Mayim Bialik's Breakdown - CIA Spy: How To STOP Narcissists, SPOT LIARS in 30 Seconds, & Protect Against Being Controlled!

Episode Date: December 3, 2024

CIA Tactics to SPOT Liars, Narcissists, Manipulators, & Learn to Control Your Emotions to Get AHEAD!   Andrew Bustamante (Ex-covert CIA spy, decorated military combat veteran, & founder of Everyday Spy) details his path into the world of espionage!   You’re either controlling or being controlled. Learn the difference.   This episode has practical tips and tools to protect yourself and get what you want in life. From learning to CONNECT WITH ANYONE, why YOU SHOULD TALK LESS, to the shocking impact of a new world order on global politics & detect when someone is LYING.   Andrew Bustamante also breaks down: - Who makes the BEST CIA agents? - Dark truth behind high rates of drug & alcohol abuse, divorce, & adultery among spies - Why sexpionage is a real thing (and how much PAPERWORK is involved) - STRESS of being a spy & how Andrew dealt with it - How he predicted the U.S. Presidential election before it even began - Why he believes America faces a decade of discomfort - How we’re all being manipulated & controlled by hidden forces - Tiny weapons & surveillance tools used in spy life - What it’s like being married to ANOTHER spy - How CIA & military agencies are pushing for better mental & physical health in agents (& why it matters for you too)   This episode gives SURPRISING ways you can break free, get ahead, & navigate uncertain times. If you’ve ever been curious about the secret world of spies, politics, and survival tactics, you can’t afford to miss this episode of MBB!    Want to learn more from Andy?   Find your Spy Superpower: https://yt.everydayspy.com/MayimBialiksBreakdown   Follow Andy on YouTube: https://youtube.com/@Andrew-Bustamante   Explore Spy School: https://everydayspy.com/   Join the podcast: https://youtube.com/@EverydaySpyPodcast   BialikBreakdown.com YouTube.com/mayimbialik   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There's a rule of thumb that CIA teaches us. You are either in control or you are under control. There is no other option. Every day you have to choose whether to take control or whether not to take control. And understand that if you choose not to take control, you're giving control to someone else. If you want to be persuasive, first you need to understand that people don't care about your point of view. But people care very much that other people, understand their own opinions. CIA taught me that there's a very simple process to rapidly build

trust and influence in other people, asking two questions, and then making one validating statement. You repeat the same cycle again. The process subconsciously makes the other person think that you are like them, and it makes them feel like they are interesting, important, and they are relevant. They have a dopamine rush that makes them feel good being around you. The fundamental need for human beings that so often goes missed is the need for connection, feeling seen, feeling heard, and feeling present in a moment with another human being. And it's a very, very powerful concoction when you can artificially create that sense of connection for somebody else. It's my and biologics breakdown.

She's going to break it down for you Because you know she knows a thing or two So now she's going to break down Hey, I just found out something astounding. Approximately 63% of those of you listening to or watching Myambialy's Breakdown are not subscribed. We know you're listening and we know you're watching

because of all of the awesome comments you leave telling us how Maya Bealex Breakdown is helping you lead a happier and healthier life. We love that. But the best way to support our show is to subscribe. It's also the only way to get latest updates. and to know when new episodes drops. So anywhere that you listen to podcasts and on YouTube,

please subscribe, hit the bell icon so that you know when a new episode drops. Thank you so much, and on to the episode. Hi, I'm Myambi Alec. And I'm Jonathan Cohen. And welcome to our breakdown. This is the place where we break things down so you don't have to.

Today we're getting secretive. We're getting very secretive. I'm going to put on my secretive uniform. She's costuming up. I'm dawning my costume, which is sunglasses and a baseball hat pulled low. I can barely tell

it to you. You blend right in. Well, today, we're going to speak to former CIA intelligence officer. Andrew Bustamante, he and his wife were actually both undercover agents all over the world. They ended up leaving

the CIA and they have a website, Everydayspy.com, and a podcast, Everyday Espionage Podcast. It's an unbelievable story, and you might think, what does my life have to do with spying? Well, have you ever wondered if you should be able to tell if someone's lying to you? Have you ever wondered if you're being influenced negatively or how you can persuade someone and have positive influence? Have you ever wondered if there are basic things about the government

that will give you a better understanding of why your kids go to school, what we eat, and how our social structure is organized? Are there things about this past election that we can understand better in the framework of the kind of intelligence that our guest was trained to have? What he explains is that the CIA collects research from leading universities on health optimization, on mental optimization, and they trained their operatives how to be the best versions of themselves. So he has taken that wisdom and shares it with us. He also breaks down the arc of the U.S. on the world stage. What's going to happen in the next, I think he said, between eight and ten years, what is life in the U.S. going to be like? And he gives us a description

that I haven't heard anywhere else. We're also going to talk about underlying forces that influence the decisions that we make in politics, in voting, and even in dating. We're going to do a super fun exercise where I get to figure out if Jonathan is lying or not. This is a really fun episode, and Andrew Bustamante is a super awesome, hilarious, incredibly knowledgeable person. He's also going to seduce my name and persuade her to like him even more than she already does. Let's welcome Andrew Bustamante to The Breakdown. Break it Down. Hello. Hello.

I'm wearing my spy uniform today for this interview. It looks perfect. This is the first time she's dressed up. It's the first time I've decided to wear a costume, as it were. But I will put on my regular glasses. Andrew, welcome to the breakdown. It's really nice to talk to you. Absolutely.

I love that you called it a costume. That is the actual professional espionage term for it. Legit. Legit. I'm not joking. It's called. a costume when you wear your spy clothing? Yeah. Whenever you try to go undercover in disguise, what the TV shows call disguise, the professionals call costume. Like, are you wearing your costume? Or do you say spy costume? That is an awesome question. We are not witty enough to actually think

through that process. It's a costume department. We don the costume. Oh. Do you have your costume articles. Yeah, that's the term, that's the inside lingo. Can you tell people a little bit specifically about what everyday spy is? Because I would like to think I'd be a great everyday spy, but I took the test from the website. I don't think it's really my strength. Tell us a little bit about sort of what you have expanded your life to include since leaving being a secret operative. Absolutely. You know, the most dangerous part about being a CIA officer, a CIA spy, isn't the mission. It isn't being undercover in a foreign country.

And that's what the movies make it out to be. It's actually very easy to do that job because you've put a lot of planning and training and practice and you've prepared yourself for the op. The most dangerous part of a spy's life is everyday living. And for that reason, CIA puts a great deal of emphasis into training us to optimize every day to improve our sleep, to improve our memory,

to improve our fitness, to improve our relationships, to think outside the box, to challenge norms, to see our own cognitive biases, our own cognitive limitations, and then to reprogram or rewire the way that we cognitively look at the world. So it's much more dangerous for a spy

to accidentally sign the receipt with their true name than it is for them to have to worry about being shot on a high-speed boat as they shoot through Venice. So everyday spy is my way, my mission of trying to share with the world how spy education and spy skills can be used to break barriers that hold you back every day. Barriers in your relationships,

barriers in your finances, barriers in your job, in your career, and overcome them using proven spy methodologies that were given to us when I went through CIA. Before we get to that, I think Maim has a few questions just on the life of a spy that I don't think she can hold on to

Can you explain to people who Andrew Bustamante is? That's a complicated question, because who Andrew Bustamante thinks of himself to be is very different than what the world thinks of Andrew Bustamante. So I will say that in a nutshell, the internet will tell you that Andrew Bustamante is a former CIA intelligence officer, the founder of a company called Everydayspy.com, and a content creator for YouTube and for digital courses that reach around the world. But if you ask my kids or my wife, who Andrew Bustamante is, he's a super geek. He loves his family. He really hates to do anything that makes his hair look nice. And he would really feel much happier, just eating ramen noodles and watching serial television shows. There's so many aspects to your life. I mean, your young life is very interesting. Can you, though, tell us how does someone become a CIA spy? Like, what is the path? It's a great question because there are many different paths, but there's not an infinite number of paths.

There's really only three primary paths. You are either recruited, meaning somebody finds you and invites you in. And that happens either through, you know, college campuses recruiting you because you studied a certain science or you studied a certain language. The military will recruit you in because they find you in some military place and you have a specific skill or a specific utility that the CIA needs at any given time. So you can be invited or recruited in. Then the second primary way is that you volunteer, you apply online, or you submit a job

application at a job fair, because CIA is at job fairs. And then that application goes through a normal process of being reviewed and being determined. And then the third way is you actually try to do something that's adjacent to intelligence, And then during that parallel process, you're kind of directed or guided to go into the intelligence world. And that third process was how I was pulled into CIA. I was actually trying to go into the Peace Corps. I was trying to travel the world and help innocent, you know, starving children and teach microfinance in Africa. That's what I was trying to do.

And that's just adjacent to stealing secrets and committing sabotage. So I was pulled into this incredible young life, which makes me a little bit nervous for when we started talking about my old life. So when you were recruited, had you had any desire to do this? Or was it like completely out of the blue? I actually thought of joining the Peace Corps when I was in college. And I was a science student and they really needed scientists. So I actually learned a bit about it at the time. But, you know, were there things about you that you felt, oh, I actually would be suited to keep secrets and kill people? I don't know. It's, yes, I love that. I've never had this question posed before. It's actually a really exciting question. I was one of those kids, like younger than 13 is what I'm talking about kid. I was one of those kids that, like, wanted to be everything, astronaut, police officer, doctor, CIA spy, fireman, all of it, right? And I thought that the sky was the limit. I could do it all.

Well, then I went into the military, and I was categorically disqualified from being an Air Force intelligence officer. And it was because the Air Force didn't need intelligence officers. There was an attitude in 1999 that intelligence wasn't that important, that it was much more important to have pilots and much more important to have, you know, people who flew airplanes or did navigation. That was, that was the predominant need until 9-11. And 9-11 happened when I was still in uniform and it kind of changed the attitude about intelligence. So when CIA picks me out of the pool of what could have been a world healer with the Peace Corps, when 2007 came along and I was recruited, I had never even considered being part of CIA. I thought that if I

couldn't do a military intelligence, for sure, I couldn't do CIA intelligence. So I was more excited and giddy that like somebody was interested in me. It was kind of like dating, right? I was like, oh, somebody thinks I'm cute. And that's essentially what made me say yes to go the next step and the next step in the process. So before we continue on this trajectory, was it a good thing that the government wanted to date you? They were an abusive partner, but it did turn out well for me. How long were you in the CIA in this capacity? I served with the National Clandestine Service for seven years, and then I left in 2014.

And in 2014, I left service, but I still had a commitment to remain legally adherent to what the CIA said my cover job was. So it took another two years before I could actually be out. And you and your wife were you were like a Mr. and Mrs. Smith? My wife and I were both from CIA. We were both in the National Clandestine Service. That's correct. It's not nearly as cool as the movies make it out to be. You're lying.

It sounds really cool. It had cool parts. It had cool parts. It's like sexy. Nothing is sexy after you have your first child. But everything before that was pretty cool. Wouldn't you think? My NBi Alex breakdown is supported by Superpower.

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Think of your average college student who wants to, like, join the Peace Corps. I wouldn't think that's a natural transition to then be an undercover CIA agent. did you, like, know a lot of things and have an interest in that world? Or once you were recruited into that world, did you then start acquiring all of this knowledge that you need to have to do that? Because, like, I, like, I lie like a dog. Like, you can tell when I'm lying. Like, I'm not good at secrets. It makes me uncomfortable. I find it, you know, morally challenging to keep secrets, you know. Like, I don't, are those skills that? that, like I said, you were already like, oh, I could be a secret person, or did you become that once you were recruited? So it's a mix, actually. And you hit on a number of really important parts in your question.

So CIA, people come to CIA from all different walks of life. Like I said, some are recruited, some volunteer, some are on parallel paths, and then cross over. But just because they're invited to come to CIA, doesn't mean they qualify to stay at CIA. It's like men in black? Sort of, yes. I mean, I know it's,

I shouldn't be surprised that we keep coming back to TV and movie references. It's all I got, bro. I know nothing about the CIA except what television and movies have taught me. So if you recall, during men in black, they put him through some,

they put Will Smith through a series of tests to see how he would respond. And one of the most famous tests is when like an alien pops out or a little girl pops out with a gun and he doesn't shoot the little girls, like, cut out. And he knew all the things. So he clocked all the things that only he could catch.

Correct. Now, if you recall, part of that was because the Will Smith character talked about his childhood and growing up and how he learned on the street, you know, how to see things differently. That is very real for the real CIA. CIA is looking for people who are just enough messed up in the head that they can skip ahead

in a lot of the training. One of the terms that we use is called moral flexibility, which is exactly why you have a hard time lying, M. Sorry, moral flexibility, that just means you can lie. It means a lot more than that. It means if you sat across from a person, you wouldn't want to hurt that person. But if that person threatened to hurt someone in your family, you would have no issue immediately hurting that person. before they could hurt someone you know. You don't know what kind of bleeding heart liberal I am, but okay. And now you're learning what kind of literal, like, bleeding heart, I am not. And not only that, but you also have to be able to sleep at night.

So you have to be able to lie to the face of a terrorist or a child prostitute pimp, right? You have to be able to lie to their face to get them into a situation where they might get hurt or captured or killed in pursuit of some larger cause to protect Americans. And then you know you got them in that situation. You go home. You kiss your daughter on the forehead. You eat a pork chop. You go to sleep.

You wake up the next day and you do it again. That's moral flexibility. It's not just, I'm going to lie on my tax return, right? It's, I'm going to lie knowing that it's going to get somebody else hurt. How do they test for that? There's a very comp, there's a multi-tiered psychological aptitude battery that we go through. And it's different types of psychological exams. Some of them are panel interviews.

Some of them are one-on-one role plays where you have people who sit behind an invisible wall who watch and assess. There's, of course, an actual empirical rubric test that we take. It's many, many hours and interrupted throughout the day. So it's a lot like you're standardized testing in elementary school and middle school amped up. And then each of those tests happen with a time space in between. So there's a time delimiter. You'll start on day one, and then you'll come back and take the second part of the test on day 70, and then you'll come back and take the final part of the test on day 120.

And you're constantly assessed through multiple different venues and multiple different people along the way. When you think about people who lie, you know, there's a lot of talk on the interwebs about, like, I was dating a narcissist, right? And one of the things that, you know, is a hallmark of narcissism is often, I don't know, moral flexibility or, you know, an ease with being dishonest and kind of perpetuating lies. Where does that fall in terms, I'm not saying those people need to be spies, but I'm curious from what you know about moral flexibility. how does that apply to kind of normal everyday people who encounter people who lie to them? It's a great point. And it's hard to talk about it in generality.

So I'm going to get a little bit geeky, right? Narcissism is just one version of something that's called antisocial personality disorder. And underneath the umbrella of antisocial personality disorder is narcissism and psychopathy and sociopathy. right, or sociopathy. So you've got these different categories that we use to describe people who are essentially just antisocial to a level that is considered to be a disorder. Well, here's the truth of it. We're all fucking antisocial. Nobody likes people. We like some people. We like the people who like us and we like the people who think like us and like our music and like our food,

but nobody likes a stranger until the stranger proves that they have something in common with the person, right? It's against our very core survival instinct. We don't trust new people. We don't like new people. So what happens is some of us are kind of grown in our formative years in an environment where we learn to trust secrets and lies more than we learn to trust the people around us. Well, now, if you advance that life into their early 20s and early 30s, some people are able to remain protective, self-preservational, without creating a disorder that puts them at the center of their world. They still have loyalties and obligations and personal values. A narcissist goes too far.

A narcissist has been damaged psychologically to the point where they truly believe they are the center of their universe and they cannot identify their own shortfalls. Whereas somebody who's somebody who just doesn't fit into society. right, a sociopath, still has loyalties and values, and they value their church possibly. They value their family. They value their education. They value something more than themselves, but they still break the rules of society. All of that psychological battery that CIA puts us through, it's not to find the smartest person. It's to find the few people who are already wired with just the right cocktail of fucked up in this,

and loyalty, obligation, and yet still seeking validation from outside. Because once you find that person, boom, they will do anything for $25,000 bonus every year. That's very helpful. My question is, are all CIA operatives of this category similar in that sense? Like, can you say, oh, this one might come from a white upper class family in Connecticut, and this person might come from the streets of Echo Park or whatever. But is this generally what the profile is? And is that the best way to get the job done? Or is it the best way for the government to be able to control such people? It's a great two-part question. So the first, I'll answer the first question first and then the second part, second, right? Yes, it is a profile that is predictable among CIA,

field officers. Now, CIA has field officers, analysts, linguists, logisticians. It's got lots of different operators. But when you're talking about what we call a core collector, a core collector is a person who goes out there and their job is to collect information direct from human sources. A core collector who has to be skilled at lying, has to be skilled in manipulation, has to be able to keep multiple lying and manipulating relationships in. order simultaneously, right? That person absolutely fits the profile that we just laid out him, right? Whether they grew up in a white privilege neighborhood or an inner city African American neighborhood, it's not about their socioeconomic status. It's about the psychological imprint

that happened to them when they were young. Did they feel like daddy loved them or was daddy always gone getting on a coke high because he ran a hedge fund? Or daddy was never there because he was gang banging. Who knows, right? We don't know why Daddy wasn't there, but the kid certainly feels like he didn't earn dad's love. And now he has to try extra hard to earn that external validation. So that's the answer to your first question. The second part is, is that the best way? I would say that we, the government doesn't try to think about what the best way is. They try to think about what is the most pragmatic way. So when it comes to having to constantly recruit new officers, new operatives, and bring them up to a basic level of capability before

you deploy them all over the world, where some will get killed, some will get captured, some will be spectacular at their job, right? The government doesn't want to spend five years creating super soldiers, but the government also doesn't want to spend three weeks putting somebody through basic police training, right? So they find this natural balance where in about nine months, they can take a person off the street and train them to a basic capability for intelligence core collection. But that nine-month window only happens

if they pull from the profile that you and I just talked about. If they went to a different profile, it might take 13 months or 18 months. If they pulled from a more violent profile, it might take six months or four months, but they've found this balance over time. I've seen those movies too.

Here's a question. Does the government know that you're telling people all of the things that you're telling us? Yes, the government knows, and they have a mixed reaction to it. Sometimes I get hats on the back. Sometimes I get hate mail. Sometimes I get these reminders in my inbox that say, just a reminder from CIA's friendly office of personnel

that you have a lifetime secrecy agreement and you will be prosecuted under the full confines of the law if we find that you violate your secrecy agreement. So that's why I don't tell CIAs, secrets. I just tell facts. Can we talk around secrets? I mean, I'm comfortable with lying. I'll just tell you something's a secret if you like. Oh, for Pete's sake, how am I supposed to talk to you at all? You can be lying about everything. But instead of facts, what you share a lot is strategies and the techniques that were instilled. And I'm actually surprised that they're even open to allowing you to share

these training mechanisms, the ways in which that you succeeded in your spy work, because it does have, number one, it kind of pulls the veil back on how they're training operatives and what the skill set is. And two, it does have some huge implications to people who are not spies, which maybe they don't want them to have those skills. Yeah, it's a great point, Jonathan. And what happened to me, it was my personal experience leaving CIA that put the dots together for me on this. CIA doesn't create top secret training methods. It doesn't create top secret life improvement hacks. What it does is it goes out into leading research universities and it pulls cutting-edge research and then it implements that research into its training

rubric. So the ways that we're trained and the ways that we're taught and the tools and techniques that we get for fighting anxiety, for reducing stress, for increasing our memory. Those are not top secret CIA methods. Those were things that came from Harvard or Princeton or Cambridge, and they came to us by way of our training program, but they're not classified. And because of the government bureaucracy... I don't know what you're talking about. What bureaucracy? Classification has a very specific definition, and I'm able to skirt that definition. So I've I adhere to my secrecy agreement, but I'm still able to pull back the veil, like you said, Jonathan. And that's a very powerful veil.

I have questions. These are going to be silly questions, but I'm going to ask them anyway. Go for it. Did you have your hair like this when you were a CIA operative? No, this is my peace core hair. I'm trying to, it's my healing process, M. So you had to just look like a normal clean-cut human being? I had to look like the environment that I was trying to disappear into.

Okay. So you sometimes had to wear disguises that made you look like you were from different places. Correct. So I don't know if you can see my giant five head or my very ample nose. And I always looked like somebody who wasn't important. Okay. So for people who aren't watching, well, this is a great episode to watch. I mean, your hair is something to behold. I can't imagine people are listening to this instead of watching it. but this would be a place where being sort of ethnically ambiguous or being able to blend into different, like I have a friend and you can't tell if she could be Italian, she could be Greek, she could be Eastern European, she could be Russian, right?

Like that would be an advantage because you could like blend in different places. Can you give us two very different examples of places you've had to blend in? Absolutely. So a lot of my operations were actually in East Asia. And the reason I was so effective in East Asia is because they are incredibly racist against anybody with brown skin in East Asia. So if you have brown skin, you're like less than, you're less than the bottom of the social hierarchy. So the last thing they would expect of a brown person is that they were smart, trained, or trying to steal secrets. They're too busy looking for all the tall, six foot tall, like six foot five, Captain America, white American-looking people. That's your spy, James Bond, right? So I operated a lot in East Asia

where nobody knew that I was anything important. And I operated quite a lot in Latin America, where I looked just like every other brown guy in Latin America, right? Even though I don't speak Spanish at well or... I mean, your name is Bustamante. It's like a fantastic last name. It is, but it's an Italian Spanish Bustamante that I borrowed from my wife. Okay, another silly question. Did you have to have different facial hair for disguises? I did. I did. And usually it wasn't very well-groomed. It was more like as nappy and homeless as you could make it look. So one of the things that I'm still getting used to being on YouTube is actually trying to make myself look like I care about my face. Did you have to use prosthetic beards and things or it was just your natural beard? You would grow it out. So we do use prosthetics. This is, again, I'm going to geek out with you,

for a second here, M. The way that we use disguise, we call it costume like we talked about, but the way that we use disguise in the field, there's three different levels. The most advanced level is also the most dangerous level because it's the least predictable level, and that's when we use prosthetics. So, I mean, nobody thinks about this, but if you don't use the right kind of adhesive. In the cold, it'll fall off. In the heat, it'll curl, right? If you don't use the right kind of matching skin prosthetic. It'll look fake. You'll blow your cover. Right away, exactly. Your nose will be like half falling off of your face. So what we try to do as much as possible is not change ourselves with prosthetics. And then if we have to use prosthetics, then we use prosthetics at

great distance from the people who are trying to observe us. So for me, they would rather dye my beard or shape my beard or even like let me grow a beard, you know, on vacation for six months and then bring it back and get it all nasty and dirty and then let me go out in the field. That's easier than shaving me and trying to put me in a straight, a straight-haired beard. Have you ever had to be costumed as a woman? No, not something I had to do operationally, but I have 100% worn female costumes to see if I could push the skills, my own skills, in costume design. And you could not? No, it's hard to pull off looking like a girl when you're this ugly.

Hey, I think you're ugly. No, but I was curious, because in some places you can cover your face as a woman. Like, I've seen that in the movies. Who hasn't seen that in the movies? Or a cartoon. It's true. It's true. And that's, you know, when you're talking about a full cover, like when people wear a,

a burqa or some sort of hijab. When you're talking about that, that is a different level of disguise. We don't consider that prosthetics. Right. We consider that still level one disguise, a very basic disguise, because it's just fabric. I mean, anybody could do that. Correct. Well, the eyes, the eyes are the giveaway.

And if anybody's ever seen... Eyes are the window to the soul. If anybody's ever seen an Arab woman in full garb, like, she puts a great deal of effort into her eyes, usually. Oh, yeah. When I was in Egypt, it was astounding. Like it was the most stunning display of makeup when that was all you can see was eyes.

Obviously, there are burkas where you do not even see their eyes because it's a screen. But, okay, here's another question, which is not as silly. And you don't have to answer, but I'm going to ask. Have you killed people? Not intimately. And yes, we have different levels of killing. I'm sure you're not surprised to hear that M.

We have intimate killing and we have non-intimate killing. Intimate killing is when you deliver the death blow with your hand. non-intimate killing is when you participate in the demise of a target, the neutralizing of a target by executing your portion of the job. So the government sends you to kill people? The government sends all of us in a way to kill people. We just have different, it's like an assembly line. Nobody does it all. We just, some people put on the bolt and some people put on the tire. And I didn't mean to make this a personal attack on you. I'm saying that like when we think about, when I think about, let's say, the Army, you know, and I have great respect for people

who, you know, who serve our country. And it is a method of our government sending often, you know, poor kids who they've promised a college education, you know, sending people to do the dirty work of a government that also isn't always transparent about why they're sending us places. Do you see your role as kind of an extension of that bureaucratic killing machine? Dishonesty. Yes, absolutely. And no, you don't have, I love this conversation right now because that is a very real element that we have to come to terms with after our first or second field tour. After you've been in the field for about two years, you start to see through, the smokescreen, and you start to see what's really happening, right? And what's really happening is

you were promised an opportunity, and then you were brought into this very bureaucratic organization, where you signed a lot of promises that are legally binding, and now all of the sudden, you have to go, you know, fight for a cause that you don't believe in. You have to go participate in a cover-up that you know is not being disclosed to the American people, because you've been told that to disclose it to the American people would also mean disclosing it to your adversaries, so we're going to keep a secret from everybody, right? It's a very difficult world to live in, but again, we are psychologically predisposed to understanding that there are secrets that need to be kept, and there are secrets that need to be shared. So it's not an easy lifestyle. That's why

many people who have made it 15, 20 years in the agency, they come out psychologically flawed for the rest of their life. They can't recover, right? I mean, you would, we now have a larger understanding of what happens to soldiers. And I think that this is true, even if you feel that it is a just cause. You know, I want to set aside the notion of like, you know, participating in murder, assassination, what do you call it, non-intimate killing. You know, that's going to do something. Seeing the destruction of war, that's going to do something to you. And it's going to do something to you. And it's going change you and it causes trauma. But I think like kind of setting those things aside for the moment and kind of talking the way we're talking right now, it's very interesting because, you know,

what is the framework for your or anyone's personal comfort in being hired by a government to do things that you may not agree with? Where is that line? And what's amazing is you don't ever think of that. When you are a good fit for the job, you don't think about that line on day one, you stumble into that line later on. And then you realize, oh, shit, like, maybe I bid off more than I can chew. And to CIA's credit, they're familiar with this buyer's remorse. So there's a very, a very strong mental health component at CIA. They've got staff psychologists. They've got staff therapists. They've got staff PT, personal trainers and exercise scientists who are all there to help you develop healthy coping mechanisms to deal with what you do

every day. And when the time comes that you can no longer cope in a healthy way, they just take you off the line and then they put you in administrative jobs where you can't do any damage. And then they treat you with, you know, whatever they can treat you with and whatever you choose to treat yourself with, which is why we see such a high rate of drug use and alcoholism, adultery, divorce, because lives just fall apart when people stay in service that long. Are those mental health providers not incentivized to keep you going and to sort of push the limits of your coping mechanisms? That's exactly what they're incentivized to do. And that's how they climb up their professional ladder by finding new treatments, new combinations, new practices that take a field officer from six years of field utility to eight years of field utility.

They take them from one or two war zone tours to three or five warzorn tours, right? If you can prolong the utility of a field operator, you've essentially increased the productivity of the entire workforce. And it's very, it's very clinical, very bureaucratic and very mechanical in that way. And I don't want to comment on at all on the role of this organization or the people in it. But in a way, you're putting someone into a pressure cooker that you know eventually they're going to crack. And it's like, how do I keep them there as long as possible, functioning to do the job as well as I can, knowing that I'm just waiting to monitoring them to say, this eventually is going to be too much. they're going to not be capable of doing it anymore,

and I'm just waiting for that. That's kind of, that's an intense... You just described a lot of people's relationship with God, right? That God sets us up, like, I know this is not going to go well on this planet, right? But let's just kind of like see what happens. I mean, this is sort of a microcosm, if you can call it that. It's a macrocosmic microcosm of kind of our existence,

meaning like I've seen that Twilight Zone episode, right, where it's like you're, you wake up and no one else is there and it's just like you're in this planet of no oneness. It's like, what am I doing here? What's my purpose? What am I supposed to do? Like, guess what?

That's your lot in life. I mean, I don't mean to get all existential, but it's kind of interesting. Well, it's also, it's to a, you're right, Jonathan, and I think what's important is going back to the macrocosmic microcosm that M just talked about. What you see at CIA,

what you just laid out at CIA is exactly what happens in the military. Why are there VA benefits? Why is there a veteran status? Why are we seeing constant support for homeless veterans and suicidal veterans, et cetera? Because the military has learned

over hundreds of years and they learned it from the British before them, right? That you're putting people under a pressure cooker, maximizing their utility, hoping they don't die in combat before they have an ROI on their training costs.

And then at the same time, you need a certain number of people to quit instead of retire because only the people who retire are going to get continuing benefits for the rest of their life. It's a strange. One of the things that CIA taught me that I make a mantra right every day is that, you know, the United States runs like a business. Everything runs like a business. It's a cost benefit analysis. It's a return on investment versus diminishing returns.

that's how the world really, really works, and CIA doesn't work any different than that. I want to get into the pulling back the curtain because through your time at CIA, you've seen how the U.S. operates, how the world operates from your unique vantage point. And I want to get into that. Just wrapping up what we were talking about

in terms of your fieldwork, how much of fieldwork is neutralizing targets versus collecting information. Versus just hanging out and not looking like yourself and seeing what happens. And when you're hanging out, not looking like yourself, usually you're collecting information. So it's about, I would say, honestly,

it's like 98% collecting, 2% neutralizing. Because once you neutralize a target, they're no longer a viable source of information. So you need to string that target along as long as possible, maximize everything you can get from them, and only when the calculation

becomes that they are more of a risk than a return, would you consider neutralizing them? Do you have to have sex with them? You can have sex with them. It's an option, but there's a lot of paperwork involved. Is that the main deterrent? Is the paperwork? That is the main deterrent, to be honest. That is the main deterrent. Just like dating me. Second to that, in the United States, we're really funny about sex. Sex in the United States oftentimes means connection, relationship, obligation, blah, blah, blah, blah. everywhere else in the world, sex is just sex.

So if you go to bed with a Russian, chances are they're going to be way more in a position of power over you than you are over them the next morning. Wait, wait, sorry, just Russians? Oh, no, I mean, it goes on. Russians are just the primary villain in all the movies, right? Oh, got it. Like, I'm thinking James Bond, right?

Correct. Yeah. But you could make a spy baby. What do you do? You don't want to get somebody pregnant. You can't make a spy baby. Well, you know, they have things. is now in modern times that can keep you from making a baby the first time.

Nothing is 100% except abstinence. That's what I tell my children. Let's talk a little bit. I mean, we could go down the spy sex route, and I think that would take the entire podcast. It's all I'm going to think about for the rest of the podcast while I listen to you guys. I have that effect on women sometimes.

I'm not going to say. Also, the difference between spies is fascinating, but I don't think we have enough time with you to cover all of these topics. I would love to talk a bit about the United States. You were very clear that you believe Trump was going to win. We're recording this fairly soon after the election. You were right. I knew he was going to win, too.

I'm not even a spy. But you didn't make any videos going on major podcasts claiming. I could have made all the videos. I could have told everybody how this was going to shake down. But go ahead. You also said that there was only one person in the Democratic Party that could have beaten Trump. If people haven't heard that, which I think, you know, much of our audience might not have, can you just briefly explain who that person is and why you think they could have beaten him?

Michelle Obama is the only Democrat in the country that had a chance of beating Donald Trump. And I think that she knew that. I am certain Barack knew that. And the entire Democratic National Convention must have had a citizen. down fireside chat over bourbons and cigars, recognizing that they only had one person who was a viable match for Donald Trump. And it's because what we just saw in our election cycle is that it's not about policies. It's not about power. It's not about, you know, democracy and freedoms. It's a popularity contest tied in with political credibility.

And Michelle Obama has incredible amounts of both political credibility and popularity, just like Donald Trump has, right? And even though it's easy for us to criticize Donald Trump's political credibility, he was a former president. He has his name on hotels all over the world. That in the eyes of the average American, that is a high level of credibility. Talk to us about the average American. The average American is much more disappointing than any of us want to admit.

admit to. And that's just the truth of it, right? The average American, I mean, whether you're, everything you look at, whether you're looking at salary or education level, or whether you look at hours spent behind a screen versus hours spent reading a book, on average, when you talk about the bell curve, right, a true average, the average American is not very well informed, not very well educated, not very physically fit, not very health conscious, does not make a very good salary, and does not spend a great deal of time engaging in personal enrichment activities. So that is the primary bell curve of America. And just like we were talking about earlier,

M, it's because that is a very good cog in a large machine. The out the extremes of the bell curve, that's where you find the people who are the most vocal, the people who are the most accomplished, the people who are the least accomplished, and also the most vocal, right? So what we really see day to day are the two outliers,

active on TV, active on the internet, active on YouTube, active everywhere, right? The people producing are the outliers for the most part. The silent center is the piece that everybody forgets

is the real decision-maker for the future of our country. Let's talk a little bit about the female aspect here, though, because many people, you know, I live in Los Angeles, so it's kind of like, with all due respect to my city, the streets are littered with traumatized humans right now who, like, cannot even lift their heads up.

Like, it's like a wasteland here. And what a lot of people are saying is the whole country prefers a rapist over a woman. And I feel that's too broad of a brush to be using when we try and accurately assess this situation.

And also I do believe that certain regions of the country, my region of the country included, tend to be a bit dramatic, meaning that's like a really like, oh my God,

oh, it's catastrophic and it's, you know, all these things. But if we're to take a more kind of measured view, can you explain? Because a lot of people would say,

I don't think a woman is going to cut it for most Americans. I think they're, want dad. No matter what, like dad's always done this job. Why would mom plunge the toilet when dad always plunges the toilet and every time he plunges it like at some point we get to poop again, right? So talk a little bit about the female aspect of it because I think so many people want to just be like, people hate women. Yeah, there's gender is a very real thing. And the bias towards

paternity in the United States is also a very real thing. But, but, But race and racial injustice is also a very real thing in the United States. And so are racial biases. And yet we still saw Barack Obama take the office for two consecutive terms and have a very successful presidency. I mean, I don't, I think certain people never recovered from the fact that we had a man of color as our president. Like the birth, like the birth, like people went crazy. They didn't give him a moment's rest literally because they were picking on him. Like he's a secret like Muslim operative.

Like it was crazy. Like, that's nuts. Remember, we're talking about the bell curve. What you're referencing right now is an outlier. The person who can't sleep at night because there was a African American or there was a black president, that person exists. But they're not the silent center. All right. So we had a black president.

So that was good. Correct. And I think, honestly, I think that the center, I think the majority of Americans would welcome a female president. I think they would be excited for a female president. They just didn't want this one. That's exactly it. The problem is that the Democratic National Convention has put forth two females to the ticket for president, Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris, right? Neither of them, frankly speaking, was a woman that the majority of Americans wanted to see be the first.

They didn't want that. They want, like, think about what Barack Obama was. Barack Obama was a man of color who worked his ass off to come. from nothing to be the leader of the free world. That's what we want to see in a first. A lot of the criticisms, though, that people did have of Hillary Clinton and a lot of the criticisms people have of Kamala. And honestly, I think a lot of the criticisms people would have about Michelle is things that only women get criticized for. And I'm not looking to like bring down the patriarchy so we can have a woman president. But I also think like you have to understand

the system that you're in. And the fact is a woman is going to be judged differently. And we have to figure out how you deliver a package that people are going to want, even if we think they shouldn't feel the things they do about a woman, about her voice, about her suit, about her fucking hair. Like, I don't care, but a lot of people do. I get you. And I don't disagree with you. I just what I think that the measurable pieces of impact here are that when you stand, when you are a minority of any variety, and I I would include women as a minority. If you're a minority of any variety

and your platform promotes your minority, you are immediately ostracizing everybody who is not part of your minority. And men are very, very sensitive to being left out. They are. Well, not only that, but it creates a weird sort of hypocrisy. It creates a weird sort of hypocrisy in a party that says that gender shouldn't matter

and then promotes femininity, right? it's difficult when you say that age shouldn't matter, but then you highlight youth. It's difficult when you say that wealth shouldn't matter, but then you highlight poverty. It's not about individual, it's not about people in their beliefs or value systems. It really is about the core way the brain processes information. It creates a sense of cognitive dissonance that people don't know how to process. And when people don't know how to process, they take the easier way out. Donald Trump is a very simple thing to process.

Really? Oh, he's a very simple thing to process. Most people don't like Donald Trump. They just chose him because they didn't want the alternative. Right. And at some point, most of our country is comfortable with all of the things that he says about all the people that he hates and all the people he wants to step on. and the violence that he speaks of when he speaks of women. I appreciate your point of view being a person in LA.

It's not about, hold on one second. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. This isn't about a point of view. I'm talking about the things that Donald Trump says that he stands for is what people are choosing. It's not about a point of view. I think if you believe that people are choosing what Donald Trump stands for, that is your point of view.

Got it. I think there are plenty of people out there who are choosing Donald Trump for all sorts of of reasons other than what he stands for. I agree. I agree. I also, I do want to just bring one thing. You mentioned femininity. That actually does not really have a place for me in this conversation. Maybe you meant femaleness, you know, that like you're presenting like, oh, men and women should be equal, but like, I'm a woman, right? Like, that's not necessarily femininity. Like, femininity would imply, like, you know, they said that Kamala was Donald's worst enemy

because he couldn't pick on how ugly she was, which was, you know, his favorite. thing to do about Hillary Clinton. No, that's totally fair. And I did not know that femaleness is a word, but I know that now. Well, femininity implies something different, but I think you men, I think you men, if you're going to act like, oh, we're all equal, she should just be a neutered, a neutered female. Maybe we shouldn't use any pronouns, but that's also as offensive to people. Andrew, the world is a complicated place from an international diplomacy standpoint,

currently active wars, you know, there's almost two different roles for the president, one internationally and one nationally. You know, what does it mean to have Trump on the international stage now, and where are we in terms of the arc of American dominance? Are you concerned that we're at the end of that arc? I wouldn't say that I'm, I don't think we're at the end of the arc. I don't think the evidence suggests we're at the end. I do think that it's not a smooth arc. There might be, you know, some fits and bursts, some peaks and some valleys. And we're somewhere in those peaks and valleys right now. What I will say is that Donald Trump represents a very, what we consider to be a traditional, dominant, forceful, bullish American idea. He's not a diplomat. He doesn't believe in alliances.

he doesn't believe in, you know, equality. He believes in superiority. And within the government, it's important to understand inside the government national security arena, that is how everyone thinks. American primacy is the term that we use to define the imperative of the future of the United States. So whether you're talking to the army

or whether you're talking to the CIA or whether talking to the FBI, you will hear the term American primacy. It means America must be the prime, the number one, the only superpower. Not necessarily because we are the best ever, but because if someone else rises to our level, it means that our national security interests will be threatened. Equality means that whoever was number one is no longer number one. It means that there's less control.

It means that there's more risk. It means that there's less opportunity. Not no opportunity, just less opportunity. And that is the way the national security sector works. So anybody who was raised in a family that believes that American primacy is important, anybody who was cultivated professionally or educationally to believe that American primacy is important, they are going to lean towards that message much more than some of the other conflicting messages that we've seen from the Biden administration or the Harris administration,

especially when the truth, Jonathan, the truth of what we see play out in the headlines, is that we don't always tell the truth about why we make the decisions that we make policy-wise, why we support Ukraine, but don't support, you know, Israel, why we label Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorists, but Iran labels the U.S. military as terrorists. That one's pretty clear to me, but I could just be speaking for myself. There's all these different pieces that because of the advent of technology and the spread of social media and the availability of information, we're now seeing that people have more access to create that cognitive dissonance than ever before. Which countries benefited or had a vested interest in one candidate over the other becoming the U.S. president? You know, this was an amazing year for intelligence sharing and intelligence communication in advance of the election.

2016 was really the first time that Americans realized that there's election meddling. There's always been election meddling. It's just that 2016 was the first time that it became mainstream media. And then in 2020, it became a topic again. But from 16 to 24, you really got to see the intelligence community, what we call the IC, create a strategy for how to collect and combat actively foreign meddling and foreign intervention. Sorry, can you explain for people who may not understand? Do you mean that other countries might try to change the number of votes so that a particular person will win?

No, no, no. We're not talking about anything that has to do with the actual manipulation after the vote. It's all about the influence campaigns in the lead-up to the vote. Got it. Yeah, that's when the meddling happens so that people can send false information, misinformation, disinformation to sway that big chunk of middle voters because those middle voters might, they might choose somebody based on a whim because they watched a movie or- They might not know if Puerto Rico is referred to as trash, and then they might say Puerto Rico's trash, let's vote for that guy. Yeah, you have no idea. So that's what the foreign governments are very good at meddling with disinformation and misinformation. But the intelligence assessments were really, really clear

and really consistent. Russia wanted a Trump victory. And it's because, empirically, it's because, or at least what's known in open source, it's because Trump has made it very clear. He wants to end the war in Ukraine. He wants to call a ceasefire, and he wants to move on.

That's exactly what Vladimir Putin wants, too, because in Putin's vernacular, that is a victory. It's what the Ukrainians would want, except not by being handed over to the, the Russians, which is presumably what's going to happen. I mean, it depends on if you're talking about what the Ukrainian people want, I don't think the American population has a very clear idea what the Ukrainian people want.

What Zelensky has made clear is he wants the full return of all original pre-K Crimea invasion Ukraine, returned to Ukraine. And that was the promise that he made. That definition of victory is a very difficult definition to achieve, which is why anything less than that is of Putin victory. So Putin and Russia wanted a Donald Trump presidency because of that primary issue. However, Iran, who is a close ally of Russia, did not want a Trump victory. They wanted a Harris victory because Iran is very, very familiar with how to skirt the sanctions

and get around the diplomatic pressures and the economic sanctions when there's a Democratic president because democratic policy is usually open to more abuse than Republican policy. There's less sable rattling, there's less violence, there's less, you know, intense military action. There's more soft power action. And Iran hates Donald Trump because Donald Trump was the commander-in-chief when IRGC General Soleimani was killed. So they very much wanted a Harris victory instead of a Trump victory. So I wonder if you can talk a little about good guys versus bad guys.

You know, nothing is as simple as that. And, you know, many of us were raised, you know, with an understanding, for example, that Russia is a country that does not have a free press. Russia is a country where I happen to know many people who fled Russia and Ukraine. They were not allowed to practice, not even practice their religion. They weren't allowed to have rights as Jews, for example. And there was a huge campaign to evacuate, you know, the Jews of Russia and the former, you know, USSR. are. And, you know, for many of us, we were raised with this sort of notion of like, Russia is that's, I mean, if I had to say good guy or bad guy, like a lot of people would say, like, that's a bad guy,

right? Or, you know, Kim Jong-un, like, North Korea, like, oh, that's, and I understand this is a lot more complicated and who's to say. But, you know, for some of us, you know, October 8th of last year brought about a real turnaround in, you know, individual groups that are terrorist organizations that were now being called freedom fighters and, you know, are being celebrated in many fringe aspects of this country. But what happened to good guy and bad guy? And do you understand that for some people, Trump making nice, nice with a lot of people that many of us believe are bad guys feels problematic? Oh, yeah. It makes, it's the, the notion of a dichotomy between good and bad is an oversimplification of life.

And what happens is when we're young and someone and our parents and our community are trying to teach us the basic survival mechanisms to move forward. It's very easy to create dichotomies. Good, bad. Rich, poor. Expensive, cheap, right? Hot, cold. It's very easy to teach a dichotomy. but the thing is, as you grow and mature, you realize that the world we live in is much more nuanced than that. So to your point, M, about Russia being a bad guy, do you know why we won World War II? Because of Russia. Russia was our closest ally. And Russia's strategy in World War II that defeated Nazism was the same strategy they used when they invaded Ukraine in 2022. too. So it's the same Russia in many ways, even though it's gone from being the Soviet Union to being just Mother Russia. So Russia used to be good, now they're bad. Well, I mean,

if you're a Jewish person, Russia was never good. Like, it got worse when Russia came in after liberation. The notion of good and bad, the notion of good and evil, it's transient. People had different opinion about Germany and people had a different opinion about Spain and People have a different opinion about Argentina. Like, our opinions about countries change and shift as they relate to this question of American priorities and American interests. And that's why we have very famous statesmen who have quoted, right, there are no permanent friends or enemies, only permanent interests.

Do you think that the world can exist without NATO, without the alliances that currently exist? I think one of the main concerns about Trump as a destabilizing force and, putting America first and, you know, creating much more of a nationalism is that, you know, the world orders that have existed since the second end of the Second World War have created some stability. Yes, there have been wars, of course, but there hasn't been a next world war. And, you know, people are concerned that the undercutting of these alliances could leave a lot of chaos. Yeah, and I think that what's happening is we're seeing a blending of two ideas,

and people don't realize there's two distinct ideas that are blending into one. The idea that we need a new world order, I would say that is an accurate idea. The world order that was established after World War II, for anybody who doesn't recognize it, that world order was defined by American primacy. NATO was built in large part so that the United States could remain in control of Europe. The United States rebuilt Germany, rebuilt France, rebuilt the United Kingdom on the back of loans and weapons and the proliferation of technology that was American technology.

NATO understands that, right? You've seen Germany and Spain and France take more of an independent streak in the last eight years because they realize they're kind of under the thumb of the United States, and that is the old world order. What we need for a more democratic world is we need more powerful democratic alliances. The actual current NATO alliance is not democratic. It's very dictatorial based on American power and American primacy.

Donald Trump, in one case, Donald Trump is saying, we need to separate ourselves from NATO. That's kind of accurate. It's just that he doesn't understand that separating ourselves from NATO by making us less free than Europe is not a good idea. Are you hopeful or concerned about the next, even for six years, not even to make it about Trump, but about the changes that you see happening on the world stage? I'm pessimistic about the next 10 to 12 years because I categorize this as saying, the United States, don't forget that we're less than 300 years old.

We're going into middle school right now. We're coming into puberty, whereas Russia, China, I mean, ethnic groups that run their own countries are thousands of years old. We're only a few hundred years old. We haven't figured this whole thing out yet. We don't realize that, you know, the pants that fit us really well back in 1970 don't fit us so well in 2024. We've gained a lot of weight. So I'm pessimistic because it's going to be uncomfortable. It's uncomfortable to learn. I mean, I make all the boy jokes about middle school. It's uncomfortable to, learn that you can't wear sweatpants anymore and you can't wear silk boxers anymore and you know

it's uncomfortable to deal with zits and acne and body odor and that stuff's uncomfortable you got to figure out how to live with those realities before you can evolve to the next level the United States has has a decade or so of discomfort before we learn how to move forward and and evolve in a positive way what do you think that looks like for the middle of the bell curve that we talked about everyday people, Americans living life. What does that discomfort look like practically? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think the good news is that to the everyday person, to the average bell curve person, it's small changes. It's more expensive beef. It's more expensive milk. It's more products that are coming in from countries that you don't know about and less imports from countries

that you like. It's more expensive plastic because we're not going to take it from China anymore. It's more mandatory recycling, right? It's things like that that the average person is going to work through. They're going to feel the pain, but they're going to feel it in small amounts. It's really the bigger corporations, the bigger American governments, entrepreneurs who are making, seven figures, that's where they're going to feel the biggest shifts. Because some years they're going to get taxed at 38 percent, and some years they're going to get taxed at 24 percent. And they're never going to know what taxes are going to be taxed at 38 percent.

is going to look like. They're never going to know when their investment on waterfront property in Fort Lauderdale is going to be good or bad. They're never going to know when the legal system changes, right? And the Supreme Court justices change. It's going to be big changes for a small amount of people and small changes for the rest of us. How about the people who want to get abortions? I mean, I think that's what a lot of people worry about, you know, like the things that the Supreme Court actually does get to rule on. That, I for sure agree, that the people, having the Supreme Court determine what rights we do and don't have, that's a difficult thing, because one person can change that entire policy. And we will continue to see, especially as we,

I don't think the end of partisan politics is anywhere nearby. So we're going to continue to see this jockeying, not just of Supreme Court justices, but of all the people who are politically appointed. The head of CIA is a political appointee. The head of FBI is a political appointee. And that's not before we start talking about health and human services, IRS, you know, the education department, et cetera, et cetera, we're going to continue to see these machinations and feel the discomfort as we figure out how to create a consistent improvement strategy rather than the constant chaos of adolescents. Do you think there should be a third party? Like I've heard people talking about this kind of left and right, but like, is this a thing? I would love for there to be more than two

parties. The bicameral system that we have is not effective. It's definitely not effective for where we're trying to go in the future. You can't have coalitions like you have in Europe. You can't have independent candidates because they don't meet the bureaucratic requirements to even be promoted, right? And then, like, even if you look at how our system currently works now, it's not the American voter who gets to choose the candidates that get to move forward. It's some group of people that we don't even vote on. So there has to be a change to that process if we want to believe that we will have leadership in the future that truly represents the people. Right now, what we have is a popularity contest between two candidates that we may or may not have really chosen in the first

place. Well, and in a country that's extremely large has way too many people to even have us like, it's like we're not in eighth grade and we're choosing a class president. That's kind of what it feels like, you know? You're right. You're right. It's like we're choosing our class president before we're even realize. Right. This is like literally the president of this entire nation. And I don't know, I'm thinking of other democratic countries in the world that have this many people. Like, it's not a thing. Yeah, it's true. It's a, it's a weird place where the United States has found itself. And that's a part of our strength, but it's also a part of our vulnerability. And it's what our enemies try to exploit is our own development process. They try to call us flawed and broken and

corrupt when we recognize that we're just figuring it out every day. Well, I mean, look, in the, in the global stage, like, the notion of, like, we're just trying to figure it out doesn't really fly. I mean, I'd like to ask one question about this kind of divisiveness. And I'm not trying to be a, I'm not trying to be a threat monger here. But, you know, one of the things that, that Sinwar said, you know, that he learned when he was in a prison in Israel, was that when there is infighting in Israel will be the best time to seize upon the vulnerability of the country. And October 7th happened after years of protests and civil unrest among the Israeli population. I don't, I would obviously don't want anything horrible to happen to us.

And I wonder if we're in this particularly vulnerable place because we're so fiercely in opposition here about kind of core values, or at least that's what it seems like. Does that put us in a vulnerable place, like for, I don't want to say our enemies, but for adversaries in the world? I think Americans understand there's a divisiveness that we need to get past if we are going to increase our level of security. Does that mean that our enemies are going to be able to unravel what we've built because of our divisiveness? That's the real question. I think right now the answer is know. There's no level of sophistication that Russia or China or Iran or North Korea has. To be like, hey, everybody, get off the floor. We're going to have a big old kumbaya with Russia

so that we can defeat Trump. That's not going to happen. My yoga studio is not going to be taken over by Iranian operatives. Correct, correct. So I'm not worried about that, but I do believe you are totally right, that there is a vulnerability that's inherent in our bipartisan nature right now. What I think is also important to understand, at least from my experience, is that our core values, I don't think our core values are as opposite as sometimes politicians make them out to be. Right? I think there are plenty of people out there who are actually independent, but they're forced to identify with one of two camps. Maybe we need a parliament.

I've been saying this for quite some time. Maybe we need a parliament. So what my dad says all the time is that all the U.S. problems are, I'm Canadian. And so he says that all the U.S. problems are because we don't have a parliament. Do we think that this is the U.S.'s major Achilles heel or vulnerability right now? Or is there another blind spot that we should be aware of? I think there's two blind spots that we need to be keeping an eye on, right? The first is we are an inherently conflict-oriented country, right?

Like, we love conflict. We glorify war. We glorify debate. We glorify arguments. And we lie about it and we call it Thanksgiving. That too. But we love conflict. And as long as we celebrate conflicts,

then what we're doing is we're preventing ourselves from ever understanding the real value, the genuine value of collaboration, of cooperation, of alliance and working together, right? It's very, very difficult. It's very, very difficult for people to develop more skill for collaboration and cooperation when we are celebrating in media

and celebrating in school and celebrating in salary competition. So that is one Achilles heel. The second Achilles heel we have, I think, is when we don't recognize that we are a giant bully, that is what the United States is. We're a gigantic bully,

and the people who are our closest allies are our closest allies because they want to be friends with the fucking bully. They're not our friends because they think that we're the best democracy. They're not our friends because they believe in our ideals.

they believe they are friends because we are pragmatically a good friend to have right now. And you've seen those alliances break down and change over time as people have seen other bullies rise. And now what we're seeing is that the countries that are succeeding around the world, they're taking a page out of our book and they're essentially becoming little fiefdom bullies on their own. That's how China has gained success in the last 20 years, right? That's what has made Russia successful in its small sphere of influence. That is what we continue to see happen in Mexico and what we see even happen in Europe.

I do agree what, I mean, I can't help it. When I look at what just happened in this country, you know, yeah, people chose the bully. People chose the person who teases special needs people and who mocks people who choose to change their sexual or gender identity. Like, that's who this country just elected. And the fact is, like, I get it. Like, people want him to get the job done.

And, like, even with Israel, like I, there's some complexity there for people, but yeah, it makes me kind of uncomfortable that I, you know, I'm a, a peace-loving person who wants to like kumbaya it, you know, globally. And also, I understand that you can't just lay down and be mowed over by people who are burning American flags all over the world. So, you know, to me, though, it makes me sad, sad, I'm having feelings. It makes me sad and it makes me worried for my kids, for your kids, for, all of this next generation, that, you know, is in this case living in a country with someone who

really ran on a campaign of, I don't make friends. I'm not friends with people. And you're not going to feel friendly with the people that I'm going to denigrate as you step over them on the way to the, you know, the ballots. Like, it's hard. I don't necessarily see it as hopeful that the bully won the election. But I do see it as hopeful that almost half of the country wanted to take a different approach. Well, wait, hold on one second.

It's not that half the country wanted, I mean, a third of the country was going to vote Democrat and probably a third of the country was going to vote Republican. Somewhere in the middle is where this teeter point came where these states flipped. It's not like half the country used to vote for her and went for him.

were divided. Well, what I'm saying is I'm looking at the popular vote numbers, really, is what I'm talking about. When it comes to the votes that were actually cast, not the electoral college. Because the electoral college is a machine all of its own, right? But when you just look at, you know, I voted for this person, I voted for that person. And you compare that apples to apples to apples. Yeah, yeah. What I was saying is to say that people wanted something different, that would imply that half the country used to vote for Biden and was like, I want something different, I want Trump.

You're saying that the majority of people have decided that they don't want to continue the administration, essentially, that we have had. Yes. I'm going to say yes, because I think we're getting at the same thing, right? But that it's not like 80% of our country decided that we want to be bullies. Right. It was it was a empirical process, a mathematical process that landed on the current president through electoral votes. but there was a huge component of our country that said, I don't think I want to do this. I don't think I want to go down this path. There's got to be a different path. So that tells me that we're not sold out to the bully cause.

We're still deciding what our future is going to look like. That makes me feel better, thank you. That's why I was hoping, like, that's how I see it too, right? Yeah. There's so much in your work in everyday spy that relates to people in their everyday life with amazing tools and skills that they can learn, which I want to get to. But before that, I think it's, you know,

one of the things we do on this podcast is, you know, pull back the curtain a little bit to explain how things are operating in ways that people might not realize. You know, we talk about that, oh, you're making decisions in your health and you're having this outcome that you might not realize

is because you have these other behaviors that you don't realize are causing this effect. Can you describe or give us some example? of things that happen in American life that people don't realize or being influenced by factors behind the curtain. We recently did an episode on UFOs. And now the conversation on UFOs is like, oh, wait a second, yeah, there is all this evidence that they exist

and there are aircraft and biological. And the government knew. And the government knew, and the government just hadn't felt comfortable telling people, you know, I'm curious about your take on this. that in your experience, if you saw inside the CIA anything that, you know, maybe you're not allowed to speak about. But what else are people not realizing that like shit isn't as it appears? You know, this is, it might be a boring example, certainly not as sexy as UFOs, but the calculus that I learned at CIA is an economic calculus. The United States was built

to meet the needs of the Industrial Revolution. So the reason that our children go to preschool and stand in line isn't because it's efficient. It isn't because it's good for our kids. It's because at a certain level, the preschool wants to be able to minimize the number of staff and maximize the number of students, and that's easier when you make the kids stand in line.

But it's also part of the overall programming so that a five-year-old standing in line, now will become a law-abiding, tax-paying, non-argumentative subordinate when they're 35, right? And that process is, it's ingrained from everything, from our driver's license applications, to schools, to, you know, waiting in line to cast your vote, right? But what's really fascinating is that when you look at the numbers, economic analysis numbers, you see that most people, 80% of people, are going to reach and lose their highest income

before the age of 55, even though we retire at 67, because there is an incentive in both government and corporations that once somebody starts to push 50, 52, 54, it's cheaper to get younger talent and to let go of the older person who costs more money. So the end result is that in retirement, most people are retiring on less than what they ever made at their peak impact, their peak financial impact. That economic engine that drives the United States is what has made us a superpower.

It's what makes us have the ability to afford the world's most advanced and sophisticated military. It's what gives us the ability to have the most advanced intelligence collection capability out there. It's what gives us worldwide reach. But at the same time, it's essentially guaranteeing that not everybody will get an opportunity to reach their fullest potential. It's only the outliers who either get opportunities given to them, which is why you see the Kennedy family, you see the Bush family, you see these families that somehow perpetually have opportunities. So it creates this opportunity or creates this system where few people will be given opportunities. And then the other half that essentially buck the system and create their own opportunities are also equally

celebrated. So it ends, it creates this kind of dearth of hope for everybody else in the middle. And as we get older and we face reality, we give up on that hope more and more. And then we just kind of fall back on crossing our fingers and wishing and hoping that we just somehow don't get ground down by the system. It makes me think that if you're not questioning why you are required to do almost everything, then you're just becoming another cog in the wheel. And, you know, but there's a risk in that, right? You're called antisocial if you start questioning the norms of society. But if you don't question the norms of society, they don't have your best interest at heart.

They're not looking out for you. It's important to understand that the American government is not there to support the American people. The American government is there to perpetuate the survival of the American government, right? that's what it's there for. American primacy is not there for Jim and Jill and Jason, right? It's there so that there's another generation of American primacy. And that was a very hard lesson for me to learn. I joined the military. I joined the CIA with a very clear image in my head of me doing things to protect my sisters and me doing things to protect my mom and me doing things to make my life better for my future children. And then when I was actually

inside the machine, I started realizing, I'm just doing this because there's a senator in Kansas who's trying to get re-election, and he made a campaign promise about high-fructose corn syrup, and now they need intelligence about Cuba and Cuba's sugar crop. And I'm like, this is not what I signed up for, but I'm inside the machine, and I can't do anything about it. And it's a twisted world.

If you choose to see it that way, it's a harsh, ruthless, pragmatic world if you choose to look at it with a lens that's absent of emotion. So you need to be somewhat antisocial in order to break out of the system. I would say you need to explore non-confirmation, right? Non-conformist behavior.

You don't have, if you're standing in line or if you see your kids standing in line at preschool, you don't have to be the parent that goes in there and throws a fit. You go in there and you say, why do you have a line before they wash hands? And then the teacher is going to give you an answer. And if you're a conformist, you will say, oh, thank you for the answer. But if you're willing to practice nonconformist behavior, you'll say, is that the only reason?

Are there more reasons? Is this really the best process? Could we let them wash their hands on their own? Well, look, what happens is you have an elite population that can afford to remove their children from the military system of standardized school. We did Waldorf. We're a Waldorf family, where the teacher would ring a little gentle bell

when it was time for the kids to come in. And if they didn't come in, she didn't yell at them. She would just do an activity inside and they would eventually follow her, like the Pied Piper thing, right? But I ended up not, I mean, I couldn't afford to send my kids

to that kind of schooling. We did like, you know, an inexpensive parent and me class, learned some of the principals. And then we homeschooled because we also were like, I don't know, that you need to sit in a box and have a bell ring every 50 minutes,

which is how I was raised and like, I turned out okay, right? Like, that's what everyone's going to say. Like, we turned out okay. But that's what people say is, oh, this is just the way it is. And oh, you turned out fine. Why are you complaining? Like they don't want to think. And therefore, they don't ever build a better solution.

And they refuse to acknowledge the ingrained behavior that is then required. And actually, Miami, I would say that you have a really hard time challenging rules. it's only through this podcast that you've started to be like, wait a second, there are things that are happening here that we're not being told about. And that could have a huge impact on our lives. So I would say that the school system didn't do that well for you. No, but I think not to answer for Andrew, but, you know, people who are afraid are easy to control.

And people who are weak are easy to control. And so the fact is, and I don't mean to like go into this, but like, you know, I always say this. Why were mushrooms and pot made illegal? Because stoned people will not go into a country they have no business being in and slaughter innocence. That's why. And when people are in touch with something greater than themselves, they don't want to massacre

people on behalf of a government who's making money and making deals behind their back. So, like, that's the structure. I mean, I've seen X-Men movies. I know what happens when people are different. They group them all together. I would add to your list of, you know, poor people are easy to control and stupid people are easy to control. And, you know, ignorant people are both easy to control and easy to make. And that's the North Korean model.

They build an ignorant population. And that doesn't mean that North Korean people are stupid. What you're saying is ignorant, meaning not aware of the options, not aware. And it's, I mean, I've seen those movies, too. the one person who's like, we don't have to live like this, and they lead a revolution, right? But like that's also, that's Harriet Tubman. That's like all these great lids.

Martin Luther King Jr. It's all the people who said like we will not live like this that break out of that. There is another way, right? And until somebody is able to say there is another way, many, many people don't ever think that there is another way. They think that they're faced with the options in front of them, right? Are you going to order chicken or salmon at the wedding?

And people look at the two options, and if they don't like either option, they choose the option they like the least. And I'm like, I'm vegan and I hate mushrooms, so don't give me a portobello. Nobody thinks I don't have to eat at all at the wedding. Nobody thinks I'll just drink beer, right? They don't ever think that there's another way. Jonathan and I talk a lot about what we think is a, it's not even a conspiracy, what we think is an overt, you know, planned by the government to make us sick and then sell us pills to make us better. can you talk a little bit? You know, our favorite example

is the ultra-processed food study that came out. And like, lo and behold, what Europe has known for decades, America was finally like, hey, it seems like something weird's going on with ultra-processed food and your health. And then very quickly after that,

the government was like, that study was incorrect. They did the analysis wrong. The algorithm was incorrect. And ultra-processed food is really good for you. That's like cuckoo-pants crazy to me and Jonathan. Is there anything you can speak to about sort of the food complex that is this country? And we're like, you know, food ink people.

We're like, you know, those kinds of hippies. So anything you say is safe here. But I'd love to know your take on sort of what's going on with the industrial food, you know, complex in this country. You know, this didn't really come to my awareness until after I left CIA. Because you can imagine when you're at CIA, you live in a vacuum. and you don't realize how many resources are at your disposal when you're at CIA. So working at CIA also means you're working with Navy SEALs, you're working with Army Delta operators, Marsock, you're working with all the most elite services out there.

To your exact point, M, our institution does not feed elite operators processed food. They don't. And they train us, they train us to food. find whole food sources. They train us to sustain ourselves in the field on whole food sources, and they constantly build us back without prescription drugs as much as possible. And when they turn to using prescription solutions for elite operators, that's when they take those operators off the line. So they understand... Wait. This is mind-blowing.

At an institutional level, they understand that optimized effort, comes with whole food and non-pharmaceutical solutions. And they give us all the resources, the tools, the training, the methodologies, the staff, the support that we need to optimize ourselves because they need us to be optimized. And when the day comes that we can no longer be optimized without some sort of processed or pharmaceutical solution, that's when they replace us with somebody else. And that's that. When I was in the middle of it, I just felt like I was king of the world.

I was getting all this great, you know, great meat sources and great vegetables and great fruits. And, you know, I was, I was getting hours dedicated in my day for meditation and mindfulness. I was like, this is like, this is easy living. It wasn't until I left it. I was like, oh, I see what was happening here. I see why you paid somebody $250,000 a year to be my exercise scientist, to calculate exactly what my caloric intake should be, my exercise output should be to measure my muscles and my V-O-2 max. I see why you did that. And I also see why the rest of us are stuck paying $115 a month or an hour to some trainer down

the street of Planet Fitness. And being sold toys with our food. And yeah, exactly. And that becomes the most available food source is a processed food source. One of the things that you speak about is influence on people and people also influencing us, knowing when we're being influenced and how to increase our influence. Both of those. One is, I'm not going to be able to assert myself, get promoted, maybe make a relationship I need to. My finances might struggle. My overall health might struggle if I'm not able to have control over my own life. And the other is, if I have an idea and I want to put it out in the world, I want to influence Andrew to like what I'm talking about. Like, can you describe some of the

tools and strategies that you've learned to both understand when someone is controlling you and how to influence other people. There's a rule of thumb that CIA teaches us that's scary, but simple, right? And that rule of thumb is that you are either in control or you are under control. There is no other option, right? And it's one of those simple binary dichotomies that, you know, we all use to teach people a simple truth. There's, in reality, there are lots of other gradations between the two. But when you take that at face value, it's really about understanding that every day you have to choose

whether to take control or whether not to take control and understand that if you choose not to take control, you're giving control to someone else. And when you talk about influence, Jonathan, it's a perfect example because you hear people talk about influence all the time. And there's books about influence, There's gurus who teach you how to build influence, and business coaches who teach you how to build influence.

And you also hear the word persuasion, and there's YouTube videos about persuasion, and there's TikTok videos about persuasion. Persuasion and influence, oftentimes people misunderstand them as the same thing, when they're two very different things, right? Persuasion requires that you put active energy into someone in person, right, and that you were using emotional ploys to persuade their way of thinking. Influence happens when you are not with somebody, but they are still recalling your knowledge

or your belief or your ideas. Or your lies. Or your lies, exactly. So persuasion comes before influence. And you have to invest in mastering persuasion if you ever want to be. a person of influence because the influence is the roof on the house, but all the other structure of the house is built on persuasion. How do I become a better persuader? First, you need to understand that people don't care about your point of view, but people care very much that other people

understand their own opinions. So if you want to build persuasion, if you want to be persuasive, you have to learn how to understand and identify what other people value and then demonstrate back to them their own values. If they care about freedom, then you need to highlight freedom. If they care about environmentalism, then you need to talk about environmentalism. If they care about the future of their children, then you need to talk about the future of their children. But if you sit there and talk about the incredibly high tax rate that you have to pay when they're worried about how they're going to put food on the table, you're not going to persuade them, right? So if you can learn to meet people where they're at. Correct. It's something that we call perspective. If you can gain

perspective and let go of your own perceptions, then you have a real opportunity to build persuasive appeal, which will turn into long-term influence. What I love about you, Andrew, is that you could have any number of jobs. Like, if I were talking to you right now, I'd be like, this is the best social media influencer manager I've ever met in my life. And then when you're talking about politics, I'm like, this is the best politician I've ever heard explain Israel to me. Like when you talk about, like, you know, costume, I'm like, this is the best prosthetic makeup artist I've ever met. You're like that guy. You've got this like enormous amount of knowledge about all these different things, but they all go together

because of your training. Right. And that's what I find to be so exciting about owning an operating my own company. And my company is an education company, right? I'm essentially a giant international school. And I love that because I get to offer people the opportunity to learn something new without forcing them or grading them or objectifying them to some arbitrary set of rules, right? It's an invitation to learn instead of a mandate to learn. Are there specific strategies to use to try and uncover what someone values quickly? Is it just listening to them? Let me give you a really great tool that blew my mind when I went to CIA.

So I was 27 years old when CIA recruited me. I thought that I was a good conversationalist. I thought I was pretty good with the women. I thought I was like at least a better than average social talent. And then I realized very quickly that I was a dumbass, right? And a big part of my dumbassery was that I spent most of my time talking about me, talking about my history, my experience, my qualifications, my ideas, right? CIA taught me that there's a very simple process to rapidly build trust and influence in other people,

and that process involves asking two questions and then making one validating statement. And then after that validating statement, you repeat the same thing. cycle again. And that the process of asking questions and validating other people's ideas subconsciously makes the other person think that you are like them. And it makes them feel like they are interesting and they are important and they are relevant. And then they have a dopamine rush that makes them feel good being around you. Now you're a dating expert. What's a good intro? Like, role playing.

You're going to ask M, you're going to persuade M. You're going to get influence over her. I mean, persuasion first. Obviously, it's a situation dependent, but are there like, is there a bank that you start with, like your go-toes? Also, I'm an actor, so it's a little, I mean, I'm sure you are also an actor. I mean, that's kind of what you had to do as a spy. But let's do, can we do it?

Let's do it. So, M, I'm going to ask you not to. to act. I'm going to ask you to try to be genuine. I don't even know who I am, so this will be fun. That's all right. So from what you've shared today, I already know you're a mom, and I already know that you're, and I've watched your channel enough to know that you've been through a divorce, right? So let me start with this, M. I will start with, what did you do first thing this morning with your kids? What was the first thing you did with your kids today? My kids didn't stay over last night, and my other one's in college. But do you want me to, do you want me to take an example of when

My kid was at my house? No, I want to start right where you were. Oh, of course you do. I can see what you're doing. Okay, go ahead. I need to meet you where you are, right? Okay, my older son's in college and my younger son is at his dad, so I woke up alone today. What's it like to wake up in an empty house when you know you're a parent?

It's two things. It's kind of a sadness, kind of a pull. My son describes it as there's an invisible string, you know, that's very, very long, because wherever he is, I'm attached to him. And then there's also an element of kind of like, I don't have to wake up, make a lunch, and get the kid on the bus by 7 in the morning. So a little bit of relief as well.

I swear that you just described what I wonder about my own future. Like when my children leave, I feel like I'm going to be sad, but I also feel like I'm going to be happy? Should I write you a check for a million dollars? Is that what happens? So what does that mean for your work, productivity. Does that make it very easy to work or does that make it kind of distracting to work?

No, I think I'm pretty practiced at it. I've been divorced for 12 years. So I have a rhythm that I've fallen into when I'm alone. What does the rhythm for work look like? Well, it means that I can take my time, you know, making my protein smoothie or whatever I'm going to do for breakfast. And then I get to sit down, do some emails, you know, look at my phone, check the news just once. Don't want to get obsessed about it. I actually also start my day with a protein smoothie. I use a protein called True Greens. Have you ever heard of them? They're pretty amazing. No. So what's the protein that you use? I use, well, they used to sponsor our podcast. I use Peary, which is a vegan protein powder.

I also use vegan proteins because, first of all, I just find that they are easier to digest. But also, I find that vegan proteins are a more viable solution for long-term muscle growth when I'm older. That was the cycle of three. That was a cycle of three. The last cycle had one question and a follow-up. But I could feel the rapport building. It was happening. How did it feel to you, though?

M, you know what was happening to you. So how did it feel to you? It felt like I was at a bar and a guy was trying to get me into bed. But that's just because that's my fear about people, like, trying to connect with, you know, me. Also, she doesn't like to talk about herself in, in, in, when asked questions specifically. So like you're putting her in a very awkward position. I definitely, I felt like, oh, you're relating to things. You're finding the similarities, not the differences. So yeah, I would imagine that that it does. It feels like a connection. It feels like

you get me. It feels like I want to share more with, it feels like I'd go on a date with you if you gave me your number. So here's the twisted side of this very effective dating technique. I don't want to make a spy baby yet, though. We need to have three days first. He doesn't have protein in the morning. He never as imagined his children leaving the house. All of that was fake. No, actually, the twisted part here is I now know a great deal about you, M.

But you still don't know anything new about me from that process, really. Right. I know that you start your day in the morning. I know that you like to move slow. I know that you have a child in college and a child that's at your husband's house. I know that you used to have a protein sponsor for this podcast. Did I not ask enough questions about you? Is that why we're not going on a date?

I grew up on Blossom, M. If you want a date, I will fly to L.A. and take you to dinner. I will just tell my wife, I have to do this. But what you're saying is that what you were able to do was establish rapport, established trust, and this kind of connection without you actually having to reveal anything about yourself so that if that's the relationship you need to establish out in the field, you haven't really given up anything of yourself. Correct.

It's a tool that we call informational superiority. Now, you feel good being around me, hopefully, but you don't know anything about me. So when you meet your friend and you say, I met this guy, she's like, tell me about him. You're like, I actually don't know anything about him. But he's very interested in me, and that's what's most important. But we've all had that moment. We've all had that moment where we realize I actually don't know anything about that person. That's me and Jonathan.

I was like, why are we here? That is now, essentially, Jonathan, what we are able to do now is we just created a systematic process to make that happen all the time. With clients, with customers, with possible future dates, with in-laws, with business partners. It's predictable because the human brain is predictable in any language and any age. So what you've created is a way to get information, but more importantly, for someone to feel comfortable with you that you have shown interest. And what most people actually want is for someone to be interested in them and to have space held for them and reflected back and finding similarities.

There's nothing people love more than, oh my gosh, that person understands me and has little sparks of similarity. You're exactly right. And the way that we talk about it at CIA is that the core need, the fundamental need for human beings, that so often goes missed is the need for connection. And that connection is nothing more than feeling seen, feeling heard,

and feeling present in a moment with another human being. And it's a very, very powerful concoction when you can artificially create that sense of connection for somebody else. Because it means that there will never be a lack of people who want to connect with you, even though they don't realize they're not connecting with you on a personal level. I mean, this is also a dangerous tool to use too much,

because if you don't know that you're doing it, the user of the tool can, you know, if you're not a spy, can cut themselves off and actually, you know, not form that reciprocal relationship. These are, you know, to be used carefully. Correct. And that's what you're getting at there is really the difference between what we call a trained person and an untrained person. M talked about narcissists earlier.

Narcissists are untrained. They go to the school of on-the-job training. They learn through the school of Hard Knocks. They don't learn how to genuinely connect with another human being. A trained person learns how to use these skills to gain practical advantages for operational goals, whether that is a goal in your everyday life or a goal in your career or a goal in your personal life,

but also a trained person understands that they have to accept genuine connection in order to be optimized as an individual. You have to trust somebody. You have to connect with somebody. Otherwise, you will never be optimized. You will lose that basic core need of human connection. I mean, I'm fascinated about that

because the movie version of The Spy is someone who is isolated. You have to give up everything in order to do. join this world. I've seen Liam Neeson do that many times. You can't have the relationship. You have to be willing to leave at moments notice and everyone in your, and of course, the hero of whatever movie this is finds the one person they don't want to walk away from and they end up changing their life. But what you're saying is actually, you know, fundamental to optimization is that there has to be a break in the character. You can't be the spy 24-7 or you won't function. Correct. You have to have, it's a matter.

of energy transference. And I don't mean woo-woo, hippie, L.A. energy. I mean actual, like, national lab scientific energy. Human beings are energetic sources, and we transfer energy to and from each other. There has to be a time when you recharge your energy because so much of your day is spent shedding energy. You put energy into your children. You put energy into your spouse, you put energy into your employees, you put energy into strangers, you put energy into the Uber driver who's making you nauseous, but you don't want to yell at him. Like you put energy out into the world all the time. You must have a way of recreating or generating energy. And one of the best ways to do that is by being around another energy source where you're in

receive mode and they're pouring their energy into you. How do you tell if someone is lying to you? Because their lips are moving, Jonathan. Their lips are moving. There's a number of ways to do this. Most of the stuff that you see on TikTok and Facebook and Instagram is not right. It's not about looking for small facial movements. It's actually about things that are much bigger than that. One of the best things you can do to find out if somebody's lying to you is you can ask them a question about how they feel. Ask them a question that we call a feelings question, right?

For example, you must have been so happy when you saw the birth of your first child. what happens is you're asking a question that will absolutely create an emotional response. I mean, there's a lot going on down there if you don't take drugs, but sure. I mean, I was a little terrified, but... Oh, you were talking to him. I was like, I was the one doing it. I wasn't really watching, but yeah. But what ends up happening is you can see the challenge, you can see the effort on their face if they're trying to lie. Lying takes effort, even for the most experienced lie. Lyer. Lying takes a lot of effort. So when somebody shows very little effort in their face and their body movements and their in their intonation, there's a good chance they're telling the truth.

Or they're a sociopath. But when somebody puts a great deal of effort into their lie, you can actually see it. You can hear the pause. You can see the confusion on their face. You can hear them blubber through their words. So that's just one actual tool that we use. It's not a bulletproof tool, but it's one proven tool to actually see if someone's lying to. I'm curious about the pause. Well, I guess I'm curious about two things. The first is what does effort look like? You talked about pause. You talked about like a facial reaction. So I'm curious to hear a little bit more specifically about that. And then also, how does that differ than when you asked me that question and you proposed an emotion to me, which would be a natural emotion.

I felt like I paused for a minute because I was unsure the emotion you presented to me. wasn't really authentic to my experience. And so I was almost auditing and trying to say, what would my experience be? So I felt like I kind of looked up and I had my head tilted for a second. And I was like, oh, actually when he was born, it was a difficult birth.

And I was kind of terrified. And I was a new dad. And we did a home birth. And I was like, holy shit, there's a human being now. Like, it wasn't, you know,

like the looking at your son in the movie and being like, holy, you know, just just, just happiness. It was like a bit of terror too. And that's a very honest answer. And I think your example is one of the reasons why it's not a bulletproof solution. But let's do a real quick field experiment right here, right? Do me a favor. Jonathan, push your glasses up a little higher on your nose just so that we can see your eyes. Perfect. Now, M, can you see Jonathan? Yeah. Okay. Your job, your job is to watch his face and make observations that you can, that you can describe

physically. Don't tell me about observations about what you feel. Only tell me objective observations about what you see. Okay? Turning off my feelings. Perfect. Perfect. Jonathan, I need you to relax, because you're already preparing yourself for an exercise. I was like leading forward a lot. Okay, I'm sitting back. Go ahead. Okay, I'm going to ask you, the first question I ask you, I just want you to answer honestly. I'm really good at this also. I just want to give you a heads up. Because I grew up in a very emotionally volatile home. And I grew up, no, but I'm saying, I grew up tracking. I grew up, like, super hypervigilant. I can pick up off, like, if someone's uncomfortable about something that, like, they don't want to talk about, I know it from like 50 yards away.

So I think I'm going to be very good at this game. Perfect. Perfect. Okay. So your job is to watch Jonathan. Jonathan's job is to be Jonathan, relax. I'm going to ask you a question. It's going to be an emotional question. And your job is just to tell the truth. All right? What was it like when you met your wife for the first time? I have to think about when, uh, what? I'm really thinking. Stop right there. I don't need anymore. We've got everything we need.

So what happened? Yeah, I'm so curious. Tell me what you saw, Em. Okay, so what I saw is I saw a miniature like record scratch in his eyes. I saw his eyes kind of like, they didn't freeze, but it was like everything stopped. And I could see like the cog, like the wheels start turning. That's your emotions. That's your emotions.

What did his eyes do? Tell me what they did. Yeah, it looked like they tracked a little bit down and then they stopped. So you may not be as good at this as you think you are. But luckily, we have a replay. So production team, play the replay. What you actually see is Jonathan's eyes move up and to his left. Now, Jonathan's Canadian.

Primary language is English, correct, Jonathan? Yeah. So that means that he reads from left to right. So what you just saw him do is he referenced chronology in his memory, trying to find when did I even meet my wife, trying to find the memory. And then you could also see his forehead remained flat. He didn't furrow his eyebrows with confusion or effort.

He just looked up to try to find the memory, and then he couldn't resist smiling. He couldn't resist it. And he was talking about how he had to think, and he was talking about how he was trying. And normally you might think that somebody who's stalling is lying, but you could see in his face he was recalling the joy of his wife. I mean, they're not married anymore, but yes.

When they first met for the first time, though, that's positive stuff, right? So you could see all of this unhindered emotion. So whatever you were going to say, Jonathan, had a high likelihood of being truthful. I mean, this is the most fascinating little exercise I think we've maybe ever done on this podcast. And I've watched a lot of your content. I don't know if you've done this before. I haven't seen it. I'm fascinated also by tracking of eye movements, the notion of looking up into the left as a way to find a memory is fascinating.

There's a lot of neurological and neuromuscular research that, actually you can use eye movement to reset body patterns. And so to think about tracking that as it relates to how people are thinking is really interesting. And again, it's not bulletproof because if you're talking to somebody who maybe is dyslexic or if you talk to somebody who their primary language is Arabic, they're going to learn, they're going to reference their chronology differently, right? So now the second exercise, Jonathan, you have to relax, but your job is to lie. Your job is to lie, right?

And M, your job is to observe the observables, always knowing that we have the replay in case you don't see something exactly right. Okay? All right, Jonathan, another feeling question, but this time I need you to lie. Okay. Okay. Were you afraid that you would be lonely for the rest of your life when you got a divorce? No.

What did you see, M? His eyes didn't move. Nothing moved. Did you see how rigid the whole thing was? Yeah. This is another great replay. It's another great replay because you could see the pause that I was telling you about, Jonathan. Remember how I told you, look for a pause?

If you were telling the truth, you would have answered right away. I'm guessing that I asked that question, and the first thing that went through your head was, yes. And the next thing that went through your head was, I have to lie. No. It's interesting that I actually had to ask my... I wasn't sure if I was or not. I mean, the biggest thing when I got divorced was actually not the idea of not living with my child was the biggest thing. That's the first thing that hit me.

And there was a moment actually when I first left the house when it was actually one of the hardest parts was I came back and I was visiting the house at a time and I hadn't been gone very long. And my son was maybe five, maybe six at the time. and he had climbed into the washing machine and was standing in the washing machine because he was too small to reach in and get the clothes and he liked to do his own clothes and he was in his underwear and nothing else and he was standing in the washing machine

and really proud of himself as he was pulling the wet clothes out and throwing him into the dryer and I thought to myself you only get that moment when you live with your kid. You don't get that in a lot. a visit. You don't get that any other time than when there's just unstructured moments. And I remember, like, that's what was sort of the forefront. Like my notion of like what's going to happen to me in

relationships was like so far out of my consciousness that like when you asked me that question, I had to sort of travel back. But also I knew I was supposed to lie. So I wanted to answer quickly. So that was a, it was a tough question. It was a really tough question. It was just an emotional question. And I think your story, which is a gorgeously beautiful story, by the way, the story that you just told, really shows the pause that M and I saw was only probably three quarters of a second. And all of that happened in your brain during that pause. So fast. And that's what makes it so so viable, such a valuable tool. Because when people lie, they still feel the emotion.

And then they have to put effort into not showing the emotion. Your eyes didn't move at all. You didn't reference a chronology at all, right? You just stayed locked in on me with a tight jaw until you said, no. It was almost not human. It was like there was an absence of real human emotion in it. And when you told the truth right before that, your face told the story for you, the smiles and the grin and the teeth and the memory and the eye movement and the head movement. Like you'll see it in your own replay, how very much effort is obvious to see. I have two more questions. What's your favorite movie about a spy? My favorite movie about spies is the very first spy kids. And it's because all spy movies are not real. They're all bad. But I love Antonio Banderas, and I watch spy kids with my kids, and they loved it.

So it's just this very fond memory of a spy movie, because most of the spy movies I watch, especially the very serious ones, and all I see is just how many things they get wrong and how little of it is true. Okay, my other question in a lot of spy movies, they show like teeny tiny weapons. Like teeny, teeny, tiny weapons, like teeny, teeny tiny weapons. Is that a real thing? Are there weapons that we don't know about that are like so tiny and you can hide them in a button? Like, is that a real thing? Yes, there are weapons that are tiny that you would never believe exist.

and they deliver a lethal action in a number of different ways. Some of them deliver a lethal dose of poison. Some of them deliver some sort of lethal impulse that throws off your heart and puts you in cardiac arrest. And then there's a whole slew of other things that, you know, do everything from confuse you or blind you or whatever else. And oftentimes... It's like Dungeons and Dragons. You're like throwing a spell at someone. Lightning bolt, lightning bolt, right? But I will also say that more than weapons, because we're about collecting intelligence.

So the really impressive stuff is how small the tools are that we use to collect secrets. How small our thumb drives can be, how small microchips can be, how small cameras can be, how small audio bugs can be, right? Like how we even have ways of creating audio recording devices that have no battery power. Wow. Right? And that's just really cool stuff that is better than the movies, in my opinion. Amazing. Amazing. I have two very short questions.

One is, what is your best tool technique most universal that you would say people who are not spies should learn about? If it's something that I want just the average person to do without paying me a single dollar, I just want them to stop talking. Just, if you just talk 10% less, you're going to learn like 30% percent. 30% more than you learn right now. And it's a hard thing to do, but it's very, very simple and very memorable. Just talk less. When the moment comes where you feel like you should talk, pause and just hold it and then say what you have to say. And you're going to be shocked by how much you learn. If it's something that people will learn from me, meaning they will come to everyday spy and they will take a course with me. The thing I want them to learn is a course

I have called Opthink. That's a master course called operational thinking that I sure to opt-think. It's the best thing we've ever created. It has transformed people across the world. We use it in all of our executive coaching. It includes many of the tips that we talked about today, Jonathan, from how to ask questions and how to tell lies and how to identify falseness and persuasion and influence, all of that in one program. So if people are going to pay money, that's what I would want them to learn. If they don't want to pay anything, they just want to have a great time on this podcast. Literally, just hold your tongue for 10% of the time that you and see how much more learn. Ma'am, I'm going to opt-think. I'm coming back a super spy. I mean, that sounds amazing.

My sort of last question for you is something that you talked about sort of really at the beginning of this podcast. And I have a slight intro to it. The first is, you know, I'm wondering if people from homes where you have to scan, where you're hyper-independence, where you don't have, you know, the type of social network or connection end up making better spies. And I've heard about your story and know that you grew up in a situation that you had to fend for yourself at an early age. And I'm wondering if that makes someone more prone to be good at this work. But really, I wondered about the stress of that life and the constant scanning that has to

happen and the persuasion and having to show up for other people. defend and control yourself. We know that having a high level of freedom in self-expression is wildly important for mental health and physical health. And not having that creates a level of stress and burden that you have to carry for such a long time. And I'm wondering, you know, having been in the service that long, and is it something that you're able to really unpack? Or is it layers where you're like, holy, I'm still, you know, are you still finding yourself to like come home to yourself in that way? So I was married. I got married at the CIA. I met my wife at CIA. We served around the world. We did some incredible things. We're still

waiting for CIA to let us tell the whole story. But fast forward to 2014 when we leave CIA. Within just a few weeks of leaving CIA, we found ourselves hiring a marriage counselor. because we were just starting to see the tip of the iceberg of exactly what you were talking about, Jonathan. We were wired through our childhood, through our unique childhood traumas and the training that we went through at CIA and all the resources that were given to us at CIA to keep us optimized. When we left, it was the first time that we started to see the house of cards start to crumble. And we went to a marriage counselor. And the marriage counselor couldn't keep up with us. Like, we're telling, to use M's words, we're telling Mr. and Mrs. Smith stories.

And the counselors like, I don't know that I'm equipped for this, right? So after two or three different therapists, nobody was really comfortable working with us. But we needed an outlet. And, you know, this is the first time I've told the story, Jonathan. Everyday Spy started because my creative expression has always been writing. So I started to write about spy skills that I was using in everyday life. I started to write about the difficulties of transitioning from CIA to everyday life. I started to write about how embarrassing it was to be an elite operator but a shitty husband. Like, I started to write and write and write and that writing became a blog, and I learned a little bit about a website, and then people started reading it, and then it just kind of snowballed.

And there came a time when I started writing courses and I started writing speeches and I started writing scripts. And then people said, stop writing, just talk. So I started talking on a stage. And then I started talking in front of a camera. And then people were like, come talk on my podcast. And I mean, the rise of my company is not because I'm some good business person. It's really just my own therapy to do exactly what you said, Jonathan, to find and express myself creatively, to process the experiences that I can't talk about in a way that is hopefully productive for myself, for my family, for my future. There's a great question, man.

Thanks for letting me talk about that. Really, really fascinating. I mean, the whole thing start to finish is really fascinating. And we hope people will check out Everyday Spy. It's so incredible. And we're so glad that you are working through your stuff by sharing so much with us and with everybody. Absolutely.

Thanks for having me. This is a great conversation. This was a great way to spend my afternoon. We didn't even get to ask him about sex performance. What kind of paperwork do they have to have? I like that he was so cavalier about, you know, oh, there's ways not to get people pregnant. Okay, but I've seen that movie, too, where the spy thinks that she's not going to get pregnant, but he gets her pregnant anyway.

I love that that's the focus for you, is spy babies. Not maybe this person is seducing me in order to kill me. Maybe they're trying to steal my secrets. I want to talk to his wife. Maybe she'll come on and talk to us. Maybe she'll talk to us about these things. I'm very curious about his wife. They got kids.

We should talk to his wife. Please make sure to go to everydayspy.com. You can learn so many things. It's not just how to be a spy. It's how to use the techniques that the most elite, secretive, powerful, influential people in the world have to learn. And you can learn it.

So please check it out. And from our breakdown to the one we secretly hope you'll never have. We'll see you next time. It's my ambiotics breakdown. She's going to break it down for you. She's got a neuroscience PhD or two. One fiction was and now she's gonna break down