Gavin de Becker: Why your phone can't hide from a government

1. 0:00 – 3:14

   Intro

   1. GBGavin de Becker0:00

      I have inside information on Jeffrey Epstein and why the US government is reluctant to be more transparent. And I know this because when I was working in government, meetings were not, "How shall we tell the public?" But, "What shall we tell the public?" So often the best we can get in our skepticism is to know that we are not being told the truth.

   2. SBSteven Bartlett0:19

      I think people need to know the truth.

   3. GBGavin de Becker0:20

      So put on your seatbelt, I'm gonna tell you everything, and all senior people in the US government know everything that you and I have discussed here today.

   4. SBSteven Bartlett0:27

      So you've been behind the scenes with some of the most successful, richest, most powerful people on planet Earth. But what is it you do, Gavin?

   5. GBGavin de Becker0:33

      So I do protective coverage, you know, any of the ways that wealthy or prominent people might be targeted. For example, the Saudi Arabian government obtained a system which can get into your phone, used it on Jeff Bezos. So our work was to figure out how it happened.

   6. SBSteven Bartlett0:48

      Why would a government want to hack the founder of Amazon's phone?

   7. GBGavin de Becker0:51

      So I'll tell you in a second, but we're all not as careful as we could be in terms of what we say, what we text, and there is absolutely no protection viable for the confidentiality of your phone. Do you have any skepticism about that?

   8. SBSteven Bartlett1:04

      I just have a lot of ignorance to how this whole world works.

   9. GBGavin de Becker1:07

      Lucky you. But all power centers in human history lie. There are some examples of this where we'll start telling the truth about something, but years later, things like cancer-causing asbestos in baby powder, a hundred thousand people dying from heart attacks from opioids, and we'll see it with mass vaccinations.

   10. SBSteven Bartlett1:21

       So what advice would you give about how to navigate in the world we're living in today to avoid risk, threat?

   11. GBGavin de Becker1:27

       I've got some core truths. So first of all...

   12. SBSteven Bartlett1:33

       Guys, I've got a quick favor to ask you. We're approaching a significant subscriber milestone on this show, and roughly sixty-nine percent of you that listen and love this show haven't yet subscribed for whatever reason. If there was ever a time for you to do us a favor, if we've ever done anything for you, given you value in any way, it is simply hitting that subscribe button. And it means so much to myself but also to my team, 'cause when we hit these milestones, we go away as a team and celebrate. And it's the thing, the simple free easy thing you can do to help make this show a little bit better every single week. So that's a favor I would ask you, and, um, if you do hit the subscribe button, I won't let you down, and we'll continue to find small ways to make this whole production better. Thank you so much for being part of this journey. It means the world and, uh, yeah, let's do this. [upbeat music] Gavin, we have a mutual friend, and that mutual friend actually sent me a voice note late last night. Here is what the voice note says.

   13. SPSpeaker2:27

       I'm calling at this crazy hours. I found out that you're interviewing a dear friend of mine, Gavin de Becker, I think in two days, I think on the thirteenth. He is an extraordinary human being, extraordinary soul. He comes from a, a very tough background, but what he's done to move from that background to becoming probably the single greatest security expert in the world. He designed the systems that are used to protect the Supreme Court. I've met him decades ago, and there was a threat happening to a former girlfriend of mine, and then I was getting threatening letters, and he deciphered the letters in microseconds, got the FBI involved, and put a stop to it all. It was extraordinary what he did.

   14. GBGavin de Becker3:08

       Wow.

   15. SBSteven Bartlett3:08

       That was Tony Robbins for anyone that didn't recognize.

   16. GBGavin de Becker3:11

       I, I recognized. [laughs]

   17. SBSteven Bartlett3:12

       The voice. Yeah. It'd be crazy if someone

2. 3:14 – 4:31

   What Do I Actually Do — And Who Calls Me When Everything Falls Apart?

   1. SBSteven Bartlett3:14

      didn't. But it got me incredibly, incredibly curious 'cause he said lots of things there that I found fascinating. Um, the first one I'm gonna start with is he described you helping him with a personal situation in his life.

   2. GBGavin de Becker3:24

      Mm.

   3. SBSteven Bartlett3:24

      And I guess this begets the question, what is it you do for people like Tony Robbins? What is it you do for famous people, for world leaders? What is it you do, Gavin?

   4. GBGavin de Becker3:35

      The main function of my company is anti-assassination. So, uh, we develop and deploy anti-assassination strategies. Under that, under assassination, which you can consider the worst possible outcome, um, are lesser outcomes like, uh, other kinds of crimes, uh, destruction of, of reputation, uh, threats that are designed to cause anxiety and fear. We have a division that does assessment of threats and management of threats. We have a division that does actual protective coverage. That's the biggest division, meaning actual physical protectors, fit, young, capable people, not, uh, retired ex-cops who are overweight and on their second career, but, uh, you know, people who are, who are really trained for this specific field. Armored vehicles, modifications to homes, basically everything that fits into the category of preventing, uh, uh, or disrupting, uh, uh, efforts to do tissue damage. So we're in the business of preventing tissue

3. 4:31 – 6:04

   Why High-Profile Clients Seek Me Out (And What That Says About Power)

   1. GBGavin de Becker4:31

      damage.

   2. SBSteven Bartlett4:32

      And who are some of the names that you do this for and have done this for over the years?

   3. GBGavin de Becker4:36

      All of the names that I do it for are, uh, are never spoken by me. So, uh, I don't say who clients are, and I don't say who they aren't, because if I say to you, "So-and-so isn't a client," uh, that is information that might reveal that somebody else is, or something you heard is true or not true. The way I can describe it to you, though, is to say that it's, if you took the twenty people you would assume, uh, fit into this category or the fifty, um, most of them are clients.

   4. SBSteven Bartlett5:03

      I mean, according to the internet, I've heard you sort of reference certain things before because these people have spoken or, you know, you've been seen in photos.

   5. GBGavin de Becker5:11

      That's right. If a client identifies me or it happens because I testify in a court case or something, that's a different animal. It just doesn't come from... I view myself as sort of like a, a psychiatrist or a doctor. I wouldn't be the one revealing it.

   6. SBSteven Bartlett5:24

      And some of those names that have been revealed by others are Jeff Bezos, Elizabeth Taylor, Cher, Madonna, Barbra Streisand, and many, many, many more, from government officials to royalty, et cetera, et cetera. What was Tony referring to when he said that you helped him with a situation with his girlfriend, a threat, found out that it wasn't who people thought they were?

   7. GBGavin de Becker5:42

      Right. Surely, he was referring to a case I'll never reveal, and I won't even acknowledge he's a client.

   8. SBSteven Bartlett5:48

      You won't even say he's a client.

   9. GBGavin de Becker5:50

      Mm-mm. I won't say it. If you, if you have it from some other source-

   10. SBSteven Bartlett5:53

       Tony said it.

   11. GBGavin de Becker5:54

       I, I understand. Your, your interrogation, it makes all the sense in the world, but I just don't say it. I don't talk about clients. There's a bunch of reasons, but most of all, just absolute confidentiality. I know it's weird.

4. 6:04 – 12:59

   The Real Story Behind The Jeff Bezos Hack — What Most People Missed

   1. GBGavin de Becker6:04

      Apologies.

   2. SBSteven Bartlett6:05

      But I heard you talk about the Jeff Bezos situation.

   3. GBGavin de Becker6:08

      Uh, you heard me talk about, uh, uh, cybersecurity and, and the vulnerability of phones. Uh, and the Bezos situation is a little bit different in that I was involved very publicly in it, but clearly with permission of my client and, and organized with my client. Same thing as when I testify in a court case, there's no secrecy about it. I'm doing it, but it doesn't mean that I'll then do it everywhere.

   4. SBSteven Bartlett6:32

      And, and so in that case where you did have Jeff's permission, the, the background context was there was a newspaper that was gonna publish that he was having an affair with, I think his current wife, who w-wasn't his wife at the time, Lauren Sanchez, and you were called upon in that scenario to figure out what was going on, and you were able to solve that.

   5. GBGavin de Becker6:49

      Yes.

   6. SBSteven Bartlett6:49

      What are you able to talk about there?

   7. GBGavin de Becker6:51

      Well, I'll think back to what, what's already been, what's already been public, uh, and it won't be, uh, from me, it won't be anything about the client, but it will be about the Saudi Arabian government, which at that time had just obtained a, um, a system called Pegasus 3, which can get into your phone remotely. It doesn't require a click of any kind, meaning you don't have to acknowledge anything. It can get in. It's called a no-click exploit, and it could do everything in your phone from seven thousand miles away that you could do holding the phone in your hand, even if it was off. Could turn on the camera, could turn on the microphone. It exists. It's a very real thing made by the Israelis and the Saudi prince, MBS, had just gotten it, and he used it on a group of dissidents around the world. He also used it on Jeff Bezos, according to the United Nations, according to lots of things that have been public. Our work was to, A, figure it out, figure out how it happened. In those days, I didn't know what Pegasus 3 was. I didn't know what this system was. But i-the instrumental or perhaps useful thing for you and your audience to know is that there is absolutely no protection viable for the confidentiality of your phone if a government wants you. And the reason I say there's no stopping it is that even when Apple puts out a new solution, uh, which they do an update, uh, that, you know, breaks some particular exploit, thousands of people around the world immediately start working on the next exploit. So if I said to you, "Here's a phone and we've modified it and it's great. Mr. President, here, you can use this phone for your s- confidential conversations," uh, in a month, it won't work anymore. And so I, I'm able to tell clients and friends, and now you and your audience, there l- are a lot of things being offered for sale that, you know, supposedly protect the confidentiality of your, uh, phone calls, for example, or your texts. Nothing will work reliably. There is no solution to that problem that is reliable.

   8. SBSteven Bartlett8:54

      Nothing?

   9. GBGavin de Becker8:55

      Yeah. There is... There are devices sold. There's all variety of things, but the reality is that even if something worked, even if I said to you, "Here's this cool new such and such phone that will protect you," it'll only protect you for a while because there's a constant effort to improve the exploits. And also, I have to say, people are somewhat reluctant and maybe even lazy. I'll put myself on the list, uh, and I'll put you on the list without even knowing you. We're all not as careful as we could be in terms of what we say, what we text, and, uh, I have a dear friend and client who every text and every email that he sends also goes to his executive assistant, and everybody knows it. And what happens is it controls and influences his behavior. So when you send me that off-color joke that I wouldn't wanna see on television, he responds differently. He doesn't say, "Oh, that's great," and add another topping line on top of it. He-- because he knows that his assistant in the other room is seeing that. And so the best we can all do is be, be watchful what we say and have no pretense of, of privacy or confidentiality because it simply does not exist, period. The US government got into the phones of all of our allies, uh, prime ministers, chancellor of West Germany, uh, Prime Minister of England, President of France. This is a game that's going on all the time, and, uh, a-and privacy is just not part of the new world.

   10. SBSteven Bartlett10:21

       Why would a government want to hack the founder of Amazon's phone?

   11. GBGavin de Becker10:25

       Well, the... Again, from what's been public, the founder of Amazon was also the owner of The Washington Post, and the Saudis had killed Khashoggi, who was a journalist for The Washington Post, and The Washington Post then started putting out an Arabic edition. That didn't feel good for the Saudis, and then they really went after the, I'll call him the head of state. He's the prince, but, but, uh, his, his father was alive and was actually the head of state, but they really went after MBS. I think, uh, Bezos was a kind of adversary in that regard. Additionally, the Saudi sovereign fund developed an Amazon competitor called something like NEOM or something like that, and so they were concerned about that, and they were also doing deals with Amazon, and so they could get, uh, economic advantage by seeing what the various executives are texting to each other. So there was a lot of, a lot of moving parts to that. So all these things I've just shared with you were high-stakes matters going on around the time that Khashoggi was killed and that the Western countries of the world were objecting to this assassination team of his going around and, and killing people and, and getting into their phones.

   12. SBSteven Bartlett11:30

       In early 2019, Jeff Bezos publicly accused the US tabloid The National Enquirer of attempting to blackmail and extort him by threatening to publish intimate photos, including what he described as a nude below-the-belt selfie of him and his then-partner, Lauren Sanchez. Bezos wrote a blog post saying AMI emailed his lawyer and security advisor, Gavin de Becker's counsel, threatening to publish personal photos and texts unless he and his team publicly stated that the tabloid's coverage of him was not politically motivated.

   13. GBGavin de Becker11:56

       Yeah. What they wanted me to do, the Enquirer, and they negotiated with me and my lawyer over this, that I was to go public and say two things. I was to say it was not politically motivated, and it was not influenced by outside actorsI.e., the Saudis, and that there was no hacking involved. My question was, "Why the hell do you want me to say those two things specifically?" And, uh, my-- I already knew the answer, of course, because there was outside influence, and there was hacking. Their request for me was so strange that we didn't go along with it. Bezos ultimately wrote a Medium post talking about it publicly and saying, "Hey, if, if, if I can't stand up to this, then where is a regular person?"

   14. SBSteven Bartlett12:40

       And ultimately, those pic-pictures were never published.

   15. GBGavin de Becker12:42

       Yeah. I can't-- I won't even comment on whether those pictures exist because they were doing a fascinating thing, by the way. They were... It's sort of like selling you land in, in Florida that's marshland and doesn't exist. They were doing an extortion on a thing they didn't even have, right? So it's kind of a double crime. It's an extortion

5. 12:59 – 20:39

   The Epstein Files: What They Reveal — And Why It Matters

   1. GBGavin de Becker12:59

      and fraud.

   2. SBSteven Bartlett13:00

      It's interesting, you know, we, we start talking here about digital comms and that type of security with everything that's going on at this exact moment in time with all these Epstein files, and there's a big conversation, you know, 'cause now we can see three thousand-- three million documents, and many of them are emails that people have sent at different times. Some of the most famous people in the world have sent emails to Epstein, and now those are all out there in the public to see. I wonder what your take was on all of this stuff. You must be watching this stuff from, like, through the lens that you've built your career and, uh, you must have an interesting opinion.

   3. GBGavin de Becker13:31

      Some of it I, I don't talk about because I have a fair amount of inside information, and I'm just watchful about not getting near the line. But I-

   4. SBSteven Bartlett13:40

      What do you mean by inside information?

   5. GBGavin de Becker13:41

      I mean information that, that I might have gotten from, uh, I'm characterizing it carefully, that I might have gotten from government agencies that are clients or that I might have gotten because, uh, uh, clients were, uh, were implicated. Like I learned today, for example, this morning on the way over here, that I'm in the Epstein files.

   6. SBSteven Bartlett13:58

      Oh, really?

   7. GBGavin de Becker13:58

      And here's the way I'm in there, is that someone sent Epstein an article that I wrote called Fooling Ourselves into War. And so, uh, somebody sent that, uh, article, uh, which is an article I really like, by the way, uh, uh, published in, in Huffington Post at the time, and, um, they sent that to Epstein. So that's an example of being in the Epstein files and yet obviously never having met, uh, Epstein. But I have a few clients who, uh, and friends who the Epstein group made approaches on and failed, meaning they tried to get them and failed. I'll give you one story without naming the person, of course. He goes to meet with Epstein in New York, uh, to ask for money for a charity and, and Epstein is perceived as this big billionaire, which he was not, by the way. I'll tell you in a second. And Epstein is in a robe, and they're across the desk just like you and I are, and Epstein says, "Hey," um, they're finishing the meeting. He says, "Hey, I'm gonna get a massage, hence my robe. You wanna get a massage?" And through the hallway, my friend can see a massage table and a room and a very cute girl who's the massage therapist, right? Dressed like a massage therapist. And so he happened to say no. In fact, interestingly, he happens to not like massage, which is itself, y-you know, a lot of people would say yes and might even think it would improve my relationship with this guy, Jeffrey Epstein, who I perceive as this rich guy that I'm trying to get money from my charity. Um, had that happened, what a different world for that person. What a different life. Because in that room is cameras, uh, and then eventually audio. It didn't start off with audio, but audio was added later, and then you're, uh, getting a hand job, if I'm allowed to say hand job, from somebody who you don't even think about their age, but turns out to be seventeen, and you are in a world of trouble for the rest of your life. And that's a big piece of what was going on with Epstein, with cameras in that apartment in New York and eventually audio, cameras and eventually audio at the island. My take on it, uh, and certainly my public take is that there was a profound, uh, uh, blackmail operation going on to the benefit of probably more than one government, but at least one government. And when I said a moment ago he wasn't a billionaire, he wasn't a billionaire. For one thing, the-- his earning path is highly suspect. I'll first tell you what he was. What he was is a construct. He's a created construct: money, wealth, private jet, private island, fun, not married, young girls, lots of things. So he was a construct. The money, uh, five hundred million dollars of money came from Les Wexner, who's a wealthy guy who, uh, owns or owned, I don't know what he's doing now, uh, Victoria's Secret, big donator to the state of Israel, and five hundred million dollars was transferred to Epstein, along with power of attorney to use it and invest it in the ways he saw fit. Quite an unusual, uh, you know... I'm mildly wealthy, but I'm not sending you five hundred million dollars, I'll tell you that. The idea that you're, that you're doing this is itself extraordinary, but it was probably the funding mechanism for this construct. While it's a real name, uh, Jeffrey Epstein, and he has a real birth certificate and grew up in a real way, the picture that is presented to the world is not authentic. It is not accurate to who he was. And, uh, the more you dig into this story, which of course people are doing so much now because of these, uh, three million, uh, documents so far, and videos, by the way, and photographs, there's a lot of material there. The, uh, it's very interesting to people right now and, and, and more to be learned, but, you know, what was actually going on, why in the world would anybody say, "Well, there are national security implications to some of this content. That's why some things are redacted"? What would that be? Why would the prosecutor who prosecuted him in Florida and provided one of the most unusual plea bargain deals in world history, and certainly unique in American history, which is imagine I've got you, I'm a US attorney, I've got you on some crime, and you say, "Okay, I'm going to plead guilty. I'm gonna serve my time, but please let my accountant go, and please don't prosecute my wife because all she did was deliver the stuff, and she didn't-- wasn't involved in anything." And so those are called unindicted co-conspirators. So I make a deal with you, and I say, "Okay, you go to jail for the eight months, and we will leave the unindicted co-conspirators unindicted."We won't prosecute your wife, your son, your, your accountant or what have you. That's a very normal process. It's, it's a, it's a bargaining, uh, process basically. However, in the Epstein case, the US attorney gave him a deal that said, uh, that we would not prosecute unnamed co-conspirators. Holy shit, who's that? Who's unnamed co-conspirators? Unnamed co-conspirators could be fifty people, it could be seventy-five people. The guy who gave that sweetheart deal became the, uh, Secretary of Labor. He was at that time the US attorney for, for Florida. He was asked, "Why did you give that sweetheart deal?" 'Cause the deal's ridiculous. Unnamed co-conspirators will be exempt from prosecution. And, and he said, "I was told he belonged to intelligence." And then he had to resign because of this. There was a lot going on with, with, with Epstein. Uh, the person who... I mean, there's so much of this, but the person who, uh, uh, sort of brought Epstein into the world of power and got him his job at, I think Morgan Stanley, I could have that wrong, but one of those big finance companies, was William Barr's father. William Barr was the Attorney General, who was the US Attorney General when Epstein was killed or died in prison, depending on your choice of, of reality. So there's so much there, but I won't be the first guest, Steven, that you've had, uh, that says that, um, it was an intelligence operation. Why the US government is reluctant to be more, uh, transparent, some of it is national security, some of it is, let's imagine an ally of ours, uh, is involved in, in that operation, so there's a reluctance, and there's a question, it's a little bit like UFOs, could the public handle it? Is the question that's always asked in these cases, meaning could the public handle it if, for example, the UK was running an intelligence operation inside the United States to control senators and congressmen and powerful executives and powerful figures and scientists, could we handle it? Could the US public handle it? My take personally, absolutely yes.

6. 20:39 – 23:05

   Was Epstein A Spy? The Question No One Wants To Answer

   1. SBSteven Bartlett20:39

      So you believe that he was an intelligence asset, and it sounds like you believe he was an intelligence asset potentially by a US ally.

   2. GBGavin de Becker20:48

      Yes.

   3. SBSteven Bartlett20:49

      So who is that ally?

   4. GBGavin de Becker20:51

      Israel.

   5. SBSteven Bartlett20:52

      You believe that Epstein was an Israel-

   6. GBGavin de Becker20:55

      Yes, I do

   7. SBSteven Bartlett20:55

      ... intelligence asset?

   8. GBGavin de Becker20:56

      Yes. Yes, I do. And, uh, and Ghislaine Maxwell, just for additional background, but everybody can find it, her father was an Israeli intelligent asset who was so revered, h- his funeral ceremony was held in Israel, was attended by the Prime Minister, by I think the last four or five... by every living head of Mossad attended, and there were words used in eulogies like, "He did things for Israel that, uh, the world will never know about." There's a, a lot of good connection there and a lot of good connective tissue, um, some of which I- I- I've shared with you because it's public, and some of which I'm not sharing, but that is, uh, that is indeed what I believe, yes.

   9. SBSteven Bartlett21:34

      And, and-

   10. GBGavin de Becker21:34

       Not just me, by the way. I, uh, you might already be there, and you've certainly had another guest sit here and, and, uh, former CIA guy, uh, Kirakou, how do you say his last name?

   11. SBSteven Bartlett21:43

       Yeah.

   12. GBGavin de Becker21:44

       Uh, am I close to how you say it?

   13. SBSteven Bartlett21:45

       You're close. Closer than I would get. [laughs]

   14. GBGavin de Becker21:46

       Okay, good. [laughs] And he was point blank i- i- in saying Israel.

   15. SBSteven Bartlett21:50

       Uh, so there's no, there's no direct evidence, but what people are essentially doing is putting the pieces together to make a picture.

   16. GBGavin de Becker21:56

       There is direct evidence. There's just not direct evidence I'm sharing at this moment. But there's the, there's plenty of evidence that, that has been public already, some of which I've shared. I mean, I could, I could do it for forty minutes, but everybody can just go to ChatGPT and... You know, if you ask ChatGPT, "Make the best case for..." It's a good thing for viewers to remember, "Make the best case for...' whatever it is. If you ask y- the first answer you get if you ask a straight question will always be the official narrative.

   17. SBSteven Bartlett22:24

       I've done exactly that-

   18. GBGavin de Becker22:25

       Right

   19. SBSteven Bartlett22:25

       ... as you said it. I, I asked ChatGPT, "Make the best case for Epstein being an Israel spy." Here is what it said: "The case that Jeffrey Epstein functioned as an Israeli intelligence asset rests on a pattern alignment rather than direct proof. He ran a sexual, sexual compromise operation resembling known intelligence kompromat tradecraft."

   20. GBGavin de Becker22:46

       Kompromat, yeah, like it's a Russian word that means we compromise you.

   21. SBSteven Bartlett22:49

       "Had wealth and access far beyond his formal career and operated with unusual legal protection for years. His close partnership with Ghislaine Maxwell, whose father had documented intelligence ties, fuel suspicion, as does reporting by journalists who say Epstein's activities were discussed in intelligence adjacent circles."

7. 23:05 – 24:19

   The Hidden Cameras In Epstein’s Home — What Were They Really For?

   1. SBSteven Bartlett23:05

      The cameras and the microphones hidden in his apartment and his home, how do we know they were there, and why?

   2. GBGavin de Becker23:15

      Well, how I know they were there is a little bit different from how everybody knows they were there, and I don't know enough about the entire history of the FBI piece, but I'll tell you a funny part of the FBI piece. When they went to execute a search warrant at that apartment after his more recent arrest, they found and even photographed a bunch of CD-ROMs or disks of some kind that were labeled, but they didn't take them. They said, "We'll get a warrant and we'll be back for those." And they came back after a mere six days and it was all gone. So w- where it is, I don't know. D- does the US government have it? Does somebody else have it? I just don't know the answer. But, uh, I, I know from very direct information regarding the island and the apartment, I don't know about New Mexico, I just don't happen to know, another house that he owned, that there were cameras and then eventually audio. Audio was added. Oh, also testimony by the way, pardon me, testimony from girls who said, girls who worked there and visited there a lot, who said that in a small room near to the right of the front door was a whole thing of videos where the recording was done.

8. 24:19 – 26:49

   How Secret Recordings Could Be Weaponized By A Foreign Adversary

   1. SBSteven Bartlett24:19

      And can you explain to me why recording videos and audio of people getting those kinds of, uh, doing those kinds of things would be a useful asset for this foreign adversary to have?

   2. GBGavin de Becker24:35

      Sure. Uh, you know, blackmail is not always done by calling you up and saying, um, you know, "Hey, Steven, uh, I'm gonna hurt you in the following way if you don't do A, B, or C." The other version is, is far better, which i- there's, is even alluded to in some of the now-released material, which is he calls and he says, "Steven, I've got terrible news. You remember you had that massage from Cindy? You know that girl, Cin- " "Oh, yeah, yeah, I remember." "Well, she recorded something. She had something in her bag. She made a recording, and I got worse news, Steven. The girl's 16 and a half." And now, by the way, you are stomach drops, diarrhea. You are in a w- world of stress right now just hearing that. And he, instead of being your blackmailer, becomes your rescuer. He says, "I can handle it. I can handle it. I can handle it. She's got the recordings. I don't know where they are, but I can handle it. I can handle it. I can handle it. Don't worry. Don't worry. Don't worry." And he owns you now, uh, forever. If you were involved in a naked experience with someone who's underage, and there's a video of it and audio of it as well, you will do anything that you are asked to do that is within reason. Very few people would have the character and the stamina to do what you describe Bezos doing, which is that he wrote a public letter saying, "A very unusual thing happened to me the other day. I'm being blackmailed by the National Enquirer, and here's what they said." That's very, very rare. And so, you know, a senator, a congressman, he owned a, a lot of people.

   3. SBSteven Bartlett26:12

      Hmm.

   4. GBGavin de Becker26:13

      Do you have any skepticism about that?

   5. SBSteven Bartlett26:16

      I don't have skepticism. I just have a lot of ignorance to how this whole world works.

   6. GBGavin de Becker26:24

      Hmm, lucky you.

   7. SBSteven Bartlett26:25

      And I just have a lot of ignorance to, like, you know, 'cause you hear about these things in almost, like, movies and, uh, it appears that we're all kinda witnessing something we, we might have reg- regulated just to the movies happen before our eyes. And even when, you know, I, I saw some of the emails coming up on my feed of things that Epstein had emailed people, he seemed to be continually inviting people to hang out with him-

   8. GBGavin de Becker26:46

      Sure

   9. SBSteven Bartlett26:47

      ... in a way that is quite atypical.

9. 26:49 – 29:03

   Why Would Epstein Court Podcast Hosts? What Was The Endgame?

   1. SBSteven Bartlett26:49

      Now, maybe I'm just an introvert, but I'm not... He, he was, like, aggressive in his comms to people saying, "Come and hang out with me. I'm doing this thing or this dinner party. Come to my island. Are you in the area?" And he was succeeding in getting a lot of people to come and visit his, his homes and his island, and yeah, it's, uh-

   2. GBGavin de Becker27:05

      By the way, Steven, in the circumstance you are in today, you might well have heard from, from Jeffrey Epstein. You might well have had somebody who knows you who says, "Hey, there's this guy in New York, loves your show, uh, just terrific," and, and all of a sudden you're getting that invitation, and you're getting that invitation through someone you know and kind of like.

   3. SBSteven Bartlett27:23

      Like Joe Rogan did.

   4. GBGavin de Becker27:25

      I don't know, but like so many people, and, uh-

   5. SBSteven Bartlett27:27

      Well, Joe Rogan said it.

   6. GBGavin de Becker27:28

      Oh, if he's been public about it, I, I'm just not gonna be the one to say it, but I, I got it.

   7. SBSteven Bartlett27:32

      Oh, okay.

   8. GBGavin de Becker27:32

      Uh-

   9. SBSteven Bartlett27:32

      Yeah, Joe, Joe Rogan publicly la- last week said that, and it's in the files, that a, a former guest, I think it was Lawrence Krauss of his show-

   10. GBGavin de Becker27:41

       Hmm

   11. SBSteven Bartlett27:41

       ... invited him to come and meet Jeffrey Epstein.

   12. GBGavin de Becker27:44

       Yeah.

   13. SBSteven Bartlett27:44

       And the emails show that Jeffrey Epstein was trying to get Lawrence to bring Joe Rogan in. Joe Rogan said, like, "Absolutely, abs..." Well, this is what Joe Rogan's words, said, "Absolutely fucking not."

   14. GBGavin de Becker27:53

       Right.

   15. SBSteven Bartlett27:53

       "I was creeped out about it and never went and was never involved," uh, um-

   16. GBGavin de Becker27:55

       Well, the point I was just making is that in your present circumstance with the, you know, enormous audience and, and the reach of this show and, and all your work, the small videos, et cetera, um, of course you're a terrific person because now I can call you up and say, uh, "Hey, will you have this person on?" Or I can say, "Hey, will you be really skeptical about this topic, and will you say, 'I don't believe it,' and will you say, 'I think it's wrong,' or will you say, 'I think it's anti-Semitism,' or will you, will you say such and such?" And brother, you will.

   17. SBSteven Bartlett28:24

       The, the moment where I started to, you know, really understand the blackmail angle, um, was when I started reading some of the particular emails that Epstein had sent to himself.

   18. GBGavin de Becker28:33

       Hmm.

   19. SBSteven Bartlett28:34

       One in particular where he sent himself an email regarding Bill Gates, he's alleging that Bill Gates has slept with... He's sending himself an email-

   20. GBGavin de Becker28:42

       Yes

   21. SBSteven Bartlett28:43

       ... alleging that Bill Gates has slept with someone, some, some Russian-

   22. GBGavin de Becker28:46

       Prostitute

   23. SBSteven Bartlett28:47

       ... prostitute, and that he got an STD, an extramarital affair, all of these allegations. And when I read that email, um, then I thought, "Oh, you know, he was a, he was a blackmailer."

   24. GBGavin de Becker28:55

       Hmm.

   25. SBSteven Bartlett28:55

       "He was definitely a blackmailer, and he's collected all these rich and famous people, and he has them in his pocket now." Just to close off then

10. 29:03 – 31:22

    The Unreleased Epstein Files — What Could Still Be Hidden?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett29:03

       on this, uh, point of, of Epstein before we move on, you said they, they've released some of the files, and you said they hadn't released other files.

    2. GBGavin de Becker29:09

       Yes.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett29:09

       And, and you have implied that was because they basically can't release these other files necessarily.

    4. GBGavin de Becker29:14

       Well, I don't, I, I don't know what... I think more is coming. I think more will be released, but there are certainly files, including files even right now, even yesterday, though there's a law, uh, as you may know, Congress voted for a law to release everything unredacted. Um, there's still a lot of redacted stuff. So there's more to come and, uh, will some be redacted? Sure. Is anybody gonna sit here like I did today and say, "Hi, I'm the secretary of blah, blah, blah, and, uh, let me just tell you what was really going on." Uh, you know, "I'm the head of the CIA, and let me tell you what was really going on." Not likely.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett29:46

       But Trump knows. He knows w- who Jeffrey, Jeffrey Epstein really was.

    6. GBGavin de Becker29:51

       I would say a- a- all senior people in the US government and, and many, many people in general know everything that you and I have discussed here today.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett29:59

       Hmm.

    8. GBGavin de Becker30:00

       No secret. By the way, what do you think? Let's imagine somebody came forward and said our... This country described as our greatest ally. I would say our greatest ally is the UK-

    9. SBSteven Bartlett30:10

       Hmm

    10. GBGavin de Becker30:10

        ... uh, based on, on history, but, uh, uh, Israel's an important ally in the Middle East, and it's a, uh, it's a democracy, and it's more of a Western government. I get it. Um, but, uh, what do you think? The, the, the country comes out and somebody officially says, "Okay, let me tell you what was going on." Do you think the American public can handle it?

    11. SBSteven Bartlett30:28

        I think they either way now deserve to know the truth. Whether they can handle it or not is probably secondary to whether they... I think people need to know the truth. We've... I think, like, the problem is people have been, like, partially traumatized by all of this stuff, and so-Now, I think the remedy is full transparency.

    12. GBGavin de Becker30:49

        I agree. And by the way, uh, this is close, uh, because we, we got a lot of information, whereas, you know, five weeks ago or, or eight weeks ago, people were saying, "Oh, there's nothing more. That's it. That's all there is." [chuckles] I mean, this is a big step, and I think it's a big step, as big a step toward transparency as, uh, probably as I've seen in my lifetime by a government. The exception would be, it's not a government, what Elon did after buying Twitter, the release of the Twitter Files. That was a very impressive thing of letting three journalists come in and just go through everything.

11. 31:22 – 34:33

    Why Governments Lie — And What They’re Trying To Protect

    1. GBGavin de Becker31:22

       I think it would be awesome if the US government ever... Governments don't do this very often, but if they ever said, "Okay, everybody, put on your seatbelt. I'm gonna tell you exactly what happened with the JFK assassination," or exactly what happened with the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, when he ran for president. There are some examples of this in US history where it feels like after about twenty-five years, we'll start telling the truth about something. Fifty years ago, Johnson & Johnson went to, uh, to the FDA, and they said, "Look, our baby powder, you know that stuff that you put on the baby and you breathe and the mother breathes, well, it's got asbestos in it, a- and it causes cancer." And the FDA said, "Well, thanks for bringing this to our attention. We'll begin to study how much asbestos is an allowable amount." Now, they never considered zero, which is what I'd want on my baby or you'd want on your baby, and they began to study. And then they studied for a while, and they studied for a while, and lo and behold, forty years had gone by, and they hadn't come out with a ruling to say there shouldn't be any asbestos in, in Johnson & Johnson baby powder. When did they come out with that ruling, by the way? Last year, end of two thousand twenty-four, after fifty-two years. So at the beginning, the government is saying, "Asbestos? No. What are you talking about?" Agent Orange, the same story. Agent Orange, a, a, a material used in Vietnam for defoliation, uh, hurt people, killed people, and caused birth defects in their kids, including American soldiers, lots of them. The government knew it. They had tested it on forty lab mice, and lab mice don't have a good life generally anyway. They don't have good life expectancy. But in this case, thirty-eight died within five days. What did the government do with that information? "Oh, put that in a top secret file and get rid of that." And then it sits for a long, long time, and the Institute of Medicine says, "Agent Orange, hurting people? What are you talking about? No." And they lie, and they lie, and they lie, and then finally, twenty, twenty-five years later, "Okay. Yeah, sorry, we were wrong. It does, it does cause birth defects." You see that same story with, uh, breast implants, silicone breast implants. You see that same story with, uh, baby formula, uh, with baby food, which has arsenic in it. I don't want any arsenic in baby food. But deny, deny, deny, deny, and we'll see it with mass vaccination, because after some years, there will be, "Okay, yes, uh, there is a, a good chance that it causes myocarditis," already been admitted, by the way. Pericarditis, uh, cancer in young people. It, it was a bad product. Sorry. But they won't do it a year away from a thing, and they, they obviously, as we can see every day, they won't do it five years away. It's very easy to see and to locate when the US government or any power center... This is, uh, I'm an American, I'm all for America, but all power centers in human history, uh, lie. Knowing that they are lying does not tell you the truth, however, meaning knowing that Oswald did not act alone as a shooter from the sixth floor of the Texas Book Depository, if he was a shooter at all, knowing that does not tell you who was the shooter. So often the best we can get in our skepticism is to know that we are not being told the

12. 34:33 – 40:18

    How My View Of Reality Differs From The One Most People Accept

    1. GBGavin de Becker34:33

       truth.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett34:33

       When I grew up, I felt, I feel like I was very naive to the nature of how the world really operates.

    3. GBGavin de Becker34:38

       Mm.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett34:38

       And the more I've done podcasts, and frankly, you know, you, you, you get invited to interesting things, and you meet, like, rich people and famous people and billionaires. And I went to Davos this year, which I think people think makes me some kind of like, I don't know... I wasn't in... If there was, if the Illuminati are at Davos, they didn't invite me into that room.

    5. GBGavin de Becker34:53

       [chuckles]

    6. SBSteven Bartlett34:53

       But I got to, like, I got to see, like, really powerful people and world leaders and all those kinds of things, and I've sat here and interviewed so many CIA spies, and I've learned that there are things going on out of plain sight. So the version of reality that the average person has as they go through their life, how has the work you've done over the last several decades of your career shifted your belief about the version of reality that actually exists? Like how-

    7. GBGavin de Becker35:18

       Well-

    8. SBSteven Bartlett35:18

       How are they different?

    9. GBGavin de Becker35:19

       So I, I can, I can answer it easily because I was just like you. I would say I was naive. And in fact, by the way, I want to quickly acknowledge that I'm probably naive today, even with what you've heard, because there may be a level above the level above the level above that, that I'm not seeing or I'm choosing not to see. I can tell you the exact evolution for me, not dissimilar to you. I grew up in the '50s and '60s. I believe the courts will always come up with a fair decision. I believe that the IRS will only collect, uh, money and destroy people with good reason, and they won't do it with bad reason. I believed everything, and the... A lot of it right up until COVID, by the way, right up until seeing what went on with both mass vaccination and the, the mass control through fear. Here's what I want to tell you I've learned. It's not that, um, unusual, I think. I think it's easy to, to embrace, which is that are human beings the same as they were a thousand years ago? Are human beings the same as they were in Caesar's time? What did Caesar do, by the way? A Caesar. Pick a, a, a Roman emperor. Whatever the fuck they wanted to do. They had sex with who and what they wanted. Eight years old, ten years old, boy, girl, whatever it may be. Even in King Farouk's time in Egypt, one of the last kings of, of Egypt, if you were a house guest, they'd say to you, "You know what? We're gonna have dinner at 6:00. We can send somebody to your room. Do you want a young boy or a young girl?" No, no shame to it. No, no problem whatsoever. The rich and powerful people, like the ones you were describing at Davos, often go from, "I already have all the money. I've already had all the fame. I've already had all the influence. What do I wanna do now?"And sometimes they want to do forbidden things, have an affair, keep a girl in an apartment. These are easy, right? Uh, uh, cheat on my wife, these are easy still. Fourteen-year-old girl. Uh-oh, not getting so easy anymore, but I've done all the other stuff. And that's what the Epstein piece appeals to, which is the forbidden. And I want to be very concise in, in, in answering this question about what changed, uh, in terms of my view, how I've gotten, you know, started where I started. First of all, I worked in government. Worked in the Reagan administration. I lied. I did things that were lies, that were deceitful several times in my career. Uh, I can give you examples in a minute if you want. But, uh, you know, to, to make a prosecution work, I, I reached a bit, uh, to get somebody, some bad guy who was trying to kill a client, uh, you know, uh, prosecuted or, or in, in custody for a longer period of time. Um, I was in many meetings where the questions w-were, "This thing happened," not, "How shall we tell the public?" but, "What shall we tell the public? How shall we spin this thing?" This is the norm in every corporate, uh, boardroom in America. It's not, "Oh, there's, there's, uh, uh, cancer-causing asbestos in the baby powder. I, I guess we better let everybody know." That's not the meeting. [laughs] The meeting is, "Let's notify the FDA and say it's under study, and so if we get asked, we'll get, get through this thing." Who goes to jail, by the way, in these corporations for the shit they do? Uh, uh, opioids, et cetera. My God, 100,000 people dying from heart attacks from, from a pain pill, for example, uh, Vioxx, for God's sake. Uh, the, the... I mean, it's, it's unbelievable, and nobody gets in trouble, right? Companies are fined. Do you know what the fines mean to these companies? In, in that new book I gave you, Forbidden Facts, I, I lay out what all the pharma companies have been fined criminally, what it cost them, and what they made nonetheless, right? And of course, they made the right decision because financially they, they did very well. But I want to get to the concise part. Look at world history as a pie chart, right? The entire thing is tyranny as a government method, as a control method. Just a tiny sliver is, uh, representative democracy, a little bit starting in Greece, uh, Western Europe, the United States. Tiny sliver. So our norm, Steven, is tyranny. That is the norm for human beings. And what happens to that tiny sliver that I'm describing? That tiny sliver always moves toward totalitarianism.

    10. SBSteven Bartlett39:25

        What does that mean?

    11. GBGavin de Becker39:25

        It means that the, the representative democracy we have, let's say in the UK, which is pretty stressed right now in terms of, of, uh, freedom of speech or in the United States, moves toward totalitarianism in that it says it starts with we pass a law and if... You know, the, the US Constitution says, "If there isn't a law prohibiting it, you can do it." And for government, it says, "If there isn't a law allowing it, you cannot do it." That's the US Constitution. That's the US method. Well, look what it's become. A law gets passed, and then regulators, unelected officials, go fucking nuts on interpreting that law the way they want to and applying it the way they want to. And so the, the... it moves toward totalitarianism. Forty thousand new laws passed in the United States every year. How many rescinded? Almost none.

13. 40:18 – 42:41

    Are We Being Pushed To Fight Each Other? Who Benefits From Division?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett40:18

       So where are we now? It- here in the United States, where we both are sat or in the UK, where are we in the arc of history? 'Cause it kind of does seem to move in sort of cycles.

    2. GBGavin de Becker40:28

       Now, the we, if you're talking about where are we now, like Western society or the US, empire in decline. And first of all, is it an empire? Uh, obviously, right? We have 760 military bases overseas. Seven hundred and sixty. We have a larger budget for what we call defense, now called war, uh, since Trump has changed the name to Department of War, more accurately, um, we have a larger budget than every other country in the world combined for military spending. How many overseas bases does China have? I think it's one. Now, I'm not saying China's all lovely. I'm just saying they have a different method. They have a method closer to what we had in the '60s, which was to come in with, with beneficial help. We'll redo your roads, et cetera, et cetera. So we're an empire, and we're an empire in decline. And a moment ago, when I said that, that tyranny is the normal state of affairs for, uh, how people are governed, how is it exercised? Through fear. Always through fear. Fear is the method that causes division, and division is the fuel of power, meaning you want the population to be divided. You want the left and the right. You want the, the, uh, Trumpers and the, and the, and the Democrats and the forever Trumpers and the never Trumpers. Division is the fuel that all world leaders relish. I give you the example in the cleanest terms. The king and the queen look over the castle wall, and when they see their subjects fighting, they high-five each other. Because if the, if they're fighting with each other, they're not coming over the wall, and there's always a wall. And, uh, but if they're not fighting with each other, that's a big problem because then they're coming over the wall because everybody knows in their heart, "Wait a minute, these fuckers are living in absolute luxury while I don't... I can't afford to feed my kids? That... Their, their, uh, motorcades and today, and in those days, their, you know, beautiful, ornate, uh, wagons pulled by, by a bunch of horses go by and splatter mud on me in the street?" What really is the difference? I mean, royalty is such a bullshit scam.

14. 42:41 – 48:15

    What Happens If Society Declines — And How Close Are We?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett42:41

       So what happens to the Western world if we're in a declining empire?

    2. GBGavin de Becker42:45

       I'll give you the, the optimistic version, uh, because I have a dear friend, happens to live in Cape Town, who helps me with this sometimes. Because, like anybody, when I look a lot at, uh, at, at what happens-I can get discouraged. I can get cynical. It's not a good place to live. I think, uh, Tony, maybe even he said it on your show, Tony Robbins, which is, uh, that, you know, that what you focus on will determine, uh, the quality of your life. So I can focus on the pharma companies and all the shit they're doing, or I can focus on, on the beauty of, of nature and spend more time in nature and spend more time with my kids, et cetera. So my optimistic answer, which comes from a dear friend, Nick Hudson, in, uh, in Cape Town, is that even if empires decay and, and social decay is, is outside this studio, it's in London, it's in New York, it's in Los Angeles, it's in Seattle, it's in Portland, it's unavoidable. Take a drive in Los Angeles, you know it. Every freeway o-on ramp, not some, every single one of them has tents underneath it with people living there. That is not good news. And so-- But here's the good news part of it, the optimistic part of it, is that survival and thriving always prevails, and it does not rely on these systems. Meaning you are who you are as a, in the spiritual sense or, or in the scientific sense, whatever way you wanna look at yourself as a, as a collection of energy that doesn't need that body, by the way, right? The energy doesn't go anywhere when that body's done, uh, meaning it's-- the energy is still there. It's not destructible. And, uh, so it's indestructible. So, um, you are this, this being, this awareness, this consciousness, and if around us, when we go outside here today, all the buildings are gone and, and social decay has accelerated, are we gonna be okay? And the answer is yes. What happens? Now we're living in the forest, and now I say, "Steven, you're pretty good at carpentry, right? Come join us." And you say, "You're good at s-planting sweet potatoes? Uh, we need some of that. Let's do that." And small populations of people begin again, commence again, even after nuclear war, after a variety of things. And I know it's crazy to some people, but I take my, my hope and my optimism from that fact, which is that it doesn't rely upon the electricity working. It doesn't rely upon the plumbing working and the sewage system working. That eventually there's enough of the Earth, natural Earth, for us to do what has happened before, which is start again. Give you a very fast el- aspect of this. Thousand years ago, there's a thousand little governments. There's shoguns in Japan, there's villages, there's a guy has three hundred people and he's the chief. Then it becomes what it was in your life and my life, which is about a hundred and ninety countries. But those hundred and ninety countries are really about five power centers, right? There's NATO, there's Br- there's Brexit, uh, there, there's the, the, uh, oil-producing countries, and eventually that five power centers will come to two power centers. The West, US, and China is my prediction, but it'll be somebody else's prediction can do it differently. And then those two fuckers are standing in a room together, and one has to kill the other. That's the course of history. That's how it goes. That's how it goes in every geographical area in history, which is we've got thirty villages, and if I can find your village, we'll take the women, we'll take the children, and we'll kill the men. And it's just a matter of math. How many of there are of you and how many are there of, of our group?

    3. SBSteven Bartlett46:21

       It's-- I think it's somewhat inconceivable, especially for people of my generation, to think that the US is at all, at some point, gonna be at war with China because we've never, you know, we never experienced a world war. But because the stakes are now so high with nuclear weapons, a war theoretically wouldn't be like previous wars. It would be catastrophic. So it's, it's unimaginable. Some people say now nuclear wars have-- sorry, nuclear weapons have now stopped us from getting into World War III as easily, and therefore it won't happen.

    4. GBGavin de Becker46:50

       Yeah, some people believe in that general concept of mutually assured destruction, which is that neither side will, will do it. But you said it's almost impossible for you to imagine or words to that effect. Um, uh, I want to help you, uh, with that imagining. And it goes like this. We are currently at war with Russia. We are not supporting the, the war in Ukraine only. We are at war with Russia because we are providing satellite information, electronic warfare strategies, drone strategies, providing targeting information, and that is war today. That is war. War is not just the guys o-o-on the battlefield with rifles. That's the low-end element. The high-end element is supersonic missiles, which Russia has, and the high-end element is intel and satellite technology and the wide variety of things that are going on, some of which aren't even in the news, by the way, that go on in Russia and they say, "Oh, shit," uh, or that go on in Ukraine and they say, "Oh, shit, the Russians have figured out that thing." But the US is so far beyond other countries in the world in terms of technology. And so that is war with Russia. And you could say that our war with North Vietnam was war with China, but now there's just no question about it. So, uh, that was a long answer, Steven, to say I wanna get you- your imagination closer. We're already at war with Russia.

15. 48:15 – 50:26

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    1. SBSteven Bartlett48:16

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16. 50:26 – 53:01

    Did They Have Today’s Technology Decades Ago? What This Means

    1. SBSteven Bartlett50:27

       Speaking of crazy weapons, I was, um, I was reading about a story where you did a s- a tour with the CIA, and they showed you a mechanical dragonfly-

    2. GBGavin de Becker50:35

       Yeah

    3. SBSteven Bartlett50:36

       ... with a battery. What, what, what did they show you?

    4. GBGavin de Becker50:39

       Well, I've given a, a, a, I've had a lot to do with, with the agency that's been, that's been public over the years. And I was giving a talk, and then afterwards, they took me on a tour to a CIA museum. They showed me a lot of things. "Oh, here's the helmet that was worn by that pilot who was shot down over Russia, named Powers." All, all kinds of interesting memorabilia. And one of them was a little dragonfly the size of a dragonfly, a-and it was, um, mechanical. And I looked at it real closely and thought, "Wow, that, that's really fantastic. It's very interesting." And he said, "You don't have any questions at all?" I said, "No. I mean, I, I get it." A-a-and he said, "Why don't you ask me when it was built?" Uh, and I said, "Okay. When was it built?" 1967. In 1967, before we had any miniaturized electronics or motorization, the CIA had built that little thing. And, uh, and it was a, a little camera that would fly around in here as a dragonfly and then, uh, and then, you know, fly home, and I don't know how many pictures it held. But i-i-it's an interesting piece I want to share with you about AI, which is people wonder, you know, how sophisticated is AI and, and where is it? My belief is that everything we have access to, like AI, we probably have something that the US intelligence had ten years ago. We're probably dealing with something quite old already.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett51:59

       I'm just looking at the, a picture of this dragonfly.

    6. GBGavin de Becker52:01

       Oh, it j-- I didn't even know it was public.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett52:03

       Um, this-

    8. GBGavin de Becker52:04

       That's the fucker. There he is

    9. SBSteven Bartlett52:06

       ... this little thing here.

    10. GBGavin de Becker52:07

        Yeah.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett52:08

        And, you know, this was made, as you say, what, almost fifty years ago. So one can only imagine the type of technology they have now. [chuckles]

    12. GBGavin de Becker52:14

        Oh, of course.

    13. SBSteven Bartlett52:15

        I mean, they prob-

    14. GBGavin de Becker52:16

        Of course

    15. SBSteven Bartlett52:16

        ... they don't even need to fly a dragonfly in because we have all these electronic devices.

    16. GBGavin de Becker52:19

        Of, of course. They, they can, they can turn on our devices, uh, probably your watch if it's a, an Apple Watch, but certainly your phone. Uh, and, uh, yeah, uh, the-- w-we are participating in, I won't even call it an experiment, but a process that you read "1984," I'm sure, and most of your audience did. I was very heartened during the beginning of COVID that "1984" became the seventeenth best-selling book in the world in the English language.

    17. SBSteven Bartlett52:47

        Mm.

    18. GBGavin de Becker52:48

        Telling me, ah, people are paying attention. They see that what they're experiencing here has a degree of "1984" to it. I think all science fiction stories come true. I really do. I see it [chuckles] time after time.

17. 53:01 – 58:40

    Why You Must Follow Your Intuition — Before It’s Too Late

    1. SBSteven Bartlett53:01

       What advice would you give to my listeners about how to navigate in the world we're living in today, you know, to avoid risk, threat, you know, whether that's of our soft tissue, as you said, or just with our privacy or lives generally. Like, where does the advice start? You said you raised ten kids.

    2. GBGavin de Becker53:15

       Yeah.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett53:16

       What advice are you giving to your ten kids?

    4. GBGavin de Becker53:18

       Uh, well, they, they all know that their dad is a big proponent, uh, and, and my first book, which is still a, a very, uh, big book, "The Gift of Fear," that book is, I think, still the best-selling book in the world on violence after twenty-five years. And, um, that book is all about intuition and personal responsibility. So the very first thing I would say to your listeners, to you, to remind myself as well, is that human beings did not get the biggest claws or the biggest teeth or the biggest muscles. We got the biggest brains relative to our size. And the nuclear defense system that all human beings have is intuition, much different from logic. Intuition, the root of it, by the way, I learned when I was writing that book, is "inter," which means to guard and to protect. So intuition, when you think about it, "Oh, I just have a feeling I should go back to the apartment and double-check such and such. Did I leave the fire on on the pot?" And you go back and you open the, the door, and you didn't leave the fire on the pot, but something else will always [chuckles] be going on that makes you glad you came back. I believe that intuition is always right in at least two ways. One, it always has your best interest at heart. It's not fucking with you. It's giving you real information that's valuable. And, uh, and number two, uh, it's always based on something. And so our journey is to figure out when I have an intuitive feeling like, "Do this show with you," who knows why? But when I have that intuitive feeling, and by the way, I don't do most shows, I don't know what the reason is. I, I don't know what it'll be. I mean, I can make up one with logic, right? I like that guy. I learned a lot from his shows. I can create a case. I can make a case for anything. But if it's just based on what I feel, and everything you've succeeded at and accomplished was based on what you felt, it was based on intuition. In America, in the West, we think we're doing it by logic, right? I do a big PowerPoint presentation, and I say to the board, "Here's the reason, uh, uh, here's why, and here's the percentages." And they say, "Oh, good." The board at corporations in America would actually prefer that I use logic, even if I'm wrongInstead of using intuition, even if I'm right. So when I say to you, "No, I just think it's the right thing to do. I, I think it'd be smart. I think it'll be, it'll really work out," like something like Amazon Prime that people opposed and then it's like 175 million people just in America are using it. Big success. Intuitive process, not a, not a logic process. Logic is weak and plodding. Logic does A, B, C, D. Intuition does A to Z instantly, and you don't know why. It's knowing without knowing why. I don't feel good about that person. I'm, I'm gonna back... I, I said I was gonna make this business deal, I'm backing out of it. I said I was gonna show up to that thing, I'm calling and canceling. And by the way, canceling, one of my favorite things. I recommend it to everybody. I recommend canceling and postponing to everybody I know. You are not obligated to keep your plans. You made a plan three months ago and you don't know who you'll even be, or if you or them or anybody will even be alive three months from now. There's nothing wrong with canceling. Now, I don't do it rudely, by the way. But just to finish on, you know, sort of what your list- your, your viewers, uh, uh, and listeners can do is that-- is to really fall in love with intuition and to learn the way you communicate with yourself. The, there's signals from intuition, curiosity. You just wonder something. Suspicion, worry can even be a signal of intuition. Um, uh, but the biggest one is true fear. When you feel true fear, "I, I don't wanna do this."

    5. SBSteven Bartlett56:55

       I wanted to ask you a question about this.

    6. GBGavin de Becker56:56

       Please.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett56:56

       I've met with Magnus Carlsen, who is the arguably the best chess player in the world, and I met with him after spending some time in Cape Town writing about gut instinct and intuition, all these kinds of things. And one of the things that I learned through my writing was that in s- in many cases when someone has a really well-trained intuition, their first thought is the right thought.

    8. GBGavin de Becker57:17

       Yeah.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett57:17

       And actually, if you give them longer to think about the problem, they make a worse decision. So when I met Magnus Carlsen as a pr- as the number one chess player in the world, backstage we were both on stage together. I said to him, I said, "Listen, I've got a question to ask you. Do you basically now just run off intuition or do you think?" And he said, "My first thought is nearly always right."

    10. GBGavin de Becker57:36

        Mm.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett57:36

        "So actually I spend the other time just confirming the first sort of intuition that I had." And actually I, I was telling him about a dodgeball game where they got dodgeball players, professional dodgeball players, to look at a frozen image of a dodgeball game and said, "Where would you throw the ball?"

    12. GBGavin de Becker57:53

        Mm.

    13. SBSteven Bartlett57:53

        And when they gave them little time to decide, they made a better decision. When they just went with their first gut instinct, they made a better decision. They unfroze it, and it was the right throw. If they gave them longer, they made the worst decision. And the, the sort of caveat and I guess the question for you is, it appeared to me that you almost have to train the intuition. Like areas in our life where we've got multiple reps and pattern recognition, our intuition is valuable. But then in other areas of our life where we haven't trained the muscle yet, we can make bad decisions. One such example would just be like the first time you start hiring people.

    14. GBGavin de Becker58:25

        Mm. Yes.

    15. SBSteven Bartlett58:25

        You don't have a trained intuition yet, so you go, "Yeah, she seems nice." But then you get... I've probably been hiring thousands of people for 15 years now, and I get, you know, I get an intuition.

    16. GBGavin de Becker58:36

        Sure.

    17. SBSteven Bartlett58:36

        So do you have to train your intuition?

    18. GBGavin de Becker58:37

        Well, I think it happens automatically as you,

18. 58:40 – 1:02:46

    Why We Ignore Our Gut Instincts (And The Cost Of Doing So)

    1. GBGavin de Becker58:40

       as you live life, that new distinctions are added. Um, but I also believe that, uh, it is a natural resource. I could think of it in a spiritual sense. It's very hard to figure out why we feel a certain way, and we do what, what Magnus said, which is we get our answer and then we backtrack and see if it fits, right? I think the training that's necessary, Steven, is not the training to, uh, improve your intuition, uh, but rather the training to listen to it and to not interrogate it and to not prosecute it. Because I'll give you an example. A woman is working late at night in a, in an office building like this. She's on the tenth floor. She's leaving. She pushes the button for the elevator. The elevator door opens up. Inside the elevator is a man who causes her fear. She doesn't like it for whatever reason. Obviously, she has no opportunity yet to assess all the issues. What's he dressed like? What's he look like? What did I hear three weeks ago about a guy who wore a, a blue cap and T-shirt and both? She doesn't have any time for that. Her first reaction was like that. What does she do? Most women. They get into a steel soundproof chamber with someone they're afraid of, and there's not another animal in nature that will do it. Now, why does she do it? Because the thought comes, "Oh, I don't want him to think I'm a racist because he's Hispanic," or, "I don't want to be that kind of person," or, "I don't want this reality to be true, so I'm gonna act like it's not true," right? And what I say is let the door close in his face. No problem. If you've got the signal, uh, that's a low cost decision. Wait for the next elevator, right? That's a very low cost issue. Now, there are so many examples of this in my work where I interviewed people who had been victimized, and time after time they would tell me, "I knew when I walked into that underground parking lot that that was the same car that I'd seen earlier. I knew when I met that guy such and such." In fact, there's a beautiful... a woman who wrote me the most beautiful thing. I, I think it's in, in Gift of Fear or, or it's in one of the subsequent books, and she said that she would look at her lifelong diary. She'd kept a lifelong diary, and she looked back at it and it would say, "Met this guy, um, feel a little queasy about him, not so sure. Dated him, married him." And then she-- what she wrote to me was, she said, "Again and again, I could see there it was in my diary," listen to this, "the ending embedded in the beginning." And so what I encourage people to do, going to your original answer, is how people can be safer, is listen to their intuition. Know that its function is to protect you. That's what it's doing.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett1:01:26

       When I was reading about your work on intuition and your perspective on it, I-- it got me thinking about people in my life that I

    3. GBGavin de Becker1:01:32

       I have to get rid of tomorrow?

    4. SBSteven Bartlett1:01:33

       But can I, can I... Well, mm-mm. Well, actually, that I have, you know that little alarm bell in your head when you have, you have a little alarm bell intuition? Like, I don't know what the answer is, but I feel like something isn't right.

    5. GBGavin de Becker1:01:45

       Mm.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett1:01:45

       And that little alarm bell in my head, I'm like, "So what do I do about that?" And I think there was one particular example I was thinking of where I was getting this little vibe from someone that something was just off. And then three months later, we were at this event, and they started opening up about their childhood. And in the course of opening up about their childhood, I learned something about their mother and something their mother used to do to them.

    7. GBGavin de Becker1:02:12

       Mm.

    8. SBSteven Bartlett1:02:13

       And they were talking to someone else about this behavior that it's created in them.

    9. GBGavin de Becker1:02:16

       Mm.

    10. SBSteven Bartlett1:02:17

        It suddenly all made sense. That thing that was giving me... was making me feel like the vibe was off, I think now is because of something from their childhood that I didn't actually know, which meant they have this behavior which will make you feel a little bit uncomfortable.

    11. GBGavin de Becker1:02:29

        Mm.

    12. SBSteven Bartlett1:02:30

        And in that moment, and with that, I was thinking about this example before you arrived 'cause I was like, in that case, my, my intuition told me something, but I didn't know what it was telling me. I imagine a lot of people have that. They have a vibe of someone, something's not quite right, and they're interpreting it to mean X when it could be

19. 1:02:46 – 1:11:00

    How To Heal Childhood Wounds — And Break The Hidden Patterns

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:02:46

       Y.

    2. GBGavin de Becker1:02:46

       Yeah, sometimes there's a very nice, like in my life, and I suspect in yours too, there's often a very straight line between certain childhood experiences and what we ultimately do. In my case, a very easy one is there was fear. I then come to have a deep understanding of fear, both sides of it, uh, and, uh, and, and some compassion for it and some, uh, uh, insight, and I, I then study it. There was violence, uh, in my childhood, and so I now come... Now it's so long ago that I'm seventy-one, so my childhood is so long ago now that it doesn't have a, a grip on my throat like it did for a lot of my life, where the narrative was very, very important to me, and the narrative of my childhood was important. Go ahead. You were gonna ask a question.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:03:33

       I was gonna say, probably give people the context on your childhood.

    4. GBGavin de Becker1:03:36

       Oh, uh, you or me? Uh, uh, I'll do it.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:03:38

       You, you, you.

    6. GBGavin de Becker1:03:38

       Okay, good. Yeah, my childhood, damn it. I'll, I'll tell them.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:03:40

       Yeah. [laughs]

    8. GBGavin de Becker1:03:41

       Uh, so yeah, a very, you know, very difficult time. My mother was a heroin addict. Uh, she was, uh, quite violent. She was very troubled. She committed suicide when she was, uh, thirty-nine years old, and I was sixteen. And that was a, a kind of failure for me because I considered it my job to, to get us all through this drama alive. Um, she shot my stepfather in front of me. Uh, there... a lot of, in that house that we lived in, I think there-- I, I saw the house a few months ago, by the way. I think there are nine bullets in the walls and floor of that house, uh, that I can account for, probably still there. And so while I'm describing this to you dispassionately, uh, it's because of two things, the distance in terms of time, but most of all because of healing and the, the... M- I wanna give you my definition of healing in this context. My definition of healing for all of us is when we stop using any of our energy to manage the past, and this gives us all of our energy in the present moment. And so what do I mean using energy to manage the past? Well, if I'm keeping that story a-goin', and I'm saying to my wife, "Well, because my mama did this, this is why I feel such and such," which I went through times in my life when, when those things were much closer to me. Today, I feel like I'm not using any of my energy to manage the past, the, the narrative I told you. Th-this whole series of, of dramas happened, and anytime you hear about a parent or, or, uh, anybody in somebody's life committing suicide, we often think, "Oh, what a terrible experience that must have been." What you really ought to think when you hear about somebody committing suicide is, "Oh, what a series of terrible experiences there must have been leading up to that." And I wanna tell you real quickly that I had a, a couple of dreams that my mother was in that were particularly powerful, and I offer this to the audience to know that dream experiences are sometimes all you're gonna get, right? Because my mother died when I was sixteen, so I don't have an opportunity to sit across the table with her and say, "What were you thinking when you such and such, and what was going on in your life, uh, when such and such?" And, and but in, in a dream, she came to me once, and I asked her, "Why were you so cruel to me?" And she was totally perplexed. And she said to me, "Cruel to you? I was preparing you for this extraordinary life." And I think that's true. I think that's what happened, is that for you, whatever your experience was, for Tony Robbins, who we talked about earlier, what his experience was, it took those experiences. You take away those experiences, and you don't have someone who grows up wanting nothing more than to write these books for free and sell them for free and get them published for free, like Forbidden Facts, the current book, in order to help people deal with these issues of skepticism, of fear, et cetera. You don't get somebody doing what I do, uh, where my ambition is long gone. A-a-at my ambition for more, more anything, more money, more houses. Well, houses I might still slip on, but now it's about service to other people. Wasn't always, but it was service to other people because I believe that public life, it includes you. If all you do is give me a bad example, that's service. If you give me a good example, that's a prettier form of service. It's a... maybe it's a nicer job you got, but ultimately, all of it is service. Everything that we can observe in-- of people in public life and people in our private lives, it's all service. You know, I remember a friend of mine telling me he went back home for Thanksgiving, and he saw his whole family, and he said he learned to only stay for one day. He said because all the shit happened on the second day with his family if he stayed for two days, and he also learned to stay in a hotel. I, I said, "Oh, you're staying at home?" He said, "Oh, fun. No, never. Never stay at home." Because here was this group of people, but what he told me that was interesting is he said, "Ah, Aunt CharleneYou taught me to speak more quietly because you talk so fucking loud." And he says, "Uncle Carlo, you, you taught me to be more gentle because man, you're rough in everything you do. Throw the glasses around and the way you engage. Dad, you taught me to listen to people because you never fucking listened to a thing I said, even today." Isn't it a beautiful way of looking at it, basically? These were the teachers i-in our lives. For my mother, 100% uh, the-- I'm, I'm so far past forgiveness and so far into gratitude for the pieces that were wonderful. And by the way, this is a suffering person, right? This is a person that, you know, that, that charities are for and, and social welfare is for. Uh, you know, a woman with three kids and no job and a heroin addict, for God's sake. That's not an easy job.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett1:08:24

       Mm.

    10. GBGavin de Becker1:08:24

        Uh, and, and other drugs too, by the way, which helped me as I grew up to be skeptical of pharma. Because some of the pills she took, one of them called Doriden, has now been taken off the market for causing what? Psychosis, which explains a lot of her craziness. And so all of this, this, you know, teaching that i-i-it depends what you do with it, meaning you-- we all, we all. Nobody gets out of here alive, right? Everybody's got a story to tell. And I remember a case where I overvalued my own ability to predict human behavior, which I say, you know, I say in these books, you can predict human behavior, right? To, to drive here today in traffic, I had to predict the behavior of thousands of people based on just the little movements of the big metal objects around them. You know that guy who starts to move over into your lane and then he catches himself and goes back? You never trust that guy. You always wanna [chuckles] get way behind him or way in front of him. So we're predicting human behavior all the time. But I overvalued mine. I thought, "Oh, I'm Mr. Genius predicting human behavior," 'cause I developed these systems of artificial intuition that predict human behavior. And I was at a meeting, and there were a group of people at the meeting, and it was gonna start in about five minutes. And a few people were comforting one woman who was really sobbing at the end of the table. And I thought to myself judgmentally, "Um, why'd she even come to the meeting? I mean, if she can't do the meeting, like what's she doing here?" And I knew it was a boyfriend issue, right? That's what she's crying about, and they're comforting her. The meeting begins, and that woman speaks first, and she says through her tears, "I'm sorry you guys, uh, I'll do my best at the meeting, but as many of you know, my husband killed my twelve-year-old son four days ago." So my little journey into judgmental prediction was about as wrong as you could be. And it was a, uh, a humbling experience for me, because I would have discounted that person in a moment. That's the other side of, of prediction and intuition, right? You can discount people, uh, and quickly toss them away. And so, you know, when you get this intuitive signal, do we have a responsibility to understand it? Yeah. We have a responsibility to understand it. How many people have I met who I thought, "What an asshole that guy is. I don't ever wanna talk to that guy again," and I didn't. My loss.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett1:10:40

        Mm.

    12. GBGavin de Becker1:10:40

        Sometimes it was-- would've been the greatest person in the world. Uh, sometimes it would've been a great relationship. And now I apply the, the George Harrison rule, George Harrison of The Beatles, which writes this-- who writes this unbelievable lyric that's in While My Guitar Gently Weeps, which is, "I look at you all and see the love there that's sleeping."

20. 1:11:00 – 1:12:47

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    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:11:00

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21. 1:12:47 – 1:16:45

    What’s Real And What’s Not? How To Think Clearly In A Distorted World

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:12:47

       Through your work, you've, um, been behind the scenes with some of the most interesting people on planet Earth, the most successful, richest, most powerful people on planet Earth, and you get to see therefore both sides of the fence-

    2. GBGavin de Becker1:12:59

       Mm

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:12:59

       ... in a way that most people would never see. You get to see how they are in the public life, and then you get to see them in their private life.

    4. GBGavin de Becker1:13:05

       Mm.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:13:05

       And oftentimes you'll get to see them during some of the hardest moments of their life.

    6. GBGavin de Becker1:13:09

       Most of the time, yeah.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:13:11

       What have you learnt from that exposure?

    8. GBGavin de Becker1:13:14

       Well, probably a lot, so the-- I, I'll, but I'll give a, a, uh, what, what answer comes to me intuitively. When I was a kid and I used to watch television, I believed when I was a kid that the television was more real than our lives, and I learned s- obviously through my experience that the exact opposite was trueRight? The media world was unreal and our lives were real. And this, Steven, is incredibly important today because with AI and social media and other things, we actually are challenged to know what is real and what is not real. Did Trump really make that speech or is it an AI film? Did, did that really happen or is, is that real what I'm looking at? The cat really did that or is that an AI film? And we are challenged now to understand and choose, I would say, what's real and what's not real. That challenge has beauty in it because it's making-- for me, it's making me question reality itself. In other words, um, I'm questioning what really matters to me and what will I call real. And I'll give you some examples. I'll call touch real. Hug you, shake your hand, I'll call that real. Nature, time in a park, time with animals, my time with cats and dogs, unbelievably important to me because I trust those fuckers, right? [laughs] I believe that cat, uh, means business. This is what it's doing. If it wants to be on my chest purring, it wants to be on my chest purring, and if it doesn't, she's out of there, right?

    9. SBSteven Bartlett1:14:50

       It's a CIA cat. [laughs]

    10. GBGavin de Becker1:14:51

        And so, uh, and, and children are the same thing. I remember, uh, uh, my sons meeting a famous client of mine who let's say is/was the richest man in the world, et cetera, at that moment. And, uh, and my son at three years old, "How much money do you have?"

    11. SBSteven Bartlett1:15:06

        [laughs]

    12. GBGavin de Becker1:15:06

        Um, but he held no offense because it's this little kid, all it can be is real. There's nothing but real in the, in the little kid. And so where I think o-optimistically about AI, which definitely has some problems for, for, for the human race for sure, but where I think optimistically about it is I think it's good for people to question reality because what ultimately is it? What is it? If this is a simulation like Elon makes a good argument for, and I think he leans in that direction by the way, and sometimes I, I do too with him. If it's a simulation, uh, then we wanna make it interesting and, and we wanna be a bit outside. In a, in a simulation, we're not vulnerable, right? The, the, the, the spirit, the soul, the energy that animates us, um, will continue. It's not going anywhere, and it lets us witness this experience rather than feel victim to it, right? We get to, "This is a good movie," and we wouldn't go see a movie if we knew the outcome, right?

    13. SBSteven Bartlett1:16:04

        [laughs]

    14. GBGavin de Becker1:16:04

        But we-- But this movie's really good. And so when I look at AI things, and trust me, I don't know about you, you're younger, so you're, you may have better instincts or intuitions for it, but I genuinely can't tell sometimes. I mean, I, I send something back to a friend of mine and say, "I think that's bullshit. I don't think the dog actually jumped up on the top shelf and did that such and such. I, I don't buy it." And then you look at it a few more times. But this is good for us because what it brings us to is whatever we think is real, touch, taste, uh, uh, the feelings, tears, nature, whatever we think it is, I believe that's where I wanna be. That's where I wanna spend my

22. 1:16:45 – 1:21:08

    Why Trust In Big Institutions Is Collapsing — And What Comes Next

    1. GBGavin de Becker1:16:45

       time.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett1:16:45

       So there's this theory called the dead internet theory, where they think that because of AI and us being able to make con- I sent, I actually sent a video to some of my team members earlier. It was a two and a half minute video, and it's made with one of these AI tools, and it l- it's the ending of a very famous movie and someone's just changed it.

    3. GBGavin de Becker1:16:59

       Hmm.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett1:16:59

       And they've like, it's a kid in their bedroom has made a new ending to the movie. Couple of prompts, they've got a new ending to the movie. And as I was playing this forward, playing this forward and forward and forward, and eventually you get to a point where bots will be just spraying content at the internet.

    5. GBGavin de Becker1:17:14

       Mm.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett1:17:14

       And in such a world, unless we have these sort of, um, retina scanners to confirm that I'm doing the post live, you get to this dead internet theory where like everything you see is either written by, produced by AI. Therefore, we- our level of skepticism just raises to the point that we don't trust anything we're seeing. You're saying that that's actually a good thing for us because it makes us question what we're seeing again and revert to real things that are irreplaceably human.

    7. GBGavin de Becker1:17:41

       Yes. I think it's good to-- I think it's, it's spiritually good for us to redefine reality as opposed to take me back twenty years in my life and possibly yours, what did I believe? Everything the government said. Every official narrative. Why wouldn't I believe it?

    8. SBSteven Bartlett1:17:58

       Do you think there's any downside to our lost interest in institutions?

    9. GBGavin de Becker1:18:03

       Well, I have such a negative view of big centralized institutions.

    10. SBSteven Bartlett1:18:09

        Why?

    11. GBGavin de Becker1:18:09

        Because I think what happens when you... A, a very good number of people to live together is about three hundred. And what I base that on is, uh, Fiji, where I live a lot, villages are about three hundred people. There's a chief who lives with them. He doesn't get special treatment. He's not carried around in a gold chariot. He's gotta eat the same food they do, and he is generally, uh, benevolent and, uh... 'cause the, the beauty of the Fijian village, and I encourage you, you to go and all your, your viewers to go, don't all go on the same day 'cause you'll fuck up Fiji, but-

    12. SBSteven Bartlett1:18:43

        [laughs]

    13. GBGavin de Becker1:18:43

        ... go anyway. Um, the, the beauty of the Fijian village is that people will be born and grow up and get married and have children and die all in the same house and all with the same people. That's fantastic because what they don't get that I get in my life and you get is the engagement with all these anonymous people that don't matter, right? The waiter is just a snapshot to me, not a real person I'm sitting down with. I like to, by the way, really engage with people, uh, at the expense of, of the friends I'm with very often. I'm really curious about people. The Uber driver, I'm, I'm curious. But I know that the, this is a temporary relationship. In the Fijian village, uh, it's not a temporary relationship. I'll give you a good example. On an airplane, you're on a commercial flight somewhere, and you've got a ten-hour flight to overseas to London or something, and there's a baby cryingAnd, uh, you're pissed that the baby's crying. Some people are. I mean, I, I look at this when we used to travel, my wife and I, and I remember somebody saying when we boarded with my maybe twenty-month-old son, "Is that baby gonna cry?" And I said to the woman, "What do you think?" It's a, it's a twenty-month-old baby. But the point is, hey, folks, we're together for the next ten hours. How do we wanna spend this time? We wanna spend it hating each other? We wanna get too drunk and bug the person next to you? How do we wanna do this? A Fijian village is like that. In fact, a Fijian village is fewer bathrooms than a seven forty-seven and fewer seats than a seven forty-seven. Fewer people, for God's sake, than what we get on an airplane every day. And so I believe in small populations, uh, for governance, and I believe in subsidiarity, a word you probably don't know. I only learned it about a year ago from a dear friend in Cape Town. Subsidiarity means government at the most local possible level. So if it's a, if it's a, an issue regarding building permit, that ought to be city or county, nothing to do with Washington, D.C. If it's an issue regarding interstate commerce, okay, maybe we need a little Washington, D.C., we need a little state involved. But government at the lo- the most local possible level so that I can come over to your house, Steven, and say, "Why did you not approve my, my building permit?"

    14. SBSteven Bartlett1:20:55

        Mm-hmm.

    15. GBGavin de Becker1:20:55

        Or so I can meet you in the restaurant where we see each other every morning, where our kids go to school together.

    16. SBSteven Bartlett1:20:59

        Interesting.

    17. GBGavin de Becker1:20:59

        I don't believe centralized government works, and I think further that centralized government is our enemy. It is the enemy of, of citizens.

23. 1:21:08 – 1:24:05

    The Dark Side Of Big Companies — What They Don’t Want You To See

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:21:08

       I was thinking about the parallels there actually for business. A lot of-

    2. GBGavin de Becker1:21:10

       They get too big?

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:21:11

       Yeah, they get too big, and a lot of great companies actually break, break up divisions and departments and give them autonomy and subsidiari-- can't even say it.

    4. GBGavin de Becker1:21:18

       Subsidiarity. It wasn't easy for me either.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:21:19

       I nailed it first time. We're talking about subsidiary-- subsidiarity.

    6. GBGavin de Becker1:21:23

       Bing, bing.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:21:24

       Subsidiarity.

    8. GBGavin de Becker1:21:25

       Yeah.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett1:21:25

       And how even as our company grows, maybe I should think more about subsidiarity.

    10. GBGavin de Becker1:21:30

        Well, I'll tell you, my company at its biggest was about a thousand people and twenty-six offices around the country, around the world, and I didn't like a thousand people as a number. I liked where we are now, which is about six hundred people. And, uh, and we're hiring, by the way, so look us up and, and come to work. We, we need, we need young people, uh, who are physically fit and have good backgrounds, uh, meaning they can pass screening. But th- m-my point is that I, I like to stay in that sweet spot of... A thousand people starts to get too far from the individuals. And when it's small, and I don't know where you are now in, in this, i-in this podcast organization, but you can walk down the hall and see an employee and say, "Hey, it seems like you're, you're not doing so well. You seem... You don't like to joke anymore. You seem humorless. You seem such and such." In a big organization, while I developed a method for that, by the way, I'll tell you in a second, but in a big organization, you get farther and farther and farther from the human beings. I wanna tell you the method we developed. We have a thing, uh, called CARE. It stands for continuous asking, responding, and evaluation. Every day, every employee in my company, when they log into work, gets a question that they answer, and I get the statistical results of that every day. And the questions will be things like, uh, "When do you think you're getting your next promotion?" Uh, or, um, "Have you experienced or witnessed sexual harassment?" "Have you experienced or witnessed, uh, discrimination?" Why do I do that? Because I wanna know, right? That's why you ask. Have you... I-in bigger companies that use our system, like Amazon did, ha-- developed a system like it, the, you know, you might ask a question like, "Have you ever seen a firearm in the workplace, an unauthorized firearm?" Oh, damn it. We wanna know that information, right? "Does your supervisor know your name?" Huge question because the supervisor knowing that question is asked knows everybody's name, which is what you want. You're influencing middle management behavior. But that system we have, CARE, is no different than me walking down the hall and say, "Hey, Steven, I noticed for the last couple of days you're keeping your office door closed, and you're kind of shut down for some reason. What's going on?" You lose that when it gets too big. And when it gets really too big, like think about government agencies like HHS, the biggest budget in world history, one point seven trillion dollars, bigger than the Pentagon, started out at eighty-five thousand employees. Luckily, it's down now. Y-y-you gotta be kidding. You're, you're running a, a machine. It has nothing to do with humanity. And, and government agencies have nothing to do with humanity. They have to do with process, bureaucracy.

24. 1:24:05 – 1:33:58

    How To Live A Fulfilling Life In Uncertain Times

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:24:05

       We talked about advice, that's kind of where we started on this, uh, train of thought, that you would give to your children, and one of the, you know, t-trains we went down was about intuition.

    2. GBGavin de Becker1:24:14

       Yes.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:24:15

       Is there anything else that you think was, would... You know, if you, if you, if this, God forbid, was your last day on Earth and your children said to you, "Dad, what do I need to know to live a fulfilling life-"

    4. GBGavin de Becker1:24:26

       Yes.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:24:27

       "... based in the world as we see it today?" What would you, what would you say if you could only say one thing?

    6. GBGavin de Becker1:24:31

       For me, and I think it's true for everybody, um, contribution to others is a key part of coming to believe that you belong here. Those of us who had a tough time, and, but remember I said everybody has a tough time in some way through childhood, self-love is often, uh, missing or is hard to come by. And to believe that you belong here, contribution to others is a key thing. And the second one, you asked for one, but you're getting two, so it's a special today, a bargain. The second one was the hardest lesson for me to come to believe, and that was that what is right for you is always right for the other person. Very hard for me to get my head around this one because I thought, "Well, wait a minute. I wanna break up with this girl who wants to get married and have kids with me. How can my breaking up be right for the other person?" Well, A, she gets to be with somebody who actually wants to be with her. She gets to begin her life now instead of I stay with her till she's forty-five and she can't have kids anymore. So this idea that what's right for you is always right for the other person, the practical application is that all you need to do, Steven, is know what's right for you.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:25:42

       Which is easier said than done.

    8. GBGavin de Becker1:25:43

       It is easier said than done, but because in my case, what I would do is say, "Well, what-- how's this person gonna do?" When I was younger, I believed everybody that I fired, for example, which was very few people in my career. I mean, employed a shitload of people, but I didn't fire very often. Everybody that I fired, I thought they went from working at this great company that I was the founder of to being on the street homeless and couldn't feed their families. That's not what happened.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett1:26:06

       [laughs]

    10. GBGavin de Becker1:26:06

        They went to other great jobs. If they could work for GDBA, they had already jumped through so many hoops. They were presentable, they were intelligent, they were physically fit. They had a, a great background. They had integrity that we could see. They had all variety of, of things, and they presented incredibly well because we've got one hell of a screening process. We have a nine-day, nine-day interview, not a one-hour interview. They live, they come and live at our camp for nine days of an interview process. W- they're sleeping in our environment. We're really getting to know them. By the way, it's twelve days now, but started as nine days. So now I know if I fire somebody or if they leave, uh, they're gonna do fantastic. That, that was a big awakening for me. But this idea that what's right for me is always right for the other person, what does it do? It frees you to know that the only place I have to go to get the answer to this question is in here. You don't want me messing around in your brain trying to figure out what you want, trying to figure out what you believe, trying to figure out what's best for you. I've hurt more people in my life trying to figure out what's best for them than I've helped.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett1:27:13

        It is, um, it is remarkably true. I was just sort of sense checking it against people where i- in one particular case where I'd fired someone, and they were very upset about it many, many, many years ago in a previous business, very upset about it, protested, you know, said some things, uh, to me. And then years later, five, six, ten years later, when I reflect on where they are now and if that was the best thing for them, as I kind of assumed it was, to be honest, they would say it was the best thing for them. I would say it was the best thing for them-

    12. GBGavin de Becker1:27:42

        Mm-hmm

    13. SBSteven Bartlett1:27:42

        ...in hindsight, in part because when held in a situation that's not right for them, they're gonna suffer in other ways.

    14. GBGavin de Becker1:27:48

        Yeah.

    15. SBSteven Bartlett1:27:49

        Under the... under a standard-

    16. GBGavin de Becker1:27:50

        Including your resentment.

    17. SBSteven Bartlett1:27:51

        My resentment, a standard they can't meet, goals they can't meet.

    18. GBGavin de Becker1:27:53

        Yeah.

    19. SBSteven Bartlett1:27:53

        The pressure from everybody, the stress when they can't sleep at night.

    20. GBGavin de Becker1:27:56

        Wrong job.

    21. SBSteven Bartlett1:27:56

        Yeah.

    22. GBGavin de Becker1:27:56

        Of course.

    23. SBSteven Bartlett1:27:57

        And I, yeah, and let them go, and they started their own thing and, um, less pressure, l- lower goals, less expectation. They seem to be much, much happier.

    24. GBGavin de Becker1:28:04

        And you?

    25. SBSteven Bartlett1:28:05

        Oh, I'm, I'm much happier.

    26. GBGavin de Becker1:28:06

        And you, yeah, that's the-

    27. SBSteven Bartlett1:28:07

        Yeah.

    28. GBGavin de Becker1:28:07

        Look, God only made you, or the universe, whichever word you wanna fit in there, only made you responsible for one person, truly responsible for one person. A- and that's you. And then the... that has, of course, all the ripple effects of what it does for the rest of the world. Even our children, by the way, are we responsible for them? Certainly not for life, right? Because i- in my case, y- y- I'm an older father. My first birth kid... I had a bunch of adopted kids. A bunch. I had eight. But my first, uh, birth kid, uh, I was fifty-two years old, and so I'm an older father to my seventeen-year-old son. Uh, I don't expect to be around when he's fifty. Um, uh, I'll take it if it happens to be that way, but I would be defuckingcrepit by that point. Uh, and I, I'd rather probably, uh, exit before that. But my point is the idea that even our children, we will not find the answer. Do I know what's best for my kids? Of course not. I have a lot of opinions, but, uh, th- you know, do I really know what's best? No. But I know what's best for me, and, and that's really where my responsibility has to end. And Steven, you asked me to boil it down to one. I gave you a special today of two, and, uh, and I wanna give you, uh, the third one that you haven't asked for, and it's this: everything you want is downstream. Everything you want is downstream, meaning that time when we're swimming against the current and think, "Oh, if, if it's important, it's gonna take all this work," et cetera, et cetera, there is no swimming upstream. W- uh, downstream always wins. Reality always wins. You know, when you swim upstream, you put enough current there, and you're staying in the same place. And so the times in my life when I thought, "It must be this way. It has to be this. This, this is the only way," I was wrong. I was wrong, including hiring... A p- dear friend of mine told me the story of hiring a CEO for his company, big company, and, uh, and the guy said, uh, "I'll take the job." And they negotiated everything, and then the guy said, "You know, I'm gonna go to work for, for Pepsi Cola, and I'm sorry." And my friend got on an airplane and flew to the hotel and waited in the lobby of the, of the hotel where he knew the guy was, caught him in the lobby and said, "Don't go to work for them. Go to work for me. I'll change the offer in the following way. I'll add this equity." And he succeeded, and he got the CEO he wanted, and three weeks later, had to fire the fucker. So basically, when the whole universe says no, everything you want is downstream. Now, you probably have some... You tell me. Do you have some resistance to that idea?

    29. SBSteven Bartlett1:30:37

        Um, I would say I can think of examples where I fought for something and it was-- I fought for a person or something, and it turned out to be a good decision. Should I give you the context?

    30. GBGavin de Becker1:30:51

        Yeah, I'd love to hear the context, but by the way, that doesn't, uh, defeat my argument because fighting for something is not the same as swimming upstream. You know, swimming upstream is you know which way this river's going.
25. 1:33:58 – 1:36:50

    Why The Gift Of Fear Struck A Nerve — And Why It Still Matters

    1. GBGavin de Becker1:33:58

       upstream.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett1:33:58

       I was just gonna ask [microphone rustles] 'cause, you know, this, this was such a smash hit bestselling book-

    3. GBGavin de Becker1:34:02

       Yeah

    4. SBSteven Bartlett1:34:02

       ... nationally, and I was just gonna ask you the question, why? What is it that resonated with people that made this book so successful? The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us From Violence. What, what is it?

    5. GBGavin de Becker1:34:16

       That's a very good question. Uh, I mean, a good question in that it's, in that it's a new question. I, I'll give you what I, what I hope. I think if that book had been about Chinese pottery, uh, or about spices or any subject, carpentry, um, it also would have worked well because it had, by a number of blessings, it had some core truths in it. Like you didn't... One of the things I'm saying to them is forget about experts. You, you don't need an expert to be telling you things that are in your own body. If this story is resonant to you, if this experience from all these people that I interviewed is resonant to you, and if that works for you, then, uh, you know, you'll find value here. And, uh, there are some practical reasons why it was a bestseller, like Oprah doing it. I mean, everybody did it. Time Magazine, Newsweek, everybody did big things on the book. Why, at that moment, did that work out? I, I have a theory which is that a, a lot of people in media knew me or knew of me, but I never had done anything public, and it, it took a lot of courage to do. And when I, for me, I talk about things that were very personal in that book and, uh, a-and in the other books as well, and it took a lot of courage. In fact, I went and met with two authors beforehand who had told really hard stories about their lives and, uh, uh, I didn't know them. I just asked for meetings. One of them was in DC, and, uh, and, and I got some encouragement. I also remember, by the way, meeting with a group of, of law enforcement officials who were at my company for some reason, and I told them a couple of stories from that book, uh, childhood stories, and they were kind of aghast. Everybody was like, "Oh." It didn't stimulate any conversation at the table. I knew I was in a kind of territory that most people run away from, and that too helped me, uh, because I thought, uh, denial, denial, denial, denial, denial all around the table because every cop and every FBI agent has a story about why they are doing what they're doing, just like every doctor does, just like everybody does. There's a reason that they're doing what they're doing that usually will be discoverable in, uh, in childhood. And when they discover it, like who do you want, for example, for a heart surgeon? Do you want the heart surgeon whose grandfather died of a heart attack in his arms when he was fourteen years old, or do you want the one who said, "Heart surgery? Oh, the earnings look really good on heart surgery. I'll take heart surgery as my major." Uh, y-you know, you want the one with a, with a core, uh, with a, with a story, uh, uh, a personal story.

26. 1:36:50 – 1:44:48

    Where Purpose Comes From — And How To Find Meaning In Chaos

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:36:50

       We have a closing tradition where the last guest leaves a question for the next. And the question left for you, not knowing who they were leaving it for, is: where do you think the origin of your purpose and meaning comes from objectively?

    2. GBGavin de Becker1:37:05

       Okay. Give me twenty-five minutes of silence.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:37:08

       [chuckles]

    4. GBGavin de Becker1:37:10

       This is, I guess it's somewhat of a spiritual answer, uh, which is that I believe in... I, I tend to go with everything is predetermined, meaning down to the smallest tree in the smallest town, in the smallest place, uh, it's gonna be... that's how it was gonna be. Now, I have a scientific version of this, which is that if you're... I remember one day I was in Fiji and [chuckles] I was swimming in front of my house, and the, the water's just four feet deep in front of my house because it's on a reef, so you can walk on it, and then you get to the end of the reef, you get to the deep water. And I was standing in the, in the four-foot deep water, and suddenly a massive rainstorm came, just like the bop, bop, bop, you know, hitting you in the head, and then it stopped immediatelyAnd immediately after that, this massive school of fish about this big just started jumping out of the water in front of me, and it's noisy. It's like, [imitates splashing] as they were going around, and they go in a whole circle around me, and then they're, and then they're gone. And i-i-immediately after this, the tide, uh, which was rising, it goes up and down, as you know, twice a day, um, the tide really got strong where I was standing, and it was coming in as opposed to going out. And so I was really, like, standing there like this, and I was looking around, and I thought, "This better be enough stimulation for you, brother." Like, I'd just seen the giant rainstorm and then the sun, the fish going nuts, and then this giant tide thing, and as soon as I thought that, a whale breached right off the reef, right? And, uh, and I, and I thought, "Holy shit, man, you are seeing one hell of a movie here." And then I thought... In fact, I dreamed that night that I was, uh, as if somebody had typed in, "Show me what it would be like to be standing on a reef in Fiji," uh, there was no AI then, but, "To be standing on a reef in Fiji and have a massive school of fish go jumping up around you, have a t- you know, huge storm begin, have it quickly get sunny, and then see a whale breach in front of you as you're trying to hold onto the reef as, is, is, you know, so strong you can barely stand up. Show me what that's like, Google." And that I, Gavin, was like the eyes of God, universe, whatever it may be, that you could... Like, what is it like to be a forty-two-year-old man who's had this diet this day, this trip out to the reef, this childhood, this experience? Is it all predetermined? And I do believe it is. And so the answer to that question is I believe it's o-out of my hands. I may get the choices, uh, you know, is there free will? Something is presented to me, go left, go right. Uh, I, I might get the choice, but what is presented to me, what is presented to me is not up to me.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:40:12

       Are you telling me that life is consciousness trying to understand itself? Someone said that to me once, and it was quite a compelling thought.

    6. GBGavin de Becker1:40:18

       The idea was dropped into my skull so quickly, like it was a journalistic report that said, "Here's the way the world works." Something or somebody or everybody or everything types into Google what it wants to see, and occasionally you are the body that it works through. Because if the rest of the universe, and by the way, kind of interesting this m- very moment we're in, Steven, because that experience I had is now being relayed-

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:40:47

       Mm.

    8. GBGavin de Becker1:40:47

       ... to a few million people courtesy of you and your question and that question in this podcast. So now you do know a little bit about what it's like to stand in the water with the, the current trying to pull you over and see a whole school of fish go around you and see a whale breach right in front of you and see this, this massive rainstorm come and go in a matter of minutes. Uh, now you get a little piece of that experience. Now, do I think I... Here's the big, the punchline. Do I think I created that experience? No fucking way. I don't. I think it's predetermined. And I think the sci- I, I said to you the scientific version is y-you're gonna ask me this question, and that's the answer you're gonna get. That's what I believe. Based on what I ate today, based on w-what I ate forty years ago, based on childhood, based on who you are and who I am, that's the answer you're gonna get.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett1:41:35

       And who left the question.

    10. GBGavin de Becker1:41:36

        And who left it and how their day was and what they ate that day and everything else. I believe in predetermination. It is, um, it, it comes from a teacher of mine in India, my best teacher in life, Nisargadatta, wrote a book called I Am That, recommend it to everybody. And then his student, who's now died, uh, Ramesh Balsekar, who I got to go see and spend time with in India, who was an important teacher for me, who basically said th-th-the, every day at nine AM he had satsang in his house. Basically, people could come and ask questions. Uh, uh, and he, and it was sort of... He, he happened to be Indian, but it was sort of Buddhist in nature. And somebody said to him, "Well, are you just saying we're all robots?" And he said, "Yes, exactly correct. We're all robots."

    11. SBSteven Bartlett1:42:18

        [chuckles]

    12. GBGavin de Becker1:42:18

        And then the person said, "Well, why should I even get out of bed in the morning?" And he said, "Try it. Try and stay in bed." And he said, "After a few days, you'll be up and about. You'll be doing something. You'll be motivated to do something." So, um, that is my answer to your question, which obviously, uh, I only heard this second, and the answer only came this second.

    13. SBSteven Bartlett1:42:40

        Gavin, thank you. Thank you for opening my eyes in so many ways. You've written so many of these great books. All of them I'm gonna link below. The newest one here is called Forbidden Facts: Government Deceit and Suppression About Brain Damage From Childhood Vaccines. There's another book about children here, Protecting the, the Gift: Keeping Children and Teenagers Safe and Parents Sane. The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us From Violence.

    14. GBGavin de Becker1:43:00

        And I think those are the only three you need to link, and my reason is these are kind of specialty books.

    15. SBSteven Bartlett1:43:05

        Uh, additional. Okay, fine.

    16. GBGavin de Becker1:43:06

        Yeah.

    17. SBSteven Bartlett1:43:06

        So I'll link these below for everyone to see. Um, I highly recommend checking all of Gavin's wor-work out. Um, and these are gonna be in the comment section below if, if anyone wants to read more about some of the things we've touched on. You've touched on all these books today, but if you wanna go deeper on any of these subjects, this is your opportunity to do so. And is there anywhere else people can go to find you if they're interested in your-

    18. GBGavin de Becker1:43:24

        I mean, o-o-our website is gdba.com and probably gavindebecker.com works. The website is... Uh, I don't e-even solicit new clients. We don't have any marketing or anything like that. The website is there for one purpose, which is attracting candidates for employment because we are hiring a lot of people all the time. So that's what the website does, but there may be other information there that's valuable for people. I don't know.

    19. SBSteven Bartlett1:43:46

        Well, if anyone's young and fit and strong-

    20. GBGavin de Becker1:43:48

        [laughs]

    21. SBSteven Bartlett1:43:48

        ... and wants to work with Gavin, then, um, I'll link the website below as well to see all of the jobs available. Gavin, thank you so much. It's certainly... I mean, there's so many things that have blown my mind, but one, one of the most important things for me is actually just this lesson about intuition and that even... And that to listen to it more and to be more upfront with people when I, my intuition isn't, is telling me something.

    22. GBGavin de Becker1:44:12

        Mm.

    23. SBSteven Bartlett1:44:14

        Because you're right, I think we're, we're all very good at, um, tuning the volume of our intuition down, and society kind of teaches us to gaslight ourselves and double-guess. Gavin, thank you.

    24. GBGavin de Becker1:44:23

        Uh, thank you too, and thanks for what you're doing. You are one of my teachers as well, young man. I get to say at seventy-one.

    25. SBSteven Bartlett1:44:29

        [chuckles] Thank you. YouTube have this new crazy algorithm where they know exactly what video you would like to watch next based on AI and all of your viewing behavior, and the algorithm says that this video is the perfect video for you. It's different for everybody looking right now. Check this video out. I bet you you might love it

Episode duration: 1:44:48