EverydaySpy Podcast - Term Limits: CONFRONTING Congress | EverydaySpy Podcast Ep. 9

Episode Date: September 2, 2023

We the people of the United States… need to get serious about whether we want to keep the fools we have in congress! The statistics don't lie – our leadership in the US is older than it's ever been, blocking the path for tomorrow's leaders and keeping new, fresh ideas out of a government that has been deadlocked in partisan politics for over a decade. It is human nature to avoid what CIA calls 'Hard Conversations', but the time has come to have a hard conversation right now. And Jihi and I are willing to start it as long as you are willing to listen. Find your Spy Superpower: https://everydayspy.com/spyquiz Learn more from Andy: https://everydayspy.com/ Join the SpyTribe: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EverydaySpy/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everydayspy/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/EverydaySpy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Maybe old people in positions of leadership in the House and the Congress, the Congress and the Senate, maybe we shouldn't have them there. Maybe there should be a cap before you're too old. If you look at the leadership right now in Latin America, if you look at the leadership across Asia, look at Xi Jinping, you're talking about powerful, powerful people, largely men, who are old, who are old and of a generation that is not the modern day digital generation. Because CIA has this really horrible ad campaign going on. They have this push in their advertising right now that's like highlighting diversity and woke culture, all that stuff. Last night, we're putting the kids to bed.

And our six-year-old makes a joke where she uses the word sex because she doesn't really fully understand what it means. She talks about sex so much. I know. But it's not that she talks about sex. She makes these jokes. She hears the word and she, you know, something sexy or you're sexy. or you're sexy in your bud or like she doesn't really understand what it means. But our son, who's 10, made a comment of, you know, like that joke doesn't make any sense because sex is for making babies.

And then our daughter was like, oh, yeah, sex is only for making babies. And I found myself standing there mumbling under my breath. Well, that's not exactly true. That wasn't that under your breath. I heard you correct them. I heard you correct them when I was like, what kind of Hornets nest are you trying to step? into right now because our son is 10 and I you know when I was a kid my best friends in middle school I had two best friends in middle school and they both started having sex at

11 right and we I know and we homeschool our kids so they won't be exposed in the same way but they will be exposed to other kids and I'm definitely on board of the philosophy of like you have to you have to teach your kids the right thing before somebody else teaches them the wrong thing right so in my mind I'm like our son is 10 he he's going to be entering puberty in the next few years, we are going to have to have that hard conversation with him. Not hard for him, hard for us. Hard for us. It will be hard. Well, that's a good call. Will it even be hard for him? Or is he just going to be like, what's up, mom? What's up, dad? I'm pretty certain if it's me, he's going to be like, mom, you're getting

too scientific. But it's an important conversation I have with the kids. And, you know, We've talked before about how I have a really strong filter. And in my family, we don't generally have hard conversations, but ever since being with you, we've made it this really important concept that in life and relationships, you have to have the hard conversations. You don't get anywhere without having those.

Yeah, and a hard conversation is an uncomfortable conversation. Yes. It's a conversation that most people don't have. There's not like a precedent for hard conversations. They're just conversations that are needed. Yes. But they're uncomfortable. Right.

And so they're avoided. Yeah. Right? They're the avoided conversation. Anytime you find yourself thinking, this is bothering me or I should talk about this. So this is some really, you know, an important conversation I should have. And then the next step you find yourself avoiding it, that's a hard conversation. And that's even more reason why you should have it.

You know, for me growing up, we never had hard conversations. And it was really, yes, we never had hard conversations. What we had were everybody would avoid the issue until somebody was so frustrated from the avoidance that they like melted down and then had this hostile confrontation. And that was basically life with my mom. Life with my mom was avoid, avoid, avoid, pretend everything's happy. And, you know, tip over too far into the angry side. and hostile, angry conversation,

and then say all sorts of things that you regret saying, and then pretend like those things never happened until stress builds up enough that everybody has another hostile, confrontational, and you see it with my mom still. Like when we are with my mom, and I remind her of something traumatic from childhood, and she's like, that never happened.

I don't know what you're talking about. And my family also, you know, put it down, you know, stuffed it down deep, but then it didn't normally, explode sometimes everyone I think I can remember two times where my dad exploded with some kind of repressive anger but otherwise in my family what happens is five years down the line 10 years down the line something comes up and you're like you've been holding on to that a really long time you know when I was thinking about because I woke I ding the wake this morning thinking

when am I when and how am I going to have this conversation with our son right? Like is 10 too young? Should I wait? Like, you know, what's the right time? And it made me think of how case officers develop their assets because I feel like the same skills that case officers use are skills that are important for parenting as well. So one of those is just being a good listener, right? And being a good listener in the context of being able to assess the right time.

So a case officer is trying to assess the right time for a pitch, right? To pitch to the person like, hey, I want you to spy for me, right? It's a big pitch. Right. And it's a big pitch. So it takes lots of time where you're listening to them and putting time into them until you get to that point where you assess that they're comfortable with you and they're open with you, right? With kids, it's the same thing. You need to spend all this time listening to them and assessing along the way their openness.

to you so you can figure out that right moment of like we're going to have the talk today. So and let's be clear because, you know, being a good listener in culture, in pop culture, that means something completely different than what we're talking about. Right. It's not, it's not passive. It's not empathetic. You're not trying to be a good listener so you can be a good person. You're not trying to be a good listener so you can be a good friend. In this case, we're not trying to be good listeners so we can be good parents. That's not what we're doing. We're trying to be proactive listeners so that we can find the right time to introduce a difficult concept, a difficult topic. Yeah. It's very operationally

driven. And that's how case officers use it, right? Good listener, I mean, that's something you'll get from a yoga class. You'll get that from like an influencer online who's trying to sell hair products. Who knows what? It could apply to the other things, but definitely in this context, the hard conversation context. It is not those things. Right. It is a process by which you listen so that you can assess to your point. You can gain enough evidence, verbal evidence, nonverbal evidence, life experience, context. You can assess when is the right time to bring up a topic. And it's funny because we're talking, even now, we're talking about when to bring up the topic of sex with our 10-year-old homeschooled son. Yeah. But the reason we're having this

conversation is not because of him. It's because of his six-year-old sister who makes sex jokes like she's a 35-year-old man. Right? So it's interesting because we're assessing for one person, but we're, like we're, we know that this train is coming. Yeah. But we don't, not because of him. If you, if we were to just assess from him, it's years out. He doesn't talk about sex. He doesn't show much of an interest in sex. He still thinks kissing is gross. Yeah. Right?

He talks about wanting to marry a nice girl and have a family and have kids and be a dad himself. So there's certainly evidence that he's a heterosexual kid. Yeah. But it's not like he talks about his sexuality at all. No. It is interesting. Like, is it going to happen all at once?

Like, is it going to be 10 year old is cute and 11 years old is cute and 12 year old is what? Now we're talking to like a horn dog. Like, what's it going to be like? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But, I mean, and it's not, you know, just like puberty itself, right? It's not standard.

You can't standardize these things. So the only way to approach it is to make these constant assessments along the way to really be paying attention. Now, when case officers assess, when field officers assess an asset. And, you know, it's not just case officers. Anybody who comes in contact with a case in CIA, they're all asked to weigh in on their assessment. Even the analyst who's only reading the Intel report, who never meets the person, is still asked to assess the case. So what are some of the data points that you use when you're assessing a person, a case, an individual situation? So, you know, we're always looking for case progression, right?

Because that's what matters. So we're looking to make sure that the person is comfortable with the case officer, that the person is being honest in the things that, because some people are looking to be spies, right? Some people are putting false information out there because they want to be recruited and paid for information that they don't actually have access to. So we're looking for, you know, are they being honest with the case officer? Do they trust the case officer? Do they have vulnerabilities in those situations? that we could, you know, or motivations that we could, you know, leverage when the time comes to slowly build them up to a point where they are comfortable giving us the secrets that we're

looking for. So this idea of progress over time. You want them on day five to be more open, more cooperative, more compliant than they were on day zero. Absolutely. And it's funny because one of the things that I was going to say is we look for consistency. Consistency in progression, that's one thing. but also consistency in areas of interest, consistency in vulnerabilities, consistency in levels of interest. And it's really fascinating because when you apply that same concept, in espionage, that all sounds sexy, right? Let's find the nuclear scientist who drinks too much, right? And he's working on a nuclear missile program. And then, you know, let's see that case progress.

It's way less sexy, but even more impactful in many ways when you apply it to your family, to your kids, right, or to dating for crying out. Oh, yeah. Do you see progression? Yes. Do you see consistency? Right. Do you see the promise of future growth? Because if you don't see those things during your assessment over time, not during your instantaneous assumption, right? Because assessment and assumption often get confused. Yeah. We're not saying what do you assume about the person. We're saying what do you assess from actual evidence that you collect in your, interactions with them and do you see that progression that consistency and that value yeah and it's i mean if you think talk about the dating world you know it's more than just the first three dates

because maybe you have your amazing first three dates and you have drinks and you're having a great time and everything is wonderful it's really more like on date 10 yeah right like have your last 10 dates progressed to a point where you feel like that person trusts you or you feel like that person listens to you and you are giving them the kind of feedback that shows that you were listening to them so i know you know when we started dating the first we we met at work we met um at orientation and then the first time you came to my apartment was maybe like two months after we had met and the first and the thing you brought me the first time you came to my apartment to visit was a bag of cherries because I had mentioned to you that it was cherry season and cherries

were my favorite because they were only available when they're in season. That was the reason I told you. That was the reason I told you. But I mean, come on, like the first time I went to a girl's apartment, I bring cherries. There's so much immature innuendo there, right? Well, unfortunately for you, my mom was staying with me at the time. It didn't work. It didn't work well.

She ate the cherries, which was really, really, very. really uncomfortable to me. But then over time, you showed consistently that you had been paying attention to things that I had said. And just little acts of service or little gifts that you would give me built that trust for me that, oh, Andy's paying attention. Andy cares. That's how I equated it in my mind, right? I did care. And I was paying attention. I thought you were super interesting. And I thought you were super fun and you were you were an awesome escape from all things CIA even though you were still a CIA thing too right it's funny because you know you you give this very sweet example and

when you were explaining this where my mind went was to a very raunchy example of course and and i've got to say it because i know i'm not alone i know i'm not alone i was always the guy who stayed with the wrong girl because the sex was good and that goes to you And that goes, I mean, talk about assessment, right? Like, she looked good naked. She was good in bed. She was a dumb as a hammer in public. She was not the kind of person you want to introduce your mom to.

Your friends all looked at you like, why are you wasting your time? Like you could do so much better. But for you, as the dude, 28, or not 28, 28, I was with you. I was past it by then. 24, 25, 21, right? I didn't want to work hard. I didn't want to work hard. I definitely didn't want to work as hard as it takes to find a true life partner.

Yeah. So the lazy way was to find the good enough partner. And, you know, there's a lot of guys out there who do that. We work just hard enough to find a partner who's good enough. Yeah. And unfortunately, what I think I find with a lot of people now that we're in our early 40s is that what was good enough to them when they were in their 20s, it's not good enough anymore. And that's why you find them moving on to second marriages or you find them going through

their first round of divorce, which is strange to be a season in our lives where we're being invited to second weddings instead of first weddings. But that's where my mind went because that's a failure to assess. Right. I was failing to assess the situation. There was no progress. There was no growth. There was no outside of the consistency of being good in bed. The other thing that was consistent was all bad. Bad conversation, you know, not enjoyable times in public, no approval from my social circles. Yeah. Like I wasn't tuned in.

I wasn't doing a proper assessment. Right. And that's, I mean, and that's if you were looking for your assessment to be, will this be a long-term partner? Right. Because if your assessment is, will this person meet my needs for, you know, the next six months? Then maybe that was a proper assessment you were making. Hmm. Way to validate my bad, my bad single bachelor decisions.

Well, I have my own decisions too that will. remain in the lactoine a closet. But man, could you imagine those talk about hard conversations. If I would have had any one of those bad fits and I would have had an honest conversation with them, it would have gone horribly wrong. So that's why we find a thousand and one excuses

to break up with boyfriends and girlfriends. The whole, it's not you, it's me thing is like the worst breakup plan ever, but we all use it because we're just trying to avoid the hard conversation. Because it really is, you? I do remember a conversation in our history where it was definitely a, it's not me, it's

you conversation. That's true. You want to bring it up. We'll jump right into that because that may have been our first hard conversation. Hard conversation when you broke up with me. Yep. After you had been bringing me dinner, too many, too many second plates of dinner. Yes. Yeah. So I don't know, we were dating. I don't think we were living together. We were living together? No. We had been dating maybe six weeks or so. Oh, yeah. So very early on. It was very early on.

Yeah, it didn't take you long to make that assessment. I was very into you because you were smart, you were bold, you were confident, you were intelligent, you were capable. You were a strong woman. I really respect strong women. I feel like the world is a better place because of strong women, right? And for sure, I was raised in a household full of strong women. So it was a very natural thing for me to be attracted to your strong woman nature And when we were dating early on and you were a strong woman in public

But then whenever we got in private watching a movie eating dinner going on a date you were like demure and the little woman and the little woman and the big woman the hashtag Lady boss and public and you were like little house on the prairie in private and I was like I didn't like this this consistency is not working for me. Yeah, and it was because, you know, I'd come from a family where my female role models did everything for the men. And I had just come out of a long-term relationship where that was the dynamic and that was a dynamic with his parents as well. And so that was the example that I, you know, I was emulating these women who I adored.

But it wasn't really me and you knew that. And what I think is so powerful about that hard conversation, was it was a hard conversation. I was completely heartbroken. I didn't fully, like I knew you were unhappy, but I don't think I fully knew your feelings for me at the time because it was so early on. I didn't know my feelings for you at the time.

Yeah. And so, but what happened was because you took the step, right, if you had not had that conversation with me, if you had avoided it, we would have continued down the same path and you would have continued to have been unhappy and maybe we would have broken up eventually because of it, or maybe we would have continued, and then you just would have not had the partner that you wanted,

I wouldn't have grown. But because you had that hard conversation with me, we broke up for quite a while, and I took that conversation as an assessment of myself, and I grew. So I took all of that time and all of that feedback that you gave me as hard as it was to hear, and I ruminated on it,

and I figured out what can I do to make these changes, right? At first I was very, at first I pushed back. You remember, right? We haven't, no, you're jumping to the end of the story, right? Because I saw that you were being weak in private and strong and public.

And then the actual conversation that you keep referencing, that's what I'm saying, you're jumping to the end. No one knows the conversation. Oh, sorry everybody. Is we were having dinner, we were watching a movie, we were having dinner, You brought me dinner, like you have done a hundred times before, and I asked you multiple times, like, don't bring me my dinner.

Like, I'll get my own happy ass up, and I'll go get my own food. In fact, sit down and let me bring you dinner. But you kept bringing me dinner. And then I think the straw that broke the camel's back was we're watching this movie. You had just sat down to your own dinner, and I was mostly done with mine, and I was talking about how good the food was. And then you didn't even take a bite of your own food. You then stood right back up and came over and got my plate and took it away to go get me more food.

And I was like, I cannot handle this. And that was when I told you. I was like, this is not what I'm interested in. I do not want a partner who's going to wait on me. You're not a waitress. You're a partner. We're supposed to do this thing together. And I feel like right now you're putting yourself second.

And how are we ever going to be on the same page? if I put you first and you put yourself second. How are we ever going to see eye to eye on this? Right? Like, let me take care of you. You can take care of you. And then anything that's left over, we can use that to focus on me. Because I don't need what you need.

I'm not a needy person. I don't need attention. I don't have anxiety. I don't have low energy. I'm not an introvert. Yeah. Right? I have excess resources in these areas.

So let me invest them in you. I don't need you going into debt with your. resources yeah I don't need you you know exacerbating your anxiety you know I don't need you running your energy levels even lower by trying to pretend to be this little Latina woman for her big Latina boy taking care of my name that's not what I need right when I need you to take care of me it'll count and you've taken care of me a lot in our life I've been super sick and you've taken care of me and you've brought me back from places of deep depression like you've been there when I needed you and and

And the hard conversation we had in that moment was, I don't need you to wait on me hand and foot. Yeah. And that was not something you wanted to hear. I recall you yelling in my face, this is the way I am. That was my response. This is who I am. And that's how we ended up breaking up because I was like, well, and I don't want to have any part of you. Yeah.

Yeah. But yeah, so I definitely, that was definitely my answer. But it was, that conversation was the catalyst to a really big change. Yeah. So what happened? Because I went home. I cried for a while like a week. I talked to my mom a lot and then and then I realized that you were right and I was being obstinate and so the first thing I did was

I found you in the hallway and I made sure that I solidified the connection with you because I didn't want to lose you I wanted another chance and I knew it but I couldn't tell you that so I found you in the hallway and I remember it was a stare well and I ran after you I grabbed your arm and I was like it's really important to me that we stay friends right like you have a positive influence on my life and it's really important to me that we continue to be friends and I you know I find a lot of growth from my interactions with you and if you're okay with that that would make me happy and you were like yeah and you were great so that was the first step because crazy because I had a plan at that point like I knew right

Like the case officer knows they're going to make their pitch down the line, right? So I knew down the line I was going to make a pitch. So I just needed to keep that first contact going. And then I started really reflecting on what you said. And I started putting in the work of not being demure, of making sure I put myself first. And I started going out by myself, which I hadn't been. And then we had the same circle of friends. So you would see me out.

and you would see the difference in my demeanor over time. So over time, you were able to make the assessment by me intentionally changing my behavior that I was really making a change. I was really working on it. So then when I reached back out and started to make passes at you, you were more open to those. When you showed up at my apartment with a deep cut top blouse. And the Transformers, too, moving.

And a DVD. that's how we age, that's how we date ourselves right there. How could I say no? Yeah. But yeah, hard conversations. And now, you know, we've been married 13 years. We've known each other more than 16 years. So now hard conversations are something we do all the time.

On a regular basis. We know it has to get done. And we don't really shy away from it. In fact, I think most people think that we're arguing when we're just talking. Yeah, yeah, and it's interesting because, you know, there are times when we'll be with a group of people or we'll be talking and We'll have different opinions and I have to remind myself that I am with you and not with my You know parents or extended family like I'm with you so when I disagree I need to say it I need to speak up and if that's the beginning of a hard conversation that's okay

It's necessary, right? So speaking of hard conversations there is so much going on right now that people don't like and they don't want to accept but they're not willing to talk about it. So what is one of those things for you? What irritates you when you read it in the headlines? What news articles, what current events come across your phone in the morning, because we've talked about this before. You read the news first thing in the morning.

I've got bleary eyes. Apparently it helps you tune in. It makes me angry. start my day angry every day. If I had to read the news first thing, I would start the day angry. But seriously, though, what is the hard conversation? What's the thing that you see that you don't like every day? I mean, right now, I think that the, I think one of the hard conversations that the nation is hopefully having was, you know, highlighted by Mitch McConnell recently, having whatever happened to him. An episode, right? You know, very publicly. And then before that,

that, you know, several months ago, Diane Feinstein was also out sick for months and people were calling on her to please step down because her health was in peeing. She sits on some very important committees and when she's not there, nobody's there. Like there's no backfill for her, right, to make those decisions. So, you know, the idea of, you know, age, I think is, I think talking about using age as a factor to prevent somebody from being in a job is a hard conversation, right? It doesn't feel right to people to, I think, and generally in this day and age, like it doesn't feel right to people to say you're too old. Right. And there's this whole idea of ageism. Now to take a step back,

what you're talking about is pretty recent news for us. Yeah. when Mitch McConnell was giving a, he was speaking to the press and giving just public comments and then standing there behind his pedestal, he just kind of blanked out. Yeah. And it was the strangest thing to watch too, because he's having a conversation and he's speaking in that octogenarian voice. And then he just stops. And he keeps staring. And you can see he's got that 10,000 foot stare. It's not like, it wasn't like a stroke or anything like that. I know some people joke and call it that. He just stopped for a very long time. Like a very, clearly it was not a strategic pause. It was a solid 12, 15, 25 seconds. And then his aides actually

started saying, you know, hey, Mitch, is there anything else you want to say? Or people tapping him on the shoulder and they actually pulled him away from the microphone. But that was an episode. For sure, some break in cognitive process that was partially induced by age. Partially, I think people suspect that he had a concussion not long ago. Yeah. So a concussion is a bruise of the brain. The older we get, the longer bruises last. Yeah, the longer it takes the heel.

But you're exactly right. Like, here is the leader of the Republican Party in the House, unable to communicate to the press. That's an issue. That's a big deal. There is no more senior member than him. Yeah. And he can't communicate.

And then the same point with Feinstein, right? Here you have somebody who is so, critical to some of the most important subcommittees out there that without her presence, nothing happens. And she's got, I think it was shingles that she was diagnosed with. So she was absentee. Yeah. I mean, these are responses that are induced in large part by age that are impeding their ability to execute the office that they're in. Right. So at what point are we allowed to have the hard conversation of saying, hey, maybe old people in positions, of leadership in the House and the Congress, the Congress and the Senate, maybe we shouldn't have

them there. Maybe there should be a cap before you're too old. Just like there's a minimum. Just like there's a minimum. And federal agencies have caps. That's a fair point. You can't be older than 38, I think, to apply to certain job categories. Right. A lot of special agent positions, 37 is the cutoff. Department of State for Foreign Service. 60 is the cutoff. So, and I think, you know, so I think it's not unprecedented to have an age cut off, just like you have an age minimum in the federal government. I also think that it's a larger, it's larger than just age, right? Because the people who are of older age in Congress are generally people who have also been in Congress like 20 plus years, right? So there's, it's not just about age for me, it's about

term limits, right? Like, how long are you going to sit in that seat when there are, other people that are more representative of the demographic that you are trying to represent, right? And they're competing, right? There are competitors out there trying to fleet up, trying to bring in fresh ideas, trying to bring in, you know, new levels of cooperation, trying to better represent the constituency. Right. But they just don't have the the long-term support, they don't have the funding base, they don't have whatever that you've developed as a multi-generational, right, holder of a position in government. Right.

I mean, imagine if people knew that after two terms, right, let's say maybe not the House, but maybe the Senate, right, after two terms, that seat is up for grabs, right? It's open to everybody. And two terms in Senate would be 12 years. 12 years, that's a long time. That's a third of a government career right there, more than a third. That's a long time to make an impact. 12 years is more than two presidents if they, that's two presidents, if those.

two presidents both have consecutive terms right that's a long time you can step down yeah let someone new step in and you should and you should I mean consider how fast technology has changed how fast society has changed in our adult life right and I would say our adult life didn't start until we were really 21 speaking about adolescents you're not really an adult at 18 yeah well they say your brain doesn't really stop growing until 25 25 right so cognitively you and I know you're not an adult when people say you're an adult right and I'd say most people who are over the age of 35 probably also admit like yeah I was kind of a dumb shit at 22

I wasn't really a grown up until I was 28 yeah but either way if if you had the opportunity to bring in fresh adults 30 year olds 32 year olds 35 year olds yeah right to replace the aged out 50 year olds 55 year olds what you're doing there is you're always having the steady rotation yeah of new ideas new talent, new collaborations, new resource pools, new networks that are always coming in, and still leaving plenty of time for people to have a really positive impact and move the government ball forward. Move the social ball forward. And it's not like those people, it's not like the people who, you know, term out or age out can't be still be involved somehow. Correct. Right. And we

know for a fact that that's how it works in DC anyways that, you know, it's a revolving door. It's a revolving door you're gonna come back as a consultant in some way anyways making more money right so you know allow the younger generations to come in allow not I mean I say younger generations because I believe that that's important right the the for me the position of the elders is to you know curate and and mentor the youth right the next in line for leadership if you hold on to your position for you know 40 years you're not doing that you're not doing that you're not doing the job that you're supposed to be doing. So, you know, it's, but yeah. Yeah. Well, to your point, too, I don't think either of us is saying that we need to bring in youth, right? Like,

we're not saying bring in somebody who's unqualified and zealots. Yeah, we're saying bring in the new blood. Yeah, because zealots don't work well in Congress either, right? I do not like AOC. And I know a lot of people out there love AOC. She is a zealot. She is not trying to do what's in the best interest of the country she's trying to do what this radical base that she represents because of her youth when she started it's just become like this permanent constant Instagram battle right that's not what we're talking about because there's definite um like having having experience is important right right real world experience and having a real dedication to the office that you serve yes is super important. You're not self-serving. You're serving a public office that supports a public constituency.

Yes, and you are supposed to represent that constituency. So how do you feel then about the fact that like the two top contenders for president right now are both over, are they both over 75, both over 80? They're both over 75. Isn't that insane? Yes. And it's not just the United States. If you look at the leadership right now in Latin America, if you look at the leadership across Asia, look at Xi Jinping, you're talking about powerful powerful people, largely men who are old, who are old and of a generation that is not the modern day digital generation. We're talking about people who grew up in the Cold War. We're talking about people who grew up during the time when racial segregation was a thing, right?

We're not talking about people who understand cybercrime and who understand digital evolution and who understand the rise of the internet, right? We're talking about people who came up when things were still done on ink and paper and a courier delivered it. Yeah. And I think that they're the ones leading the world. Right. And I, you know, I think that those are very demanding jobs.

You know, that Congress, if you work in Congress or if you're president, those are very demanding jobs. And you just can't overlook the fact that that kind of stress, the kind of hours, the kind of hours that a president has to keep, right? It takes a toll. We saw Barack Obama go gray in like four years, like completely gray. Do you remember Bush? Yeah. Yeah, Bush went like Bush had dirty blonde hair when he took office. He was an ancient old man when he left office. And it was insane how much of a toll the office took on him. Yeah, it takes a toll on your health. And you just can't overlook the fact that when you're older, it's going to be more impactful. And are you really

serving your country if you're going to leave a mess? A mess, right? Either by not being able to fulfill the duties, whether the public knows it or not, and possibly even dying in office and then leaving your second in command, you know, it's just messy. Yeah. Yeah. Why do that? You know, it's funny because you and I think have had this very kind of recent intimate experience with this because we've started to see our own family members age and we've started to see their decline and I'm reminded of a guy in the private intel world that I was working with about a year and a half ago and his mother-in-law was dying rapidly and his wife was very dedicated to her mother so they were traveling to Cincinnati I think it was up from Florida to Cincinnati almost every

weekend, right, to try to check in. Yeah. New health emergency. They needed to do something, right? Yeah. And he was commenting after weeks of this, how it's just, it's not helping anybody. The mother's life is being prolonged and she's in pain and discomfort and she doesn't even, she's disoriented.

The wife, his wife, the daughter of the mother is not sleep. She's sleep deprived. She's stressed out. She's frustrated. She's disappointed. The whole staff at the hospital is also frustrated and angry and disappointed. he's struggling in his career in his business trying to keep things running because he's managing a family emergency for what?

Yeah. Right? For what benefit? And you and I kind of see the same thing. We see the same thing with our own families. We see the same thing kind of playing out in the headlines, too. It's just we think that they're different and they're not that different. Mitch McConnell is somebody's somebody's son.

He's somebody's father. He's somebody's brother. he's somebody's grandparents. Right? And right now, that family member is watching him become a public spectacle on headlines. Yeah, we are mortal beings and life has a cycle, right? And we should respect that cycle. When you get to a certain age, you should fill the role of mentor.

You should take it easy on yourself, right? Like, I know that you want to be involved, and I respect all of your experience and your contribution, but it's not your time anymore, right? It's not your time for that position anymore. Let somebody else in, right? And then you take the role of that stage of life that you're in, right? Like kick back, take it easy.

Well, not even take it easy, but dedicate yourself in the capacity that you're now qualified to do. Yes. You're not qualified to be a mentor when you're 30 years old. I know there's life coaches out there who are like 28 years old. So you can't coach shit at 20 years ago. You barely qualify to coach softball or like T-ball for crying out. out loud you definitely can't coach somebody's life high-ticket coaches I love seeing their ads on friggin' Instagram but my point is you're not qualified to

coach at 28 you might be qualified to coach at 48 you're certainly qualified to start giving some wisdom at 58 right and by the time you're 68 you've seen it all yeah now all of a sudden you can give people really meaningful guidance really meaningful counsel right because you can you've had so much life so much experience so much secondhand experience. It's just it's incredible what you can do at 68 that you simply can't do at 28. I remember being a kid. I was always in a hurry to grow up. I always want to be a grown up to make my own decisions, to pick my own food, stay up and go to sleep whenever I wanted to go to sleep, right? I remember wanting to grow up all the time. And then I remember being like

28, 29 and realizing that like I don't have any of the Wasta or influence. that I want to get shit done. And it was hard to have my hands slapped every time I had a creative idea at CIA and in the military and everything else. And then somehow, at like 41, all of a sudden, people trust my opinions. Yeah.

They didn't trust my opinion at 29. They trust my opinion at 41, right? Even I, when I talk to people, you've seen me do this. I'll talk to a client or I'll talk to, you know, somebody who comes across our radar. And you'll be like, oh tell me about them and I was like oh it's 32 years old he's a fucking kid right but other

people are like 50 years old I'm like you know he's like 50 years old she's 50 years old they got to figure it out like they they have a really good idea because they've had enough life experience to make sure it's a good idea that 32 year old may also have a good idea but I'm still like yeah but I don't know if he's going to follow through yeah I don't know if they're going to deliver all right we haven't had enough assessment data yeah well it's partially perspective too because I mean maybe a 30 year old could be a life coach to like 19 year old, right? I was, I was going into a bathroom the other day and it was an 80 year old woman and a 60 year old woman passing each other and the six year old woman made some comment about age

and the 80 year old woman was like, oh honey, you're so young, you just wait and see. And I was like, it still happens. It still happens, right? To the 80 year old woman, the 60 year old woman's really young. Yeah. So our hard conversation today for everybody listening is, is ageism really something that we need to worry about. Or is ageism actually does it have some validity? That there really is a time and a place where somebody can be the wrong age for the role that they're in. Right. And it's, we're not saying that, you know, all 22-year-olds are idiots and all 60-year-olds are invalids. What we're saying is there's a season. There's a time. There's a place where you can optimize your contribution in line with your age and the experience that you've had and the

knowledge base that you have. And there's also very real value in recognizing that there are places where just one generation behind you can come in and make a massive contribution. Yeah. And I think that that's a very fair but uncomfortable thing for people to admit to. And whether or not anything is going to happen with that. I'm pretty sure Mitch McConnell is still going to be running the show. and we've got a lot more old white men still ahead of us in senior positions of government. I can almost guarantee you. Well, on the other part of that hard conversation is how long should you hold onto power, right? At what point, no matter what age you are, should you let it go?

Washington turned it over. That's how the whole country started. Yeah. Exactly. We'll see. What's our question for today? Did we have a question from the spy tribe today? All right, so our question for today is actually really interesting, completely unrelated.

Well, maybe it's not that unrelated. Maybe it is kind of a hard conversation. We'll find out. But the question that came in today was, are all CIA officers super fit like in the movies? I love your reaction. I feel like that answers the question. Thank you very much, folks. That's it for today.

I think people have to remember that the CIA. is a federal government agency. So I don't know if you've ever met anybody from another federal government agency, but it's varying levels of fitness. I do think that within the, within case officers, so I mean, the CIA has so many, so many roles, right? But within case officers, I do think that generally they are younger and fitter

than possibly the remains. of the population. I would actually say analysts are far more fit. Really? Oh yeah. I would I actually give that to the DIY personally. Interesting. But either way you're right. Yeah, you see it. Yeah, you see it. When you've been on the inside of the building, you can see it. It's because the lifestyles of the different job categories have different demands. So like your tech, so really the truth is no, people are not fit at CIA. Not any fitter than anywhere else. Not any fitter than anywhere else and you absolutely have you know the pretty standard breakdown of your super fit people and you're like weirdly obese people and then your average people in the middle

yeah and and a big part of I think what plays into that is the lifestyle that comes from being an intelligence I think that's accurate when you're young and you have no spouse no kids no obligations you heal like a young person you drink like a young person, you party like a young person, and you have copious amounts of time. Because basically, I mean, when I first started at 27, I was either in the office or in the gym, in bed. In the office, in the gym, in bed. That's pretty much it. And I very quickly built my whole sleep schedule around optimizing my time in the office and my time working out. But then when you start getting serious with a partner, when you start, you get married and you start raising a family

and you go up in your career, you spend more time in the office, less time. You spend more time in the office less time in the gym, less time in the bed. Yep. And things start to change. And especially for our field officers, people don't realize how hard a case officer's life is. Like a case officer who's running operations in the field, they're always on call. Yeah. They're on call with their boss, obviously, but they're also on call with their entire asset stable. Yeah. So any asset has problems at any time, any developmental calls in a favor at any time, they're gone. Yeah. They're eating fast food. They're traveling all the time. Like, they're drinking. They're smoking.

They're doing whatever the asset wants to do to feel good. Yeah. And the gym goes out the window. Rest goes out the window. Whatever it takes to move the case forward, to progress the case forward. And, you know, I've seen case officers just their bodies transform. Yeah. In, what, 12, 16 months?

They go from being, you know, fit, honed bodies that came out of the military or came out of, like, college or came out of, you know, advanced education. And then all of a sudden they are like state puffed marshmallow person. Struggling to just like keep the cake, keep everything on the rails. You see them and they have like the same work shirt that they were hired in except now the buttons are like pulling at each other and you're like, oh, like you don't realize that you've gained weight in these last, you know, 18 months or so. Even paramilitary officers, right? So our paramilitary officers are those people who were special apps, special forces in the military. They basically get secunded or recruited into CIA to do very. very specific paramilitary tasks.

However, for them to progress professionally, they basically do like two or three paramilitary tours, you know, demanding special ops tours. And then they do one or two traditional tours. And then on those traditional tours, inevitably, they're like, wow, life with croissants and coffee and wine is really a whole hell of a lot easier than life with MREs and like, you know, jungle BDUs.

And then they go back to the paramilitary unit, and they've got an extra 12 or 15 pounds they're carrying and then they got to get that they got to lose it and what's hard is you know we you and I started CIA at 27. Mm-hmm. Three tours in, you're 37 years old, right? 37 years old, it's a lot harder to turn your body around than 27, right? Four tours, five tours, all of a sudden now you're 46 years old. Really hard to turn your body around after you've had some nasty stuff from from traveling the world. Mm-hmm.

So yeah, the short answer is, no, not everybody's fit. I think it's also worth noting, though, that when you're undercover, there's lots of reasons to choose someone who's not fit to be a certain undercover role. Oh, yeah. There's reasons to pick somebody who has anxiety or somebody who has even mild asperger's. There's the diversity that exists inside CIA is really quite shocking. And it's necessary. And it's necessary because you really do have to pick the right.

tool for the operation. Right? I need a heavyset, African-American person who studied English at a state college and, you know, who is an avid fan of cribbage. There he is. And now he's on ops, right? Now he's the one doing this thing. And now, oh, I need a super fit female who speaks Arabic, but who also whatever, right? And then boom. And you put them where you need them to be. you have to have a super diverse pool of talent to be able to pull that. I'm continuing to riff on this. Thank you for being patient with me. But it reminds me of all of the current CIA ads that are out there that make me laugh.

Oh, yeah? Because CIA has this really horrible ad campaign going on. And it's been going on for probably two or three years now. You can tell that they've had issues with recruitment and issues with retention. Yes. And you see it because they have this push in their average. advertising right now that's like highlighting diversity and woke culture and like all all that stuff. Whatever seems popular at the moment. Yeah. They're just pushing it out there like here's rainbow flags and

here's lesbian couples and here's you know here's a Asian guy in a wheelchair with glasses. Whatever. They're just pushing all this stuff out there and you can tell that they're trying to represent like that they're a diverse workforce. I'm like guys. you actually are a diverse workforce so why change your advertising at all like you've always been able to attract incredibly diverse talented people because they value their intelligence they value the risk they value the challenge they value serving the American people they value something so much more than the color of their skin or the status of their of their sexual identity yeah the personality trait

that they're looking for and a good officer transcend gender, transcend, race, transcend background. And because of that, you get such a diverse pool of people. And it just, I feel like that's such a strong lesson to all of us, especially as Americans, where it's like we don't have to subdivide ourselves into 5,000 labels. Yeah. Right? Where it's like, oh, it reminds me of like the church system where it's like you can't just be Protestant. You have to be Presbyterian of this sex.

of this belief system, whatever. That's what I feel like sometimes as an American. It's like, oh, you have to be, you know, conservative or liberal. And you have to be, you know, extreme left or extreme right. And then what's your news source and who's your this and who's your that? And how do you identify and what state of your own? And you believe in gay marriage? It's like, can't I just, like, love my country and try to do a good job

and hope that my kids grow up and be contributing members of society? That's the kind of American flag I carry. Do you still accept me? No, I agree with you. I think that, you know, like, that it's important to accept people at face value when you meet them. And when we start trying to box everybody in and what is your pronoun and all that. And I'm, you know, why don't you just have the conversation with me, right? If you call me the wrong pronoun, it's okay.

I don't hate you for it. I don't hate you for it because you know what? I grew up, my name is Jehe. you know how many times that is that still to this day nobody says it right it's fine I'm not gonna get upset right you if you don't know what my religion it you don't know what my my gender you don't know my orientation it's fine yeah no I will I will not be offended we used to make friends without those things yeah now you need a name tag this long yeah yeah like let's just find out through dialogue yeah you know I promise not to be

offended I promise not to keep an open mind if you'll do the same thing. If you'll do the same thing. And then it'll be a happy conversation, not a hard conversation. Yeah. Thank you very much, folks, for joining us again for an awesome conversation. Please leave your comments below. Let us know what you liked. Let us know what you didn't like. Leave your hate mail if you want to leave your hate mail. We don't really care. We're thick enough skinned for it. But we absolutely want to know what questions do you have for us? What do you want us to talk about? What do you want us to dig into more? We've had a fantastic opportunity here to sit with you, to talk with you, to talk with each other.

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