Stunningly Simple Secrets for Success & What Really Goes On at the CIA
51:52 Share

♪ Engelbert's Rules ♪

If your bingo has ads in it, that's not a bingo. If it doesn't have the coolest tournaments, mini games, and the most breathtaking design, nope, not a bingo. If your bingo moment makes you feel so excited that you just want to burst in joy and scream out loud, bingo! Sorry. So you're playing Bingo Blitz? Now that's a bingo. Discover a world of excitement with Bingo Blitz, the number one free bingo game. Download Bingo Blitz and play for free. Now that's a bingo.

Today on Something You Should Know, having friends is getting so expensive that for many of us it's affecting the friendships. Then, proven habits that will propel your success. Here's just one.

The habit is called the curious. The top performers are always more interested in others than they are in themselves. Here's the quick life hack. If you want to be interesting to people, then start being interested in those people. Also, can chewing gum really improve your test scores? Depends on how you chew and what really goes on at the CIA from a true insider.

The day-to-day work of the CIA is breaking foreign laws. It very rarely involves shooting and car crashes and all the stuff you see on TV, but at its most basic level, it's an organization committed to convincing other people to commit treason. All this today on Something You Should Know. Dell Technologies' Black Friday event is live, and if you've been waiting for an AI-ready PC, this is their biggest sale of the year.

Tech enthusiasts love this sale because it's all the newest hits, plus all the greatest hits, all on sale at once. Savings on Dell Technologies' most popular PCs that accelerate AI with Intel Core Ultra processors are here, like the XPS 16.

So if you're ready to step up all the things you like to do, streaming, surfing, multitasking, whatever, Dell Technologies AI-ready PCs are the perfect upgrade. And for the best of Intel Core Ultra processors, look for Intel Evo Edition laptops, engineered to do it all.

Just visit dell.com slash deals. Whether you're treating yourself or thinking of others, these Black Friday prices were worth the wait, but it's only for a limited time. Shop now at dell.com slash deals. ♪

Something you should know. Fascinating Intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Hi, welcome. Something I've noticed, perhaps you've noticed this too, but I don't hear people talking about it much, is about the high cost of going out. Going out with friends for drinks or to eat or going to a sporting event.

It can all get very pricey. And I came across this survey article on a website called badcredit.org that talks about how people are coming to terms with the fact that having and maintaining friendships is really expensive. So expensive that it affects the friendships. According to the survey, Americans spend an average of $5,184 per year on time with friends.

More than half of the survey respondents, 52%, say they consider friendship to be expensive. Not only that, but inflation is affecting social lives as well. 37% of respondents said they are neglecting their friends due to the high cost of living. And that percentage jumps to 44% for Gen Z.

Friendship can also take a back burner to other major expenses such as buying a house or alleviating debt. 65%, that's two out of three people surveyed, confess to reducing social activities to focus on saving money and cutting spending. I guess the point of all this is if you've had similar thoughts that going out with your friends is taking a financial toll and maybe it's affecting your friendships...

There are a lot of other people who agree with you. And that is something you should know. You don't have to look very hard to find advice on how to be successful. Many people have become very successful selling advice on how to be successful. Today, though, I'd like you to listen to some really good advice that is backed up by data, real solid data, rather than opinion or just someone's personal story.

William VanderBloemen is founder and CEO of VanderBloemen Search Group, an executive search firm, and he has conducted some great research into the traits of the people who become successful. They're not traits you're born with, but rather traits you can acquire and put into action today. William is author of a book called Be the Unicorn, 12 Data-Driven Habits That Separate the Best Leaders from the Rest. Hi, William. Welcome to Something You Should Know.

Thanks, Mike. I really appreciate you having me on. So everyone, it seems, has advice for what it takes to thrive and be successful. But as someone who has studied this, if you can boil it down, what does it boil down to? What is the essence of all of this? Mike, what a good question. You said everybody's got advice and opinion. I don't know that you want to hear my advice or opinion. However...

I do have data and we have studied, we're an executive search firm, so we help people, we help companies find their top talent. And we interviewed

the very best we've interviewed lots and lots of lots of people but we found the very best the top one percent of everybody we've interviewed and and that's for all kinds of jobs and that's 30 000 people in that one percent and we just asked the question do these people have anything in common and the answer was yes and so we did like empirical research to say well then what do they have in common

And the answer was exactly not what I thought it would be. But it does. It did give us a roadmap for saying, oh, here's how people can get ahead, how they can stand out in a really crowded world, how they can be that exception to the rule in whatever they do, whether they're a student or a custodian or a leader or whatever they're spending their day doing.

And what is that? And what is that? Yeah. So, yeah, we found. So I thought, Mike, that, you know, what are the best of the best have in common? I figured it would be they're all over six feet tall and have fabulous hair and teeth and, you know, super high IQs and went to all the right schools. It was none of that. It was 12 habits that they had in common. And all of those habits are really fundamentally how these people are treating other humans.

I mean, this was a selfish research project, Mike. We started this saying, could we find a way to identify top talent faster so we get our job done faster and better? And what we stumbled upon was these 12 habits can all be learned.

And we were looking for a way to identify talent. What we discovered was a roadmap for becoming that talent or becoming that standout or get ahead person. Anybody who wants to get ahead, if you study these 12 habits and apply them to your life, you will get ahead. So let's start with one that you call the fast. And that is basically getting

getting back to people quickly is really important and it's something I don't think people think that much about. You know, you get back to people when you can get back to people, but you say there's a real opportunity here. And what I mean by that is, you know, you get, you send a message to somebody and you never hear back from them. This happens in, people fill out forms, I'd like to buy your product, please have someone contact me. Well, it's staggering how often

uncommon it is for companies to actually get back to somebody that fills out that form. And when they do, they usually wait a day or two. But studies have shown that if you get back to people within 60 seconds of that form coming in and you do it not in a way a chatbot would or an AI, you know,

program if you do it in a really intentional human way really quickly you're almost certain to talk to that person again and maybe make whatever sale it is you're trying to make so unicorns get back to people really quickly and with intention not like a chat bot the rest of us just don't and if you want to get ahead and stand out in the crowd in a way that is is really remarkable just get back to people quickly and with intention

like mention something about their world or what they're doing, not just a, how can I help you today? Yeah. That, I mean, that's perfect because think about it. When somebody does get back to you fast, uh,

How, like you noticed that. Well, that's impressive. It got right back to me. And yet I've never heard that advice before. So talk about the problem I think a lot of us have, or maybe we think we have, is, you know, standing out from the crowd, getting noticed without being a jerk about it. You know, I think people are always like, like I go to a party and I'm like, I don't know if anyone's going to remember me. I'm not very...

memorable or interesting, like

How do I stand out in a way that whether it's a relationship with a family member or a coworker or trying to get the next job, how do I stand out in a room that's really crowded? Well, here's one thing, and I'll say it this simply. The habit is called the curious. Okay. The top performers are always more interested in others than they are in themselves. They're curious. They're asking questions. So here's the quick life hack. Okay.

If you want to be interesting to people, then start being interested in those people. So I used to work at a church where the people that went there were almost all of them were literally the best in the world at what they did during the week.

And I would try and ask them about themselves. And invariably, the best leaders I met really never wanted to talk about themselves. And they deflected the conversation back to me, which made me like them even more. So there's a life hack here for people trying to get ahead. If you'll just be curious about the people you're interacting with, if you'll be interested in them, you'll be interesting to them.

Does that make sense? Yeah, and not only that, but the urge is to tell people how great you are and tell them all about you when in fact what you just said is the better way.

well and it's not brown nosing the people it's not like uh like the super old black and white show leave it to beaver you had eddie haskell telling beaver's mom oh what a nice dress you have on mrs cleaver it's not that it's just how many kids do you have oh what do you like to do what do you really love about your job it's it's being interested in them and people like to talk about themselves so you've just opened the door to their favorite subject in a way that's not you know false compliments or that sort of thing

it will open the door to further conversation and you will stand out in the crowd. I think in all the episodes of this podcast, you are the first person to bring up Eddie Haskell or Mrs. Cleaver from Leave It to Beaver ever. Talk about the self-awareness because I think that is so, I mean, how many people have we all met and thought later, but that guy, that woman has no self-awareness.

I think all of us could work on self-awareness and it's a pretty major blind spot. Self-aware was one of those 12 habits. And what's interesting is the unicorns are incredibly interested in learning more about what they're good at and what they're not.

how the world perceives them. And, you know, they're very good at this. So when we surveyed all 30,000 of the unicorns, we asked them to force rank. What are you best at? What are you worst at of these 12? Right. The list, the rankings were very different because everybody's wired differently. Like some had this at the top. There wasn't a clear winner for most popular. The only clear winner was last place.

And that was self-awareness. So the unicorns, the 1%, the people who are best at self-awareness said that it was their worst of the 12. Like, I really got to work on this. Now, if you flip the script, we also surveyed 250,000 people just randomly, like normal people like you and me. 91% of all those 250,000 said they were above average at self-awareness.

like I'm not a statistician but I right pretty sure there's not a group where 91 is above average 50 is above 50 like we all think we're it's a major human blind spot and and people say well I don't know what you're talking about what do you mean let me ask you this Mike do you remember when back in your radio days the first time you heard your voice recorded oh of course

Yeah. And what was that like? It's horrible. And nobody likes to hear their voice recorded the first time. No, I hate it. I was like, who is this person? I don't want to put me back on. I don't want to listen to this. This is all it's cringy. Right.

That's the perfect example of how we see ourselves one way, but the world perceives us another. And the unicorns just get really determined at figuring out how is it people are seeing me? What am I good at? Where do I need to get better? While most of the rest of us just float along thinking, I'm pretty good at all this. The problem, though, is if you lack self-awareness, you lack the ability to know you need to fix your self-awareness. It's a bit of a chicken and an egg, right?

Yeah. I think though, Mike, we're living in maybe the,

the best season ever for people who want to develop self-awareness. There are literally hundreds of personality profiles you can take to discover what your strengths are or what gives you energy or where you're good with other people. Like the Enneagram is super helpful, the DISC inventory. We actually built one around these 12 habits and tested it against the 250,000 and the 30,000, like,

Where am I in these 12 habits against the general population and against the unicorns? And that gives me a map for knowing how I am perceived and how I'm going to get better. So I think there's a it's by the way, sorry, shameless plug. If you go to Vander index dot com, you'll you'll see that profile. But there's a there's a.

So much that people can just take a first step. We are talking about 12 habits that are supported by a lot of data, 12 habits that will propel your success. And my guest is William Vanderbloomen, author of the book, Be the Unicorn, 12 data-driven habits that separate the best leaders from the rest.

You know, today, anyone can sell anything online, and if you use Shopify to do it, you are setting yourself up for success. Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. Whether you're just setting up shop, or you have a physical store, or even if you've had a million orders or more,

Shopify will help you grow your business. Shopify helps you turn browsers into buyers. They have the Internet's best converting checkout, 36% better on average compared to other leading commerce platforms. And what I love about Shopify and what you can see when you peek inside, no matter how big or small you are, Shopify offers everything to manage and control your business.

And what's really great is you don't need to know anything about web design or coding or anything. Plus, Shopify's award-winning help is there to support you every step of the way. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.com slash S-Y-S-K, all lowercase. Go to shopify.com slash S-Y-S-K to grow your business no matter what stage you're in. shopify.com slash S-Y-S-K

There are just some things you come across that you have to tell people about. And because I, like you, have a cell phone, and I know it can get expensive, I'm telling people about Mint Mobile. They offer premium wireless for $15 a month when you purchase a three-month plan. Now, I have Mint Mobile, and before that, I was paying a lot more than that for my wireless plan. And I'm wondering, why would anyone do that?

You see, all Mint Mobile plans come with high-speed data, unlimited talk and text, delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. You can use your own phone with any Mint Mobile plan and bring your phone number along with your existing contacts, too. So ditch overpriced wireless with Mint Mobile's deal and get three months of premium wireless service for $15 a month.

To get this new customer offer and your new 3-month premium wireless plan for just $15 a month, go to mintmobile.com slash something. That's mintmobile.com slash something. Cut your wireless bill to $15 a month at mintmobile.com slash something.

$45 upfront payment required, equivalent to $15 a month. New customers on first three-month plan only. Speed slower above 40 gigabytes on unlimited plan. Additional taxes, fees, and restrictions apply. See Mint Mobile for details.

So William, talk about being authentic. That's a phrase I've always struggled with because I'm not really sure what it means. But in terms of success, in terms of your own personal success, what do you mean by being authentic? So one of the 12 habits is the unicorns, the very best of the best unicorns.

are incredibly authentic and they're perceived as incredibly authentic.

You know, Mike, in a world where we are dealing with more and more automated, AI-driven phone calls that are robo calls, robo text, robo, anything that's truly humanly authentic is a higher value maybe than it's ever before. So how do I develop authenticity? I'm going to give you one life hack. Look people in the eye.

Now, I'm saying that both generally and very intentionally. When I say look people in the eye, if you're younger right now, if you're Gen Z and you're listening to this, the number one complaint recruiters at companies have with the interviews that Gen Z is giving them is that Gen Z doesn't look them in the eye.

isn't that interesting they just don't look up i i we've got seven kids and so our kids that are that don't use the phone but facetime us all the time they'll facetime us and then all i see is their nostrils because they're holding the phone and walking around they're not actually looking at us there's something lost in eye contact so simply looking at people is first step toward authenticity but here's the real here's the real meat of the life hack we have two eyes

One is dominant. One is peripheral. In other words, you see the world through one eye. The other eye just gives you perspective. Okay. Depth perception, that sort of thing. 90% of all humans on the planet are right eye dominant. It's how scopes are built on rifles. It's how lots of things are built around the fact that most of us are right eye dominant. So what that means is when you sit down with somebody to interface with them,

If you will look not at the not at the center of their nose, you can't look there. You can't look in both eyes at the same time. If you will look people in the eye, the right eye directly, you've got a 90 percent chance of being right. And what it produces is this. Have you ever sat in a room with somebody and talk to them and you go, they made me feel like I was the only person in the room. Chances are they were looking you dead in the eye.

And I think that will convey a level of authenticity that makes people go, this person's different. They authentically care about me. They're authentically interested in me. And that one little life hack, I mean, just that one twitch, just look right at their right eye. It could make all the difference in getting ahead at whatever it is you're trying to get ahead at. So lastly, let's talk about productivity because that's such a big buzzword now and people are always...

You hear it all the time. And so what does your data say about it? Yeah, that unicorns get stuff done the very first chance they get. It's kind of like responding the very first chance you get. There's the top performers, the people who stand out in any crowd are the ones who actually go to bed saying, I got something done. And that can sound pretty overwhelming. But I think that...

you know maybe the best advice i've heard is some old management advice and if you've got time for a quick story uh years and years ago i had a really successful business guy mentoring me and very generous

successful business guy mentoring me and he called me and said he owned a bank and he called me and said uh come to my office I'll give you a Christmas present I'm like cool and this is kind of embarrassing but the whole way there I'm like I wonder what he got me I bet it's pretty cool oh man I wonder if it's this I wonder if that very selfish thoughts sorry but that's that's where I was

And I got there and he handed me a little like all two by three inch day timer, really small with the bank's logo on it. Like he gives this to kids when they open a checking account. And he said, no, no, no, no. The calendar is not the gift. Here's the gift. I want you for the next year.

You can do it the night before or the morning you wake up. I want you to write six objectives down. They're going to help you move forward in wherever you're trying to move forward.

and that's just six things you want to get done this day no more no less i said why he said well it's the oldest management consulting ever given it was uh one of the first management consultants ever went to jp morgan the guy before you know chase and said if you'll do this with your team you'll get more productive and it and they skyrocketed and i was like wow and he said yeah and he said if you'll do it consistently you'll be amazed how much you get done and so what do you mean he and so he opened the credenza behind his desk

and there were 30 years of those little day timers he said ask me what I got done on any day in the last 30 years and I picked a date and he pulled it out and he showed me do this this this this and this and I just was like wow okay and and what really brought this home for me is you can feel overwhelmed feeling I've got to get everything done I've got to get everything right now right now but if you'll do small he

you know six tasks each day that might be as a parent how am i going to get six things done for my kids as a student what am i going to do build my college resume as a how do i get the promotion at work six objectives every day and catalog them i've graduated from the tiny little bank issued day timer to apple notes and i just date them so i can see everything it's amazing what happens and it reminds me of

There's a quote that's gone around many times, but a good friend of mine said one time, you know, William, people overestimate what they can get done in a year, but they always underestimate what they can get done in a decade. And that's that sort of small deposits every day of here are six things I'm going to get done. And our research showed most people love talking about getting something done. Very few people actually take action.

So one quick way to not get overwhelmed by I got to get more done is to just say, could you go to Apple Notes and write down six things you want to get done? Apple Notes even has a little checkbox function, which I love. And you can just check the box when you get it done and look back and say, I got everything done today that I planned to get done. That creates momentum. A flywheel starts to turn. And before you know it, you stand out. And so what do you do?

Because I've tried similar things before, and sometimes you don't get all six things done. You just can't, and then the momentum starts to wane.

If you're consistently not hitting them, maybe you're making them too big. You know, my objective for today is to achieve world peace. Well, that box isn't going to get checked. Yeah, that's going to be tough. Good luck. So are you making these something that can actually get done? Make them really small. Make them so you could get it done by 10 a.m. and build your momentum that way. Momentum is the best friend of anyone trying to get ahead.

You know, when people ask me who haven't heard this podcast, like, well, what do you do on your podcast? I said, well, one of the things we like to do is give people really good information, solid information that they can use in their lives. And you've just done that. Hit it out of the park. William Vander Blumen has been my guest. He is founder and CEO of Vander Blumen Search Group. And he's author of the book, Be the Unicorn, 12 Data-Driven Habits That Separate the Best Leaders from the Rest.

There's a link to his book at Amazon in the show notes if you would like to read it. Thank you for coming on and sharing this, William. Thanks, Mike. I really appreciate being on your podcast. It's amazing how many hours and interviews you've done, and you're really good at your job. I appreciate you having me.

For many businesses, the holiday season can be both an exciting and stressful time. With so many balls in the air, one thing you definitely want to know you can rely on is how you're selling your products. And with Shopify, you can rest easy knowing it's the home of the number one checkout on the planet.

Nobody does selling better than Shopify and when it comes to successful brands like Aloe, Allbirds or Skims, an often overlooked secret is all the things that go on behind the scenes that make selling and for shoppers buying simple. For millions of businesses, if you take a peek behind that curtain, you'll see that Shopify is what makes it all possible. ShopPay boosts conversions up to 50% so that's more happy customers and way more sales going.

It's true all the time, but especially this time of year, your commerce platform better be ready to sell wherever your customers are scrolling or strolling: on the web, in your store, in their feed, and everywhere in between. Businesses that sell more sell on Shopify.

Upgrade your business and get the same checkout we use for Realm merch with Shopify. Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.com slash realm, all lowercase. Go to shopify.com slash realm to upgrade your selling today. shopify.com slash realm. Is it time to reimagine your future?

The right business skills may make a difference in your career. At Capella University, we offer a relevant education that's designed to focus on what you need to know in the business world. We'll teach professional skills to help you pursue your goals, like business management, strategic planning, and effective communication. And you can apply these skills right away. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn more at capella.edu. ♪

If you watch movies or TV shows, you have, or think you have, a pretty good understanding of what the CIA does. The image, anyway, is that the CIA is a spy agency. They do things in other countries to gather information, disrupt things, maybe overthrow governments.

There's an element of rogueness to it, that they do things that maybe we shouldn't or we don't want to know about, all in the name of national security. But is that really what the CIA does? Or does that just make good fiction?

Well, let's find out, shall we? My guest is David McCloskey. He is a former CIA analyst who wrote regularly for the President's Daily Brief. He delivered classified testimony to congressional oversight committees and briefed senior White House officials, ambassadors, military officials, and Arab royalty. And he has worked in CIA field stations across the Middle East.

He is also author of a book called The Seventh Floor, which is a novel about spies, and I suspect it has a lot in there that is based on his knowledge and experience in the CIA. Hi, David. Welcome to Something You Should Know. Hey, Mike. Thanks for having me on. So I guess first, I guess what I'd like to know, because I think everybody has this idea in their head,

but what is the cia what what is it supposed to be doing what does it do what is it i actually think the best way to think about it is to think about the cia or sort of the work of the cia as clandestine journalism

So, if you think about the work that an investigative journalist does, they scope out a story, they go and recruit sources who have information, they put the story together with a whole bunch of disparate sources, facts, pieces of analysis, and they try to put it together into something that is comprehensive.

coherent, subjective, that's not value driven or laden, you know, in the best cases of investigative journalism. And then they report the kind of what, why, and so what to their readers. And I think the CIA actually is

trying to do something very similar. The CIA is out there writing about stories that the president and other American policymakers care about, what's going on in the world. We're trying to find sources in the world who will give us that information, sell us that information. And we're trying to put it all together into a picture for the people in our country that make the most important national security decisions. So it's an information gathering organization?

Absolutely. Information gathering and analysis is really what it is. And at its core, the agency, as we call it, exists to provide us and our elected officials with an information advantage. That is why the CIA exists. So we have more information or better information about what's going on in the world than other countries do. Is that all they do?

Well, we do other things, but that's the primary objective. Because on TV, that's not all they do. It is, you know, and well, and it's not as entertaining, is it? You know, obviously, there are what we call covert action pieces of the work, which is when the president decides that they want something done in the world and they want it to be deniable, they'll turn to the CIA. Yeah.

Um, that stuff tends to be more fodder for fiction, more fodder for, you know,

spy entertainment or spy attainment as it's sometimes called you know it's it's hard to make there's a reason why jack ryan is an analyst you know sort of had to have a gun and you know talk about how this isn't what an analyst was supposed to do because the actual work of an analyst is is not car chases and guns and you know shooting bad guys it's um it it's finding the

the truth. But yeah, you're right. The agency does other things. The agency has covert action work that it does. The agency has something that's called a special activities center, which does some of the paramilitary work of the agency. But I will stress that although those are very sort of sexy components from a, if you were talking about this, like a business, those would be the pieces of the business that get all the press attention, but really, you know, are a small part of the overall operation.

Because when I think of the CIA doing what they do, I know for one thing they say on TV all the time, you know, that the CIA is not allowed to operate on U.S. soil, that what they do is somewhere else.

Got to be somewhere else. And what they do is they spy on people. They gather information by spying on guys that are doing things and that they mess things up and that, you know, Mission Impossible, they kind of sabotage things. And from what I hear you saying, that's theater. Well, let's get down to the brass tacks of what we're talking about when I mentioned the investigative journalism example, right? So, yeah.

recruiting a source, what does that actually mean? That actually means, and I'll just make up a hypothetical here, that actually means that maybe you're going and finding a Russian who has access to somebody in the Kremlin.

And that Russian, you know, hates his boss and is in debt, right? We're paying, we might pay that person if we can get in front of them and sort of convince them that this could be done securely. We're paying that person to commit treason.

to tell us things they shouldn't tell us. So in effect, the day-to-day work of the CIA is breaking foreign laws. I mean, that is the sort of the definition of what we're doing. It very rarely involves shooting and car crashes and all the stuff you see on TV, but at its most basic level, we are, you know, it's an organization committed to

convincing other people to commit treason in many respects, sometimes for reasons we would consider noble, sometimes for reasons that are more mundane or even kind of gross in some cases. But that is the core of the work is stealing secrets.

Okay. Well, but the CIA, and what's the difference between the CIA and the NSA and the other spy agencies that we hear about? Like, do they work together? Do they not work together? Do they have different jobs? What's that all about? The U.S. intelligence community, I think, technically has like 16 or 17 entities inside it, formally. And...

If that sounds like a ridiculous number, it's because it probably is. It can be overall very bloated. I think there's probably too much overlap and redundancy between many of these groups. But for simplicity's sake, take a couple of the bigger organizations. So the CIA, the Central Intelligence Agency, is our sort of premier foreign intelligence agency, meaning we are working abroad to steal secrets from foreign countries and groups, right?

The National Security Agency is our primary signals intelligence arm, meaning they're doing a lot of the intercepts of phone communications, emails, etc., sort of manipulating electronic communication. Obviously, you have the State Department, which is our diplomatic arm overseas. I mean, there's intelligence agencies or entities inside the State Department, inside the FBI.

inside the various services of the military. So if you kind of put all this on a couple pages, it's a bit overwhelming. But all of these groups, in theory, work together and in most cases actually do relatively well. But of course, there are different cultures and all of that that sort of prevent clean cooperation at all times. And so there can be sort of

competition over turf and dropped handoffs between the two. I mean, it's all the things you'd expect with a massive, probably too large group of agencies that are all sort of distinct but have overlapping mission sets.

So this all sounds very mundane. I mean, not mundane so much, but it doesn't sound all that exciting, frankly. It's not what I was hoping to hear. I was hoping to hear about the guns and the car chases. Well, look, I'll tell you this, that there are really, I mean, the mission of CIA is

is an exceptional one. And although it's not, you know, martinis and tuxedos and car chases, the agency is out there stopping and disrupting terrorist attacks. The agency is sending people into denied environments all the time under very exotic forms of cover. The agency is fielding, you know, incredible sort of next-gen technology, and it is producing, you

really what I call the most, you know, sort of highly classified reports that our president reads and what's called the president's daily brief or PDB. So I see the work of the CIA as being highly exceptional, but it's also this sort of big organization at the same time that in many respects would resemble, you know, a Fortune 500 company. So I like to think of the place as being kind of a

a uniquely bipolar organization. On the one hand, it has this exceptional mission, which I don't think actually has a lot of parallels elsewhere or analogs elsewhere. And on the other side, you know, it's a big place that's run by people. And so you get a lot of the foibles and quirks that go along with that. But the CIA is only spying on gathering information at working in other countries. Is that correct?

So the agency does have domestic field stations, but those are for basically liaising with FBI and targeting foreign nationals who are in the states. The CIA is prevented from targeting Americans. The CIA does not recruit Americans. And the CIA is a foreign externally facing organization designed to collect Americans.

on foreign nationals and foreign governments. And every country, I imagine, sophisticated country has some sort of CIA, right? Absolutely. Yeah. And are they all friends? Do they all have lunch together? Or do they, I mean, sometimes what's the relationship? You know, we have liaison relationships with friendly services. So we're sharing information, right? So, you know, we're sharing information with the Brits, you know, we're sharing information with the Israelis.

They're sharing information with us. You could rattle off a long list of foreign intelligence services, some of which I probably shouldn't, that we're engaged in business with. I think the key thing there is a lot of these relationships can be quite warm. They can be quite productive. But intelligence services, they don't generously give

It's an exchange with the expectation that, you know, we give something here, you give something back. This is sort of commerce happening at the secret level. So there's no military component to the CIA, or is there? There's a paramilitary component. Yeah. Who's that? It's called the Special Activities Center. Ooh. Yeah. Yeah, I know. Isn't that a good... That's a good name, isn't it? I like that. Special Activities Center. That is for... So if you recall...

let's say some of the first teams that went into afghanistan after 9 11 you know you had a mix on those teams of sort of form like kind of typical cia case officers but then you also had paramilitary officers who had typically come out of army special forces or delta force or the marines or something like that they had a military background um and then they're working at cia and and

The CIA has that group because sometimes you want to be able to deploy those types of assets in a, in a deniable way under the auspices of what we call a covert action finding, which is when the president wants something done and they, they don't want, you know, us fingerprints on it. So that's, that's kind of why the CIA has those, has those groups. So talk a little bit about what you did at the CIA. What was your title?

So I was an analyst. What does that mean? Like Jack Ryan? Yeah. Well, you realize after about two days, it's not really like Jack Ryan. What I did was, as I worked on primarily Syria and on the broader Middle East, and I did a lot of my work from Langley, I did a lot of my work from the region. Most of what I was doing was taking, basically looking at all of this information that's coming in. And that could be

That's the human intelligence we've gathered. That's just stuff from press, that's stuff from academics, that's stuff from our embassy. It's the signals intelligence we talked about from the National Security Agency, intercepted phone calls, intercepted emails, et cetera. You're looking at all this and you're answering a question, really, that a policymaker might have. And so the example I like to give is, you know, I was working on Syria in the opening days of 2020.

its unrest, which eventually became a civil war. This was in early 2011. And the big question that

you know the president obama was asking was okay what are the what are the scenarios for how this how this goes down right how long can asa hold on to power and so you're you know i was writing essentially an answer to that question in like two or three pages that's sourced and you know structured well and gives the president the ability to sort of bound reality of

you know, what might happen, what could happen, what would it mean for us in different scenarios. So that's an example of something that I wrote and then briefed downtown to, you know, to the White House, to the National Security Council and analysts who work on Russia, you know, analysts who are working on all these different regions and countries, you know, are sort of topics today are answering similar questions depending on what might be going on.

So when you go to work as an analyst for the CIA, does it just feel like you're going to work as an analyst for any other company? Or does it feel different? Does it feel special? Does it feel dangerous? Does it feel like, is there any sense of, ooh, I'm a spy? It feels, now after having done analysis for other companies since I've left, what I will say is it does feel special.

And the reason it feels special is because you are dealing with stolen information and you're dealing with information as a result that other people cannot access. And one of the fundamental, I think, highs of the place is that you are or you can be sort of led to believe and oftentimes, I think,

with reason that you are kind of in the inner ring you have access to stuff other people don't which is a which is a thrill so i think for me as i look back on it i think yeah that's it is a special place because it has a very special mission and it's got access to very special stuff and there's something inherently even though you know i i feel bad mike i deflated you a little bit by saying you know it's not it's not explosions and car chases and jack ryan i think

there's something very special about the place. You know, even now, me as an alum, I still feel, I think I feel a fondness for that work because I felt like I was contributing to something that was bigger than myself and doing something that frankly was really cool.

But in lore, not just in movies, but in real life, you know, there are people out there claiming that the CIA overthrew a government, that the CIA meddled in this and meddled in that. Is there a lot of meddling going on or that's people's propaganda? I do think you have to separate or at least acknowledge that the CIA of...

the 50s and 60s and even early 70s is not the CIA of today, right? The CIA that really helped

overthrow governments in Iran in 53 or in Syria later that decade in 56, I think, and in Guatemala, and the CIA that was actually, you know, in some cases, spying on Americans in the 60s, the CIA that was experimenting with psychedelic, you know, drugs on people, like,

This organization doesn't, that organization doesn't exist anymore. That was a far less institutionalized that was finding its way at the height of the Cold War and essentially operated as the president's black bag outfit with sort of a wink and a nod from the president at the time. And it is not how the CIA operates today. When the CIA does something today with basically no exceptions, it is doing that with

the full support and frankly, like formal authority of the president, more so than just the CIA kind of going rogue or anything like that. I think that the mental model of the CIA is some kind of like unconstrained

bad actor that does its own thing is just simply false. The CIA operates as part of an interagency process in Washington that's driven by the White House and by the president. And it does the president's bidding and the president as an elected official is entitled to do so. So I think

It's important that we kind of understand the CIA, not as some rogue actor, but as a piece of sort of the fabric, frankly, of our government and society. So I think about those, I guess, what are they, stars or something in the lobby of the unnamed people? Well, if they're just gathering information, why do your identities have to be protected? What's so secret about...

about the people doing the work if they're just gathering information, reading the newspaper and talking to people? Look, we talked about the sort of covert action side of things and the paramilitary side of things and I don't have a direct number for you. I don't know it. My wager would be that a disproportionate number of the stars on that wall come from that sort of thing. So it's not just pure information gathering, to be clear.

But in either case, the reason why many of those stars are not named – and by the way, many of them are. I mean, if you go into the original headquarters building lobby and there's a book that's actually kind of in a case by that wall, and there are names attached to many of the stars.

if not most. Some of them do not have names. And the reason for that, although I certainly couldn't speak to whether any of this on an individual basis is still justified, is because the details around that operation, be they sources, be they methods, remain classified. And so the names cannot be made public.

Is it like on TV that when you're an analyst or some other, you know, frontline kind of CIA person, that you can't tell your wife what you're doing, that you can't tell your wife where you're going, that everything is confidential? For the most part, yes. You know, it depends a little bit on your role.

So, you know, and I was an analyst, like my wife knew where I worked, my W2 said, Central Intelligence Agency. And yet, you know, sometimes I could almost always be open with her about where I was going, but I couldn't really say much about what I was actually doing.

Well, this answers a lot of questions I think people have about the CIA, what really goes on. It's really kind of fun to hear, but it's also, I think, important for people to understand what happens. I've been speaking with David McCluskey, a former CIA analyst. He has written three novels. His most recent is called The Seventh Floor, which is about spies, and you can read it and hear more about the CIA. There's a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks, David. Thanks for explaining all this.

Hey, thanks Mike for having me. Really enjoyed our conversation. You may have heard that chewing gum can improve test scores. That's true if you know how to chew the gum. Researchers split 224 undergraduates into three groups and then put gum to the test. One group chewed before and during the test. The next group chewed for five minutes before the test. And the third group didn't chew anything at all.

The pre-test chewers outperformed the other two groups. It seems that chewing gum before the test did boost performance, but only for about 20 minutes. Chewing gum can literally warm up the brain by increasing blood flow to the head. Those who chewed gum through the entire test didn't get the benefits because all that chewing gets tiresome and can actually sap brain power after a few minutes. And that is something you should know.

Could you do me a favor and just tell one or two people that you know about this podcast and suggest that they listen to it? Because like every podcast, we always need new listeners. It's how the audience grows. It's how the podcast grows. It really helps us out, and it doesn't take much. Just share this podcast with someone you know and help our audience grow. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Hi, I'm Alexis Ohanian.

You may know me as one of the co-founders of Reddit, but more recently, a large part of my identity is being a father to my wonderful daughters. In my podcast, Business Dad, I hope to open the conversation about working parents a bit. You'll get to hear from a wide range of business dads, from Rainn Wilson and Guy Raz to Todd Carmichael and Shane Battier.

Hi, I'm Jennifer, a founder of the Go Kid Go Network. At Go Kid Go, putting kids first is at the heart of every show that we produce.

That's why we're so excited to introduce a brand new show to our network called The Search for the Silver Lining, a fantasy adventure series about a spirited young girl named Isla who time travels to the mythical land of Camelot. Look for The Search for the Silver Lining on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts.