Joe Rogan Experience #1800 - Gavin de Becker

Joe Rogan 0:00 (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.

Gavin de Becker 0:04 The Joe Rogan Experience.

Joe Rogan 0:06 Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (instrumental music) Hello, Gavin.

Gavin de Becker 0:13 Hey.

Joe Rogan 0:14 Pleasure to meet you in person, in the flesh.

Gavin de Becker 0:16 You too. Uh, we obviously have a lot of friends in common, and I'm glad to be here.

Joe Rogan 0:19 I'm glad to have you here. And, uh, I'm glad to talk about, uh, we have a lot of shared interests, but, uh, this Survival Signals That Protect Us From Violence.

Gavin de Becker 0:29 Mm.

Joe Rogan 0:30 Now, this is, uh... I- I've always wanted to talk to you because you are a truly an expert on preparedness and cautionary tactics in, in, w- what to do and not to do, like in terms of security and how to protect people. And how did, what is your background like? How did you get started in all this?

Gavin de Becker 0:50 Uh, bad childhood, violent childhood is the way I started. Um, when I was, uh, 10 years old, my mother shot my stepfather in front of me.

Joe Rogan 0:59 Oh, Jesus Christ.

Gavin de Becker 1:00 And that was one of many-

Joe Rogan 1:01 (laughs)

Gavin de Becker 1:01 ... sort of gun incidents, uh, in our family. And so I grew-

Joe Rogan 1:05 Was your stepfather violent or something?

Gavin de Becker 1:07 No, he wasn't. Uh,, uh, my mother was. And, um-

Joe Rogan 1:10 Wow, that's unusual, right?

Gavin de Becker 1:12 Uh, it is. It's the, it is the more unusual of the two, you know, the two genders. Certainly men are more violent more often throughout history. Uh, so I had that experience but, uh, and a whole bunch of others. Uh, my mother was a heroin addict. She committed suicide when I was, uh, 16. And so I saw a lot of stuff. I saw a lot of criminality, I saw a lot of violence. And I guess I developed kind of like a, uh, an ambassador between the two worlds. I spoke both languages.

Joe Rogan 1:39 Hmm.

Gavin de Becker 1:39 You know, if I had a few other disadvantages, there's no way I would have, uh, you know, succeeded in life. I would have died young. Like, if I'd been a Black kid with the same circumstance, I'd have been in big trouble.

Joe Rogan 1:49 Hmm.

Gavin de Becker 1:49 And, uh, so that, uh, that life brought me to a fascination with... When John Kennedy was killed, I was 10, and, uh, I was home from school, and it just absolutely captivated and fascinated me, not so much the issue of who killed him or the conspiratorial sides of these things, which, (laughs) which are very real, not so much that, but the actual physics of how you prevent assassination. And that interest stayed with me throughout my life, and I eventually... I've had a, an odd life. So as, as I tell you this story, uh, you'll, you'll be ready for it to be unusual. But by the time I was, uh, 19, I had already read and devoured everything I could on this subject, which was pretty limited. Most of the stuff on anti-assassination strategies I wrote later in life, but there wasn't a lot to read at the time. And at 19, I got a job w- working for Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, and they were the most, uh, famous people in the world, maybe not known to everybody today, but she was a big movie star and he was a big movie star. And, uh, at that time, there was really only, uh, Jackie Onassis and, uh, Elizabeth Taylor and the Queen of England. Those were the giant media figures. Now we've got-

Joe Rogan 3:02 Oh yeah.

Gavin de Becker 3:02 ... hundreds of media figures. Uh, and Marilyn Monroe, who had died already. And I worked for them starting as a kind of flunky. Do you know the word?

Joe Rogan 3:10 Mm-hmm.

Gavin de Becker 3:11 A gopher.

Joe Rogan 3:11 Yeah.

Gavin de Becker 3:12 And then, uh, a- a- and through the course of everybody above me being fired, I ended up being what's called Traveling Chief of Staff. And, uh, uh, I traveled with them around the world. I got to work with protectors and intelligence agencies in South Africa and in Israel and in Mexico and all over Europe, and I learned a lot, and I observed everything. And when I was done, I was 21, and I wrote a, uh, an article about public figure protection in the private sector for, uh, a law enforcement journal. And everybody assumed I was a 55-year-old ex-FBI agent, but I was 21 years old. And so I used to get asked to come and give speeches, and when I would arrive, they would look around, you know, "Is your dad with you?" You know, they'd look around, and I-

Joe Rogan 3:56 (laughs)

Gavin de Becker 3:56 ... had a mustache. I used to darken it, because you could see through it.

Joe Rogan 4:00 (laughs)

Gavin de Becker 4:00 And, um, and I gave speeches. And, uh, and I got better and better at it. And giving speeches, you have to be, you have to be right, you know? You get tested a lot by audiences. And so, uh, I was driven by the idea of accuracy and, uh, and, and good intellectual process, because I didn't have... I wasn't a former cop, I wasn't an FBI agent, etc. Later, I became all that kind of stuff. Later, I got appointed by the president to the Department of Justice Advisory Board and, and worked with CIA and FBI and all the things that have gone on between 10 years old and today. By the way, the reason I mentioned that is sometimes when somebody wants to say something shitty about me, they say, "Oh, his whole training is that he had a bad childhood." Uh, could we count the 55 years between then and now? Uh, perhaps, but ultimately I, I developed a company that had, you know, as a consulting company that advises people at risk and, um, and, uh, w- wrote books on the topic and did a lot of, a lot of research and study on the topic.

Joe Rogan 4:59 So when you were 19 years old, how did you get this job working with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton?

Gavin de Becker 5:04 It's a good question. So I went to Beverly Hills High School. My, uh... We were on welfare and food stamps, but my grandfather got a one-room apartment in Beverly Hills where we could lie, and my sister and I would say we lived in Beverly Hills, used that address. So I went to Beverly High, and there I met a lot of friends who are still friends today. And, uh, one of them was Gina Martin. And Gina Martin was Dean Martin's daughter. Uh, and, uh, and so I went to work for her mother for $60 a week, uh, which I still have by the way. And, uh, the, uh... A- and one day, Elizabeth Taylor came over to their house. And, uh, Gina and I, my girlfriend and I, we sat up at the balustrade and looked through the railing, and I saw Elizabeth Taylor. I didn't really even know who she was, but I thought this is gonna be a big deal, and in came this giant, you know, big hair and all, all the stuff. And, and then a, uh, few months later, somebody called me and said, uh, "She's looking for an assistant, and will you go meet with her?" So I went to the Beverly Hills Hotel to meet with her, and she wasn't there. Her boyfriend was there. I met with him.I got hired. "Uh, can you type?" "Yes." Couldn't type.

Joe Rogan 6:15 (laughs)

Gavin de Becker 6:15 "Uh, do you speak French?" "Yes." Don't speak French.

Joe Rogan 6:18 (laughs)

Gavin de Becker 6:18 Uh, but-

Joe Rogan 6:18 Why French?

Gavin de Becker 6:19 Uh, they were going to France two weeks later.

Joe Rogan 6:21 Wow.

Gavin de Becker 6:22 So, uh, the, uh, I, I, uh, got the job and I went home, and I told my friends I got this job, it's unbelievable, and turned on the television. And, uh, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton have gotten back together. She's left her boyfriend, and I see her, you know, going through the airport paparazzi, and my career is over.

Joe Rogan 6:40 (laughs)

Gavin de Becker 6:40 I'd never even, never even met her. And then, uh, a few months later, got another call, and this time she was back in Los Angeles with the same boyfriend, and we, uh, we had a-

Joe Rogan 6:50 So her and Elizabeth, uh, Richard Burton broke up already?

Gavin de Becker 6:53 Three times when I was with them.

Joe Rogan 6:54 (laughs)

Gavin de Becker 6:54 Three times broke up and three times back together. And then we, uh, so I started working for her. Um, she was, sh- she was great to me, very, very nice and, uh, and kind. And one day she came into my office and she said, I was at, working at the house, and she said, uh, "Can you take me to the tropical fish place tomorrow?" Uh, and I thought, "Yeah, sure. That'd be great." And her boyfriend was a guy named Henry Weinberg, and he used to take her and so I thought maybe he's gonna be a little jealous or something, but I figured I'll take her. This means driving some Rolls-Royce I've never driven. I didn't have a car at the time. And I was supposed to pick her up in, at her house, meet her there at 10:00 AM. At about 10:45 in the morning, I wake up at home. Fuck, I have totally (laughs) blown it. I am, I've missed the appointment completely. I rush like crazy to get to the house, get there by noon. She's gone to the fish place. And she comes into my office afterwards, clearly to fire me, and she says, uh, "Gavin, thank you so much for what you did this morning. That was, that was a very admirable thing to do." But, you know, uh, I don't know what it is yet. And she says, "You knew Henry would be jealous and so you stood back and, and let him take me to the fish place, so that was great."

Joe Rogan 8:03 (laughs)

Gavin de Becker 8:03 Okay, world. (laughs) I'm in. So I kept the job.

Joe Rogan 8:06 (clears throat) Wow.

Gavin de Becker 8:08 Uh, and, uh, and then, uh, home one night and a friend of mine calls and says, "Put on the television," and it's Elizabeth Taylor back with Richard Burton-

Joe Rogan 8:16 (laughs)

Gavin de Becker 8:16 ... has left her boyfriend, and my career's over again.

Joe Rogan 8:19 (laughs)

Gavin de Becker 8:20 And, uh, so I, uh, I'm done, f- finished. It's over, and, uh, few weeks later she calls me and she says, "Would you be willing to come to work for me and Richard in Europe?" I don't think I'd ever been to Europe. Maybe I'd been one time to England at that point and I'm like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah." And I say, you know, Richard Burton was an intimidating British actor and, and, uh, so I said to her, "What should I call him? Do I call him Richard? Do I call him Mr. Burton?" And she said, "Richard, he wants to know what he should call you." And in the background I hear, "I don't give a shit, love."

Joe Rogan 8:52 (laughs)

Gavin de Becker 8:52 Uh, fuck, I'm gonna (laughs) have a, have a rough time with this guy. And then I show up and we, we live in Switzerland for a year. I live with them in their house, and, uh, the very first night he comes to talk to me and we talk for, like, six hours. I'm 19 years old.

Joe Rogan 9:07 Wow.

Gavin de Becker 9:08 And I love him and he loves me. I don't just mean in that moment. I mean through our lives, and we stayed, even after I left working for them, we stayed friends until he died at maybe 50, 50 years old, uh, from, uh, alcoholism.

Joe Rogan 9:22 Wow.

Gavin de Becker 9:23 So that was an interesting start, just the way things, the way things went.

Joe Rogan 9:27 Well, he must have been close to death then, right? 'Cause how old was he then?

Gavin de Becker 9:30 He was, uh, he was 45 probably when we met. Uh, or, or maybe f- that's an interesting question. I have to look. You know, I, I was in, uh, Jerusalem a few years ago and I stayed at the same hotel where Elizabeth and Richard and I had stayed when we made a trip to Israel. And she had converted to Judaism, uh, in, uh, in the '60s and, because she was married to a guy named Mike Todd, and so she was an enormous big deal in Israel. There were Elizabeth Taylor theaters-

Joe Rogan 10:00 Oh, wow.

Gavin de Becker 10:00 ... when we landed. The entire tarmac of the airport, hundreds of thousands (laughs) of people, and I thought, "Wow, Israel's really a disorganized country. They let everybody on the tarmac." But it was obviously because of Elizabeth being there.

Joe Rogan 10:11 (laughs)

Gavin de Becker 10:11 And so I was learning, uh, quickly about this, uh, this kind of stuff. And, uh, and while we were, while we were there, many experiences, w- went out with the Kissingers and I, uh, crowds and blah, blah, blah. But many years later, uh, as an adult and, uh, i- in my 60s, I was at that hotel and I was looking around at all the pictures they had of, of, uh, famous people, and there I find Elizabeth and Richard and me.

Joe Rogan 10:38 Oh, wow.

Gavin de Becker 10:38 And, uh, so it gave me the idea to download the diaries of Richard Burton, which I had never read. He used to keep a diary all the time when we were traveling, and if he was drunk or in trouble, I used to go get the diary out of the room so, uh, you know, it wouldn't get stolen or by pap, uh, photographers or-

Joe Rogan 10:55 Oh.

Gavin de Becker 10:55 ... news media people or housekeepers or whatever. And I always wo-

Joe Rogan 10:59 Handwritten?

Gavin de Becker 10:59 What?

Joe Rogan 11:00 Handwritten?

Gavin de Becker 11:00 Yeah. T- tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny. He'd be writing all the time. And so I had two experiences with that diary that are good teachers for, for my kids now. Uh, one is that one day he went to sleep and he was on a bender. He was an alcoholic and he was having a hard time. And I saw the diary sitting just folded over the armchair and I thought, "Well, I better grab that so a housekeeper doesn't get it." And I pick it up and I turn it over and I read it, curious, like, "What does he always write in here?" And my eyes land on these words. "Uh, must get rid of Gavin when we get back to London."

Joe Rogan 11:32 (laughs)

Gavin de Becker 11:33 (laughs) Good, good teaching. Uh-

Joe Rogan 11:36 Oh, boy.

Gavin de Becker 11:37 So anyway, now years later-

Joe Rogan 11:39 (laughs)

Gavin de Becker 11:39 ... I'm at the King David Hotel and I download this book and it's a book of his diaries and I think, "Oh, am I in there?" So I start looking around. And I find, uh, passages, uh, that, you know, it's a, by this point it's been 45 years or so since I worked for them, and I find these passages from him. One of them says, uh, "Gavin gave us a long letter yesterday, uh, telling us that he's right about everything and we're wrong about everything." I have no memory, but it sounds like some young Gavin move. And, uh, and then, you know, other entries regarding me, but one of them that really struck me is, uh, that he said, "There were days and days without any entry." There'd be five days with no entry and at the end of it, he would say, "Lost five days."... five days gone. And, and I realized that I was a kid living with this couple, and really had no idea, uh, what they were going through, and what he was going through with, uh, with alcoholism, and what she was going through with, with drug addiction.

Joe Rogan 12:34 W- were they always like that? Or is this a response to the pressures of fame? Is it... 'cause one of the things that I've encountered, and you meet a lot of movie stars-

Gavin de Becker 12:45 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 12:45 ... and celebrity-type people, there's, especially rock stars, they're, it's not just all of the life on the road and the partying that goes with that, but it's, it's in response to the pressures of so many people wanting your attention, and so much, so much focus on you-

Gavin de Becker 13:02 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 13:03 ... that a lot of them turn to something to dilute that.

Gavin de Becker 13:06 Yeah, no question. I, I mean, Elizabeth was famous from when she was, uh, 11 years old. So, she was the star in a big movie called National Velvet, she became an international sensation. Richard was not. Uh, he grew up poor in Wales, and, uh, and then was thrust into this circumstance. He was a stage actor, and suddenly thrust into this circumstance of being with, in this couple, and, uh, and they had a lot of, you know, tabloid stories, and, and controversies. But on your, on your main point, yeah, I have a, you know, I've had a real, uh, front row seat on fame and the pressures that go with fame, and it's highly unnatural circumstance, right? If we go back a thousand years, there was no such thing.

Joe Rogan 13:46 Right.

Gavin de Becker 13:47 You could, you could be known in your community. You could be called the King Caesar, but nobody met you, or knew you, or saw you.

Joe Rogan 13:53 Right.

Gavin de Becker 13:53 The vast majority of people, you know, had no connection to you. And now, you have people who, uh, are known to millions and billions of people. If you're a female singer, you're singing romantically to somebody. If you're a female actress, or male, your face is closer to people than you would ever be unless you were gonna kiss them or hit them. You would never see all the little lines in somebody's face, and have this kind of intimacy, and I think physiologically, our bodies are not able to distinguish between that which we see in media and that which we see in our actual lives. And, uh, so it is an enormous pressure to have everybody you meet... You'll recognize some of this yourself, that everybody you meet will have some idea about you in advance, everybody you see, uh, will have seen you first. You're at a restaurant going like this, they've already made you, and, uh, and, and that's a weird distortion of, you know, you wanna meet somebody and build a relationship, right? You don't wanna meet somebody and they already have their 50% done.

Joe Rogan 14:56 Right.

Gavin de Becker 14:57 And now you have to undo it-

Joe Rogan 14:58 Yeah.

Gavin de Becker 14:59 ... uh, a- and, and, uh, you know, and, and assert yourself. Years ago, you know, the Beatles had a line that, uh, uh, the whole world went crazy and used the four of them to do it, and that they were the only four people in the world who didn't experience the Beatles.

Joe Rogan 15:13 Mm. That's-

Gavin de Becker 15:14 And so ...

Joe Rogan 15:15 Jamie had a very similar s-

Gavin de Becker 15:16 I remember ...

Joe Rogan 15:16 ... statement the other day.

Guest (third person in studio, brief interjection) 15:18 I, I've heard that before, but yeah, just-

Joe Rogan 15:19 (coughs)

Guest (third person in studio, brief interjection) 15:19 ... thought of it in the same way.

Joe Rogan 15:20 Oh, about the Beatles?

Guest (third person in studio, brief interjection) 15:21 Well, like, me and him experience the world without-

Joe Rogan 15:25 Without the JRE.

Guest (third person in studio, brief interjection) 15:26 ... dealing with this show, kinda.

Gavin de Becker 15:27 That's right.

Joe Rogan 15:27 Like, we don't, you know-

Gavin de Becker 15:28 That's right.

Joe Rogan 15:29 Like, 'cause we're weirded out, because we were so insulated, like the show is so small in terms of, like, the amount of people that work on it. It's just me and Jamie. So ...

Gavin de Becker 15:39 Right.

Joe Rogan 15:40 Me and Jamie, and whoever the guest is, communicate, we have fun. It's just, like, a bunch of people ta- you know, three of us talking, and it reaches millions of people.

Gavin de Becker 15:51 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 15:51 And that escapes us in this moment. So, the, all the people that are listening, that are listening right now, that are, uh, driving in their car, and at the gym, and wherever you listen to the show, or watch the show, th- these people experience the show. We are a part of the show. So, for us, it's just life.

Gavin de Becker 16:09 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 16:09 So, all the controversy behind it, they can bring it into work, and go, "Did you hear about this guy that's on the JRE that said this and that?" And like, "Oh, I heard that's bullshit." Or, "Oh, I, oh, I know about that." And then these conversations break out, and all the controversy breaks out, and we're blissfully immune to it.

Gavin de Becker 16:25 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 16:26 But the world has changed so much for us, because when we go out, then we experience it. Then we experience all these conversations, and all the controversy, and all the people, and all the attention. It's just strange.

Gavin de Becker 16:39 Yeah, I think as, uh, uh, I mentioned physiological, because we're not physiologically prepared for it, right?

Joe Rogan 16:44 Yeah.

Gavin de Becker 16:44 When you meet somebody, you don't have a place in your organism to put, "They already have a full opinion of me." It's a little bit like racism or discrimination, uh, or a police officer's experience, right? A police officer pulls you over, and everybody lies to him.

Joe Rogan 17:00 Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Gavin de Becker 17:00 Everybody treats him different. Everybody's real, real nice, or everybody's got a, a story to tell. And so they're not engaging with the human being, they're engaging with the uniform.

Joe Rogan 17:08 Right.

Gavin de Becker 17:08 Fame is a uniform.

Joe Rogan 17:10 Well-

Gavin de Becker 17:11 It's on, it's on the outside of you.

Joe Rogan 17:12 That totally makes sense. And especially, I've always thought that of cops, like, that people need to take that in consideration when y- and also that cops, when they pull people over, they're really genuinely worried about being shot and killed.

Gavin de Becker 17:24 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 17:24 I mean, you might think, "Hey, I was only going 10 miles an hour over the speed limit." The cop is thinking, "This guy could be an on-the-run criminal, and I could get shot in the face right now."

Gavin de Becker 17:34 Of course. Of course. Yeah, cops are having a tough, a tough run right now-

Joe Rogan 17:38 So-

Gavin de Becker 17:39 ... all over the country.

Joe Rogan 17:39 They, they really are. So, did they, like Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, when you first started working with them, were, were you, uh, old enough or aware enough that they were dealing with this, the pressures of fame and of celebrity, and that they were diluting it through alcoholism and pills, and that that's why they were doing that?

Gavin de Becker 17:59 No, uh, I, I really wasn't. I had, uh, you know, I was learning along the way, and I, they must have had experiences together where they say, "Man, this Gavin kid can really take it." But of course, I'd have the, had this childhood already, where the dramas that they were going through, uh, were, were pretty mild. Uh, my older sister-

Joe Rogan 18:17 Hmm.

Gavin de Becker 18:17 ... said a thing years ago that s- some boyfriend of hers overturned a table in anger, and was sort of moving toward her, and she said to him, "You're gonna have to do a lot more than that to get my attention." Because we were just low blood pressure. We'd been through so much already-

Joe Rogan 18:31 Hmm.

Gavin de Becker 18:31 ... as kids, and so we went through this sort of, uh, you know, o- academy of, uh, of university of adversity. And so I didn't see, and didn't understand what their circumstance was at the time. I certainly saw the, the outer look of it, but my view was, and I think a lot of people have this view, "Oh, famous people, they're built for it."... or they're just famous people. They forget, well, they weren't just famous people two weeks ago, or two years ago, or two decades ago.

Joe Rogan 18:58 Yeah.

Gavin de Becker 18:58 And so it's, it's regular people to whom a circumstance occurs, right? It doesn't change anything about you as a person and how you engage with people individually, but if something has happened to you, and, and you specifically, uh, are a good example of it because of, uh, y- you know, the, the controversial element. Um, by the way, I don't think you're controversial. I think what, you know ... Controversy gets made on the outside, it doesn't get made in here. Uh, I haven't seen a lot of, you know, hot arguments in here. Uh, and so, uh, y- y- ... That thing gets stuck to you, and it's basically a, you know, uh, an outfit you're wearing, and it's a, you know, it's, it's your, your life now.

Joe Rogan 19:39 Yeah, it's weird. The, for the most part, most people don't interact with me like I'm controversial.

Gavin de Becker 19:44 Hmm, good.

Joe Rogan 19:44 The, the vast majority of people that I meet are just friendly.

Gavin de Becker 19:47 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 19:47 The, the problem is when people want something, that's a problem. Like, these people always want me to ... They wanna give me a book or, that they wrote, or they wanna talk to me about being on the show because of some experience they've had, or... That, that becomes exhausting, because they wanna do it while you're eating dinner-

Gavin de Becker 20:02 Of course, yeah.

Joe Rogan 20:03 ... or they wanna, you know. They wanna do it while you're ordering food somewhere.

Gavin de Becker 20:06 Yeah, I like this one, that people come up to the table, uh, and I've been with so many, uh, famous people through my career and life that I've seen every variation of it. And they say, "Oh, can I take a fast picture of you?" And if the person says yes, they ... "Well, not with the fork in your hand." "Oh, so now you wanna direct me and take a, a fast picture." Uh, you know, "Not like this." It's as though it, it becomes an entitlement. There's a feeling of entitlement and a feeling of, uh, you know, this is the ... The protocol for approaching a famous person is that I say to you, "Can I have your autograph?" and you say yes, no matter what you're doing. Argument with your wife, difficult times in, in life, you know, just, uh, lost something, just gained something, doesn't matter. This is the protocol that people know, and they think that's the only one. And of course, what I've learned (laughs) is, uh, stand back and leave people alone or call out a nice thing.

Joe Rogan 20:52 Well, definitely don't interrupt them while they're eating.

Gavin de Becker 20:54 No.

Joe Rogan 20:54 Y- they're just people eating, and if, you know-

Gavin de Becker 20:56 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 20:56 ... I'm sitting there having a conversation with my kids, and I've had this before, where people come up and they, they want a photo, and I'm like, "We're having dinner."

Gavin de Becker 21:03 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 21:03 And, you know, and they're like, "Come on, man." I'm like, "What if everybody did that? Then I'm not having dinner with my kids, and I'm not talking to them, and I'm talking to you." Like, you need to come on. Like, you need to realize this is silly.

Gavin de Becker 21:13 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 21:14 Like, don't, don't... If, if I'm leaving, when I'm leaving, you wanna take a photo? Sure. I'll take a photo with you when I'm leaving. But when I'm sitting down and I have a fork, and I'm eating, have food in my mouth, like, get the fuck out of here.

Gavin de Becker 21:25 So, is it-

Joe Rogan 21:25 This is crazy.

Gavin de Becker 21:25 ... i- is it inappropriate for me to ask for a photo right now?

Joe Rogan 21:28 Ah, ah.

Gavin de Becker 21:29 I, I brought you a book that I asked you about, so ...

Joe Rogan 21:31 Yes. Well, I'm excited to read this book, 'cause, uh, a good buddy of mine really, really enjoyed this book, and, uh, he said it was very valuable to him. And the, uh, the perspective that you have about this, you know, ab- about security and, and psychology and, and, and threats of violence and all those different things, because of your childhood, and then because of your experience initially with, uh, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, is, did you know, like, when you started working with them that this childhood that you had and this, this chaos would, would help you form this career? Is that how you got into it? Uh, like, realizing that you were working with these famous people, and these famous people are, like, uniquely vulnerable-

Gavin de Becker 22:14 Hmm.

Joe Rogan 22:14 ... and that you could somehow or another protect them?

Gavin de Becker 22:16 Way before that. I think I knew at 10 years old. I had a vision that there would be a company that, uh, that, you know, people who were at-risk public figures might have a manager or an agent if they were in show business, or a family office, or a corporation, or if they were religious leaders, they'd have a church, and they would also have this consulting company that I envisioned. 10 years old. And I'm not the only person who's had an experience like that, where you, you know, you have some certainty about what's going on. I have a dear friend who won an Oscar, and she designed her Oscar dress at 10 years old.

Joe Rogan 22:50 What? (laughs)

Gavin de Becker 22:50 Yeah. No, not an actress, you know, living in, in Massachusetts somewhere, no chance of being an actress. And when she got to college, uh, the, uh, acting teacher at s- in the theater class said to the whole class on day one, uh, uh, you know, "Only one of you will ever make it in show business, statistically." And she looked around, and she thought, "Oh, these poor kids."

Joe Rogan 23:11 (laughs)

Gavin de Becker 23:13 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 23:13 Well, she was right.

Gavin de Becker 23:14 She was right, yeah.

Joe Rogan 23:14 But that ... But how weird is that, when someone is right about something like that?

Gavin de Becker 23:18 I think it happens with a lot of ... You know, look, as I get older, it happens more frequently, that something slips into the flow. And I'm not as surprised anymore when things work together the way they do. The universe is a ... got a lot of mystery to it, and, uh, you know, my, uh, my childhood and then the things I did afterwards, uh, were, you know, were sort of part of a, part of a story. And I don't take credit for crafting that story. I didn't, you know... I couldn't get myself with Elizabeth Taylor or get myself with Ronald Reagan or cause these things to happen, I guess. Uh, but I watched the movie, and it's been, it's been super interesting.

Joe Rogan 23:56 So, you're 19 years old. You work with them. How long does this relationship last?

Gavin de Becker 24:02 I, I worked with them and lived with them for two years.

Joe Rogan 24:05 Two years?

Gavin de Becker 24:06 Yeah. And then I wrote this, um, this paper, uh, that got picked up by the National Justice, uh, National Criminal Justice Reference Center, which is a, uh, part of the Department of Justice and given to every police department in America.

Joe Rogan 24:17 Back then?

Gavin de Becker 24:18 Yeah. Back then. And, uh, w- the, uh ... A- and it was a, a four-part series on ... Not about the Burtons, but about public figure protection in the private sector. And I was a good writer. Uh, and-

Joe Rogan 24:29 That's ... Uh, w- public figure protection in the private sector when you were 21 years old?

Gavin de Becker 24:33 Yeah.... yeah. But it was only of interest to law enforcement.

Joe Rogan 24:36 But you weren't law enforcement back then.

Gavin de Becker 24:38 No.

Joe Rogan 24:38 You were just an assistant to two famous people.

Gavin de Becker 24:41 Well, I had become, I became their, to use the lofty title there, uh, traveling chief of staff. So, when we would go to cities, it was me who arranged security and logistics, and I learned. And I had this really good gift you might, you might like from your own, uh, you know, Eastern self-defense training, and that is that in the mind of the beginner, there are many possibilities, and in the mind of the expert, there are few. Right?

Joe Rogan 25:04 Hmm.

Gavin de Becker 25:04 The expert says, "Oh, we tried that. That doesn't work."

Joe Rogan 25:07 Yeah.

Gavin de Becker 25:07 The beginner says, uh, "Why do they do it that way? How about this way?"

Joe Rogan 25:10 Yeah.

Gavin de Becker 25:10 And that's been my whole career. Uh, I wasn't a cop, I wasn't a Secret Service agent, but I've worked with Secret Service now, and worked on research projects with them, and, uh, you know, trained police departments all over the country. And it isn't always the path of, uh, uh, you know, going to college and learning a particular skill. I'm glad I didn't, by the way. I, I went to college, uh, for one course, one class, uh, criminal investigation. And then when I got, uh, appointed as a senior fellow at UCLA School of Public Policy, and I had to give a little speech, I thanked the dean, because, uh, "You're the first person to ever put me through college, and I've, you know, I've only been here for 20 minutes." But, uh, you know, I drove through Princeton once, was my, my other college experience. But it, look, not everybody has the life, uh, that is in the system.

Joe Rogan 25:57 Right.

Gavin de Becker 25:58 And the system offers certain, uh, makes certain promises if you do certain things. "If you go to medical school, maybe you'll become a doctor." I think those promises get broken very often by big systems. But, uh, I just had a, a different life, a different circumstance. And I did research, just like a scientist, and I met with people, and I studied, and we did experiments, and we'd do all variety of things in my company. Uh, but it wasn't at a university.

Joe Rogan 26:21 But that's just a v- a very unusual thing for a 21-year-old to do with no real background in law enforcement, other than the fact that you were, you know, coordinating with them when you were traveling with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor.

Gavin de Becker 26:34 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 26:34 That's strange that you would write s- a paper, and that that paper would actually be taken seriously.

Gavin de Becker 26:40 Yeah, it was. And nobody thought I wrote it, but it, but it was. Uh, at the time, it was, uh, taken seriously, and there wasn't a lot on the topic, and most people who had experience in this field were, were cops. And, and police departments have exactly zero training on public figure protection. It's not, uh, you know, it's its, its own discipline, and much more so now. And, uh, I, I was just fascinated by it. And, uh, and I still am.

Joe Rogan 27:04 So, you leave this, you're in your early 20s, and what do you do from then?

Gavin de Becker 27:11 So, the next thing that happened is, uh, friends and people that knew me would recommend me to others who were just becoming famous, and say, "You know, you oughta talk to this guy, Gavin De Becker. Maybe he has some advice for you." And so, a, uh, a good friend of mine at the time was a kid named Shaun Cassidy, and he became, um, a big teen idol. He was just my friend in high school, and, uh, h- he went off. He had an interesting experience too, because he was our, uh, you know, high school buddy. He was a couple years younger than me. We used to pick on him like crazy. Keep him in the middle of the pool at a friend's house, and we wouldn't let him go to the edge, uh, until (laughs) he was getting really tired 'cause he was smaller than us, and, and, uh, we were, uh, what I would call-

Joe Rogan 27:50 Bullies?

Gavin de Becker 27:51 F- uh, no, no, I call it fun bullies.

Joe Rogan 27:52 (laughs)

Gavin de Becker 27:52 But it's the, but it's the same thing, yes, bullies. And, um, he went off to Germany, and had an experience of being The Beatles. We did not know it. We didn't know, uh, and, and he got to come back, and be in the pool again, and be treated like shit again. And ultimately, he did become a big teen idol in America. And, uh, and I was a natural person to give him advice and guide him-

Joe Rogan 28:13 So he-

Gavin de Becker 28:13 ... through that circumstance.

Joe Rogan 28:14 He was like David Hasselhoff in that regard? Like, he would go to Germany and he'd be huge?

Gavin de Becker 28:19 I- in the beginning, but then he became huge all over the world. I mean, he-

Joe Rogan 28:21 Mm-hmm. But that was the first place he was famous?

Gavin de Becker 28:22 It was, yeah. And he, he became, you know, cover of People Magazine and big recording artist, and all that stuff, and-

Joe Rogan 28:27 My sister was in love with him when I was a kid.

Gavin de Becker 28:29 Yeah? A lot of sisters.

Joe Rogan 28:31 (laughs)

Gavin de Becker 28:31 And, uh, in fact, when we, when we, now as, uh, as adults, we would go into a restaurant and he could tell if the person seating you was of a certain age, "We're gonna get a great table," right? Some people would say, "Oh, you know, I was, uh, I was a big fan of your brother," 'cause his older brother, David Cassidy-

Joe Rogan 28:47 David, yeah.

Gavin de Becker 28:47 ... was also famous. And then other people would say, "Oh my God, you were on my, you were on my bedroom wall all, all through childhood." Of course, they're now 56 years old and-

Joe Rogan 28:55 Is he still alive?

Gavin de Becker 28:56 Oh my God, yes.

Joe Rogan 28:57 Shaun is?

Gavin de Becker 28:58 Uh, Shaun, oh yeah, alive?

Joe Rogan 28:58 David's not?

Gavin de Becker 28:59 Na- David's not, but Shaun is alive, a big TV producer.

Joe Rogan 29:02 Oh.

Gavin de Becker 29:02 And a, and, and a TV writer, smart guy. But anyway, so then I had an experience with him, then he referred me to somebody else, then comes a whole series of, of clients, and this company began to be formed. And around 1980, um, a dear friend of mine, Morgan Mason, uh, still a dear friend, uh, went to work for Ronald Reagan. Speaking of controversial and unpopular, that was like going to work for Trump if, uh, in Hollywood, you know that-

Joe Rogan 29:29 Hmm.

Gavin de Becker 29:29 ... "Oh, Ronald Reagan was the worst thing in the world." He'd been governor of California. Uh, and, uh, so he went to work for Ronald Reagan, and guess what happened? Reagan became president when everybody said, "You're wasting your time," and, "He'll never become president." And he called me and, and gave me a job. I was now, I probably was 26, and he gave me a job as a director of special services group for the president's inaugural. And this president, because he'd been in show business, had all kinds of people coming, Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin and Johnny Carson, et cetera. And right at the beginning of my getting there, John Lennon, uh, was assassinated. And the Lennon's had also hired me to do work for them if they went on tour. And they were deciding whether to go on tour based on the success of a, of a, his last record album called Double Fantasy. And they decided, uh, not to go on tour. I never met them at that time. Uh, uh, uh, I did, uh, meet her later. But, uh, so I went up to the, uh, to New York, uh, and we had this, uh, a bunch of meetings after he was assassinated. Uh, sad memories. And interestingly, I learned later that I was at Blair House, uh, I was now working for Reagan, was now working for President-elect Reagan-... uh, as director of Special Services Group. And I was at Blair House in the morning, where the president-elect was staying, and then I flew to New York for this meeting after John Lennon was killed. And I let, later learned that John Hinckley made the same trip the same day, and flew back the same, on the same trip the same day. He also went and stood outside the Dakota building, where John Lennon was killed, in getting up his courage to eventually shoot, uh, President Reagan. And, and he shot him-

Joe Rogan 31:09 Wow.

Gavin de Becker 31:09 ... a few months later. So then Reagan became president, and he was the oldest president at that time. Not anymore. But he was the oldest president at that time, and he appointed me as the youngest appointee ever at Department of Justice, on the President's Advisory Board. So I'm kinda giving you the, the process of how this, how this particular life happened. And, um, I remember, you know, being on that advisory board, and there was the Supreme Court justice, uh, chief justice from Arizona was on the board with me, and a Supreme Court justice from California, and the sheriff of San Diego County, and this kid. You know, and we're sitting at the table at our first meeting, and I, as an icebreaker, I said, uh, "Well, has anybody here ever been arrested?" Knowing that, of course, none of these people would have been arrested. And every single one of them had a story about being arrested. We went around the table. I had mine. They had theirs. You know, it would be, "I was standing in line with my, you know, 20-year-old son, and the guy behind me said, 'Such, such and such,' and my son took a swing at him, and I took a swing at him, and we all went to jail." Or it would be, "I was in college, and my girlfriend called the police because I took the record collection, and I got arrested." Every single one of them, Supreme Court justices, chiefs of police, uh, head of the Pennsylvania Crime Commission, all of them had a story of being arrested. And my asking that question was an icebreaker that, uh, uh, you know, that made our relationship work. Suddenly, this 26-year-old kid in the room who doesn't know shit about shit was actually kind of interesting. (laughs) And, uh, so, uh, that led to some, uh, big research projects that I got done. Uh, uh, the biggest one being on, uh, assessment of threats to public figures, and, uh, that I worked on for five years, and that was published and became a big deal, again, in law enforcement, and, uh, led to all kinds of things. I mean, and then I got appointed to something by, by George Bush also, not the younger but the older George Bush.

Joe Rogan 33:02 So it essentially started out as almost like a word of mouth.

Gavin de Becker 33:05 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 33:05 And then you just start working for people, your reputation grows-

Gavin de Becker 33:08 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 33:08 ... and then you do more and more research to get more and more involved in it.

Gavin de Becker 33:12 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 33:12 Did you also find that there was a lack of understanding of what was necessary to protect people? That, like, the, there was... You know, when you're talking about your beginner's mindset-

Gavin de Becker 33:22 Hmm.

Joe Rogan 33:22 ... were there people that were doing it incorrectly? And, like, what, what flaws did you find?

Gavin de Becker 33:27 I think the big... Yes is the answer. It's a, it's a good question, because it was a-

Joe Rogan 33:31 (clears throat)

Gavin de Becker 33:32 You know, in those days, when John Lennon was assassinated, uh, there then came a few in a row, and they tend to group, uh, all kinds of, of, uh, uh, sort of media-age violence groups. So if you have a school shooting, you'll have another and another, uh, within a geographical area. Right now, by the way, at the present moment in the United States, we're having multiple victim shootings almost every day. So something that, you know, used to happen every few months and be a giant story is now happening all the time, but we'll cover that, uh, maybe later. But on your question, I think the biggest mistake that people were making in public figure protection was the belief that threats, a direct death threat, "I'm gonna kill you," was the most important communication that could be assessed in advance, and that was simply not true. What I learned through research and then later wrote about is that of every public figure attack you've ever heard of, of everyone you've ever known where a public figure was killed, not any of them were threatened directly by that, by the person who killed them in advance.

Joe Rogan 34:35 Really?

Gavin de Becker 34:36 So the... And likewise, none of the people who made a direct threat to a public figure later shot that public figure. So when I started, everybody was very, uh, you know, responsive to a direct threat. "Oh, it's a death threat. He says he's gonna kill me." And, uh, and I learned that other kinds of communications were far more indicative of who will show up. And I learned that the, the art, and still today, the art and craft of what I do and what my company does, is try to avoid unplanned encounters, unwanted encounters. Because if you avoid the, all the unwanted encounters, you're also avoiding the dangerous ones. And you can be sure that nobody who travels 1,000 miles to get a meeting with you or waits outside your house if you're a famous person is gonna hand you a check for a million dollars. That's not (laughs) what they're coming for. It's always something for them, and it's always something, uh, inappropriate, because millions of people write fan letters or emails or are, uh, admirers of a recording artist or a, or a politician or whatever, but very few, statistically speaking, make, uh, what we call targeted travel. You know, get, figure out where somebody lives or where they work and, and travels to see them. So my approach was different from others, which was to, uh, try to detect as early as possible those individuals who might pursue encounters. And from that to where we are now, we now have the largest library in the world of threat material directed to public figures. I think it's about 600,000 pieces of communication. People who send blood, people who send bullets, people who send body parts.

Joe Rogan 36:06 They send blood?

Gavin de Becker 36:07 Oh yeah, we've-

Joe Rogan 36:07 Body parts?

Gavin de Becker 36:08 Yeah, we've had everything.

Joe Rogan 36:09 Like what kind of body parts?

Gavin de Becker 36:10 We've had a finger. Uh, we've had-

Joe Rogan 36:12 Their own finger or somebody else's?

Gavin de Becker 36:14 Uh, their own. We've had-

Joe Rogan 36:15 (laughs)

Gavin de Becker 36:15 ... explosives. Uh-

Joe Rogan 36:17 Ooh.

Gavin de Becker 36:17 We've had facsimile bombs, uh, uh, blood, hair-

Joe Rogan 36:21 So someone cut-

Gavin de Becker 36:22 ... skin.

Joe Rogan 36:22 ... their own finger off to send it to a celebrity?

Gavin de Becker 36:25 Yeah, to a public figure.

Joe Rogan 36:25 Can you say who, who they did it to?

Gavin de Becker 36:27 No.

Joe Rogan 36:28 No?

Gavin de Becker 36:28 Um, but, uh, uh, I mean, uh, our whole podcast would be talking about weird things people have sent to public figures.

Joe Rogan 36:34 What was the message with the finger?

Gavin de Becker 36:36 I'll give you another one 'cause, that I remember the message for, which is somebody, uh, sent an animal they had killed.... and said, um, "I killed this because it's, it was beautiful like you."

Joe Rogan 36:45 Oh, Jesus.

Gavin de Becker 36:46 So there's no direct threat there-

Joe Rogan 36:48 (clears throat)

Gavin de Becker 36:48 ... but clearly somebody has-

Joe Rogan 36:50 And implied.

Gavin de Becker 36:50 ... that much emotional investment. It's a, you know, it's a serious topic. And so, that is probably the biggest change I made in, in my y- y- you know, my contribution was that direct threats were not the most important pre-incident indicator.

Joe Rogan 37:04 Hmm. And before that they were, they were considered?

Gavin de Becker 37:07 They were.

Joe Rogan 37:08 Yeah.

Gavin de Becker 37:08 If, if you went to cops when I was starting and you said, "Look, we've got this person and, and he's written 10,000 letters to one public figure. He goes every single day to the mailbox to check and see if she's responded. He's mentally ill. He is, uh, he's lost his job and we're c- we're concerned about him." Cops would say, "Well, did he make a threat?" (laughs) Well, it, it is a threat. It's, the circumstance in- includes hazard, but, uh, in those days, they responded only to threats. And now we've made a lot of progress in that, that there are other kinds of communications

Gavin de Becker 37:38 that are pre-incident indicators. I just wanna give you and your listeners this, uh, little, uh, uh, acronym, which is PIN, pre-incident indicators.

Joe Rogan 37:49 Hmm.

Gavin de Becker 37:49 So before everything that ever happens, there are PINs. And so one of the things in my work and in my book and in the masterclass that I've done, what we're trying to teach people about is what are the early pre-incident indicators of people in your life who turn violent or people who aren't yet in your life who turn violent? In other words, can we predict violence in advance? And the answer is we can.

Joe Rogan 38:11 And so you go from this to, uh, uh, I mean, I don't wanna make this big leap into the Jeff Bezos thing, but it is, um, i- i- it's, it's very fascinating to me. You were involved in finding out how Jeff Bezos' phone got hacked, and you were involved in connecting it to the Saudis and that whole thing. How did, how did this all come about?

Gavin de Becker 38:35 Well, I, I, I have promised, I wrote one, um, op-ed for The Daily Beast about this and in that op-ed at the end, I say, "I'll never say another word on this case because I'm turning it over to the federal government." That was a few years ago. So I, what I can share is only that which has been public and, and a lot wasn't public. But, uh, the, the, uh, circumstance did involve, uh, MBS, who's the prime, you know, the, the, the prince of Saudi Arabia, and he did send a, uh, a text with a video to Jeff Bezos. They knew each other, they had met, they had exchanged phone numbers and embedded in that video was a, uh, a, uh, system that downloaded something that then later connects to a website and downloads something more sinister like Pegasus 2.0, which is a, a, a, um, a system that, uh, governments around the world use to get into your phone and then they have full control of your phone.

Joe Rogan 39:32 So it doesn't immediately connect to it?

Gavin de Becker 39:34 No. It doesn't download immediately because it's a bigger-

Joe Rogan 39:36 Mm-hmm.

Gavin de Becker 39:36 ... package. Uh, what, what you're getting in your first, uh, incursion into a phone, uh, or laptop or iPad or whatever, you're getting a, uh, a very small file, a little executable file that then later reaches out, uh, via the internet.

Joe Rogan 39:51 And that executable file could be a website, it could be...

Gavin de Becker 39:54 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 39:55 And does it exist only on the physical phone itself? Or is it, is it in the operating system? And if you change phones and, like, upload to the cloud and then re-upload, do you... or re-download on a new phone, does th- that, does that spy software make it onto your phone again?

Gavin de Becker 40:13 Probably not, but we don't know completely. Whether it does or it doesn't, when a government wants you, like the US government or Saudi or... So basically there are, there are two kinds of countries in the world when it comes to, uh, to incursions into, uh, smartphones. There are, uh, original developers, the United States, China, Soviet Union and Israel. So there are original developers of programs that do these things. And then there are the purchasing countries, uh, Mexico, Saudi Arabia and all 190 other countries. By the way, I say 190. Do you know there isn't even a consensus about the number of countries in the world? Countries can't even agree on that.

Joe Rogan 40:50 Is that because of like Taiwan and-

Gavin de Becker 40:52 Taiwan's a good example.

Joe Rogan 40:53 Yeah.

Gavin de Becker 40:54 Yeah. So, um, so, uh, the, the best way I can put it to you is that if a government wants you, from an informational point of view, wants to get into your phone, um, they have you. Uh, the, these systems are extraordinarily robust, powerful as I learned more and more about them. It's not actually my area of expertise, cybersecurity, but as I had to learn more about it for myself and for clients, uh, when the Saudis wanted to get into a phone, they could.

Joe Rogan 41:22 What if you're dealing... What if you're communicating rather only through direct encryption devices or, uh, applications rather like Signal?

Gavin de Becker 41:30 Yeah. It's a very good question. So if Signal, uh, i- encrypts the, the package going back and forth between the two devices over the internet. So if you have, uh, interception between device A and device B, the... it'll be encrypted and... But that's not what happens with things like Pegasus 2.0. Pegasus 2.0 is a very high-end, uh, system, and it's in your phone just like you're in your phone. Everything you can do on your phone, I can do from 7,000 miles away in some Saudi government office.

Joe Rogan 42:01 Wow.

Gavin de Becker 42:01 And so Signal doesn't help you with that. I do think, however, uh, by the way, Signal is a, is a foundation. It's not a for-profit company, so I'm glad to, to promote it. I do think they have something very valuable on Signal, and that is disappearing messages, which is you can s- if you and I were exchanging Signal communications, we could set in one week, make all this disappear. In one hour, make all this disappear, up to four weeks. That's very valuable because otherwise our text messages... Look, I, I was tasked to do this for myself when the Saudi thing started, which is, I have to think about everything that's on my phone. Holy shit.... every communication I had, you know, for years. Every text I sent, every photo, every argument, every joke that would be taken out of context. Y- you know, it's a very hard thing to do because we're, it's, we're like a mind. We're collecting all of this data-

Joe Rogan 42:50 Right.

Gavin de Becker 42:50 ... i- in the phone. And so Signal is valuable. I think Signal's a good, a good service and, uh, but it doesn't solve the problem if a government wants you. Uh, if a government wants information, uh, they, they can get it through programs like, uh, like, uh, Pegasus 2.

Joe Rogan 43:04 Right. Well, how does Pegasus 2 get on your phone?

Gavin de Becker 43:07 Well, different ways. It is a no-click-

Joe Rogan 43:09 (clears throat)

Gavin de Becker 43:10 ... uh, incursion, meaning you don't have to click on anything. Uh, you, you might, you know, typically, you would get a text and you would open that text and that would download the little executable file. Or you would watch a video and it would be i- in the video. But e- now, the newest, uh, Pegasus systems, they don't even need you to do anything. Uh, they can send you a message on WhatsApp, and even if you never m-, uh, even if you delete it, even if you never open it, they can get in your phone.

Joe Rogan 43:35 But what if you don't use WhatsApp?

Gavin de Becker 43:37 It's a help. By the way, I, I don't recommend WhatsApp. A- or-

Joe Rogan 43:40 Why's that?

Gavin de Becker 43:40 ... because WhatsApp has had a, um, s- uh, for some reasons that I don't wanna share, and for some reasons that I do wanna share, WhatsApp has had a particularly, uh, vulnerable circumstance with regard to, uh, with regard to, uh, people getting into other people's phones. Now having said that, there are thousands of people right now all over the world working on nothing but getting into the new iPhone operating system. And then there's thousands of people at Apple working on nothing but being sure that the new operating system is impenetrable. And this just is a, uh, you know, is an arms race that's gonna go on, it's gonna go on forever.

Joe Rogan 44:16 So, you, you were saying that don't, i- if you get a message through WhatsApp. But what if you don't get a message through WhatsApp? Is that executable of just a blank text message comes your way and you don't open it?

Gavin de Becker 44:27 Less than that, unfortunately. You can get nothing at all with Pegasus 2. You can get nothing at all. They can enter a telephone number and they can get into your phone.

Joe Rogan 44:35 Nothing at all? No text messages?

Gavin de Becker 44:37 No. You don't get anything.

Joe Rogan 44:37 So you have no idea whatsoever?

Gavin de Becker 44:39 That's correct. And that's a problem with, you know, zero-day exploits, which is you don't know it happened and you go on for months and months and months not knowing that somebody's in your phone, uh, is a, is a problem.

Joe Rogan 44:49 And how do you find out if someone's in your phone?

Gavin de Becker 44:51 Well, depends on, on the circumstance. In, in, uh, in the case you described, uh, I was notified by, originally by somebody in CIA, then notified, uh, eight times by the FBI about the, what information they had learned. And then we began to do, uh, to do, uh, you know, work on the phone itself. And you learn about it in those ways, which is very difficult, by the way. Because Pegasus 2, I feel like I'm giving a commercial for Pegasus 2, but I, I, uh, most people can't really, can't buy it anyway. But Pegasus 2 is not sitting in an armchair waiting for you to arrive, "Hey, I'm over here." It is extremely well hidden, uh, right down at the very core levels of a, uh, of a phone or, uh, or an iPad. And, uh, but there are strategies for, uh, for finding it, and they're challenging and they're evolving all the time. There are, you know, whole organizations like, uh, Citizen Lab and a, and a really great expert, uh, Anthony Ferrante who used to work for Obama at the White House on this kind of stuff. He's now in, in private practice. Uh, they've had a lot of success. They even have found, uh, uh, Pegasus 2 in the wild, meaning before there was a reason to be suspicious, they've identified it. And, uh, it's a tricky game because it, it, it... Let's say you were targeted y- by the Mexican government, which happened a lot to people, and, uh, you, you have it on your phone and you think you are being monitored in some way, so you get rid of your phone. You turn it off, you put it in the top drawer. Well, Pegasus will say, "Hey, this activity has just stopped. Self-delete." It'll self-destruct. So now you, you ev- you don't even have any evidence that it ever happened, even if you could get an FBI involved in it.

Joe Rogan 46:35 So Pegasus sends a signal to the person that's using the spyware to tell you that that phone is not active any longer?

Gavin de Becker 46:42 Well, they know. They, they s- they see immediately, "Hey, Joe isn't texting his friends anymore." So they know that right away.

Joe Rogan 46:48 So they execute it-

Gavin de Becker 46:50 But the s-

Joe Rogan 46:50 ... independently?

Gavin de Becker 46:50 Nope. Nope. It can happen internally. Because what happens, remember, when it's, when it's turned off or the battery's taken out or a wide variety of things can happen that, uh, you know, with a, quote, uh, "suspect phone," um, it will self-destruct on its own, uh, after a few days of no contact. That's one of the things they market. I got all their marketing material. Uh, and at the time, you know, when we were really doing this investigation, we were getting a lot of content from around the world. It is, uh, it's sold by a company called NSO, which is in Israel, based in Israel. And, uh, it's a very dark game all over the world, uh, involving governments and other powerful people. And, uh, you know, phone... L- most people say, "Well, what do I care? Nobody wants to get into my phone." And they're right. Uh, but if you are a person who is subject to, uh, to the interest of government anywhere in the world, uh, it's very hard to have privacy.

Joe Rogan 47:43 So if you don't get a message through WhatsApp, what are the other vulnerabilities? Like, could you get a message through Twitter? Can you get a message through-

Gavin de Becker 47:50 Yes, you could get a regular-

Joe Rogan 47:52 ... Instagram?

Gavin de Becker 47:52 You could get a regular text.

Joe Rogan 47:53 A regular text?

Gavin de Becker 47:54 Yeah. Pegasus 1, which did require that the user click on something, but Pegasus 2 is a no-click exploit. Nothing has to happen.

Joe Rogan 48:03 So someone can just send you a text? You don't even have to open it?

Gavin de Becker 48:07 Not even send... Less than that. What I'm-

Joe Rogan 48:09 Less than that.

Gavin de Becker 48:09 ... saying is that the, that the high-end Pegasus system that's used by Saudi Arabia and other countries, all they need to do is have your phone number.

Joe Rogan 48:16 That's it?

Gavin de Becker 48:17 Noth- nothing more.

Joe Rogan 48:17 So they have your phone number, they have access to all your photographs, your messages, everything you send?

Gavin de Becker 48:23 Yep. Turn on your phone, there's a microphone right now in this room.

Joe Rogan 48:26 Wow.

Gavin de Becker 48:26 Turn on your phone, there's a camera right now. And even, it's so, it's so smart. Let's say it makes an audio, uh, recording of a phone call. And it doesn't download it right now. It waits until the phone is quiet and it's, you know, late night in the, in the target destination, like in your home, it's late night. And then it downloads it at night so that you don't even see a reduction in performance.... right? And then people who are sort of watching the, the cost don't see spikes of all kinds of activity. In the case you talked about, uh, gigabytes of data was taken out of that phone.

Joe Rogan 48:58 Gigabytes?

Gavin de Becker 48:59 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 49:00 How many gigabytes are on a phone?

Gavin de Becker 49:02 No idea. Don't know. Uh, so, so anyway, yeah, the, the, the short punchline on this is that there is no way to... There's a lot of products being sold that do the best they can, but, uh, depending on who wants you, there really is no way, uh... You know, if the Central Intelligence Agency wants to get into somebody's phone overseas, they can do it.

Joe Rogan 49:21 Now, is there a difference between operating systems? Like, is there more of a vulnerability to Android than there is to iPhone?

Gavin de Becker 49:28 I hear... Again, not an expert, but I hear that there's more vulnerability to, uh, to iPhone, but that might be because they are the ones that are targeted most often and that thousands of people are working on all the time-

Joe Rogan 49:40 Yeah, that was my question.

Gavin de Becker 49:41 ... to get into it. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 49:41 Like, what about one of those, uh, de-Googled Android phones-

Gavin de Becker 49:46 Yep. Pro- pro-

Joe Rogan 49:46 ... that are becoming more...

Gavin de Becker 49:48 Probably better, but I don't know.

Joe Rogan 49:50 You don't know? Because there's a lot of people that are swearing by those now that have moved to these operating systems that have been manipulated to the point where they don't send information, you can't get tracked, GPS doesn't work, all that stuff.

Gavin de Becker 50:04 Yeah, it's good to have the, you know, the least, the, the, those lowest number of apps you can have on a phone, the better, if you're talking about just using it for phone calls. The challenge I have, because I get... You can imagine, every product is brought to me, usually given to me for free to try, hoping that clients will want it or, or that my company will want it. I see everything. But the challenge is, it's a moving target. So if somebody says today, "Oh, we've got something great for such and such," two weeks later, uh, people have been able to... Adversaries have been able to work on it and it's an arms race. And so it's sort of like saying, "Hey, I got this great new thing, you know, a catapult, and I can throw fiery bombs over the wall of a castle." Yeah, it's not so interesting anymore now (claps) that we have tanks. These things continue to evolve.

Joe Rogan 50:45 Hmm. (smacks lips) Do you anticipate there ever being a time where they can circumvent that and there w- will no longer be exploits like that? Or is this just a new reality that people have to live with?

Gavin de Becker 50:58 I anticipate it going in the other direction, which is that it, uh, it becomes far more accessible for far more people and that anything we do, you know, online is, is subject to, to being intercepted and seen more and more. You know, a lot of people... Like, I have clients who could be targeted by China, could be targeted by Russia, could be targeted by France, could be targeted by the United States, by other companies, by powerful adversaries. And they often say, "Well, I just treat every communication as if it could be heard." Uh, but the reality is that as human beings on a phone call, we are unguarded, right? You don't wanna have a phone call with me or a conversation that's, uh, that's completely guarded-

Joe Rogan 51:38 Right.

Gavin de Becker 51:38 ... where I'm like this all the time. And so the reality is that this is going to be a vulnerability in, in people's lives, uh, period.

Joe Rogan 51:45 And it's going to expand?

Gavin de Becker 51:47 Expand, sure.

Joe Rogan 51:48 And do you think it's gonna expand to the point where, uh, regular people have access to everyone else's phone and all their data?

Gavin de Becker 51:55 I think it will expand to where, uh, motivated people, and not governments, could get access to other people's data. And, you know, there are even laws, uh, there's some in the UK where, you know, why should people be able to have a secret encrypted communication? What are they trying to hide? Government is challenged by it, right?

Joe Rogan 52:11 Yeah, I've seen those.

Gavin de Becker 52:12 People in power are challenged by that stuff. And so, well, because we, we might wanna have a communication that the government isn't part of. That would be the reason. But, uh, uh, but people in power don't like it. And so slowly, it will erode that way as well.

Joe Rogan 52:25 Well, those are some of the dumbest arguments ever. Like, why would you want encrypted communication? And th- there was... D- during, um... After January 6th in particular, there was, uh, a lot of talk of the dangers of encrypted-

Gavin de Becker 52:37 Yes.

Joe Rogan 52:37 ... peer-to-peer messages and, and applications, which I thought was hilarious.

Gavin de Becker 52:42 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 52:42 Like, just because there's a few nuts that, you know, stormed the Capitol, you, you want to have all encrypted messages illegal? Or enc- encrypted messages apps? You think they're a problem because a, a tiny fraction of the people that use it are up to nefarious actions?

Gavin de Becker 53:00 Yeah. Well, it's a goofy... You know, the government equation, uh, throughout human history is always to, uh, uh, protect its power as much as possible. And the absolute wet dream of every government on Earth is, uh, is the internet and the way we engage with it, right? I mean, if you read 1984, still a fantastic book by the way. Interesting thing, it, it's 70 years old, that book, and uh, year before last, the... 2020, um, it was the 17th best-selling book in the country. It was a top 20 best-selling book.

Joe Rogan 53:32 Wow.

Gavin de Becker 53:33 Isn't that encouraging, though, about people having their head screwed on right? In other words, that they were aware that some of what they're seeing is not just pandemic or is not just politics. It is also a, a s- you know, profound gathering of power.

Joe Rogan 53:47 Yeah.

Gavin de Becker 53:48 And, uh, there's never been a day in human history, not a moment, that there weren't well-funded people close to people in power working on the best new weapon, uh, and, uh, or the best new method for controlling other people.

Joe Rogan 54:03 Why was MBS trying to get into Jeff Bezos's phone?

Gavin de Becker 54:07 Hard always to predict what someone else... you know, what's going on in their heads. I can just tell you the circumstances at the time, uh, included that, uh, that the Saudi government was negotiating a multi-billion dollar deal, uh, with Amazon. And so, uh, that's one. Uh, I think the far more likely one is that Jeff was the owner of the, uh, Washington Post-

Joe Rogan 54:30 Hmm.

Gavin de Becker 54:30 ... and the Washington Post was employing, uh-

Joe Rogan 54:33 Jamal Khashoggi.

Gavin de Becker 54:34 Jamal Khashoggi. And he was just really ramping up his communications that were making MBS crazy. We had sources inside the, the Royal Palace and the family, and who said that, uh, MBS's first thing every morning was to open the Washington Post, uh, website and look at what was in there. He was very stressed by it, and, uh, as you may have heard, he became so stressed that he, uh, you know, ordered the killing of Khashoggi.

Joe Rogan 54:58 Yeah. I, uh, followed that very closely and I had Bryan Fogle on when he was promoting The Dissident.

Gavin de Becker 55:05 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 55:05 And that documentary is terrifying.

Gavin de Becker 55:08 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 55:09 And the response by the world, the world stage, is terrifying too, because they kind of just waited to see how much outrage was out there and then sort of accepted-

Gavin de Becker 55:21 Yes.

Joe Rogan 55:21 ... the fact that this head of state killed a journalist and had him dismembered in a consulate.

Gavin de Becker 55:28 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 55:28 I mean, the whole story is beyond crazy. I mean, he flew a hit team with a coroner-

Gavin de Becker 55:36 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 55:36 ... amongst them. I mean, there's audio recordings apparently.

Gavin de Becker 55:39 Yes, there are. Yeah. Uh, so I worked on that case a lot, and, uh, I know Bryan well. And it's good that you mentioned The Dissident because it's a fantastic documentary and it too got canceled in every way possible.

Joe Rogan 55:52 Yes.

Gavin de Becker 55:52 And, uh, so it became very difficult to see. I'm sure you can see it now, but-

Joe Rogan 55:55 Well, no, it's not difficult to see.

Gavin de Becker 55:56 ... it became difficult to promote, that's what I mean.

Joe Rogan 55:58 Well, I promoted it.

Gavin de Becker 55:59 Yep.

Joe Rogan 55:59 Um, I think he had a really hard time finding streaming services to accept it.

Gavin de Becker 56:04 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 56:04 That's what, what I thought was fascinating, that even Jeff Bezos, who had been victimized by this, uh, intrusion on his privacy, he wasn't willing to have it stream on Amazon Prime. You could buy it.

Gavin de Becker 56:17 Yep.

Joe Rogan 56:18 And, you know, you could buy it on iTunes, but the amount of people that would buy something versus the amount of people that would stream something for free on Netflix, it's a big difference. And he was just coming off of this Icarus documentary, which was award-winning. It was a huge hit for Netflix, and he felt like Netflix is just gonna have- welcome him with open arms for his next project because obviously the guy's super talented.

Gavin de Becker 56:40 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 56:41 And they were like, "Uh-uh, not interested." That's how powerful that guy is.

Gavin de Becker 56:44 Yeah. That's how powerful, uh, powerful people are in general. And, and, you know, uh, Bryan, uh, Fogle won an Academy Award for Netflix, their first one, for Icarus. And, uh, and I agree. I, I, you know, I thought right alongside him, "Of course Netflix will want this. This is a hell of a documentary."

Joe Rogan 57:01 Right.

Gavin de Becker 57:01 "This is incredible."

Joe Rogan 57:02 Yeah.

Gavin de Becker 57:02 I mean, you've seen it.

Joe Rogan 57:03 Yeah.

Gavin de Becker 57:03 It's got amazing information and amazing insight. Uh, but that is where we are. We are in a... You might have heard about this. We are in a, uh, cancellation culture, you know, with a tremendous amount of, uh...

Joe Rogan 57:13 I heard about that.

Gavin de Becker 57:13 You did? I thought so. Y- so you are paying attention to what's going on.

Joe Rogan 57:17 Yeah, it's going on.

Gavin de Becker 57:17 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 57:17 It's going around like the flu.

Gavin de Becker 57:18 Yep.

Joe Rogan 57:19 (laughs)

Gavin de Becker 57:19 And, uh, so, uh, that i- i- that is a, you know, the use of the word dangerous, for example, when you said, you know, it's dangerous for people to be able to communicate encrypted, uh, end-to-end encryption. Um, anytime that word is, is floated, that something is dangerous, uh, what you wanna hear that as is it's dangerous to government.

Joe Rogan 57:40 Hm.

Gavin de Becker 57:40 That's who it's dangerous to. I mean, governments have been in this game of using fear to control human behavior and to control their own populations throughout history. It's n- there's never been anything else. And so when we see... Anytime a government wants us to fear something, it's very important to ask yourself and really learn about what that thing is. Is that thing worth fearing in the ways that the government is telling us? Because government wins from a frightened population all the time. And there's been examples of it, you know, President W- Woodrow Wilson wanting to get support to get into World War I. Uh, he formed a virtual police state, like something out of 1984, with people, uh, you know, fired and people losing their careers and people being lynched and new sedition laws and all variety of things. And if you weren't with us, you're against us. And, and it was pretty severe. So it's happened before.

Joe Rogan 58:30 Yeah.

Gavin de Becker 58:31 Post 9/11, of course. And, uh, and I just found an amazing one, by the way. I wanna tell you because it's so amazing. It's slightly off the topic of me, but, um, King Charles in the 1600s banned coffee houses in England. Why? Because coffee houses were places that people gathered together and talked, and they'd be a little, you know, uh, uh, amped up because of the coffee and they'd be feeling good with each other. And so, uh, he put out a proclamation, I'm quoting it here, "Restrain the spreading of false news and licentious talking of matters of state and government." And he said that this bold discourse that was going on, this is really worth it, "That the public assumed to themselves a liberty not only in coffee houses but in other places and meetings, both public and private, to censure and defame the proceedings of state by speaking evil of things they do not understand and, uh, and causing jealousy and dissatisfaction in the minds of my subjects," the king's subjects. But, but I wanna give you one more piece of this. The following year, he extends it to not just coffee houses, but any place that sells coffee or chocolate or tea. And I'm not joking, by the way. This is true. And then the following year, he does another proclamation and this one says, "Spreaders of false news or promoters of anything malicious against the state will be considered seditious." You know, going against the government.

Joe Rogan 59:51 Wow.

Gavin de Becker 59:51 So...

Joe Rogan 59:52 And what, what year is this?

Gavin de Becker 59:53 1650, uh, 1672, uh, '73, '74.

Joe Rogan 59:57 So that's where fake news came from.

Gavin de Becker 59:59 Yeah, no shit.

Joe Rogan 1:00:00 (laughs)

Gavin de Becker 1:00:00 And, and, uh, that's right. But i- interesting, why I, why I wanted to share that with you is that here we are on, you know, the Joe Rogan Experience, which has had its share of, of, uh, shit flung at it for literally just having conversations, nothing, nothing more going on in here, no collection of, of weapons or plans to overthrow the government. And I always like to remind people that these things are not new, they're human nature, meaning governments have done this always. And, uh, and every word I just read in that thing, it's amazing. He wanted to ban coffee houses, and now people wanna ban end-to-end encryption or anything else that will, uh, allow for an actual open dialogue.

Joe Rogan 1:00:42 Well, there's people that are openly talking about amending the First Amendment-

Gavin de Becker 1:00:45 Hm.

Joe Rogan 1:00:46 ... changing it-

Gavin de Becker 1:00:47 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:00:47 ... and saying maybe we shouldn't have so much free speech. Maybe free speech is a problem, which is-

Gavin de Becker 1:00:52 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:00:53 ... crazy. It's crazy that there's so many people that have a voice and have a, a say in matters and they're so shortsighted that that's one of the things that they would actually say.

Gavin de Becker 1:01:03 Yeah. I, I think it is, uh... But it has existed before, and I think it's important to remember that if you look at human history, it's almost all tyranny. And the United States and Western Europe is a tiny sliver of the pie, it's a tiny period in human history in which we grew up, um, uh, with freedom of speech, and, uh, and we grew up with these protections from the court and from, uh, you know, the Constitution. But it's not a, it's, it's not some

Gavin de Becker 1:01:33 permanent state of affairs. It definitely won't last forever. And I, I say to people who wanna change, uh, any amendment, w- wanna make an amendment to the amendments, eh, eh, you know, in the Constitution, you almost don't have to, because major media companies have done it anyway. Right? Major media companies, uh, New York Times, CNN, etc., etc. Something your listeners might not know about called, uh, the Trusted News Initiative that's run by BBC, which is a whole collection of major media companies from all over the world who decide together on how to handle certain stories. And that's how you get, uh, you know, 5,000 headlines that say, uh, "Ivermectin is a, is a horse paste." Uh, Ivermectin is a, uh, an animal drug in the same way that, uh, antibiotics are an animal drug, meaning we have a shared biology with other animals and, uh, uh, a- and it can be given to all kinds of, of beings, but of course it's a people drug. Won the Nobel Prize as a people drug. Uh, given billions of times as a people drug. But when you looked at what happened with you, you had a monolithic approach in media, where everybody said the same thing.

Joe Rogan 1:02:41 Yeah.

Gavin de Becker 1:02:41 Horse paste. Horse paste. And that's because of, uh, a monolithic approach in corporate media right now.

Joe Rogan 1:02:47 And so who's at the helm of that?

Gavin de Becker 1:02:49 Well, the, the BBC Trusted News Initiative is certainly the most organized version that we're aware of, but I think in any of these things like what we're experiencing for the last two years, people wanna find a single villain. You know, it's Klaus Schwab, it's Bill Gates, it's pharma companies, whatever it may be, because it's a simpler narrative. And, and unfortunately it's not a simple narrative. What happens is this. Many, many people have competing incentives to exploit a new thing. So for example, when 9/11 happened, and, uh, you know, airplanes flown into buildings, there came up companies that reinforced the concrete on government buildings, as if they could stop a fucking airliner. Ridiculous. But the government spent millions of dollars on it, on reinforcing windows and reinforcing, you know, the outsides of buildings. My point being that for, in our current world, if you used to make perfume, now you make hand sanitizer. If you used to make bumper stickers, now you make stickers that say, "Stand six feet apart," that are on the, you know, the floor of the supermarket. Uh, if you used to make, uh, uh, you know, fabric, uh, scarves, now you make masks. And so everybody is inclined by the momentum of, uh, of commerce to jump onto anything that has everyone's attention.

Joe Rogan 1:04:07 Right.

Gavin de Becker 1:04:07 In, in attention there is money to be made, in the area of attention. So, when governments of the world say, uh, y- you know, "There's a virus, and i- if you're over 60, it'll kill you," that was the first, you know, that was the original information. And when that gets etched on the tablet, it's very hard to change people's minds after that, even though we learned that it was far more, uh, you know, you were far more vulnerable if you were older, if you were frail, if you were... I mean, s- look at, look at Canada. 70% of the people who died in Canada whose deaths are attributed to COVID were nursing home residents, meaning w- what do you go to a nursing home for, by the way?

Joe Rogan 1:04:46 You're dying.

Gavin de Becker 1:04:46 That's it.

Joe Rogan 1:04:47 Yeah.

Gavin de Becker 1:04:47 I- in Los Angeles County, the average stay in a, in a nursing home, uh, uh, a, uh, a Medicare nursing home is six months. Right?

Joe Rogan 1:04:56 You have six months to live.

Gavin de Becker 1:04:58 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:04:58 Yeah.

Gavin de Becker 1:04:58 So, so when we learned, I- myself included, I heard about the pandemic and thought, "Oh, shit, over 60, you get it, you die." So, all kinds of, uh, cautions and care and concern. Then I got that first report that came out of Italy which showed that 94% of the people had 2.7 fatal comorbidities, meaning they already had other diseases that could kill them. I didn't. And they already were elderly. I wasn't. They were, uh, in many cases overweight, all variety of problems. And the point being that it was highly age stratified. It, it, it... This disease is highly age and health stratified. And so, uh, young people, you know, a, a kid in college, y- y- you don't have a challenge from this disease. Now, quickly, if, uh, if, uh, Dr. Fauci were in my pocket right now, he would be climbing up here to yell at me, "Oh, yeah? But we've got a lot of young people who, who are killed and di-" Uh, first of all, it's not a lot, relative to anything. And, uh, and secondly, w- you know, people get killed in car accidents. Life is a sexually transmitted, always fatal, communicable disease. That is what life is, right? It is a condition that is sexually transmitted, always fatal, and communicable. We, we cannot eliminate all risk, and government always pretends they can. After 9/11, the color codes. It's a, it's a-

Joe Rogan 1:06:18 Yeah.

Gavin de Becker 1:06:18 ... red day, it's a yellow day.

Joe Rogan 1:06:19 Right.

Gavin de Becker 1:06:20 The UK is using the color codes i- uh, in this pandemic and it looks like comedy when you see it. You know, this is a yellow day. And what, what do I do? Duck? Not breathe? Uh, you know, stay under the kitchen counter? What do I do with this information? And then you see how do people actually die. Overweight, heart disease, diabetes, etc., etc., etc., etc. And, uh, that was a little diatribe you just heard.

Joe Rogan 1:06:41 So this Trusted News Network, like, in the, in this, the instance of COVID and, uh, in my recovery in particular, they concentrated on one thing, and that one thing was ivermectin. And it was one of many things that I listed. I r- listed, uh, Z-Pak. I listed, uh, prednisone. I listed monoclonal antibodies, and I said also ivermectin. And I said IV vitamin drips and NAD as well I think.... but the, all they concentrated on was ivermectin. And then there was all these stories, like all over the world, about me taking horse dewormer.

Gavin de Becker 1:07:17 Mm.

Joe Rogan 1:07:18 And it was very specific, it was horse dewormer.

Gavin de Becker 1:07:20 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:07:21 Even though ivermectin, by the way, I found some stuff in my cabinet that was heartworm medication for my dog-

Gavin de Becker 1:07:27 Mm.

Joe Rogan 1:07:28 ... that was ivermectin.

Gavin de Becker 1:07:29 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:07:29 And, uh, I was like, "I wonder what's in this?" And I was like, "I wonder if this is ivermectin?" This is all after the fact.

Gavin de Becker 1:07:34 Mm.

Joe Rogan 1:07:34 And, and I was like, "Holy shit, this is ivermectin too." But they had come up with one narrative, one narrative that they all stuck to-

Gavin de Becker 1:07:41 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:07:41 ... and that was horse dewormer. Why do you think that's the case? Because, like, w- why would they be s- why would they concentrate on only one aspect of this laundry list of medications that I took?

Gavin de Becker 1:07:53 Well, in your case you mentioned that one. They did a similar hit job that was years in the making on hydroxychloroquine.

Joe Rogan 1:08:00 Right.

Gavin de Becker 1:08:00 I say years in the making, you know, for anybody who hasn't read, uh, Robert Kennedy's book called The Real Anthony Fauci, you can skip right to the last chapter and have your socks blown off in terms of things that are going on in the world. And it's got 3200 citations, everything is, is very carefully, uh, researched and studied. It's, uh, and it's been the number one book in the country for-

Joe Rogan 1:08:20 Silently.

Gavin de Becker 1:08:21 Silently for, you know, we're coming up on 25, 30 weeks now without a single review in the United States. Now when in our lives did that ever happen that a c- book is the number one best-selling book in America and nobody reviews it? So it goes to the same question you're asking, how you have a monolithic opinion that is, that is, uh, foisted on the public, and it's why, Joe, this show has been so important. Not because you give people advice or you give them some specific, uh, you know, uh, guidance and tell them what to do, but because you just give another, you can hear another view. Any time you hear only the government view in world history, that's been bad news. And when in world history was it the good guys who were, uh, you know, censoring books? Uh, that's just not the way it works. But I wanna go to your question specifically on ivermectin. Um, the, the, any treatment for COVID-19, um, was a threat to, uh, the emergency use authorization and a threat to, um, to, uh, vaccines. The reason being that the emergency use authorization is not available if there are treatments available, right? So that's why they had to go nuts on hydroxychloroquine and why they had to go nuts on ivermectin, because if there was a viable treatment available to the public then you do not get an emergency use authorization. And what is the emergency use authorization? The emergency use authorization allows you to go from step one to step 30 in 100 days instead of 12 years, right? Before you would inject something into somebody's body, it used to be that vaccines took seven, eight, nine, 10 and, and on the average 12 years to be approved by the FDA. This was 101 days. And so ivermectin was a threat, and if people knew it was a viable treatment, uh, or any early treatment by the way. I mean, how can you have a government health system that doesn't even bother to say to people, through a pandemic, uh, "Take vitamin D. Take zinc." You know, there are many experts who feel that this was a pandemic of low vitamin D, meaning that's a, that's an absolute epidemic in America. You know, people don't go out. And what, what did the government do? "Stay home. Don't go outside. Watch television. Eat everything you can possibly eat." And they don't say a word about your health, and it's supposed to be public health, but it isn't public health anymore. It's much more focused on, uh, on specific outcomes. I still haven't answered your question though-

Joe Rogan 1:10:44 Yeah.

Gavin de Becker 1:10:45 ... which is how it happens, is it's this group of shared incentives. So you have the pharma companies where the incentive is not small, right? Uh, Pfizer, uh, upwards of $60 billion already just on this one consumer product. Uh, uh, Moderna in the 30s. Um, these are enormous, im- enormous events and it's the best business in the history of the world because they have no liability. They cannot get sued for any effect from these particular products. And, you know, even 500 years ago when you went into the town square and you bartered with somebody to, you know, buy something off him, if it turned out to be shitty you could bring it back to him and say, "Hey man, this thing you sold me isn't, isn't what you said it was." And you could, you know, engage with him. Not with pharma, right? No matter what happens from these particular products, uh, they cannot have liability.

Joe Rogan 1:11:35 W- so, but how do all these media outlets share this narrative? Like, what is their incentive? What's their incentive?

Gavin de Becker 1:11:42 Well, I, I can't speak to, uh, uh, to, or pretend to know every incentive, but I can look from the outside and see what we do know. Um, every major news program is sponsored predominantly right now by Pfizer. Literally Pfizer, not just a company or drug companies in general, but they'd been pharma companies for, for a decade, meaning that's what, if you watch regular television and you see commercials you're gonna see pharma commercials. All those commercials that, you know, tell you about the adverse e- effects, et cetera.

Joe Rogan 1:12:11 Do you think that there's a specific conversation that gives them this narrative or do you think that they know that their interest lies in keeping these pharmaceutical companies happy so that there's this sort of, like, understanding? And-

Gavin de Becker 1:12:24 I think it's, it's human nature. I think you know it. Now can there also be conversation? Sure. Uh, there's a, you know, uh, uh, a former head of Fox who's died now, I forgot his name. Fox News. Um, he said to a good friend of mine, um, "I will never put on..." He was talking about a particular guest who was perceived as gonna speak, uh, adversely about vaccines. Um, he said, "I'll never put him on because Pfizer is our primary," you know, w- "this, this is how we run this place is based on these sponsors." So that is just an incentive. Uh, other incentives would be, in the beginning, in the beginning of this pandemic, uh, would be to get rid of Trump, meaning, uh, mainstream or corporate media had had enough, ha- they had whatever their, uh, philosophical beliefs were about Trump, and so all bets were off. A very interesting example was the New York Post story on Hunter Biden. New York Post, oldest newspaper in America, started by Alexander Hamilton for God's sake, runs this story about, uh, Hunter Biden's laptop-... and, uh, the, uh, the Biden campaign, he hadn't won yet, uh, floated the idea that it was all Russian disinformation. And, uh, 50 former intelligence officers wrote a public letter saying it has the earmarks of Russian disinformation, meaning it looks like it could be Russian disinformation. Um, but the really bad thing that happened is Twitter would not allow you to share the story, and Facebook would not allow you to, uh, to share the link. So, the story was literally killed, and guess what? Two weeks ago, The New York Times has now come out and acknowledged that it wasn't Russian disinformation. It is, uh, Hunter Biden's laptop. By the way, I don't care about, m- me, I'm not a political person, don't care about Biden, don't care about Trump, don't care about Hunter Biden. It's not interesting. But what is very interesting and important to me is the control of information, i- i- in terms of censorship, and I didn't like it.

Joe Rogan 1:14:17 I didn't like it either. Um, why do you think that they're admitting that it's real now?

Gavin de Becker 1:14:24 Probably because indictments might be coming.