12 Simple Habits to Propel Your Success & The Inner Workings of the CIA-SYSK Choice

0:00William Vanderbloemen: Do you want to hear about visionaries creating a better world? People working in conservation, exploration, science, and tech, alongside storytellers imagining and creating a better future. I'm Alex Honnold, professional rock climber and founder of the Honnold Foundation, bringing you season six of Planet Visionaries.

0:15Michael Hurst: This season, I speak to guests like National Geographic photographer Tom Pesek and Anna Rathman, Executive Director of the Jane Goodall Institute USA, in partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative. Watch Planet Visionaries on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. Today on Something You Should Know, having friends is getting so expensive that for many of us it's affecting the friendships. Then, proven habits that will propel your success. Here's just one. The habit is called the curious. The top performers are always more interested in others than they are in themselves. Here's the quick life hack.

0:54Michael Hurst: If you want to be interesting to people, then start being interested in those people. Also, can chewing gum really improve your test scores? Depends on how you chew. And what really goes on at the CIA from a true insider.

1:10William Vanderbloemen: The day-to-day work of the CIA is breaking foreign laws. It very rarely involves shooting and car crashes and all the stuff you see on TV, but at its most basic level, It's an organization committed to convincing other people to commit treason.

1:26Michael Hurst: All this today on Something You Should Know. I imagine most of us shop for clothes online at least some of the time. And there's always that little mystery. Is what shows up at your door actually going to look like what you think you ordered? We've all had that experience. I know my wife has ordered dresses that look beautiful in the pictures. But when they arrived, not so beautiful. Cheap looking, disappointing. And that's one of the reasons we've become such big fans of Quince. When we order from Quince, we are confident we're going to get something really nice. The quality is consistently good.

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2:51Michael Hurst: Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go to Quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK, too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, please let them know it was Something You Should Know. It's the best way to support the show. Something You Should Know. Fascinating intel. the world's top experts, and practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Hi, welcome. Something I've noticed, perhaps you've noticed this too, but I don't hear people talking about it much, is about the high cost of going out.

3:37Michael Hurst: Going out with friends for drinks or to eat or going to a sporting event. It can all get very pricey. And I came across this survey article on a website called badcredit.org that talks about how people are coming to terms with the fact that having and maintaining friendships is really expensive. So expensive that it affects the friendships. According to the survey, Americans spend an average of$5 ,184 per year on time with friends. More than half of the survey respondents, 52%, say they consider friendship to be expensive. Not only that, but inflation is affecting social lives as well. 37 % of respondents said they are neglecting their friends due to the high cost of living.

4:28Michael Hurst: And that percentage jumps to 44 % for Gen Z. Friendship can also take a back burner to other major expenses, such as buying a house or alleviating debt. 65 %—that's two out of three people surveyed—confess to reducing social activities to focus on saving money and cutting spending. I guess the point of all this is, if you've had similar thoughts that going out with your friends is taking a financial toll, and maybe it's affecting your friendships, there are a lot of other people who agree with you. And that is something you should know.

5:08Michael Hurst: You don't have to look very hard to find advice on how to be successful. Many people have become very successful selling advice on how to be successful. Today, though, I'd like you to listen to some really good advice that is backed up by data, real solid data rather than opinion or just someone's personal story. William Vanderbloemen is founder and CEO of Vanderbloemen Search Group, an executive search firm, and he has conducted some great research into the traits of the people who become successful. They're not traits you're born with, but rather traits you can acquire and put into action today.

5:49Michael Hurst: William is author of a book called Be the Unicorn, 12 Data-Driven Habits That Separate the Best Leaders from the Rest. Hi, William. Welcome to Something You Should Know. Thanks, Mike. I really appreciate you having me on. So everyone, it seems, has advice for what it takes to thrive and be successful. But as someone who has studied this, if you can boil it down, what does it boil down to? What is the essence of all of this? Mike, what a good question. you said everybody's got advice and opinion. I don't know that you want to hear my advice or opinion. However, I do have data and we have studied, we're an executive search firm.

6:29Michael Hurst: So we help people, we help companies find their top talent. And we interviewed the very best, we've interviewed lots and lots and lots of people, but we found the very best, the top 1 % of everybody we've interviewed and that's for all kinds of jobs. And that's 30 ,000 people in that 1%. And we just asked the question, do these people have anything in common? And the answer was yes. And so we did like empirical research to say, well, then what do they have in common? And the answer was exactly not what I thought it would be. But it does, it did give us a roadmap for saying, oh, here's how people can get ahead, how they can stand out in a really crowded world, how they can be that exception to the rule in whatever they do, whether they're a student or a custodian or a leader or whatever they're spending their day doing.

7:23Michael Hurst: And what is that? And what is that? Yeah. So, yeah, we found. So I thought, Mike, that, you know, what are the best of the best have in common? I figured it would be they're all over six feet tall and have fabulous hair and teeth and super high IQs and went to all the right schools. It was none of that. It was 12 habits that they had in common. And all of those habits are really fundamentally how these people are treating other humans. I mean, this was a selfish research project, Mike. We started this saying, could we find a way to identify top talent faster so we get our job done faster and better?

8:04Michael Hurst: And what we stumbled upon was, These 12 habits can all be learned. And we were looking for a way to identify talent. What we discovered was a roadmap for becoming that talent or becoming that standout or get ahead person. Anybody who wants to get ahead, if you study these 12 habits and apply them to your life, you will get ahead. So let's start with one that you call the fast. And that is basically getting back to people quickly is really important. And it's something I don't think people think that much about. You know, you get back to people when you can get back to people. But you say there's a real opportunity here.

8:47Michael Hurst: And what I mean by that is, you know, you send a message to somebody and you never hear back from them. This happens in people fill out forms. I'd like to buy your product. Please have someone contact me. Well, it's staggering how uncommon it is for companies to actually get back to somebody that fills out that form. And when they do, they usually wait a day or two. But studies have shown that if you get back to people within 60 seconds of that form coming in, and you do it not in a way a chatbot would or an AI program, if you do it in a really intentional human way really quickly, you're almost certain to talk to that person again and maybe make whatever sale it is you're trying to make.

9:31Michael Hurst: So unicorns get back to people really quickly and with intention, not like a chatbot. The rest of us just don't. And if you want to get ahead and stand out in the crowd in a way that is really remarkable, just get back to people quickly and with intention. Like mention something about their world or what they're doing, not just a, how can I help you today? Yeah, I mean, that's perfect because think about it. When somebody does get back to you fast, how, like, you notice that. Well, that's impressive. They got right back to me. And yet I've never heard that advice before. So talk about the problem I think a lot of us have, or maybe we think we have is, you know, standing out from the crowd, getting noticed without being a jerk about it.

10:23Michael Hurst: You know, I think people are always like, like I go to a party and I'm like, I don't know if anyone's going to remember me. I'm not very memorable or interesting. Like how do I stand out in a way that whether it's a relationship with a family member or a coworker or trying to get the next job, how do I stand out in a room that's really crowded? it. Well, here's one thing, and I'll say it this simply. The habit is called the curious, okay? The top performers are always more interested in others than they are in themselves. They're curious. They're asking questions. So, here's the quick life hack, okay?

11:00Michael Hurst: If you want to be interesting to people, then start being interested in those people. So, I used to work at a church where the people that went there were, almost all of them were literally the best in the world at what they did during the week. And I would try and ask them about themselves. And invariably, the best leaders I met really never wanted to talk about themselves. And they deflected the conversation back to me, which made me like them even more. So, there's a life hack here for people trying to get ahead. If you'll just be curious about the people you're interacting with. If you'll be interested in them, you'll be interesting to them.

11:43Michael Hurst: Does that make sense? Yeah. And not only that, but the urge is to tell people how great you are and tell them all about you when in fact, what you just said is the better way. Well, and it's not brown nosing the people. It's not like the super old black and white show, Leave it to Beaver. You had Eddie Haskell telling and Beaver's mom, oh, what a nice dress you have on, Mrs. Cleaver. It's not that. It's just how many kids do you have? Oh, what do you like to do? Oh, what do you really love about your job? It's being interested in them and people like to talk about themselves. So you've just opened the door to their favorite subject in a way that's not, you know, false compliments or that sort of thing.

12:23Michael Hurst: It will open the door to further conversation and you will stand out in the crowd. I think in all the episodes of this podcast, you are the first person to bring up Eddie Haskell or Mrs. Cleaver from Leave It to Beaver ever. Talk about the self-awareness, because I think that is so, I mean, how many people have we all met and thought later, that woman has no self-awareness? I think all of us could work on self-awareness, and it's a pretty major blind spot. Self-aware was one of those 12 habits. And what's interesting is the unicorns are incredibly interested in learning more about what they're good at and what they're not, how the world perceives them.

13:08Michael Hurst: And, you know, they're very good at this. So when we surveyed all 30 ,000 of the unicorns, we asked them to force rank. What are you best at? What are you worst at of these 12? Right. The list, the rankings were very different because everybody's wired differently. Like some had this at the top. There wasn't a clear winner for most popular. The only clear winner was last place. And that was self-awareness. So the unicorns, the 1%, the people who are best at self-awareness said that it was their worst of the 12. Like, I really got to work on this. Now, if you flip the script, we also surveyed 250 ,000 people just randomly, like normal people like you and me.

13:57Michael Hurst: 91 % of all those 250 ,000 said they were above average at self-awareness. Like I'm not a statistician, but I'm pretty sure there's not a group where 91 % is above average. 50 % is above, 50 % is above. Like we all think we're good. It's a major human blind spot. And people would say, well, I don't know what you're talking about. What do you mean? Let me ask you this. Mike do you remember when back in your radio days the first time you heard your voice recorded oh of course yeah and and what was that like it's horrible and no nobody likes to hear their voice recorded the first time no I hated I was like who is this person I don't want to put me back on I don't want to listen to this this is all it's cringy right that's the perfect example of how we see ourselves one way, but the world perceives us another.

14:50Michael Hurst: And the unicorns just get really determined at figuring out how is it people are seeing me? What am I good at? Where do I need to get better? While most of the rest of us just float along thinking, I'm pretty good at all this. The problem though, is if you lack self-awareness, you lack the ability to know you need to fix your self-awareness. It's a bit of a chicken and an egg, right? Yeah. I think though, Mike, We're living in maybe the best season ever for people who want to develop self-awareness. There are literally hundreds of personality profiles you can take to discover what your strengths are or what gives you energy or where you're good with other people.

15:34Michael Hurst: The Enneagram is super helpful. The DISC inventory. We actually built one around these 12 habits and tested it against the 250 ,000 and the 30 ,000. And like, where am I in these 12 habits against the general population and against the unicorns? And that gives me a map for knowing how I am perceived and how I'm going to get better. So I think there's a it's by the way, sorry, shameless plug. If you go to Vanderindex.com, you'll see that profile. But there's so much that people can just take a first step. We are talking about 12 habits that are supported by a lot of data, 12 habits that will propel your success.

16:18Michael Hurst: And my guest is William Vander Blumen, author of the book, Be the Unicorn, 12 Data-Driven Habits That Separate the Best Leaders from the Rest. This episode is sponsored by Vinted. You know, I remember interviewing an organizing expert who offered this really clever trick for figuring out which clothes you should get rid of. You go to your closet and you look at the clothes hanging there. And chances are the ones toward the middle are the clothes you wear most often. But the clothes pushed way over to the left or the right. Some of those you probably haven't worn in years. And yet there they hang, taking up space.

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19:16Michael Hurst: So seriously, think about it. I mean, how much would you pay for a truly great night of sleep? Beam is just 83 cents per night. So go to shopbeam.com slash S-Y-S-K now. That's shopbeam.com slash S-Y-S-K. So William, talk about being authentic. That's a phrase I've always struggled with because I'm not really sure what it means. But in terms of success, in terms of your own personal success, what do you mean by being authentic? So one of the 12 habits is the unicorns, the very best of the best, are incredibly authentic and they're perceived as incredibly authentic. You know, Mike, in a world where we are dealing with more and more automated, AI-driven phone calls that are robocalls, robotext, anything that's truly humanly authentic is a higher value maybe than it's ever before.

20:23Michael Hurst: So how do I develop authenticity? I'm going to give you one life hack. Look people in the eye. Now, I'm saying that both generally and very intentionally. When I say, look people in the eye, if you're younger right now, if you're Gen Z and you're listening to this, the number one complaint recruiters at companies have with the interviews that Gen Z is giving them is that Gen Z doesn't look them in the eye. Isn't that interesting? They just don't look up. We've got seven kids. And so our kids that don't use the phone, but FaceTime us all the time, they'll FaceTime us. And then all I see is their nostrils because they're holding the phone and walking around.

21:06Michael Hurst: They're not actually looking at us. There's something lost in eye contact. So simply looking at people is first step toward authenticity. But here's the real meat of the life hack. We have two eyes. one is dominant, one is peripheral. In other words, you see the world through one eye, the other eye just gives you perspective, okay? Depth perception, that sort of thing. 90 % of all humans on the planet are right eye dominant. It's how scopes are built on rifles. It's how lots of things are built around the fact that most of us are right eye dominant. So what that means is when you sit down with somebody to interface with them, if you will look not at the center of their nose, you can't look there, You can't look in both eyes at the same time.

21:50Michael Hurst: If you will look people in the eye, the right eye directly, you've got a 90 percent chance of being right. And what it produces is this. Have you ever sat in a room with somebody and talked to them and you go. They made me feel like I was the only person in the room. Chances are they were looking you dead in the eye. And I think that will convey a level of authenticity that makes people go, this person's different. They authentically care about me. They're authentically interested in me. And that one little life hack, I mean, just that one twitch, just look right at their right eye. It could make all the difference in getting ahead at whatever it is you're trying to get ahead at.

22:33Michael Hurst: So lastly, let's talk about productivity because that's such a big buzzword now and people are always, you hear it all the time. And so what does your data say about it? that unicorns get stuff done the very first chance they get. It's kind of like responding the very first chance you get. There's the top performers, the people who stand out in any crowd are the ones who actually go to bed saying, I got something done. And that can sound pretty overwhelming. But I think that, you know, maybe the best advice I've heard is some old management advice. And if you've got time for a quick story, years and years ago, I had a really successful business guy mentoring me and a very generous, successful business guy mentoring me.

23:25Michael Hurst: And he called me and said, he owned a bank and he called me and said, come to my office, I wanna give you a Christmas present. I'm like, cool. And this is kind of embarrassing, but the whole way there, I'm like, I wonder what he got me. I bet it's pretty cool. Oh man, I wonder if it's this. I wonder if it's that. Very selfish thoughts, sorry. but that's where I was. And I got there and he handed me a little like all two by three inch day timer, really small with the bank's logo on it. Like he gives this to kids when they open a checking account. And he said, no, no, no, no. The calendar is not the gift.

23:59Michael Hurst: Here's the gift. I want you for the next year, you can do it the night before or the morning you wake up. I want you to write six objectives down. They're going to help you move forward in wherever you're trying to move forward. And that's just six things you want to get done this day. No more, no less. I said, why? He said, well, it's the oldest management consulting ever given. It was one of the first management consultants ever went to JP Morgan, the guy, before Chase, and said, if you'll do this with your team, you'll get more productive. And they skyrocketed. And I was like, wow. And he said, yeah.

24:33Michael Hurst: And he said, if you'll do it consistently, you'll be amazed how much you get done. And so what do you mean? And so he opened the credenza behind his desk and there were 30 years of those little day timers. He said, ask me what I got done on any day in the last 30 years. And I picked a date and he pulled it out and he showed me do this, this, this, this, and this. And I just was like, wow. Okay. And what really brought this home for me is you can feel overwhelmed feeling. I've got to get everything done. I've got to get everything right now, right now. But if you'll do small, so six tasks each day, that might be as a parent.

25:08Michael Hurst: How am I going to get six things done for my kids as a student? What am I going to do to build my college resume? How do I get the promotion at work? Six objectives every day and catalog them. I've graduated from the tiny little bank-issued day timer to Apple Notes, and I just date them so I can see everything. It's amazing what happens. And it It reminds me of, there's a quote that's gone around many times, but a good friend of mine said one time, you know, William, people overestimate what they can get done in a year, but they always underestimate what they can get done in a decade. And that's that sort of small deposits every day of here are six things I'm going to get done.

25:47Michael Hurst: And our research showed most people love talking about getting something done. Very few people actually take action. So one quick way to not get overwhelmed by I got to get more done is to just say, could you go to Apple Notes and write down six things you want to get done? Apple Notes even has a little checkbox function, which I love. And you can just check the box when you get it done and look back and say, I got everything done today that I plan to get done. That creates momentum. A flywheel starts to turn. And before you know it, you stand out. And so what do you do? Because I've tried similar things before, and sometimes you don't get all six things done.

26:27Michael Hurst: You just can't. And then the momentum starts to wane. If you're consistently not hitting them, maybe you're making them too big. You know, my objective for today is to achieve world peace. Well, that box ain't going to get checked. Yeah, that's going to be tough. Good luck. So are you making these something that can actually get done? Make them really small. Make them so you can get it done by 10 a.m. and build your momentum that way. Momentum is the best friend of anyone trying to get ahead. You know, when people ask me who haven't heard this podcast, like, well, what do you do on your podcast?

27:00Michael Hurst: I say, well, one of the things we like to do is give people really good information, solid information that they can use in their lives. And you've just done that. Hit it out of the park. William Vander Blumen has been my guest. He is founder and CEO of Vander Blumen Search Group, and he's author of the book Be the Unicorn, 12 Data-Driven Habits That Separate the Best Leaders from the Rest. There's a link to his book at Amazon in the show notes if you would like to read it. Thank you for coming on and sharing this, William. Thanks, Mike. I really appreciate being on your podcast. It's amazing how many hours and interviews you've done, and you're really good at your job.

27:38Michael Hurst: I appreciate you having me. Well, here's something you should know about your bones. We all hear about calcium and vitamin D, and they're important. But there's another ingredient in healthy bones that hardly anybody talks about. Collagen. Think of your bones like a building, right? Collagen provides the framework, while minerals like calcium help give it strength. Here's the problem, though. As we get older, our bodies naturally produce less collagen. That's why I was interested in Native Path Bone Health Collagen. It's not just ordinary collagen. It contains a specialized form called Fortibone.

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30:51Michael Hurst: If you watch movies or TV shows, you have, or think you have, a pretty good understanding of what the CIA does. The image, anyway, is that the CIA is a spy agency. They do things in other countries to gather information, disrupt things, maybe overthrow governments. There's an element of rogueness to it, that they do things that maybe we shouldn't or we don't want to know about, all in the name of national security. But is that really what the CIA does? Or does that just make good fiction? Well, let's find out, shall we? My guest is David McCluskey. He is a former CIA analyst who wrote regularly for the President's Daily Brief.

31:36Michael Hurst: He delivered classified testimony to congressional oversight committees and brief senior White House officials, ambassadors, military officials, and Arab royalty. And he has worked in CIA field stations across the Middle East. He is also author of a book called The Seventh Floor, which is a novel about spies, and I suspect it has a lot in there that is based on his knowledge and experience in the CIA. Hi, David. Welcome to Something You Should Know. Hey, Mike. Thanks for having me on. So I guess first, I guess what I'd like to know, because I think everybody has this idea in their head, but what is the CIA?

32:16Michael Hurst: What is it supposed to be doing? What does it do? What is it?

32:21William Vanderbloemen: I actually think the best way to think about it is to think about the CIA or sort of the work of the CIA as clandestine journalism. So if you think about the work that an investigative journalist does, you know, they scope out a story, they go and recruit sources who have information, they put the story together with a whole bunch of disparate, you know, sources, facts, pieces of analysis, and they try to put it together into something that is coherent, this objective that's not value-driven or laden, you know, in the best cases of investigative journalism. And then they report the kind of what, why, and so what to their readers.

33:01And I think the CIA actually is trying to do something very similar.

33:07William Vanderbloemen: The CIA is out there writing about stories that the president and other American policymakers care about, what's going on in the world. We're trying to find sources in the world who will give us that information, sell us that information. And we're trying to put it all together into a picture for the people in our country that make the most important national security decisions.

33:28Michael Hurst: So, it's an information gathering organization? Absolutely.

33:33William Vanderbloemen: Information gathering and analysis is really what it is. And at its core, the agency, as we call it, exists to provide us and our elected officials with an information advantage. That is why the CIA exists. So, we have more information or better information about what's going on in the world than other countries do. Is that all they do? Well, we do other things, but that's the primary objective.

34:03Michael Hurst: Because on TV, that's not all they do.

34:06William Vanderbloemen: It is, you know, well, and it's not as entertaining, is it? You know, obviously, there are what we call covert action pieces of the work, which is when the president decides that they want something done in the world and they want it to be deniable, they'll turn to the CIA. Okay. That stuff tends to be more fodder for fiction, more fodder for, you know, spy entertainment or spy-tainment as it's sometimes called. You know, it's hard to make. There's a reason why Jack Ryan is an analyst, you know, sort of had to have a gun and, you know, talk about how this isn't what an analyst was supposed to do because the actual work of an analyst is not car chases and guns and, you know, shooting bad guys.

34:57William Vanderbloemen: It's finding the truth. But yeah, you're right. The agency does other things. The agency has covert action work that it does. The agency has something that's called a special activities center, which does some of the paramilitary work of the agency. But I will stress that although those are very sort of sexy components from a, if you were talking about this like a business, those would be the pieces of the business that get all the press attention, but really, you know, are a small part of the overall operation.

35:27Michael Hurst: Because when I think of the CIA doing what they do, I know for one thing they say on TV all the time, you know, that the CIA is not allowed to operate on US soil, that what they do is somewhere else. Got to be somewhere else. And what they do is they spy on people. They gather information by spying on guys that are doing things and that they mess things up and that, you know, Mission Impossible, they kind of sabotage things. And from what I hear you saying, that's theater.

36:02William Vanderbloemen: Well, let's get down to the brass tacks of what we're talking about when I mentioned the investigative journalism example, right? So, recruiting a source, what does that actually mean? That actually means, and I'll just make up a hypothetical here, that actually means that maybe you're going and finding a Russian who has access to somebody in the Kremlin. And that Russian, you know, hates his boss and is in debt, right? We're paying, we might pay that person if we can get in front of them and sort of convince them that this could be done securely, we're paying that person to commit treason, to tell us things they shouldn't tell us.

36:46William Vanderbloemen: So in effect, the day-to-day work of the CIA is breaking foreign laws. I mean, that is the sort of the definition of what we're doing. It very rarely involves shooting and car crashes and all the stuff you see on TV, but at its most basic level, we are, you know, it's an organization committed to convincing other people to commit treason in many respects. Sometimes for reasons we would consider noble, sometimes for reasons that are more mundane or even kind of gross in some cases. But that is the core of the work, is stealing secrets. Okay.

37:28Michael Hurst: Well, but the CIA, and what's the difference between the CIA and the NSA and the other spy agencies that we hear about? Like, do they work together? Do they not work together? Do they have different jobs? What's that all about?

37:44William Vanderbloemen: The US intelligence community, I think, technically has like 16 or 17 entities inside it, formally. And if that sounds like a ridiculous number, it's because it probably is. it can be overall very bloated. I think there's probably too much overlap and redundancy between many of these groups. But for simplicity's sake, take a couple of the bigger organizations. So the CIA, the Central Intelligence Agency, is our sort of premier foreign intelligence agency, meaning we are working abroad to steal secrets from foreign countries and groups, right? But the National Security Agency is our primary signals intelligence arm, meaning they're doing a lot of the intercepts of phone communications, emails, etc., sort of manipulating electronic communication.

38:43William Vanderbloemen: You know, obviously, you have the State Department, which is our diplomatic arm overseas. I mean, there's intelligence agencies or entities inside the State Department, inside the FBI, inside the various services of the military. So if you kind of put all this on a couple pages, it's a bit overwhelming. But all of these groups, in theory, work together, and in most cases actually do relatively well. But of course, there are different cultures and all of that that sort of prevent, you know, clean cooperation at all times. And so there does, there can be sort of competition over turf and dropped handoffs between the two.

39:28William Vanderbloemen: I mean, you know, it's all the things you'd expect with a massive, probably too large group of agencies that are all sort of distinct, but have overlapping mission sets.

39:37Michael Hurst: So this all sounds very mundane. I mean, not mundane so much, but it doesn't sound all that exciting, frankly. It's not what I was hoping to hear about the guns and the car chases.

39:52William Vanderbloemen: Well, look, I'll tell you this, that there are really, I mean, the mission of CIA is an exceptional one. And although it's not, you know, martinis and tuxedos and car chases, the agency is out there stopping and disrupting terrorist attacks. The agency is sending people into denied environments all the time under very exotic forms of cover. The agency is fielding, you know, incredible sort of next gen technology. And it is producing really what I call the most, you know, sort of highly classified reports that our president reads and what's called the president's daily brief or PDB. So I see the work of the CIA as being highly exceptional, but it's also this sort of big organization at the same time that in many respects would resemble, you know, a Fortune 500 company.

40:53So I like to think of the place as being kind of a uniquely bipolar organization.

40:59William Vanderbloemen: On the one hand, it has this exceptional mission, which I don't think actually has a lot of parallels elsewhere or analogs elsewhere. And on the other side, you know, it's a big place that's run by people. And so you get a lot of the foibles and quirks that go along with that.

41:16Michael Hurst: But the CIA is only spying on gathering information at working in other countries. Is that correct?

41:24William Vanderbloemen: So the agency does have domestic field stations, but those are for like basically liaising with FBI and targeting foreign nationals who are in the states. The CIA is prevented from targeting Americans. The CIA does not recruit Americans. And the CIA is a foreign externally facing organization designed to collect on foreign nationals and foreign governments.

41:54Michael Hurst: And every country I imagine, sophisticated country, has some sort of CIA, right? Absolutely.

42:01William Vanderbloemen: Yeah.

42:03Michael Hurst: And are they all friends? Do they all have lunch together or do they? Sometimes.

42:08William Vanderbloemen: What's the relationship? You know, we have liaison relationships with friendly services. So, we're sharing information, right? So, you know, we're sharing information with the Brits, you know, we're sharing information with the Israelis, they're sharing information with us. You know, you could rattle off a long list of foreign intelligence services, some which I probably shouldn't, that we're, you know, engaged in business with, I think the sort of key thing there is a lot of these relationships can be quite warm, they can be quite productive, but intelligence services, they don't sort of generously give.

42:46William Vanderbloemen: It's an exchange with the expectation that, you know, we give something here, you give something back. This is sort of commerce happening at the secret level.

42:56Michael Hurst: So there's no military component to the CIA, or is there?

43:00William Vanderbloemen: there's a paramilitary component yeah um who's that it's called the it's called the special activities center oh yeah yeah i know isn't that a good that's a good name i like that special activities center that is for so if you you recall let's say some of the first teams that went into afghanistan after 9-11 you know you had a mix on those teams of sort of form like kind of typical CIA case officers, but then you also had paramilitary officers who had typically come out of Army Special Forces or Delta Force or the Marines or something like that. They had a military background. And then they're working at CIA.

43:42William Vanderbloemen: And the CIA has that group because sometimes you want to be able to deploy those types of assets in a deniable way under the auspices of what we call a covert action finding, which is when the president wants something done and they don't want, you know, US fingerprints on it. So that's kind of why the CIA has those groups.

44:05Michael Hurst: So talk a little bit about what you did at the CIA. What was your title?

44:10William Vanderbloemen: So I was an analyst.

44:12Michael Hurst: What does that mean? You're like Jack Ryan.

44:14William Vanderbloemen: Yeah, well, you realize after about two days, it's not really like Jack Ryan. And what I did was, as I worked on primarily Syria and on the broader Middle East, and I did a lot of my work from Langley, I did a lot of my work from the region. Most of what I was doing was taking, basically looking at all of this information that's coming in. And that could be, that's the human intelligence we've gathered. That's just stuff from press. That's stuff from academics. That's stuff from our embassy. It's the signals intelligence we talked about from the National Security Agency, intercepted phone calls, intercepted emails, et cetera.

44:47William Vanderbloemen: You're looking at all this and you're answering a question, really, that a policymaker might have. And so the example I like to give is, you know, I was working on Syria in the opening days of its unrest, which eventually became a civil war. This was in early 2011. And the big question that, you know, President Obama was asking was, okay, what are the scenarios for how this goes down, right? And how long can Assad hold on to power? And so I was writing essentially an answer to that question in like two or three pages that's sourced and structured well and gives the president the ability to sort of bound reality.

45:34William Vanderbloemen: You know, what might happen? What could happen? What would it mean for us in different scenarios? So that's an example of something that I wrote and then briefed downtown to, you know, to the White House, to the National Security Council. And analysts who work on Russia, you know, analysts who are working on all these different regions and countries, you know, are sort of topics today are answering similar questions depending on what might be going on.

46:01Michael Hurst: so when you go to work as an analyst for the cia does it just feel like you're going to work as an analyst for any other company or does it feel different does it feel special does it feel dangerous does it feel like is there any sense of oh i'm a spy it feels now now after having

46:21William Vanderbloemen: you know done analysis for other companies since i've left what i will say is it does feel special And the reason it feels special is because you are dealing with stolen information and you're dealing with information as a result that other people cannot access. And one of the fundamental, I think, highs of the place is that you are or you can be sort of led to believe and oftentimes I think with reason that you are kind of in the inner ring. You have access to stuff other people don't, which is a thrill. So, I think for me, as I look back on it, I think, yeah, it is a special place because it has a very special mission and it's got access to very special stuff.

47:15William Vanderbloemen: And there's something inherently, even though, you know, I feel bad, Mike, I deflated you a little bit by saying, you know, it's not explosions and car chases and Jack Ryan. I think there's something very special about the place. you know even now me as an alum i still feel i think i feel a fondness for that work because i felt like i was contributing to something that was bigger than myself and doing something that

47:42Michael Hurst: frankly was was really cool but in lore not just in movies but but in real life you know there are people out there claiming that the cia overthrew a government that the cia meddled in this and meddled in that is there a lot of meddling going on or that's people's propaganda i do think you

48:05William Vanderbloemen: have to uh separate or at least at least acknowledge that the cia of the 50s and 60s and even early 70s is not the cia of today right the cia that that really helped kind of overthrow governments in Iran in 53 or in Syria later that decade in 56, I think, and in Guatemala, and the CIA that was actually, you know, in some cases, spying on Americans in the 60s, the CIA that was experimenting with psychedelic, you know, drugs on people, like, this organization doesn't, that organization doesn't exist anymore. That was a far less institutionalized that was finding its way at the height of the Cold War and essentially operated as the president's black bag outfit with sort of a wink and a nod from the president at the time.

49:05William Vanderbloemen: And it is not how the CIA operates today. When the CIA does something today with basically no exceptions, It is doing that with the full support and, frankly, like formal authority of the president, more so than just the CIA kind of going rogue or anything like that. I think that the mental model of the CIA is some kind of like unconstrained bad actor that does its own thing is just simply false. The CIA operates as part of an interagency process in Washington that's driven by the White House and by the president. And it does the president's bidding and the president as, you know, an elected official is entitled to do so.

49:57William Vanderbloemen: So I think it's important that we kind of understand the CIA, not as some rogue actor, but as a piece of, you know, sort of the fabric, frankly, of our government and society.

50:08Michael Hurst: so i think about though i think about those i guess what are they stars or something in the lobby of you know the unnamed people well if they're just gathering information why do your identities have to be protected why what's so secret about the people doing the work if they're just gathering information reading the newspaper and talking to people look we talked about the

50:31William Vanderbloemen: sort of covert action side of things and the paramilitary side of things and i don't have a direct number for you. I don't know it. My wager would be that a disproportionate number of the stars in that wall come from that sort of thing. So it's not just pure information gathering, to be clear. But in either case, the reason why many of those stars are not named, and by the way, many of them are. I mean, if you go into the original headquarters building lobby and there's There's a book that's actually kind of in a case by that wall. And there are names attached to many of the stars, if not most.

51:16William Vanderbloemen: Some of them do not have names. And the reason for that, although I certainly couldn't speak to whether any of this on an individual basis is still justified, is because the details around that operation, be they sources, be they methods, remain classified. and so the names cannot be made public.

51:39Michael Hurst: Is it like on TV that when you're an analyst or some other, you know, frontline kind of CIA person that you can't tell your wife what you're doing, that you can't tell your wife where you're going, that everything is confidential?

51:57William Vanderbloemen: For the most part, yes. You know, it depends a little bit on your role. so you know and i was an analyst like my wife knew that where i worked my w-2 said central intelligence agency and yet you know sometimes i i could almost always be open with her about where i was going but i couldn't really say much about what i was actually doing well this answers

52:20Michael Hurst: a lot of questions i think people have about the cia what really goes on it's really it's kind of fun to hear but it's also i think important for people to understand what happens i've been speaking with David McCluskey, a former CIA analyst. He has written three novels. His most recent is called The Seventh Floor, which is about spies, and you can read it and hear more about the CIA. There's a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks, David. Thanks for explaining all this.

52:49William Vanderbloemen: Hey, thanks, Mike, for having me. Really enjoyed our conversation.

52:54Michael Hurst: You may have heard that chewing gum can improve test scores. That's true if you know how to to chew the gum. Researchers split 224 undergraduates into three groups and then put gum to the test. One group chewed before and during the test, the next group chewed for five minutes before the test, and the third group didn't chew anything at all. The pre-test chewers outperformed the other two groups. It seems that chewing gum before the test did boost performance, but only for about 20 minutes. Chewing gum can literally warm up the brain by increasing blood flow to the head. Those who chewed gum through the entire test didn't get the benefits because all that chewing gets tiresome and can actually sap brain power after a few minutes.

53:47Michael Hurst: And that is something you should know. Could you do me a favor and just tell one or two people that you know about this podcast and suggest that they listen to it because like every podcast, we always need new listeners. It's how the audience grows. It's how the podcast grows. It really helps us out, and it doesn't take much. Just share this podcast with someone you know and help our audience grow. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. The real cost of a break-in isn't your valuables. It's the feeling that your home stopped being safe. Simply Safe keeps danger away from your family with three layers of protection.

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