we're always... Asking the why question is really, really important. And always thinking

through what is actually in the best interest of the person that you're thinking about when you consider the decision. Yes. So slow decision making. Yep. Asking that why question and keeping in perspective. Yeah. The other person's needs, true needs and desires, right? And then you're you're exactly right on big decisions having a process or having a system. And our system, like you said, our process has been to the most emotional of the two people, assuming that one person is more emotional than the other. If you're both emotional, then both people should do it, I imagine. Yeah, I'm always the emotional one. But create that a list of pros, a list of cons. It doesn't have to be long. Just 10 or so on each

side, if we make this decision, here's 10 good things, here's 10 bad things. If we make that decision, here's 10 good things, here's 10 bad things. And then give each one of them a score from one to 10 where each item can only get one score. So that forces you essentially to prioritize what is the thing that gets the most score. Yeah. And then what oftentimes we find with you at least is that the things that you score the highest because you're forced to use rationality. Yeah. Right? You're forced to use logic and reasoning. whenever you score them, oftentimes what happens is the things that you are the most emotional about are not the highest scoring items.

Correct. And it's been really interesting because then you do. You have your own, it's really nice for me because I don't have to be in the middle of being the one that tells you you're no and you're wrong and you're not thinking about it. That does not work. Not for my best interest. Nope. But there we go.

That's a great. So great question and great conversation. That's exactly. I feel like we do have a pretty good way of solving. big questions. It's been working out. And just so everybody knows it is not, it's not pretty. No.

Yeah, there's still. Our marriage is not pretty. No. It works pretty well. Yeah, it's not all like smiles and apple pie. But it's not pretty. Right before we started recording this, we were in one of those moments we were like, oh, come on.

I'm taking my deep breath. I'm like, I have to look like I like Andy. You don't ever have to look like you like me. because it's so real that you do. It's true. I'm very lucky that way. But no, but in all seriousness, I mean, marriage is work. And I was talking to somebody on the crew who actually recently went through a divorce.

And he was like, he was verbalizing how disappointed he was that his mom and dad, who had a great marriage, never once told him or his sisters or his brothers how hard marriage is. Oh, yeah. I felt the same way after we got married where I was like, nobody told me this was hard. The movies make it look like marriage is like the ultimate goal. Yeah, right? You find somebody, you fall in love, you're romantic to each other, your kind to each other at the end. Yeah. Marriage is hard. Yeah. And it's not just hard work. It's hard because people change. You are not the person you were when I met you in 2007. I am not the person I was when you met me then. Like we are not who we were when we got married in 2010. We are not who we were when our first child was born in 2013.

We are not the same people. And we're constantly. growing, changing, shifting. We have different interests, and yet we're forced by our own volition to do this thing together. Yeah. So there's moments, forever. Which you laugh at.

I think it's comforting, but I remember the moment that forever dawned on you and you were terrified. The night we got married, I was like, oh my God, this is forever. Lucky you. Lucky you.

But there's a, I mean, so marriage is hard. And anybody who's hearing this message, anybody who hears our conversations and is part of a married couple or was married or is considering marriage, I know you get it. I know, I know the person listening understands that if they're married, if there's a ring on their finger or if there's ever been a ring on their finger. This is so, so hard. But at the same time, it's such a unique opportunity. over all the people who never get married.

And all the people who get married, but then maybe don't try their hardest. One of the saddest things that I come across is clients and customers and peers who got married and were only married for a few years or less. Yeah. And then when they had that first whiff of hardness, of difficulty, they were gone.

Yeah. And it's especially hard for the people who, like, made it 20 years, 18 years, 30 years of marriage and then divorced. Yeah. Because then they become, like they realize how a little bit more work would have resulted in a life partner. Yeah.

There's plenty of people who get divorces and it's for the right reasons and it's great for them. Yeah. But predominantly what I have seen in my experience is a lot of people who regret the fact that they didn't try harder. Yeah. So one of the things I love about us is that we have had some dark years in our marriage and we keep trying. Yeah. Right? Like we always keep trying.

We always trust in the process of communicate, make better decisions, like lean into the discomfort because, you know, one day it's either going to work out for the best or it's not going to work out for the best, but we'll have known that we tried our hardest every step of the way. We're never going to have to ask ourselves that question whether or not we didn't. Right, exactly. And for sure, every year that the kids get older, every year that the business gets stronger, every year that we are healthy. Like we do.

We get closer. We grow more. We get closer. We find our voice. We stand our ground. And it makes for a really wonderful relationship. So thank you. Thank you for my wonderful, difficult marriage.

You're welcome. I'll keep making it difficult. Promises, promises. Folks, thank you so much for joining us. If you enjoyed this conversation, please leave a comment below. If you felt like we were speaking about it. something that was important to you, whether it's Argentine wine and steak, or whether it's the challenges of marriage, or if you want to rent a friend like gee, he wants to rent a friend,

leave a comment below too so that the whole world knows we're not the only ones who are crazy about this stuff. And of course, leave your questions so we can pick them up and add them to our Q&A every time we sit down and have one of these conversations. So we really enjoy having a chance to serve you. We really enjoy the opportunity to watch the channel grow and watch all of you join us for these conversations. We genuinely hope that you are having a wonderful holiday season yourself. In the United States, we just celebrated Thanksgiving, and we have our eyes set on Christmas and the New Year, and this is a very important holiday season for multiple cultures around the world, multiple countries around the world, and we hope that you are spending awesome time with family,

having a blast, having all the same hardship that we have, and having some fun along the way. Thank you so much for everything, and we can't wait to talk to you next time.