Diary Of A CEO: w/ Security Expert Gavin de Becker (Transcript)

And you were called upon in that scenario to figure out what was going on, and you were able to solve that?

GAVIN DE BECKER: Yes.

STEVEN BARTLETT: What are you able to talk about there?

GAVIN DE BECKER: Well, I’ll think back to what’s already been public. And it won’t be from me, it won’t be anything about the client, but it will be about the Saudi Arabian government, which at that time had just obtained a system called Pegasus 3, which can get into your phone remotely. It doesn’t require a click of any kind, meaning you don’t have to acknowledge anything. It can get in. It’s called a no-click exploit, and it could do everything in your phone from 7,000 miles away that you could do holding the phone in your hand. Even if it was off, it could turn on the camera, could turn on the microphone. It exists. It’s a very real thing, made by the Israelis. And the Saudi prince, MBS, had just gotten it, and he used it on a group of dissidents around the world. He also used it on Jeff Bezos, according to the United Nations, and according to lots of things that have been public.

Our work was to figure it out — figure out how it happened. In those days, I didn’t know what Pegasus 3 was. I didn’t know what this system was.

But the perhaps useful thing for you and your audience to know is that there is absolutely no protection viable for the confidentiality of your phone if a government wants you. And the reason I say there’s no stopping it is that even when Apple puts out a new solution — which they do, an update that breaks some particular exploit — thousands of people around the world immediately start working on the next exploit. So if I said to you, “Here’s a phone and we’ve modified it and it’s great, Mr. President, you can use this phone for your confidential conversations,” in a month it won’t work anymore.

And so I’m able to tell clients and friends and now you and your audience: there are a lot of things being offered for sale that supposedly protect the confidentiality of your phone calls or your texts. Nothing will work reliably. There is no solution to that problem that is reliable. Nothing.

There are devices sold, there’s all variety of things. But the reality is that even if something worked — even if I said, “Here’s this cool new such-and-such phone that will protect you” — it’ll only protect you for a while, because there’s a constant effort to improve the exploits.

And also, I have to say, people are somewhat reluctant and maybe even lazy. I’ll put myself on the list and I’ll put you on the list without even knowing you. We’re all not as careful as we could be in terms of what we say, what we text.

I have a dear friend and client who every text and every email that he sends also goes to his executive assistant, and everybody knows it. And what happens is it controls and influences his behavior. So when you send him that off-color joke that he wouldn’t want to see on television, he responds differently. He doesn’t say, “Oh, that’s great,” and add another punchline on top of it, because he knows that his assistant in the other room is seeing that.

And so the best we can all do is be watchful about what we say, and have no pretense of privacy or confidentiality, because it simply does not exist. Period. The US government got into the phones of all of our allies — Prime Ministers, Chancellor of West Germany, Prime Minister of England, President of France. This is a game that’s going on all the time. And privacy is just not part of the new world.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Why would a government want to hack the founder of Amazon’s phone?

GAVIN DE BECKER: Well, again, from what’s been public, the founder of Amazon was also the owner of the Washington Post. And the Saudis had killed Khashoggi, who was a journalist for the Washington Post. And the Washington Post then started putting out an Arabic edition that didn’t feel good for the Saudis. And then they really went after — I’ll call him a head of state, he’s the prince, but his father was alive and was actually the head of state — but they really went after MBS. I think Bezos was a kind of adversary in that regard.

Additionally, the Saudi sovereign fund developed an Amazon competitor called something like Noom or something like that. And so they were concerned about that. They were also doing deals with Amazon, and so they could get economic advantage by seeing what the various executives are texting to each other. So there were a lot of moving parts to that — all these things I’ve just shared with you, with high-stakes matters going on around the time that Khashoggi was killed and that the Western countries of the world were objecting to this assassination team of his going around and killing people and getting into their phones.

The National Enquirer Extortion Attempt

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

GAVIN DE BECKER: Yeah. What they wanted me to do — the Enquirer — and they negotiated with me and my lawyer over this, was that I was to go public and say two things. I was to say it was not politically motivated, and it was not influenced by outside actors — that is, the Saudis — and that there was no hacking involved.

My question was, “Why the hell do you want me to say those two things specifically?” And I already knew the answer, of course, because there was outside influence and there was hacking. Their request for me was so strange that we didn’t go along with it. Bezos ultimately wrote a Medium post talking about it publicly and saying, “Hey, if I can’t stand up to this, then where is a regular person?”

STEVEN BARTLETT: And ultimately those pictures were never published.

GAVIN DE BECKER: I won’t even comment on whether those pictures exist, because they were doing a fascinating thing, by the way. It’s sort of like selling you land in Florida that’s marshland and doesn’t exist. They were doing an extortion on a thing they didn’t even have. So it’s kind of a double crime. It’s extortion and fraud.

The Epstein Files: Inside Information

STEVEN BARTLETT: It’s interesting — we start talking here about digital communications and that type of security, with everything that’s going on at this exact moment in time with all these Epstein files. And there’s a big conversation, because now we can see 3 million documents, and many of them are emails that people have sent at different times. Some of the most famous people in the world have sent emails to Epstein, and now those are all out there in the public to see. I wonder what your take was on all of this stuff. You must be watching this through the lens that you’ve built your career on. You must have an interesting opinion.

GAVIN DE BECKER: Some of it I don’t talk about because I have a fair amount of inside information, and I’m just watchful about not getting near the line.

STEVEN BARTLETT: What do you mean by inside information?

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

STEVEN BARTLETT: Oh, really?

The Epstein Files: Intelligence Operations and Blackmail

GAVIN DE BECKER: And here’s the way I’m in there: someone sent Epstein an article that I wrote called “Fooling Ourselves into War.” So somebody sent that article — which is an article I really like, by the way, published in Huffington Post at the time — and they sent that to Epstein. So that’s an example of being in the Epstein files and yet obviously never having met Epstein.

But I have a few clients and friends who the Epstein group made approaches on and failed, meaning they tried to get them and failed. I’ll give you one story without naming the person, of course.

He goes to meet with Epstein in New York to ask for money for a charity. And Epstein is perceived as this big billionaire, which he was not, by the way — I’ll tell you in a second. And Epstein is in a robe, and they’re across the desk, just like you and I are. And Epstein says, hey, they’re finishing the meeting. He says, “Hey, I’m going to get a massage — hence my robe. You want to get a massage?”

And through the hallway, my friend can see a massage table and a room and a very cute girl who’s the massage therapist, dressed like a massage therapist. And so he happened to say no. In fact, interestingly, he happens to not like massage, which is itself — you know, a lot of people would say yes, and might even think it would improve my relationship with this guy, Jeffrey Epstein, who I perceive as this rich guy that I’m trying to get money from for my charity.

Had that happened, what a different world for that person. What a different life. Because in that room are cameras. And then eventually audio — didn’t start off with audio, but audio was added later. And then you’re getting a hand job from somebody who you don’t even think about their age, but turns out to be 17, and you are in the world of trouble for the rest of your life.

And that’s a big piece of what was going on with Epstein — with cameras in that apartment in New York, and eventually audio, and eventually audio at the island. My take on it, and certainly my public take, is that there was a profound blackmail operation going on to the benefit of probably more than one government, but at least one government.

Epstein: A Constructed Identity

And when I said a moment ago he wasn’t a billionaire — he wasn’t a billionaire. For one thing, his earning path is highly suspect. I’ll first tell you what he was. What he was is a construct. He’s a created construct. Money, wealth, private jet, private island, fun, not married, young girls, lots of things. So he was a construct.

The money — $500 million — came from Les Wexner, who’s a wealthy guy who owns, or owned, Victoria’s Secret, and who donated big to the state of Israel. And $500 million was transferred to Epstein, along with power of attorney to use it and invest it in the ways he saw fit. Quite an unusual arrangement — I’m mildly wealthy, but I’m not sending you $500 million, I’ll tell you that. The idea that you’re doing this is itself extraordinary, but it was probably the funding mechanism for this construct.

While it’s a real name, Jeffrey Epstein, and he has a real birth certificate and grew up in a real way, the picture that is presented to the world is not authentic. It is not accurate to who he was.

The Intelligence Operation

And the more you dig into this story — which, of course, people are doing so much now because of these 3 million documents so far, and videos and photographs — there’s a lot of material there. It’s very interesting to people right now, and more to be learned.

But what was actually going on? Why in the world would anybody say, “Well, there are national security implications to some of this content — that’s why some things are redacted”? What would that be?

Why would the prosecutor who prosecuted him in Florida provide one of the most unusual plea bargain deals in world history, and certainly unique in American history? Imagine: I’ve got you, I’m a U.S. attorney, I’ve got you on some crime, and you say, “Okay, I’m going to plead guilty. I’m going to serve my time, but please let my accountant go, and please don’t prosecute my wife, because all she did was deliver the stuff and she wasn’t involved in anything.” And so those are called unindicted co-conspirators. So I make a deal with you and I say, “Okay, you go to jail for eight months, and we will leave the unindicted co-conspirators unindicted. We won’t prosecute your wife, your son, your accountant, or what have you.” That’s a very normal process. It’s a bargaining process, basically.

However, in the Epstein case, the U.S. attorney gave him a deal that said that they would not prosecute unnamed co-conspirators. Holy sh. Who’s that? Who are unnamed co-conspirators? It could be 50 people. It could be 75 people.

The guy who gave that sweetheart deal became the Secretary of Labor. He was at that time the U.S. attorney for Florida. He was asked, “Why did you give that sweetheart deal?” — because the deal’s ridiculous; unnamed co-conspirators will be exempt from prosecution. And he said, “I was told he belonged to intelligence.” And then he had to resign because of this.

There was a lot going on with Epstein. The person who sort of brought Epstein into the world of power and got him his job at — I think Morgan Stanley, I could have that wrong, but one of those big finance companies — was William Barr’s father. William Barr was the Attorney General who was the U.S. Attorney General when Epstein was killed, or died in prison, depending on your choice of reality.

So there’s so much there. But I won’t be the first guest, Steven, that you’ve had that says that it was an intelligence operation. Why is the U.S. government reluctant to be more transparent? Some of it is national security. Some of it is — let’s imagine an ally of ours is involved in that operation. So there’s a reluctance, and there’s a question. It’s a little bit like UFOs: “Could the public handle it?” is the question that’s always asked in these cases. If, for example, the UK was running an intelligence operation inside the United States to control senators and congressmen and powerful executives and powerful figures and scientists, could we handle it? Could the U.S. public handle it? My take personally — absolutely, yes.

STEVEN BARTLETT: So you believe that he was an intelligence asset, and it sounds like you believe he was an intelligence asset potentially by a U.S. ally.

GAVIN DE BECKER: Yes.

STEVEN BARTLETT: So who is that ally?

GAVIN DE BECKER: Israel.

STEVEN BARTLETT: You believe that Epstein was an Israeli intelligence asset?

Ghislaine Maxwell and the Israeli Connection

GAVIN DE BECKER: Yes, I do. And Ghislaine Maxwell — just for additional background, but everybody can find it — her father was an Israeli intelligence asset who was so revered that his funeral ceremony was held in Israel, was attended by the Prime Minister, by, I think, the last four or five, and by every living head of Mossad. And there were words used in eulogies like, “He did things for Israel that the world will never know about.”

There’s a lot of good connection there and a lot of good connective tissue, some of which I’ve shared with you because it’s public, and some of which I’m not sharing. But that is indeed what I believe. Yes. Not just me, by the way. You might already be there. And you’ve certainly had another guest sit here — former CIA guy, Kira Kao. How do you say his last name?

STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah.

GAVIN DE BECKER: Am I close to how you say —

STEVEN BARTLETT: You’re closer than I would get.

GAVIN DE BECKER: Okay, good. And he was point blank in saying Israel.

STEVEN BARTLETT: So there’s no direct evidence, but what people are essentially doing is putting the pieces together to make a picture.

GAVIN DE BECKER: There is direct evidence — there’s just not direct evidence I’m sharing at this moment. But there’s plenty of evidence that has been public already, some of which I’ve shared. I could do it for 40 minutes, but everybody can just go to ChatGPT. And if you ask ChatGPT — it’s a good thing for viewers to remember — make the best case for whatever it is. If you ask a straight question, the first answer you get will always be the official narrative.

STEVEN BARTLETT: I’ve done exactly that. As you said it, I asked ChatGPT: “Make the best case for Epstein being an Israeli spy.” Here is what it said: “The case that Jeffrey Epstein functioned as an Israeli intelligence asset rests on a pattern of alignment rather than direct proof. He ran a sexual compromise operation resembling known intelligence kompromat tradecraft.”

GAVIN DE BECKER: Kompromat? Yeah, it’s a Russian word that means “we compromise.”

STEVEN BARTLETT: “You had wealth and access far beyond his formal career and operated with unusual legal protection for years. His close partnership with Ghislaine Maxwell, whose father had documented intelligence ties, fuels suspicion, as does reporting by journalists who say Epstein’s activities were discussed in intelligence-adjacent circles. The cameras and the microphones hidden in his apartment and his home.” How do we know they were there, and why?

The Hidden Cameras and the Blackmail Mechanism

GAVIN DE BECKER: Well, how I know they were there is a little bit different from how everybody knows they were there. And I don’t know enough about the entire history of the FBI piece, but I’ll tell you a funny part of the FBI piece.

When they went to execute a search warrant at that apartment after his more recent arrest, they found and even photographed a bunch of CD-ROMs, or discs of some kind, that were labeled — but they didn’t take them. They said, “We’ll get a warrant and we’ll be back for those.” And they came back after a mere six days, and it was all gone. So where it is, I don’t know. Does the U.S. government have it? Does somebody else have it? I just don’t know the answer.

But I know from very direct information regarding the island and the apartment — I don’t know about New Mexico, I just don’t happen to know about another house that he owned — that there were cameras, and then eventually audio. Audio was added. Also, testimony, by the way — testimony from girls who said, girls who worked there and visited there a lot, who said that in a small room to the right of the front door was a whole setup of videos where the recording was done.

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

GAVIN DE BECKER: Sure. Blackmail is not always done by calling you up and saying, “Hey, Steven, I’m going to hurt you in the following way if you don’t do A, B, or C.” The other version is far better, which is even alluded to in some of the now-released material.

He calls and he says, “Steven, I’ve got terrible news. You remember you had that massage from Cindy? That girl? Oh, yeah, I remember. Well, she recorded something. She had something in her bag. She made a recording. And I’ve got worse news, Steven — the girl was 16 and a half.”

And now, by the way, your stomach drops. You are in a world of stress right now just hearing that. And he, instead of being your blackmailer, becomes your rescuer. He says, “I can handle it, I can handle it, I can handle it. She’s got the recordings. I don’t know where they are, but I can handle it. Don’t worry, don’t worry, don’t worry.” And he owns you now forever.

If you were involved in a naked experience with someone who’s underage, and there’s a video of it and audio of it as well, you will do anything that you are asked to do. That is within reason. Very few people would have the character and the stamina to do what you described Bezos doing, which is that he wrote a public letter saying — a very unusual thing — “A very unusual thing happened to me the other day. I’m being blackmailed by the National Enquirer. And here’s what they said.” That’s very, very rare.

And so, a senator, a congressman — he owned a lot of people. Do you have any skepticism about that?

STEVEN BARTLETT: I don’t have skepticism. I just have a lot of ignorance as to how this whole world works.

GAVIN DE BECKER: Lucky you.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And I just have a lot of ignorance as to — because you hear about these things in almost like movies, and it appears that we’re all kind of witnessing something we might have relegated just to the movies happen before our eyes.

And even when I saw some of the emails coming up on my feed — things that Epstein had emailed people — he seemed to be continually inviting people to hang out with him in a way that is quite atypical. Now, maybe I’m just an introvert, but he was aggressive in his communications to people, saying, “Come and hang out with me. I’m doing this thing, this dinner party. Come to my island. Are you in the area?” And he was succeeding in getting a lot of people to come and visit his homes and his island. And yeah, it’s —

The Epstein Files: What’s Really Being Hidden

GAVIN DE BECKER: By the way, Stephen, in the circumstance you are in today, you might well have heard from Jeffrey Epstein. You might well have had somebody who knows you who says, “Hey, there’s this guy in New York, loves your show. Just terrific.” And all of a sudden you’re getting that invitation, and you’re getting that invitation through someone you know and kind of like.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Like Joe Rogan did.

GAVIN DE BECKER: I don’t know, but like so many people.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Well, Joe Rogan said it.

GAVIN DE BECKER: Oh. If he’s been public about it, I’m just not going to be the one to say it, but I got it.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Oh, okay.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Joe Rogan publicly last week said that, and it’s in the files, that a former guest — I think it was Lawrence Krauss — of his show, invited him to come and meet Jeffrey Epstein. And the emails show that Jeffrey Epstein was trying to get Lawrence to bring Joe Rogan in. Joe Rogan said — and this is what Joe Rogan’s words said — “Absolutely f*ing not. I was creeped out about it and never went and was never involved.”

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

The Blackmail Operation

STEVEN BARTLETT: The moment where I started to really understand the blackmail angle was when I started reading some of the particular emails that Epstein had sent to himself — one in particular where he sent himself an email regarding Bill Gates. He’s alleging that Bill Gates has slept with — he’s sending himself an email —

GAVIN DE BECKER: Yes.

STEVEN BARTLETT: — alleging that Bill Gates has slept with someone, some Russian prostitute, and that he got an STD. An extramarital affair. All of these allegations. And when I read that email, I thought, “Oh, he was a blackmailer. He was definitely a blackmailer.” And he’s collected all these rich and famous people and he has them in his pocket.

Now, just to close off on this point of Epstein before we move on — you said they’ve released some of the files, and you said they hadn’t released other files.

GAVIN DE BECKER: Yes.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And you have implied that was because they basically can’t release these other files necessarily.

GAVIN DE BECKER: Well, I don’t know what — I think more is coming. I think more will be released. But there are certainly files, including files, even right now. Even yesterday, though, there’s a law — as you may know, Congress voted for a law to release everything unredacted. There’s still a lot of redacted stuff. So there’s more to come.

And will some be redacted? Sure. Is anybody going to sit here like I did today and say, “Hi, I’m the Secretary of blah, blah, blah, and let me just tell you what was really going on. I’m the head of the CIA, and let me tell you what was really going on.”

STEVEN BARTLETT: Not likely, but Trump knows. He knows who Jeffrey Epstein really was.

GAVIN DE BECKER: I would say all senior people in the US Government, and many, many people in general, know everything that you and I have discussed here today. No secret.

By the way, what do you think? Let’s imagine somebody came forward and said — this country described as our greatest ally — I would say our greatest ally is the UK based on history. But Israel’s an important ally in the Middle East, and it’s a democracy, and it’s more of a Western government. I get it. But what do you think? The country comes out and somebody officially says, “Okay, let me tell you what was going on.” Do you think the American public can handle it?

STEVEN BARTLETT: I think they — either way, now deserve to know the truth. Whether they can handle it or not is probably secondary. I think people need to know the truth. I think the problem is people have been partially traumatized by all of this stuff. And so now I think the remedy is full transparency.

Governments, Lies, and the Long Game

GAVIN DE BECKER: I agree. And by the way, this is close, because we got a lot of information. Whereas five weeks ago or eight weeks ago, people were saying, “Oh, there’s nothing more. That’s it. That’s all there is.” I mean, this is a big step, and I think it’s a big step — as big a step toward transparency as probably as I’ve seen in my lifetime by a government.

The exception would be — it’s not a government — what Elon did after buying Twitter, the release of the Twitter files. That was a very impressive thing, letting three journalists come in and just go through everything.

I think it would be awesome if the US Government ever — governments don’t do this very often — but if they ever said, “Okay, everybody put on your seatbelt, I’m going to tell you exactly what happened with the JFK assassination, or exactly what happened with the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, when he ran for president.” There are some examples of this in US history where it feels like after about 25 years, they’ll start telling the truth about something.

50 years ago, Johnson and Johnson went to the FDA and they said, “Look, our baby powder — you know that stuff that you put on the baby and you breathe and the mother breathes? Well, it’s got asbestos in it and it causes cancer.” And the FDA said, “Well, thanks for bringing this to our attention. We’ll begin to study how much asbestos is an allowable amount.” Now, they never considered zero, which is what I’d want on my baby, or you’d want on your baby. And they began to study. And then they studied for a while, and they studied for a while. And lo and behold, 40 years had gone by and they hadn’t come out with a ruling to say there shouldn’t be any asbestos in Johnson and Johnson baby powder. When did they come out with that ruling, by the way? Last year, end of 2024. After 52 years.

Agent Orange — the same story. Agent Orange is a material used in Vietnam for defoliation. It hurt people, killed people, and caused birth defects in their kids, including American soldiers — lots of them. The government knew it. They had tested it on 40 lab mice. And lab mice don’t have a good life generally anyway. They don’t have good life expectancy. But in this case, 38 died within five days. What did the government do with that information? Put that in a top secret file and get rid of it. And then it sits for a long, long time. And the Institute of Medicine says, “Agent Orange is hurting people.” “What are you talking about? No.” And they lie and they lie and they lie. And finally 20, 25 years later — “Okay, yeah, sorry, we were wrong. It does cause birth defects.”

You see that same story with breast implants — silicone breast implants. You see that same story with baby formula, with baby food which has arsenic in it. I don’t want any arsenic in baby food. But deny, deny, deny, deny.

And we’ll see it with mass vaccination, because after some years there will be — “Okay, yes, there is a good chance that it causes myocarditis.” Already been admitted, by the way. Pericarditis, cancer in young people. It was a bad product. Sorry. But they won’t do it a year away from a thing. And obviously, as we can see every day, they won’t do it five years away.

It’s very easy to see and to locate when the US Government, or any power center — I’m an American, I’m all for America — but all power centers in human history lie. Knowing that they are lying does not tell you the truth, however. Meaning, knowing that Oswald did not act alone as a shooter from the sixth floor of the Texas Book Depository — if he was a shooter at all — knowing that does not tell you who was the shooter. So often the best we can get in our skepticism is to know that we are not being told the truth.

How Reality Really Works

STEVEN BARTLETT: When I grew up, I feel like I was very naive to the nature of how the world really operates. And the more I’ve done podcasts — and frankly, you get invited to interesting things and you meet rich people and famous people and billionaires. I went to Davos this year, which I think people think makes me some kind of — I don’t know. If there was an Illuminati at Davos, they didn’t invite me into that room. But I got to see really powerful people and world leaders and all those kinds of things. And I’ve sat here and interviewed so many CIA spies, and I’ve learned that there are things going on out of plain sight.

So the version of reality that the average person has as they go through their life — how has the work you’ve done over the last several decades of your career shifted your belief about the version of reality that actually exists? How are they different?

GAVIN DE BECKER: I can answer it easily, because I was just like you. I would say I was naive. And in fact, I want to quickly acknowledge that I’m probably naive today, even with what you’ve heard, because there may be a level above the level above the level above that I’m not seeing, or I’m choosing not to see.

I can tell you the exact evolution for me, not dissimilar to you. I grew up in the 50s and 60s. I believed the courts will always come up with a fair decision. I believed that the IRS will only collect money and destroy people with good reason, and they won’t do it with bad reason. I believed everything — and a lot of it, right up until Covid, by the way. Right up until seeing what went on with both mass vaccination and the mass control through fear.

Here’s what I want to tell you. I’ve learned it’s not that unusual, I think. I think it’s easy to embrace, which is — are human beings the same as they were a thousand years ago? Are human beings the same as they were in Caesar’s time? What did Caesar do, by the way? A Caesar — pick a Roman emperor — whatever they wanted to do, they had sex with who and what they wanted. Eight years old, ten years old, boy, girl, whatever it may be.

Even in King Farouk’s time in Egypt — one of the last kings of Egypt — if you were a house guest, they’d say to you, “We’re going to have dinner at 6. We can send somebody to your room. Do you want a young boy or a young girl?” No shame to it, no problem whatsoever.

Rich and powerful people like the ones you were describing at Davos often go from — “I already have all the money, I’ve already had all the fame, I’ve already had all the influence. What do I want to do now?” And sometimes they want to do forbidden things. Have an affair, keep a girl in an apartment — these are easy, right? Cheat on my wife. These are easy. Still. A 14-year-old girl? Oh, not getting so easy anymore. But I’ve done all the other stuff, and that’s what the Epstein piece appeals to — the forbidden.

I want to be very concise in answering this question about what changed in terms of my view, how I’ve gotten started, where I started. First of all, I worked in government, worked in the Reagan administration. I lied. I did things that were lies, that were deceitful, several times in my career. I can give you examples in a minute if you want. But to make a prosecution work, I reached a bit to get somebody — some bad guy who was trying to kill a client — prosecuted or in custody for a longer period of time.

I was in many meetings where the questions were, “This thing happened” — not “How shall we tell the public?” but “What shall we tell the public? How shall we spin this thing?” This is the norm in every corporate boardroom in America. It’s not, “Oh, there’s cancer-causing asbestos in the baby powder. I guess we better let everybody know.” That’s not the meeting. The meeting is, “Let’s notify the FDA and say it’s under study. And so if we get asked, we’ll get through this thing.”

Who goes to jail, by the way, in these corporations for the things they do? Opioids, et cetera. My God, a hundred thousand people dying from heart attacks from a pain pill — Vioxx, for God’s sake. I mean, it’s unbelievable. And nobody gets in trouble, right? Companies are fined. Do you know what the fines mean to these companies?

In that new book I gave you, Forbidden Facts, I lay out what all the pharma companies have been fined criminally, what it cost them, and what they made nonetheless. And of course, they made the right decision because financially they did very well.

But I want to get to the concise part. Look at world history as a pie chart. The entire thing is tyranny — as a government method, as a control method. Just a tiny sliver is representative democracy — a little bit, starting in Greece, Western Europe, the United States. Tiny sliver. So our norm, Stephen, is tyranny. That is the norm for human beings. And what happens to that tiny sliver that I’m describing? That tiny sliver always moves toward totalitarianism.

The Decline of Western Civilization and the Arc of History

STEVEN BARTLETT: What does that mean?

GAVIN DE BECKER: It means that the representative democracy we have, let’s say in the UK, which is pretty stressed right now in terms of freedom of speech, or in the United States, moves toward totalitarianism in that it says, it starts with we pass a law. And if, you know, the U.S. Constitution says if there isn’t a law prohibiting it, you can do it. And for government, it says if there isn’t a law allowing it, you cannot do it. That’s the US Constitution. That’s the US method.

Well, look what it’s become. A law gets passed, and then regulators, unelected officials go f*ing nuts on interpreting that law the way they want to and applying it the way they want to. And so it moves toward totalitarianism. 40,000 new laws passed in the United States every year. How many rescinded? Almost none.

STEVEN BARTLETT: So where are we now? Here in the United States, where we both are sat, or in the UK, where are we in the arc of history? Because it kind of does seem to move in sort of cycles now.

GAVIN DE BECKER: If you’re talking about where are we now, like Western society, or the US Empire in decline. And first of all, is it an empire? Obviously, right. We have 760 military bases overseas. 760. We have a larger budget for what we call defense, now called war, since Trump has changed the name to Department of War, more accurately. We have a larger budget than every other country in the world combined for military spending. How many overseas bases does China have? I think it’s one now. I’m not saying China’s all lovely. I’m just saying they have a different method. They have a method closer to what we had in the 60s, which was to come in with beneficial help. “We’ll redo your roads,” et cetera, et cetera. So we’re an empire, and we’re an empire in decline.

And a moment ago when I said that tyranny is the normal state of affairs for how people are governed, how is it exercised? Through fear. Always through fear. Fear is the method that causes division. And division is the fuel of power. Meaning you want the population to be divided, you want the left and the right, you want the Trumpers and the Democrats and the Forever Trumpers and the Never Trumpers. Division is the fuel that all world leaders relish.

I give you the example in the cleanest terms. The king and the queen look over the castle wall and when they see their subjects fighting, they high five each other. Because if they’re fighting with each other, they’re not coming over the wall. And there’s always a wall. But if they’re not fighting with each other, that’s a big problem, because then they’re coming over the wall because everybody knows in their heart, “Wait a minute, these f*ers are living in absolute luxury while I can’t afford to feed my kids.” Their motorcades today, and in those days their beautiful ornate wagons pulled by a bunch of horses go by and splatter mud on me in the street. What really is the difference? I mean, royalty is such a bullshit scam.

STEVEN BARTLETT: So what happens to the Western world if we’re in a declining empire?

Optimism Amid Decline

GAVIN DE BECKER: I’ll give you the optimistic version because I have a dear friend, happens to live in Cape Town, who helps me with this sometimes. Because like anybody, when I look a lot at what happens, I can get discouraged, I can get cynical. It’s not a good place to live. I think Tony Robbins, maybe even he said it on your show, which is, you know, that what you focus on will determine the quality of your life. So I can focus on the pharma companies and all the stuff they’re doing, or I can focus on the beauty of nature and spend more time in nature and spend more time with my kids, et cetera.

So my optimistic answer, which comes from a dear friend, Nick Hudson in Cape Town, is that even if empires decay and social decay is outside the studio, it’s in London, it’s in New York, it’s in Los Angeles, it’s in Seattle, it’s in Portland. It’s unavoidable. Take a drive in Los Angeles. Every freeway on-ramp, not some, every single one of them has tents underneath it with people living there. That is not good news.

But here’s the good news part of it, the optimistic part of it, is that survival and thriving always prevails. And it does not rely on these systems. Meaning you are who you are in a spiritual sense or in the scientific sense, whatever way you want to look at yourself, as a collection of energy that doesn’t need that body, by the way, right? The energy doesn’t go anywhere when that body’s done, meaning the energy is still there. It’s not destructible, and so it’s indestructible.

So you are this being, this awareness, this consciousness. And if around us when we go outside here today, all the buildings are gone and social decay has accelerated, are we going to be okay? And the answer is yes. What happens now? We’re living in the forest. And now I say, “Steven, you’re pretty good at carpentry, right? Come join us.” And you say you’re good at planting sweet potatoes. “We need some of that. Let’s do that.” And small populations of people begin again, commence again. Even after nuclear war, after a variety of things.

And I know it’s crazy to some people, but I take my hope and my optimism from that fact, which is that it doesn’t rely upon the electricity working, it doesn’t rely upon the plumbing working and the sewage system working, that eventually there’s enough of the earth, natural earth, for us to do what has happened before, which is start again.

Give you a very fast aspect of this. A thousand years ago, there’s a thousand little governments, there’s shoguns in Japan, there’s villages, there’s the guy who has 300 people and he’s the chief. Then it becomes what it was in your life and my life, which is about 190 countries. But those 190 countries are really about five power centers. There’s NATO, there’s Brexit, there’s the oil producing countries. And eventually those five power centers will come to two power centers — the West, US and China, is my prediction. But it’ll be somebody else’s prediction, can do it differently.

And then those two f*ers are standing in a room together and one has to kill the other. That’s the course of history. That’s how it goes. That’s how it goes in every geographical area in history, which is, “We’ve got 30 villages. And if I can find your village, we’ll take the women, we’ll take the children, and we’ll kill the men.” And it’s just a matter of math, how many of there are of you and how many are there of our group.

Are We Already at War with Russia?

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

GAVIN DE BECKER: Yes, some people believe in that general concept of mutually assured destruction, which is that neither side will do it. But you said it’s almost impossible for you to imagine, or words to that effect. I want to help you with that imagining. And it goes like this.

We are currently at war with Russia. We are not supporting the war in Ukraine only. We are at war with Russia because we are providing satellite information, electronic warfare strategies, drone strategies, providing targeting information. And that is war. Today, that is war. War is not just the guys on the battlefield with rifles. That’s the low end element. The high end element is supersonic missiles, which Russia has. And the high end element is intel and satellite technology and the wide variety of things that are going on, some of which aren’t even in the news, by the way, that go on in Russia and they say, “Oh shit.” Or that go on in Ukraine and they say, “Oh shit, the Russians have figured out that thing.”

But the US is so far beyond other countries in the world in terms of technology. And so that is war with Russia. And you could say that our war with North Vietnam was war with China, but now there’s just no question about it. So that was a long answer, Steven, to say, I want to get your imagination closer. We’re already at war with Russia.

The CIA’s Mechanical Dragonfly and the Secrets of AI

STEVEN BARTLETT: Speaking of crazy weapons, I was reading about a story where you did a tour with the CIA and they showed you a mechanical dragonfly.

GAVIN DE BECKER: Yeah.

STEVEN BARTLETT: With a battery. What did they show you?

GAVIN DE BECKER: Well, I’ve had a lot to do with the agency, and that’s been public over the years. I was giving a talk and then afterwards they took me on a tour to a CIA museum. They showed me a lot of things. “Oh, here’s the helmet that was worn by that pilot who was shot down over Russia named Powers.” All kinds of interesting memorabilia. And one of them was a little dragonfly, the size of a dragonfly, and it was mechanical. And I looked at it real closely and thought, “Wow, that’s really fantastic. It’s very interesting.” And he said, “You don’t have any questions at all?” I said, “No, I mean, I get it.” And he said, “Why don’t you ask me when it was built?” And I said, “Okay, when was it built?” 1967.

In 1967, before we had any miniaturized electronics or motorization, the CIA had built that little thing. And it was a little camera that would fly around in here as a dragonfly and then fly home. And I don’t know how many pictures it held, but it’s an interesting piece. I want to share with you about AI, which is, people wonder how sophisticated is AI and where is it. My belief is that everything we have access to, like AI, we probably have something that the US intelligence had 10 years ago. We’re probably dealing with something quite old already.

STEVEN BARTLETT: I’m just looking at a picture of this dragonfly.

GAVIN DE BECKER: Oh, I didn’t even know it was public.

STEVEN BARTLETT: This little thing here. Yeah, and you know, this was made, as you say, what, 50 years ago? So one can only imagine the type of technology they have now.

GAVIN DE BECKER: Oh, of course. I mean, they probably —

STEVEN BARTLETT: They don’t even need to fly a dragonfly in because we have all these electronic devices.

The Power of Intuition

GAVIN DE BECKER: Of course they can turn on our devices, probably your watch, if it’s an Apple watch, but certainly your phone. And yeah, we are participating in — I won’t even call it an experiment, but a process. You read 1984, I’m sure, and most of your audience did. I was very heartened during the beginning of COVID that 1984 became the 17th best selling book in the world in the English language, telling me, “Ah, people are paying attention. They see that what they’re experiencing here has a degree of 1984 to it.”

I think all science fiction stories come true. I really do. I see it time after time.

STEVEN BARTLETT: What advice would you give to my listeners about how to navigate in the world we’re living in today? To avoid risk, threat — whether that’s of our soft tissue, as you said, or just with our privacy or lives generally. Where does the advice start? You said you raised 10 kids. What advice are you giving to your 10 kids?

GAVIN DE BECKER: Well, they all know that their dad is a big proponent. And my first book, which is still a very big book, The Gift of Fear — that book is, I think, still the best selling book in the world on violence after 20, 25 years. And that book is all about intuition and personal responsibility.

So the very first thing I would say to your listeners, to you, to remind myself as well, is that human beings did not get the biggest claws or the biggest teeth or the biggest muscles. We got the biggest brains relative to our size. And the nuclear defense system that all human beings have is intuition — much different from logic.

The root of the word intuition, by the way, I learned when I was writing that book, is inter, which means to guard and to protect. So intuition — when you think about it — “Oh, I just have a feeling I should go back to the apartment and double check. Did I leave the fire on the pot?” And you go back and you open the door and you didn’t leave the fire on the pot. But something else will always be going on that makes you glad you came back.

I believe that intuition is always right in at least two ways. One, it always has your best interest at heart. It’s not f*ing with you — it’s giving you real information that’s valuable. And number two, it’s always based on something. And so our journey is to figure out, when I have an intuitive feeling — like, “Do this show with you.” Who knows why, but when I have that intuitive feeling — and by the way, I don’t do most shows, I don’t know what the reason is, I don’t know what it’ll be. I mean, I can make up one with logic, right? “I like that guy, I learned a lot from his shows.” I can create a case, I can make a case for anything.

But if it’s just based on what I feel — and everything you’ve succeeded at and accomplished was based on what you felt, it was based on intuition. In America, in the West, we think we’re doing it by logic, right? “I do a big PowerPoint presentation and I say to the board, here’s the reason, here’s why, and here’s the percentages.” And they say, “Oh good.” The board at corporations in America would actually prefer that I use logic even if I’m wrong, instead of using intuition even if I’m right.

So when I say to you, “No, I just think it’s the right thing to do. I think it’d be smart. I think it’ll really work out” — like something like Amazon Prime that people opposed, and then it’s like 175 million people just in America are using it. Big success. Intuitive process, not a logic process. Logic is weak. Plodding logic does A, B, C, D. Intuition does A to Z instantly, and you don’t know why. It’s knowing without knowing why.

“I don’t feel good about that person.” “I’m going to back out — I said I was going to make this business deal, I’m backing out of it.” “I said I was going to show up to that thing, I’m calling and canceling.”

And by the way, canceling — one of my favorite things. I recommend it to everybody. I recommend canceling and postponing to everybody. You are not obligated to keep your plans. You made a plan three months ago and you don’t know who you’ll even be, or if you or them or anybody will even be alive three months from now. There’s nothing wrong with canceling. I don’t do it rudely, by the way.

But just to finish on what your viewers and listeners can do — really fall in love with intuition and learn the way you communicate with yourself. There are signals from intuition: curiosity, you just wonder something; suspicion; worry can even be a signal of intuition. But the biggest one is true fear. When you feel true fear — “I don’t want to do this.”

Training Your Intuition

STEVEN BARTLETT: I wanted to ask you a question about this. I met with Magnus Carlsen, who is arguably the best chess player in the world. And I met with him after spending some time in Cape Town writing about gut instinct and intuition, all these kinds of things. And one of the things that I learned through my writing was that in many cases, when someone has a really well trained intuition, their first thought is the right thought. And actually, if you give them longer to think about the problem, they make a worse decision.

So when I met Magnus Carlsen as the number one chess player in the world, backstage — we were both on stage together — I said to him, “Listen, I’ve got a question to ask you. Do you basically now just run off intuition, or do you think?” And he said, “My first thought is nearly always right. So actually I spend the other time just confirming the first intuition that I had.”

And actually I was telling him about a dodgeball game where they got professional dodgeball players to look at a frozen image of a dodgeball game and said, “Where would you throw the ball?” And when they gave them little time to decide, they made a better decision — when they just went with their first gut instinct, they made a better decision. They unfroze it and it was the right throw. If they gave them longer, they made the worst decision.

And the caveat — and I guess the question for you — is it appeared to me that you almost have to train the intuition. In areas of our life where we’ve got multiple reps and pattern recognition, our intuition is valuable. But then in other areas of our life where we haven’t trained the muscle yet, we can make bad decisions. One such example would be the first time you start hiring people — you don’t have a trained intuition yet. So you go, “Yeah, she seems nice.” But then, having probably hired thousands of people for 15 years now, I get an intuition. So do you have to train your intuition?

GAVIN DE BECKER: Well, I think it happens automatically as you live life, that new distinctions are added. But I also believe that it is a natural resource. I could think of it in a spiritual sense. It’s very hard to figure out why we feel a certain way, and we do what Magnus said — which is we get our answer and then we backtrack and see if it fits.

I think the training that’s necessary, Steven, is not the training to improve your intuition, but rather the training to listen to it — and to not interrogate it and to not prosecute it. Because I’ll give you an example.

A woman is working late at night in an office building like this. She’s on the 10th floor. She’s leaving. She pushes the button for the elevator. The elevator door opens up. Inside the elevator is a man who causes her fear. She doesn’t like it for whatever reason. Obviously she has no opportunity yet to assess all the issues — what’s he dressed like, what does he look like, what did I hear three weeks ago about a guy who wore a blue cap and T-shirt? She doesn’t have any time for that. Her first reaction was immediate.

What does she do? Most women get into a steel soundproof chamber with someone they’re afraid of — and there’s not another animal in nature that will do it. Now why does she do it? Because the thought comes: “Oh, I don’t want him to think I’m a racist because he’s Hispanic,” or “I don’t want to be that kind of person,” or “I don’t want this reaction to reality to be true, so I’m going to act like it’s not true.”

And what I say is — let the door close in his face. No problem. If you’ve got the signal, that’s a low cost decision. Wait for the next elevator. That’s a very low cost issue.

Now, there are so many examples of this in my work where I interviewed people who had been victimized. And time after time, they would tell me, “I knew when I walked into that underground parking lot that that was the same car that I’d seen earlier. I knew when I met that guy.”

In fact, there’s a beautiful — a woman who wrote me the most beautiful thing. I think it’s in Gift of Fear, or it’s in one of the subsequent books. And she said that she would look at her lifelong diary — she’d kept a lifelong diary — and she looked back at it and it would say, “Met this guy, feel a little queasy about him, not so sure.” Dated him, married him. And then what she wrote to me was, again and again, she could see it right there in her diary. Listen to this: “The ending embedded in the beginning.”

And so what I encourage people to do — going back to your original question about how people can be safer — is listen to their intuition. Know that its function is to protect you. That’s what it’s doing.

Reading the Signals Around Us

STEVEN BARTLETT: When I was reading about your work on intuition and your perspective on it, it got me thinking about people in my life that I have to get rid of tomorrow. Well, actually — that little alarm bell in your head. You have a little alarm bell, an intuition — like, “I don’t know what the answer is, but I feel like something isn’t right.”

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

It suddenly all made sense. That thing that was giving me the vibe that was off — I think now it’s because of something from their childhood that I didn’t actually know, which meant they have this behavior which will make you feel a little bit uncomfortable. And in that moment, I was thinking about this example before you arrived, because I was like — in that case, my intuition told me something, but I didn’t know what it was telling me. I imagine a lot of people have that — they have a vibe about someone, something’s not quite right, and they’re interpreting it to mean X when it could mean something else entirely.

Childhood, Fear, and the Path That Followed

GAVIN DE BECKER: Yeah, sometimes there’s a very straight line — like in my life, and I suspect in yours too — between certain childhood experiences and what we ultimately do. In my case, a very easy one is there was fear. I then come to have a deep understanding of fear, both sides of it, and some compassion for it and some insight, and I then study it. There was violence in my childhood.

And so now — it’s so long ago, I’m 71, so my childhood is so long ago now — it doesn’t have a grip on my throat like it did for a lot of my life, where the narrative was very, very important to me. The narrative of my childhood was important. Go ahead, you were going to ask questions.

STEVEN BARTLETT: I was going to say, probably give people the context on your childhood.

Gavin’s Childhood and His Mother’s Suicide

GAVIN DE BECKER: Oh, you or me? I’ll tell you. Okay, good. Yeah, my childhood, dammit, I’ll tell you. So, yeah, very difficult time. My mother was a heroin addict. She was quite violent. She was very troubled. She committed suicide when she was 39 years old and I was 16.

And that was a kind of failure for me because I considered it my job to get us all through this drama alive. She shot my stepfather in front of me. A lot of things happened in that house that we lived in. I think — I saw the house a few months ago, by the way — I think there are nine bullets in the walls and floor of that house that I can account for. Probably still there.

And so while I’m describing this to you dispassionately, it’s because of two things. The distance in terms of time, but most of all because of healing. I want to give you my definition of healing in this context.

My definition of healing for all of us is when we stop using any of our energy to manage the past. And this gives us all of our energy in the present moment.

And so what do I mean, using energy to manage the past? Well, if I’m keeping that story going and I’m saying to my wife, “Well, because my mama did this, this is why I feel such and such,” which I went through times in my life when those things were much closer to me. Today I feel like I’m not using any of my energy to manage the past.

The narrative — I told you this whole series of dramas happened. And anytime you hear about a parent or anybody in somebody’s life committing suicide, we often think, “Oh, what a terrible experience that must have been.” What you really ought to think when you hear about somebody committing suicide is, “Oh, what a series of terrible experiences there must have been leading up to that.”

Dreams, Forgiveness, and Gratitude

And I want to tell you real quickly that I had a couple of dreams that my mother was in that were particularly powerful. And I offer this to the audience to know that dream experiences are sometimes all you’re going to get, right? Because my mother died when I was 16, so I don’t have an opportunity to sit across the table with her and say, “What were you thinking when you saw such and such?” and “What was going on in your life when such and such?”

But in a dream, she came to me once and I asked her, “Why were you so cruel to me?” And she was totally perplexed. And she said to me, “Cruel to you? I was preparing you for this extraordinary life.”

And I think that’s true. I think that’s what happened. Is that for you, whatever your experience was — for Tony Robbins, who we talked about earlier, what his experience was — it took those experiences. You take away those experiences and you don’t have someone who grows up wanting nothing more than to write these books for free and sell them for free and get them published for free. Like Forbidden Facts, the current book, in order to help people deal with these issues of skepticism, of fear, et cetera.

You don’t get somebody doing what I do, where my ambition is long gone. My ambition for more — more anything, more money, more houses. Well, houses I might still slip on. But now it’s service to other people. Wasn’t always, but it is service to other people.

Because I believe that public life includes you. If all you do is give me a bad example, that’s service. If you give me a good example, that’s a prettier form of service. Maybe it’s a nicer job you got, but ultimately all of it is service. Everything that we can observe of people in public life and people in our private lives — it’s all service.

The Teachers in Our Lives

I remember a friend of mine telling me he went back home for Thanksgiving and he saw his whole family. And he said he learned to only stay for one day. He said because all the stuff happened on the second day with his family if he stayed for two days. And he also learned to stay in a hotel. I said, “Are you staying at home?” He said, “Oh, fun. No, never, never stay at home.”

Because here was this group of people. But what he told me that was interesting is he said, “Ah, Aunt Charlene, you taught me to speak more quietly because you talk so loud. And Uncle Carlo, you taught me to be more gentle because, man, you’re rough in everything you do — throw the glasses around and the way you engage. Dad, you taught me to listen to people because you never f*ing listened to a thing I said. Even today.”

Isn’t it a beautiful way of looking at it? Basically, these were the teachers in our lives. For my mother, 100%. I’m so far past forgiveness and so far into gratitude for the pieces that were wonderful.

And by the way, right, this is a suffering person. This is a person that the charities are for and social welfare is for — a woman with three kids and no job and a heroin addict, for God’s sake. That’s not an easy job. And other drugs too, by the way, which helped me as I grew up to be skeptical of pharma. Because some of the pills she took — one of them called Doradin — has now been taken off the market for causing psychosis, which explains a lot of her craziness.

And so all of this teaching — it depends what you do with it, meaning you. Nobody gets out of here alive, right? Everybody’s got a story to tell.

The Limits of Predicting Human Behavior

And I remember a case where I overvalued my own ability to predict human behavior. I say in these books, “You can predict human behavior, right?” To drive here today in traffic, I had to predict the behavior of thousands of people based on just the little movements of the big metal objects around them. You know, that guy who starts to move over into your lane and then he catches himself — you never trust that guy. You always want to get way behind him or way in front of him. So we’re predicting human behavior all the time.

But I overvalued mine. I thought, “Oh, I’m Mr. Genius predicting human behavior,” because I developed these systems of artificial intuition that predict human behavior.

And I was at a meeting and there were a group of people at the meeting, and it was going to start in about five minutes. And a few people were comforting one woman who was really sobbing at the end of the table. And I thought to myself, judgmentally, “Why did she even come to the meeting? I mean, if she can’t do the meeting, what’s she doing here?” And I knew it was a boyfriend issue, right? That’s what she’s crying about. And they’re comforting her.

The meeting begins and that woman speaks first and she says through her tears, “I’m sorry, you guys, I’ll do my best at the meeting. But as many of you know, my husband killed my 12-year-old son four days ago.”

So my little journey into judgmental prediction was about as wrong as you could be. And it was a humbling experience for me, because I would have discounted that person in a moment. That’s the other side of prediction and intuition, right? You can discount people and quickly toss them away.

And so when you get this intuitive signal, do we have a responsibility to understand it? Yeah, we have a responsibility to understand it. How many people have I met who I thought, “What an asshole that guy is, I don’t ever want to talk to that guy again.” And I didn’t. My loss. Sometimes it would have been the greatest person in the world. Sometimes it would have been a great relationship.

And now I apply the George Harrison rule. George Harrison and the Beatles, who writes this unbelievable lyric that’s in “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” which is: “I look at you all and see the love there that’s sleeping.”

STEVEN BARTLETT: Through your work, you’ve been behind the scenes with some of the most interesting people on planet Earth — the most successful, richest, most powerful people on planet Earth. And you get to see, therefore, both sides of the fence in a way that most people would never see. You get to see how they are in their public life, and then you get to see them in their private life. And oftentimes you’ll get to see them during some of the hardest moments of their life.

GAVIN DE BECKER: Most of the time, yeah.

STEVEN BARTLETT: What have you learned from that exposure?

What’s Real in a World of AI and Illusion

GAVIN DE BECKER: Well, probably a lot, but I’ll give what answer comes to me intuitively. When I was a kid and I used to watch television, I believed that the television was more real than our lives. And I learned, obviously through my experience, that the exact opposite was true. The media world was unreal and our lives were real.

And this, Steven, is incredibly important today because with AI and social media and other things, we are actually challenged to know what is real and what is not real. Did Trump really make that speech or is it an AI film? Did that really happen? Is what I’m looking at real — did the cat really do that, or is that an AI film?

We are now challenged to understand and choose, I would say, what’s real and what’s not real. That challenge has beauty in it because it’s making me question reality itself. In other words, I’m questioning what really matters to me and what will I call real.

And I’ll give you some examples. I’ll call touch real — hug you, shake your hand. I’ll call that real. Nature — time in a park, time with animals, my time with cats and dogs — unbelievably important to me because I trust those f*ers, right? I believe that cat means business. This is what it’s doing. If it wants to be on my chest purring, it wants to be on my chest purring. And if it doesn’t, she’s out of there.

CIA, cats, and children are the same thing. I remember my son meeting a famous client of mine who, let’s say, was the richest man in the world at that moment. And my son at 3 years old asked, “How much money do you have?” But it held no offense, because it’s this little kid. All it can be is real. There’s nothing but real in the little kid.

And so where I think optimistically about AI — which definitely has some problems for the human race, for sure — where I think optimistically about it is I think it’s good for people to question reality. Because what ultimately is it?

If this is a simulation, like Elon makes a good argument for — and I think he leans in that direction, by the way, and sometimes I do too — if it’s a simulation, then we want to make it interesting and we want to be a bit outside of it. In a simulation, we’re not vulnerable, right? The spirit, the soul, the energy that animates us will continue. It’s not going anywhere. And it lets us witness this experience rather than feel victim to it, right? We get to watch this — it’s a good movie. And we wouldn’t go see a movie if we knew the outcome. But this movie’s really good.

And so when I look at AI things — and trust me, I don’t know about you, you’re younger, so you may have better instincts or intuitions for it — but I genuinely can’t tell sometimes. I mean, I send something back to a friend of mine and say, “I think that’s bullshit. I don’t think the dog actually jumped up on the top shelf and did that. I don’t buy it.” And then you look at it a few more times.

But this is good for us, because what it brings us to is whatever we think is real — touch, taste, the feelings, tears, nature, whatever we think it is. I believe that’s where I want to be. That’s where I want to spend my time.

The Dead Internet Theory and the Future of Trust

STEVEN BARTLETT: So there’s this theory called the Dead Internet theory where they think that because of AI and us being able to make content, I actually sent a video to some of my team members earlier. It was a two and a half minute video, and it’s made with one of these AI tools. And it’s the ending of a very famous movie and someone’s just changed it and it’s a kid in their bedroom has made a new ending to the movie. Couple of prompts, they’ve got a new ending to the movie.

And I was playing this forward, playing this forward and forward and forward. And eventually you get to a point where bots will be just spraying content at the Internet. And in such a world, unless we have these sort of retina scanners to confirm that I’m doing the post live, you get to this Dead Internet theory where everything you see is either written by, produced by AI. Therefore our level of skepticism just raises to the point that we don’t trust anything we’re seeing.

You’re saying that that’s actually a good thing for us because it makes us question what we’re seeing again and revert to real things that are irreplaceably human.

GAVIN DE BECKER: Yes, I think it’s good to. I think it’s spiritually good for us to redefine reality as opposed to, take me back 20 years in my life and possibly yours. What did I believe? Everything the government said, every official narrative. Why wouldn’t I believe?

STEVEN BARTLETT: Do you think there’s any downside to our lost interest in institutions?

Small Communities, Subsidiarity, and the Problem with Centralized Government

GAVIN DE BECKER: Well, I have such a negative view of big centralized institutions.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Why?

GAVIN DE BECKER: Because I think what happens when you — a very good number of people to live together is about 300. And what I base that on is Fiji, where I live a lot. Villages are about 300 people. There’s a chief who lives with them. He doesn’t get special treatment. He’s not carried around in a gold chariot. He’s got to eat the same food they do. And he is generally benevolent.

Because the beauty of the Fijian village — and I encourage you to go, and all your viewers to go, don’t all go on the same day because you’ll f* up Fiji, but go anyway — the beauty of the Fijian village is that people will be born and grow up and get married and have children and die all in the same house and all with the same people. That’s fantastic. Because what they don’t get that I get in my life and you get is the engagement with all these anonymous people that don’t matter. The waiter is just a snapshot to me, not a real person I’m sitting down with.

I like to, by the way, really engage with people at the expense of the friends I’m with. Very often I’m really curious about people. The Uber driver, I’m curious. But I know that this is a temporary relationship. In the Fijian village, it’s not a temporary relationship.

I’ll give you a good example. On an airplane, you’re on a commercial flight somewhere and you’ve got a 10 hour flight overseas to London or something, and there’s a baby crying and you’re pissed that the baby’s crying. Some people are. I mean, I look at this when we used to travel, my wife and I, and I remember somebody saying when we boarded with my maybe 20 month old son, “Is that baby going to cry?” And I said to the woman, “What do you think? It’s a 20 month old baby.”

But the point is, hey folks, we’re together for the next 10 hours. How do we want to spend this time? We want to spend it hating each other? We want to get too drunk and bug the person next to you? How do we want to do this? A Fijian village is like that. In fact, a Fijian village has fewer bathrooms than a 747 and fewer seats than a 747. Fewer people, for God’s sake, than what we get on an airplane every day.

And so I believe in small populations for governance. And I believe in subsidiarity, a word you probably don’t know. I only learned it about a year ago from a dear friend in Cape Town. Subsidiarity means government at the most local possible level. So if it’s an issue regarding a building permit, that ought to be city or county, nothing to do with Washington, D.C. If it’s an issue regarding interstate commerce, okay, maybe we need a little Washington D.C., we need a little state involved. But government at the most local possible level.

So that I can come over to your house, Stephen, and say, “Why did you not approve my building permit?” Or so I can meet you in the restaurant where we see each other every morning, where our kids go to school together. I don’t believe centralized government works. And I think further that centralized government is our enemy. It is the enemy of citizens.

STEVEN BARTLETT: I was thinking about the parallels there, actually. For business.

GAVIN DE BECKER: They get too big.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah, they get too big. And a lot of great companies actually break up divisions and departments and give them autonomy. And subsidiari — can’t even say it — subsidiarity.

GAVIN DE BECKER: It wasn’t easy for me either.

STEVEN BARTLETT: I nailed it first time. What you’re talking about — subsidiarity. Bing, bing. Subsidiarity. And how even as our company grows, maybe I should think more about subsidiarity.

Keeping Organizations Human: The CARE System

GAVIN DE BECKER: Well, I’ll tell you, my company at its biggest was about 1,000 people and 26 offices around the country, around the world. And I didn’t like 1,000 people as a number. I liked where we are now, which is about 600 people. And we’re hiring, by the way, so look us up and come to work. We need young people who are physically fit and have good backgrounds, meaning they can pass screening.

But my point is that I like to stay in that sweet spot of 1,000 people. It starts to get too far from the individuals. And when it’s small — and I don’t know where you are now in this podcast organization — but you can walk down the hall and see an employee and say, “Hey, it seems like you’re not doing so well. You seem — you don’t like to joke anymore. You seem humorless.” In a big organization, while I developed a method for that, by the way, I’ll tell you in a second — in a big organization, you get farther and farther and farther from the human being.

I want to tell you the method we developed. We have a thing called CARE. It stands for Continuous Asking, Responding and Evaluation. Every day, every employee in my company, when they log into work, gets a question that they answer. And I get the statistical results of that every day. And the questions will be things like, “When do you think you’re getting your next promotion?” Or, “Have you experienced or witnessed sexual harassment? Have you experienced or witnessed discrimination?”

Why do I do that? Because I want to know. That’s why you ask. In bigger companies that use our system, like Amazon did — develop a system like it — you might ask a question like, “Have you ever seen a firearm in the workplace? An unauthorized firearm?” We want to know that information. “Does your supervisor know your name?” Huge question. Because the supervisor, knowing that question is asked, knows everybody’s name, which is what you want. You’re influencing middle management behavior.

But that system we have, CARE, is no different than me walking down the hall and saying, “Hey, Stephen, I noticed for the last couple of days you’re keeping your office door closed and you kind of shut down for some reason. What’s going on?” You lose that when it gets too big.

And when it gets really too big, like, think about government agencies like HHS. The biggest budget in world history, $1.7 trillion, bigger than the Pentagon. Started out at 85,000 employees. Luckily it’s down now. You’ve got to be kidding. You’re running a machine. It has nothing to do with humanity. And government agencies have nothing to do with humanity. They have to do with process, bureaucracy.

Life Advice: Contribution and Knowing What’s Right for You

STEVEN BARTLETT: We talked about advice — that’s kind of where we started on this train of thought — that you would give to your children. And one of the trains we went down was about intuition. Is there anything else that you think would — if this, God forbid, was your last day on earth and your children said to you, “Dad, what do I need to know to live a fulfilling life?”

GAVIN DE BECKER: Yes.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Based in the world as we see it today. What would you say? If you could only say one thing?

GAVIN DE BECKER: For me, and I think it’s true for everybody — contribution to others is a key part of coming to believe that you belong here. Those of us who had a tough time — and remember I said everybody has a tough time in some way through childhood — self-love is often missing or is hard to come by, and to believe that you belong here, contribution to others is a key thing.

And the second one — you asked for one, but you’re getting two, so it’s a special today, a bargain. The second one was the hardest lesson for me to come to believe, and that was that what is right for you is always right for the other person. Very hard for me to get my head around this one because I thought, “Well, wait a minute, I want to break up with this girl who wants to get married and have kids with me. How can my breaking up be right for the other person?” Well, she gets to be with somebody who actually wants to be with her. She gets to begin her life now instead of me staying with her till she’s 45 and she can’t have kids anymore.

So this idea that what’s right for you is always right for the other person — the practical application is that all you need to do, Stephen, is know what’s right for you.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Which is easier said than done.

GAVIN DE BECKER: It is easier said than done. Because in my case, what I would do is say, “How is this person going to do?” When I was younger, I believed everybody that I fired — for example, which was very few people in my career, I mean, I employed a lot of people, but I didn’t fire very often — everybody that I fired, I thought they went from working at this great company that I was the founder of to being on the street, homeless and couldn’t feed their families. That’s not what happened. They went to other great jobs.

If they could work for GDBA, they had already jumped through so many hoops. They were presentable, they were intelligent, they were physically fit, they had a great background, they had integrity that we could see. They had all variety of things and they presented incredibly well. Because we’ve got one hell of a screening process. We have a nine day — nine day — interview, not a one hour interview. They come and live at our camp for nine days of an interview process. They’re sleeping in our environment. We’re really getting to know them. By the way, it’s 12 days now, but started as nine days.

So now I know if I fire somebody or if they leave, they’re going to do fantastic. That was a big awakening for me. But this idea that what’s right for me is always right for the other person — what does it do? It frees you to know that the only place I have to go to get the answer to this question is in here. You don’t want me messing around in your brain trying to figure out what you want, trying to figure out what you believe, trying to figure out what’s best for you. I’ve hurt more people in my life trying to figure out what’s best for them than I’ve helped.

STEVEN BARTLETT: It is remarkably true. I was just sort of sense-checking it against people where in one particular case where I had fired someone and they were very upset about it — many, many years ago in a previous business, very upset about it, protested, said some things to me. And then years later, five, six, ten years later, when I reflect on where they are now and if that was the best thing for them — as I kind of assumed it was, to be honest — they would say it was the best thing for them. I would say it was the best thing for them. In hindsight, in part because when held in a situation that’s not right for them, they’re going to suffer in other ways.

GAVIN DE BECKER: Yeah. Including your resentment.

STEVEN BARTLETT: My resentment. A standard they can’t meet. Goals they can’t meet. The pressure from everybody. The stress when they can’t.

GAVIN DE BECKER: Wrong job, of course.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And let them go and they started their own thing. And less pressure, lower goals, less expectation. They seem to be much, much happier.

GAVIN DE BECKER: And you?

STEVEN BARTLETT: Oh my. Much happier.

Everything You Want Is Downstream

GAVIN DE BECKER: And you. Yeah, that’s the. Look, God only made you, or the universe, whichever word you want to fit in there, only made you responsible for one person, truly responsible for one person. And that’s you. And then that has of course all the ripple effects of what it does for the rest of the world.

Even our children, by the way, are we responsible for them? Certainly not for life. Right. Because in my case I’m an older father. My first birth kid, I had a bunch of adopted kids. A bunch. I had eight. But my first birth kid I was 52 years old. And so I’m an older father to my 17 year old son. I don’t expect to be around when he’s 50. I’ll take it if it happens to be that way. But I would be de-f*ing-crepit by that point and I’d rather probably exit before that.

But my point is the idea that even our children, we will not find the answer. Do I know what’s best for my kids? Of course not. I have a lot of opinions. But do I really know what’s best? No. But I know what’s best for me. And that’s really where my responsibility has to end.

Stephen, you asked me to boil it down to one. I gave you a special today of two. And I want to give you the third one that you haven’t asked for. And it’s this. Everything you want is downstream. Everything you want is downstream.

Meaning that time when we’re swimming against the current and think, “Oh, if it’s important, it’s going to take all this work,” et cetera, et cetera, there is no swimming upstream. Downstream always wins. Reality always wins. You know, when you swim upstream, you put enough current there and you’re staying in the same place.

And so the times in my life when I thought, “It must be this way, it has to be this, this is the only way,” I was wrong. I was wrong. Including hiring. A dear friend of mine told me the story of hiring a CEO for his company, big company. And the guy said, “I’ll take the job.” They negotiated everything. And then the guy said, “You know, I’m going to go to work for Pepsi Cola. And I’m sorry.”

And my friend got on an airplane and flew to the hotel and waited in the lobby of the hotel where he knew the guy was, caught him in the lobby and said, “Don’t go to work for them, go to work for me. I’ll change the offer in the following way. I’ll add this equity.” And he succeeded and he got the CEO he wanted and three weeks later had to fire the f*er.

So basically, when the whole universe says no, everything you want is downstream. Now you probably have some. You tell me, do you have some resistance to that idea?

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

GAVIN DE BECKER: I’d love to hear the context. But by the way, that doesn’t defeat my argument because fighting for something is not the same as swimming upstream. You know, swimming upstream is, you know, which way this river’s going.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Oh, yeah, yeah, that makes sense then.

GAVIN DE BECKER: Yeah. And so the. You asked what I would tell my kids is that everything you want is downstream. It kind of, you know, I’ve been so blessed or lucky, whatever word you want to use, or fortunate in my life that my work. You’ve got all these books as examples. I loved doing wasn’t work. I love. Sometimes it’s hard, but hard is not the same as feeling like I’m just stamping something out in this factory, which would be a kind of hell for me, I guess. I loved. I was doing what I was on the planet to do. I think everybody isn’t that lucky.

STEVEN BARTLETT: The example I was going to give you actually supports the story.

GAVIN DE BECKER: Yes, go ahead.

Steven’s Story: Everything You Want Is Downstream

STEVEN BARTLETT: Me and my then girlfriend were dating for a year. We had an issue. I’ve been very open about this and the newspapers write about it and stuff, but we had an issue with our intimate life and we couldn’t really see a way around it. Broke up. She flew to Bali because we couldn’t see a way to solve the problem. And then I carried on with my life.

And a year goes past and I’m thinking constantly, “Do you know what, I think actually that was the right person. I think I f*ed up. I think I should have maybe in my immaturity, I should have found a way to work through this problem.”

So I fly across the world to Bali, 18 months later. And I go there to apologize to her for not handling the situation better in a more mature way. I apologize. I think there is part of me that’s trying to get her back. Actually while we’re there, she does tell me that in the time we’ve been apart, she’s been with someone else. And I take it all very, very well. I’m very mature.

And then while we’re there, I’ve noticed she’s not trying to sit next to me. So when we go for dinner with our friends, she’s sitting two seats down. She’s like, there’s no interest in me anymore. So I accept it and I tell her I’m going home in two days time. “Thank you so much for spending time.” I sent her this nice text message.

And then in those 48 hours before my flight, it’s like we fell in love with each other again. So it supports your point because when I apologized, I came with no agenda. And then I said, “I’m leaving in 48 hours from the point where I said I’m off now.” Sent her a nice message. It’s like we fell in love again. She’s now my fiancée and that’s been —

GAVIN DE BECKER: Congratulations to you both.

STEVEN BARTLETT: I don’t know, it’s been seven years or something. But it actually goes to show what you said. Now I thought it through because I thought flying was me fighting for something because of the example you gave, but actually it was, I apologized. And I’d given up. I stopped fighting.

GAVIN DE BECKER: That’s the best when you let it go. And suddenly it happens. Yes, it does fit. Everything you want is downstream. In fact, that’s not, you know, even getting on a plane is downstream. You didn’t get on a plane that flies backwards or has no engines.

What I’m talking about is when you find yourself, and I certainly have in my life, find yourself doing something that is so difficult to do and so unrewarding, and it feels like I’m trying to swim upstream, which I can tell you from experience, and lots of rivers, some of them in Fiji, it doesn’t work. You don’t get a lot of mileage swimming upstream.

The Gift of Fear: Why It Resonated

STEVEN BARTLETT: I was just going to ask because, you know, this was such a smash hit, best selling book. Nationally. And I was just going to ask you the question. Why? What is it that resonated with people that made this book so successful? The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence. What is it?

GAVIN DE BECKER: That’s a very good question. In that it’s a new question. I’ll give you what I hope. I think if that book had been about Chinese pottery or about spices or any subject, carpentry, it also would have worked well because it had, by a number of blessings, it had some core truths in it.

One of the things I’m saying to them is forget about experts. You don’t need an expert to be telling you things that are in your own body. If this story is resonant to you, if this experience from all these people that I interviewed is resonant to you, and if that works for you, then you’ll find value here.

And there are some practical reasons why it was a bestseller, like Oprah doing it. I mean, everybody did it. Time magazine, Newsweek, everybody did big things on the book. Why at that moment did that work out? I have a theory which is that a lot of people in media knew me or knew of me, but I never had done anything public. And it took a lot of courage to do.

For me, I talk about things that were very personal in that book and in the other books as well. And it took a lot of courage. In fact, I went and met with two authors beforehand who had told really hard stories about their lives. And I didn’t know them. I just asked for meetings. One of them was in D.C. and I got some encouragement.

I also remember, by the way, meeting with a group of law enforcement officials who were at my company for some reason, and I told them a couple of stories from that book, childhood stories, and they were kind of aghast. Everybody was like, oh, it didn’t stimulate any conversation at the table. I knew I was in a kind of territory that most people run away from. And that too helps me because I thought, denial, denial, denial, denial, denial all around the table.

Because every cop and every FBI agent has a story about why they are doing what they’re doing, just like every doctor does, just like everybody does. There’s a reason that they’re doing what they’re doing that usually will be discoverable in childhood. And when they discover it. Like, who do you want, for example, for a heart surgeon? Do you want the heart surgeon whose grandfather died of a heart attack in his arms when he was 14 years old? Or do you want the one who said, “Heart surgery? Oh, the earnings look really good on heart surgery. I’ll take heart surgery as my major.” You know, you want the one with a core, with a story, a personal story.

The Origin of Purpose and Meaning

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

GAVIN DE BECKER: Okay, give me 25 minutes of silence. This is, I guess it’s somewhat of a spiritual answer, which is that I believe in. I tend to go with everything is predetermined, meaning down to the smallest tree in the smallest town, in the smallest place. It’s going to be. That’s how it was going to be.

Now, I have a scientific version of this, which is that if you’re. I remember one day I was in Fiji and I was swimming in front of my house, and the water’s just four feet deep in front of my house because it’s on a reef, so you can walk on it. And then you get to the end of the reef, you get to the deep water. And I was standing in the four foot deep water, and suddenly a massive rainstorm came, just like the bop, bop, bop, you know, hitting you in the head. And then it stopped immediately.

And immediately after that, this massive school of fish about this big just started jumping out of the water in front of me. And it’s noisy. It’s like as they were going around and they go in a whole circle around me and then they’re gone. And immediately after this, the tide which was rising, it goes up and down, as you know, twice a day. The tide really got strong where I was standing, and it was coming in as opposed to going out. And so I was really like standing there like this.

And I was looking around and I thought, “This better be enough stimulation for you, brother.” Like, I’d just seen the giant rainstorm and then the sun, the fish going nuts, and then this giant tide thing. And as soon as I thought that, a whale breached right off the reef, right? And I thought, “Holy s*, man, you are seeing one hell of a movie here.”

And then I thought, in fact, I dreamed that night that I was as if somebody had typed in, “Show me what it would be like to be standing on a reef in Fiji.” There was no AI then, but to be standing on a reef in Fiji and have a massive school of fish go jumping up around you, have a huge storm begin, have it quickly get sunny, and then see a whale breach in front of you as you’re trying to hold on to the reef, it’s so strong you can barely stand up. “Show me what that’s like, Google.”

And that I, Gavin, was like the eyes of God, universe, whatever it may be, that you could. What is it like to be a 42 year old man who’s had this diet, this day, this trip out to the reef, this childhood, this experience? Is it all predetermined? And I do believe it is.

And so the answer to that question is, I believe it’s out of my hands. I may get the choices, you know, is there free will? Something is presented to me. Go left, go right, I might get the choice. But what is presented to me is not up to me.

Predetermination and Final Thoughts

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

GAVIN DE BECKER: The idea was dropped into my skull so quickly, like it was a journalistic report that said, “Here’s the way the world works.” Something or somebody or everybody or everything types into Google what it wants to see. And occasionally you are the body that it works through, because of the rest of the universe.

And by the way, kind of interesting, this very moment we’re in, Steven, because that experience I had is now being relayed to a few million people courtesy of you and your question and that question in this podcast. So now you do know a little bit about what it’s like to stand in the water with the current trying to pull you over, and see a whole school of fish go around you, and see a whale breach right in front of you, and see this massive rainstorm come and go in a matter of minutes. Now you get a little piece of that experience.

Now, do I think — here’s the big punchline — do I think I created that experience? No f*ing way. I don’t. I think it’s predetermined. And I think I said to you, the scientific version is you’re going to ask me this question and that’s the answer you’re going to get. That’s what I believe. Based on what I ate today, based on what I ate 40 years ago, based on childhood, based on who you are and who I am. That’s the answer you’re going to get.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And who left the question, and who —

GAVIN DE BECKER: — left it, and how their day was, and what they ate that day, and everything else. I believe in predetermination. It comes from a teacher of mine in India, my best teacher in life. Nisargadatta wrote a book called I Am That — recommended to everybody. And then his student, who has now died, Ramesh Balsekar, who I got to go see and spend time with in India, who was an important teacher for me.

He basically said every day at 9am he had satsang in his house. Basically people could come and ask questions. And it was sort of — he happened to be Indian, but it was sort of Buddhist in nature. And somebody said to him, “Well, are you just saying we’re all robots?” And he said, “Yes, exactly correct. We’re all robots.” And then the person said, “Well, why should I even get out of bed in the morning?” And he said, “Try it. Try and stay in bed.” And he said after a few days, you’ll be up and about, you’ll be doing something. You’ll be motivated to do something.

So that is my answer to your question, which obviously I only heard this second, and the answer only came this second.

Book Recommendations and Where to Find Gavin

STEVEN BARTLETT: Gavin, thank you. Thank you for opening my eyes in so many ways. You’ve written so many of these great books. All of them I’m going to link below. The newest one here is called Forbidden: Government Deceit and Suppression, about brain damage from childhood vaccines. There’s another book about children here, Protecting the Gift: Keeping Children and Teenagers Safe and Parents Sane. The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence.

GAVIN DE BECKER: And I think those are the only three you need to link. And my reason is these are kind of specialty books in addition.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Okay, fine. So I’ll link these below for everyone to see. I highly recommend checking all of Gavin’s work out, and these are going to be in the comments section below if anyone wants to read more about some of the things we’ve touched on. You’ve touched on all these books today, but if you want to go deeper on any of these subjects, this is your opportunity to do so. And is there anywhere else people can go to find you if they’re interested?

GAVIN DE BECKER: Our website is gdba.com, and probably gavindebecker.com works. The website is — I don’t even solicit new clients. We don’t have any marketing or anything like that. The website is there for one purpose, which is attracting candidates for employment, because we are hiring a lot of people all the time. So that’s what the website does. But there may be other information there that’s valuable for people, I don’t know.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Well, if anyone’s young and fit, strong, and wants to work with Gavin, then I’ll link the website below as well to see all of the jobs available. Gavin, thank you so much.

GAVIN DE BECKER: Certainly.

STEVEN BARTLETT: There are so many things that blow my mind, but one of the most important things for me is actually just this lesson about intuition — and that, even in that, to listen to it more and to be more upfront with people when my intuition is telling me something. Because you’re right. I think we’re all very good at tuning the volume of our intuition down, down. And society kind of teaches us to gaslight ourselves and second-guess. Gavin, thank you.

GAVIN DE BECKER: Thank you too. And thanks for what you’re doing. You are one of my teachers as well, young man. I get to say that — it’s 71.

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