EverydaySpy Podcast - What CIA REALLY Looks For to Catch Liars

Episode Date: September 11, 2026

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When you're trying to catch a liar, you cannot rely on any of the garbage that online influencers try to tell you. You can't see it in the way that their eyes look one way or the other. You can't see it in their blink rates. You can't see it because of some typical body language movement because every human body body is different. So people just react differently. So you can't apply one behavior to all people. What you can do, however, is you can't. compare a baseline. A baseline means if I know you, Francesca, and we spend some time together,

let's just say four hours. Four hours is a pretty decent amount of time to get a baseline on a person's personal behavior. Because if I'm with you for four hours, you either like being around me or you don't like being around me. If you do like being around me, then I'm going to see that your energy stays high the whole time. If you don't like being around me, I'm going to see your energy change over those four hours. So I can still get a baseline for you in both situations because you're either going to be high energy because you like being around me or I'm going to have seen your your energy change to a lower level of energy because it's draining to be around people you don't like. But once you have a baseline, that's how you can then start to

test if people are lying to you. Because you can see a lie is a very energy intensive act. it takes energy and focus and attention to detail to lie well. Remember, we talked about nonverbal and verbal communications have to be in sync. That takes a lot of energy. You have to be able to remember the lie that you told. And you have to be able to repeat that lie consistently with a brain, body connection. That's very difficult, right? Even gifted liars, even people who naturally are good at lying and who have lied a lot in their lives,

they still make a lot of predictable mistakes when you measure them against a baseline. But if you don't have a baseline, it's very difficult to tell if someone's lying to you. There are certain tactics you can use with somebody who's brand new, like a salesperson, or a new date or a new boss. There are certain things that you can try, but they're not as reliable as the internet tries to make you believe. What are some things you can try? So for example, let me. give you a few different techniques. There's something called the emotional question. When you think

somebody is lying to you, you can test them with an emotional question. Because when you ask a question that triggers an emotion, that emotion is natural, right? So I'll do it with you right now, right? So Francesca, tell me about one of your favorite memories as a little girl. It was probably walking in the botanical gardens in Romania with my mother. So I'm going to stop you right there. Okay. For anybody who's watching right now, they just saw your face do a few important things. First, they saw you actually look up and to the left, which is the chronological order of how we read.

Right? It's a natural timeline. You read from left to right. You remember from back in time to the current day. And that's what you were doing. You were recalling a memory. Well, when you recall a memory, you physically reference like you read. You look in the upper left hand corner and you reference to the right hand corner. Maybe you look up, maybe you look down, maybe you look straight ahead. But you naturally reference from left to right because that's the way you were taught to read. That's the way you see a timeline. That's the way everything happens. in a Western world, right? Second, they saw that you immediately had a reaction. As soon as I asked the question, you immediately had a reaction where you were trying, you could see on your face that it was positive. You could see in your face that it was not threatening.

You could see your face relax, right? You could see all of these things happen. So I had high confidence that you were telling me a true response because I asked you an emotional question, okay? I'm going to ask you another emotional question. question, but I want you to lie to me. All right? I want you to lie to me.

What did it feel like the first time I'm a boy either cheated on you or lied to you? It felt really good. I was so happy about it. So you could see, as soon as I asked the question to you, you could see the tension in your face as you tried not to display what you really felt. Because when I asked you the question, you had a real memory. You had a real feeling, and that feeling was not a comfortable happy feeling. So your face went flat.

When I asked you about a happy memory, your face came to life. When I asked you about a negative memory and you lied about it, your face was flat as you processed how you were going to lie about it. It's very nuanced, but for the people watching, they can see it. When you watch this playback, you will see it yourself, right? You also didn't see your eyes reference the same way that you actually reference the memory that I asked you to reference, you referenced a different way. Because as soon as you thought to look back in your own history, you also tried to resist that feeling because you didn't want to show me the true feeling. These are ways that anybody can test to see if a liar is lying to

them because they can use an emotional question because the person who's lying cannot resist feeling the real emotion. It's a great trick if you think someone's cheating on you. It's a great trick if you think you have a friend who's not really your friend. It's a great trick if you think that there's somebody who's not telling you the truth about their past. You can ask emotional questions and see their response. I'm definitely going to test this out. This is incredibly interesting. And I'm going to replay to see how I responded. What other things have you learned about human nature as part of, you know, like your training? What, you know, what do people really want and need? It's a great question, right?

So there's a few things. First, at a very basic level, there's a survival instinct in human beings that's always present. And because of that survival instinct, the natural first response for all humans is to assess something new, new people, new information, new food. They assess it as either a threat or a non-threat. That's the first thing that's just two options. Every time we meet a new person, go to a new restaurant, get in a new car, the first thing that we're truly doing on a basic instinctive level is we are asking herself, is this a threat to me or is this not a threat to me? A threat to my reputation, a threat to my ego, a threat to my family, a threat to my success, a threat to my sense of purpose. All people, if they have pink matter and a neurotypical brain, all of us look at every piece of new.

everything through this lens of threat or non-threat. And then sometimes we make a decision very quickly in a few seconds. Oh, this is not a threat. I like this car. This car feels good to me. Or I don't like this car. This seat is uncomfortable and I can't see through the windows. That's all threat response.

It's threatening my survival. It's threatening my long-term success, my ability to keep my family safe, my ability to have a positive reputation, right? So that's one thing that's really important. very similar and very, very much aligned with that, is this understanding that all human beings are at their core pack animals. We are tribal creatures. We crave human connection. We cannot be without it. Even when we think we don't want to be around people, what we actually want is to be around people like us. That's why introverts love to be with other introverts. They just don't necessarily

love to be with them talking, but they love to sit next to another introvert on the couch. They love to sit quietly in the same library and read in silence. They love to be part of the same Facebook group, which is why there's introvert Facebook groups. So even people who think that they're antisocial or think that they want to be alone don't really want to be alone. they crave connection with people who are like them. And when you understand that all people are craving human connection, it gives you a huge advantage over all the people out there who have not yet realized. All people crave human connection.

So you can always connect with a person, always. No matter how prideful or wealthy or ignorant or angry, no matter what they're feeling, there is an opportunity to connect with them if you understand that secretly deep down, they are craving human connection from someone who they do not determine to be a threat to their survival, right? So survival instinct and human connection go hand in hand, and it's a huge benefit for anyone in business, relationships, or family life when they understand that.

What are some things someone can do to appear as non-threaty? so that they can connect with anyone. That's a great question. There's a number of things that you can keep in mind. So first of all, when you want to appear as non-threatening, you should not demonstrate power. So remember how we talked about the center of power being your chest? You don't want to demonstrate that power because you never know if someone's going to see that power as a threat to their survival instinct.

So instead, you want to always subdue your power. That doesn't mean you want to block yourself off. If you block yourself off, you can still appear as a threat. threat. It looks like you're hiding something or holding something back. What you want to do is you want to mute your power. Roll those shoulders forward and slouch a little bit, right? And now people still see your energy center, but they don't feel like you're hiding something and they also don't feel like you're overly aggressive. So you want to always start when you meet a new person, always start in an energy neutral position, right? Something casual, something where you're not featuring your strength and you're

not featuring your suspicion. And then the next step after you present yourself is neutral is something we call mirroring. So look at the person across from you and go from your neutral position to mirroring whatever they are doing. If they're leaning forward, you should lean forward. If they've got their arms crossed, you cross your arms. The reason is because there's an inherent bias in the human brain, there's a cognitive bias to trust what looks the same, the same as us.

So if I'm showing suspicion of you and you show suspicion of me, cognitively, that's a good thing. I trust you more because you're connected. But if I'm suspicious of you and you're just a wide open textbook and your high energy, that doesn't make me feel like we're the same. But if you've ever seen too naturally extroverted, bubbly people meet, especially for the first time. And their biggest day and they're high energy and they're speaking with their hands.

It just goes on and on and on. Because they're mirroring each other and it's just building more and more trust and more and more confidence that they're the same, that they're going to get along. And that's something that you can actually control when you want to. When you meet a boss, you can mirror your boss. When you meet a client, you can mirror a client. when you're trying to avoid an argument but you need to have a hard conversation with your partner, you can mirror your partner.

And it's going to inherently create trust in their subconscious. These tricks are so useful. Do you have any other spy tricks that you can share with us? No, there are so many, Francesca, because we don't call them tricks. We call them tactics. We call them tactics. Spy tactics. Spy tactics that build them.

trust, spy tactics that build confidence, spy tactics that give you an unfair advantage. There are spy tactics that you can use for everything from how to shoot a gun to how to tie your shoes. There's spy tactics for how you pack a bag. There's spy tactics for what you eat and drink in the morning. There's spy tactics for how you talk to somebody who's senior to you. How do you talk to somebody who's younger than you? How do you talk to a female? How do you talk to a female that is attractive to you? How do you talk to a female who is not attractive to you? How do you talk to a female who is older than you and also attractive to you? We can, I mean, there's tactics for all of it because at the end of the day, what a spy is trying to do is achieve a very specific outcome. And the only way that

you can get your outcome is if you understand how to take advantage of the subconscious of your target so that you can deliberately move the conversation in a direction that benefits you. That does not mean manipulate everyone. What it means is when you are on a mission with a specific outcome that you're trying to achieve, you take deliberate actions to trigger with high probability the outcome that you desire. Now I want to know what tactics do you is to talk to a female that you're attracted to. That's a great. Okay.

So if you're talking to a female that you're attractive to, that you're attracted to, but you do not want her to know that you are attracted to her. It's called parallel conversation. You don't talk to her really at all directly. Instead, you talk to somebody who is parallel to her. So if you want to approach a girl at a bar that you're attracted to, but you don't want her to know that you're attracted to her. don't talk to her when you walk up to the bar.

Talk to the person sitting next to her at the bar. Maybe it's a boy, maybe it's a girl, maybe it's an old person, maybe it's a young person, maybe there's nobody else at the bar. So you talk to the bartender. But you do not show her that you're attracted to her. Because subconsciously what will happen is you will engage in a conversation. That conversation will be between you and the person you're talking to, which means two centers of energy start to generate shared energy.

That is going to naturally attract the curiosity of the third person. If you've ever found yourself listening in on someone's conversation, when you were like, why am I even doing this? That's why. It's because they started a conversation. They created an energy center that your body couldn't resist because of survival instinct. What if they know something I don't know? What if they talk about something I don't realize?

What if one of them is crazy? your survival instinct takes over and it forces you to listen in. And that's why some of us try to not eavesdrop. We're like, oh, I shouldn't be listening to them, but I keep listening to them. I'm not even interested in what they're talking about, but I keep in, I keep listening to them. So you, it's called parallel conversation. If you ever want to talk to a female that you are attracted to without letting her know that you're attracted to her. Is that a spy tactic?

Don't let her know you're attracted to her? Absolutely. It absolutely is because in every. relationship, you have to consider the dominance in the relationships. And the leverage that you have over each other is what determines the dominance that you have. So if you're trying to approach a target, remember, in CIA speak, we're not approaching a date. We're approaching a target of interest. That target of interest is a bad guy usually. They're a drug dealer. They're a smuggler of children. They're the wife of a senior general, right? There's somebody important.

So you want to never give them the leverage to have dominance over you right out of the gates because it's confusing to the relationship. Instead, you have to find a way to approach them on equal footing. If I talk to you, you have the dominant position because I'm deferring my attention to you before you defer your attention to me. But if I talk to somebody next to you and you then join the conversation, I have dominant. to you because you are showing me attention before I'm showing you attention. Now, if you want to talk to somebody who you are attracted to, then you do want to give them the benefit of dominance because what you want to do is you don't ever want to come across as a threat to them. One of the ways that you can make sure that you don't trigger a threat response

is by letting that person know they're in the dominant position. So you would find a way, a reason, a cause to approach them that is not threatening to them. So you come up to them and maybe you ask them a question that's unrelated to them, right? You ask them, you know, do you know where the restroom is? Or you ask them if they've been to this, you know, have you been to this bar for? Even as cliche as that is, have you been here before? Strangers ask each other that all the time. They ask themselves, they ask each other, have you had this, have you had coffee here before?

Do they have good food here? Like, have you ever had their pizza? Like, we say that stuff to waiters. We say that stuff to bartenders. We say that stuff to baristas. We say that stuff to same-sex people in a social scenario. So it's not actually cliche because it really is something that's used. But the goal is to ask a question that's unrelated to the fact that you're attracted.

But what you're doing is you're creating a shared energy that is not threatening energy. Because if I come up to you and I say something like, I'm lost and I'm looking for the nearest hamburger place, you don't feel like I'm here to threaten your survival. You feel like I'm some dumbass who's lost asking about a hamburger place in a wine bar. That's all I need because now I'm, I am closer to my objective of getting you to trust me as a non-threat when in fact, I am a threat. You see what I'm saying? Mm-hmm. Something else I want to ask you is, how do you deal with fear and anxiety in high-pressure situations as a spy?

Do they look for people that are low in anxiety? You know, this is a great question that shows some of the myth in Hollywood and the myth in the general public's understanding of spies. The best spies are not actually people who don't have anxiety. The best spies are people with high anxiety. and CIA actively recruits people with anxiety because anxious people are naturally more attentive. They are naturally more suspicious. They are naturally more observant. They naturally have a stronger recollection, right?

It's a superpower. Anxiety is a superpower in the world of espionage. However, if it goes untrained, it can be very damaging because anybody, who has anxiety knows the spiral that comes out of anxiety. So what CIA does is they teach us how to recover, recuperate, and maintain our energy reserves, our mental health, because they also know that they're tapping into our anxious tendencies. So that's another reason why sleep is so important. That's another reason why diet, not the food that you eat, but the order of what you eat, such as water first is so important.

That's why exercise is a priority for us, because these are all things that counter and combat anxiety, right? Sunlight or vitamin D combats anxiety. Routines and schedules combat anxiety. One of the things that my wife is also a CIA officer, and my wife has a general anxiety disorder, like a clinical disorder. And one of the things that keeps her sane,

is a routine that goes wherever she goes. So she can always have hard-boiled eggs. Anywhere in the world, you can find eggs, and you can boil them and you can eat them. Very, very predictable for her. Anywhere in the world, you can make some kind of hot tea, right? Whether that is cinnamon tea or mint tea or green tea or jasmine tea, you can make it pretty much anywhere.

So steeping some kind of plant in hot water to make tea is another thing that she uses. So that's part of her routine. There isn't a day that goes by that she doesn't have some kind of hot drink first thing in the morning after she's had her water. And when possible, in most cases, she also has either boiled eggs or scrambled eggs or some kind of cooked egg. It's a very predictable, calming, anti-anxital routine. That's amazing because it's such a simple thing that you can do, you know, just having a routine, but it's so effective. And one of the things that people don't realize is that 90% of your anxiety that you will

feel during the day is actually determined in the first two hours of your day. So if you start your day and there's a number, there's a lot of changes or there's a lot of threats or there's a lot of confusion, you've just determined with almost 90% certainty that you will have lots of anxiety throughout the day. But if you can start the first two hours of your day in a low anxiety state, then you can present and protect your energy reserves for the rest of the day. And that's something that a lot of people get wrong. They think that they should start their day with caffeine and checking their phone and catching

up on the news and all these things that cause them anxiety. And all they're doing is they're ruining the rest of their day. When instead, if you just set an alarm on your phone for one, when you can pick up your phone. Don't set an alarm for when to wake up. Set an alarm for when you can pick up your phone. So then you wake up, you can't even touch your phone. So you can't go looking for things that make you anxious.

Instead, you go for a walk, drink some water, eat your eggs, drink your tea, read a magazine, read your favorite book, and then your phone alarm goes off and then you can check the news. Completely transforms the level of anxiety that you feel throughout the day. That's so useful.