[00:00:01] Due to the themes of this podcast, listener discretion is advised.

[00:00:07] Lock your doors, close the blinds, change your passwords. This is Secrets and Spies.

[00:00:27] Secrets and Spies is a podcast that dives into the world of espionage, terrorism, geopolitics, and intrigue.

[00:00:34] This podcast is produced and hosted by Chris Carr.

[00:00:37] Hey everybody, it's Chris here. I hope you're well. Today's episode is a little bit different.

[00:00:41] We're in a video studio for the first time, which is kind of cool.

[00:00:44] And in the video studio today, I'm joined by the author Julian Fisher.

[00:00:49] And Julian's written this fantastic book called Think Like A Spy.

[00:00:52] It's all about how to use espionage skills to build life-changing alliances and to kind of build the life that you want.

[00:00:59] So I hope you find this episode interesting. Take care.

[00:01:02] The opinions expressed by guests on Secrets and Spies do not necessarily represent those of the producers and sponsors of this podcast.

[00:01:27] So today we're joined by Julian Fisher. Julian, welcome to the podcast. How are you doing?

[00:01:32] I'm good. Thanks very much, Chris. Delighted to be here and privileged to be part of your first televised podcast, I believe.

[00:01:39] Yes, this is it. This is our sort of first studio-based podcast.

[00:01:42] So hopefully it'll be a habit of the future as we sort of slowly move more into YouTube and things.

[00:01:47] Into the future.

[00:01:48] Yes, indeed, indeed.

[00:01:49] So Julian, for the benefit of the audience, please can you just tell us a little bit about yourself?

[00:01:52] Well, I can. I'm just an ordinary person. I was born in Birmingham, in the city of Birmingham, in what was then apparently the poorest postcode in the UK.

[00:02:04] I'm not sure how they arrive at those metrics, but it's been popularly described as such.

[00:02:09] And I was brought up in a pretty straightforward way. I went to local comprehensive school.

[00:02:20] But something key happened in my early life, and that is that very sadly I lost my sister to suicide.

[00:02:28] In fact, as it happened on my first day at secondary school.

[00:02:33] And that had, as you might expect, a profound effect on me.

[00:02:36] And a year later, I ended up walking in front of a car on my way to school.

[00:02:43] I'm not sure that I was attempting to take my own life, but I was certainly trying to avoid school that day.

[00:02:49] And as a consequence of that, I spent a fair amount of time in hospital where I met an extraordinary young woman called Maya.

[00:02:57] She was a nurse from Iran, a refugee from the revolution which had taken place in 1979.

[00:03:07] And she had lost her father during that revolution, come over to the UK with her mother and was desperately trying to get into the medical profession.

[00:03:14] And she struggled because she didn't speak much English until she met and worked with a young chap called Dan, whose father supported the pair of them.

[00:03:26] Dan was learning Farsi at SOAS, the University in London.

[00:03:32] And they would have conversation classes together, one hour in Farsi, one hour in English.

[00:03:36] And Dan's father provided a lot of support to Maya so that she was able eventually, from very unpromising background, to pass her nursing exams.

[00:03:46] And she said to me at the age of 12, lying there in the hospital bed, she one day said to me, she used to call me Kuchulu, which I understand is Farsi for little one.

[00:03:55] She said, you know, Kuchulu, the most important thing in life is allies.

[00:04:00] Never forget that.

[00:04:02] And I never have.

[00:04:03] So from that point on, I really thought about life in a different way.

[00:04:08] And I understood from what Maya had told me that it was important to build strong, enduring allies, alliances, to help one to get away from unpromising beginnings.

[00:04:20] And so it happened.

[00:04:22] And I ended up going to Oxford University.

[00:04:25] I went into work in the city for a while.

[00:04:28] Then I ended up in a fairly varied and thrilling career in the broadly speaking security, intelligence and risk worlds.

[00:04:37] Eventually ended up making a TV series in 2017 on Channel 4 called Spies.

[00:04:41] And I've recently been privileged to be published, the book called Think Like a Spy, published by Hachette in May of this year.

[00:04:51] So I feel that I've, my life was transformed by the words of a remarkable young refugee.

[00:05:01] I feel very grateful for that.

[00:05:02] But I never forget that I come from very ordinary background.

[00:05:07] There's nothing particularly special about me.

[00:05:11] What was special were Maya's words to me and the effect that they had on me.

[00:05:16] Yeah.

[00:05:16] Thank you for sharing that.

[00:05:18] And were Maya's words sort of the impulse behind this book?

[00:05:22] Yes and no.

[00:05:23] I've thought about the content of this book for a long time.

[00:05:28] Yes, because what I'm trying to do to a certain extent in the book is to democratize a skill set, which I've seen in use in professional settings.

[00:05:42] Essentially, it's the spy skill set, because I think it's an astonishingly powerful skill set.

[00:05:47] And I'm going to let you into a secret.

[00:05:49] And we talk about the secret spies.

[00:05:51] Uh, we, there's nine separate skills that we talk about, or I write about in the book and we call them the secret skills that spies use in their day-to-day life.

[00:06:03] The secret is they're not a secret.

[00:06:05] In actual fact, they're skills that all of us can learn that anyone can learn.

[00:06:09] Anyone can practice and anyone can perfect to, to extraordinary ends in their day-to-day, their personal and their professional life.

[00:06:17] And I was driven by an instinct to help people from unpromising backgrounds and underprivileged backgrounds.

[00:06:27] Because what I genuinely believe is that people need enhanced social capital to make that transition from an unpromising start to a flourishing career.

[00:06:40] And social capital is something that can be built.

[00:06:43] You have it in your own hands to enhance your own social capital.

[00:06:48] You know, the saying goes, it's not what you know, it's who you know.

[00:06:52] I think that's absolutely true.

[00:06:54] And you can control to a certain extent what you know, but people don't understand that you can also control who you know, as well as what you know.

[00:07:03] And that's the thing I'm trying to get across in the book, because I think it is potentially a force for great social change.

[00:07:09] Yeah, I agree. I think it's a very interesting book.

[00:07:12] And I've always had a bit of a soft spot for books in this genre that talk about how you can use espionage techniques in your daily life.

[00:07:21] And I think this book really does that very well.

[00:07:22] There's a similar book from a CIA officer interviewed a couple of years ago about sort of management skills from the CIA and things.

[00:07:30] I love this kind of stuff.

[00:07:31] So I think this book really helps.

[00:07:33] And in fact, I think it might be helping me in a couple of weeks with a networking event I'm going to.

[00:07:37] That's great to hear. Thanks, Chris.

[00:07:39] And I've had a number of readers say to me that it's the contents of the book have led them to stop and think about their own behavior in certain settings and how they approach into personal relationships.

[00:07:51] You mentioned there that you bought by the former CIA officer is about business skills.

[00:07:58] And yes, to a certain extent, think like aspires about business skills, but it's also about just basic human interrelationships.

[00:08:04] I want it to be a bit wider than business.

[00:08:07] You know, I think if I if you walked into a bookstore, you probably find my book on the business shelves.

[00:08:13] But equally well, it could be it could belong on the self-help shelves.

[00:08:18] It's a it's a handbook for life rather than a handbook for any one particular part of life.

[00:08:23] Yeah. Yeah.

[00:08:24] And I think it's very good.

[00:08:25] So before we delve into the book itself, one question I was asked was what do spies do?

[00:08:30] Because people have sort of different views on this.

[00:08:33] Yes, it's a good question.

[00:08:34] And it's widely misunderstood.

[00:08:37] I think partly because we have franchises such as the Bond franchise or the Bourne franchise, which give an image of espionage of a particular nature, which is probably closer, in fact, to what special forces operatives do than civilian spies.

[00:08:54] But I sum it up this way as by assuming that they're working in an international agency will go abroad, undercover, build personal relationships, focus on one or two of those personal relationships with very senior people, be it in the military, be it in politics, be they in business, judiciary.

[00:09:20] And over time, become so close to one or two of those characters, one or two of those individuals, that they're able to ask them to do something quite extraordinary.

[00:09:32] And what they're able to ask them to do is to betray their country, to become a traitor, to share classified information, not in support of their own national interest, but in support of the spies' national interest.

[00:09:47] And if you stop to think about that for a moment, it's an extraordinary ask, isn't it?

[00:09:50] It feels like it must be the preserve of a rarefied human being, of a rarefied set of people, people who have access to skills that are just not available to the rest of us, people who have some sort of superhuman abilities.

[00:10:08] But my point is, they don't have access to skills that we don't have access to, and they don't have superhuman abilities.

[00:10:15] Simply what they're doing is using a set of skills available to us all in an intentful manner.

[00:10:20] And that's the big difference, it's the intent and the purpose behind how they use skills that we use every single day.

[00:10:27] Yeah, yeah, thank you for sharing that.

[00:10:29] So let's go through the nine skills that you have identified in your book.

[00:10:33] So skill number one is the power of targeting.

[00:10:37] Yes.

[00:10:38] We live in an age when people want connections, they want followers.

[00:10:43] I guess that's pertinent to you as somebody who runs their own podcast.

[00:10:48] And there is, of course, a great value in having a wide following.

[00:10:53] You know, influencers make a lot of money out of having a lot of people on their Twitter or Instagram accounts or whatever it may be.

[00:11:00] We talk about networking.

[00:11:03] We've talked about networking in the real world as well over many years.

[00:11:08] And, of course, it's helpful to have a Rolodeck full of names of people that are useful, potentially useful to you, particularly if you work in the sales capacity, for instance.

[00:11:19] That's not targeting.

[00:11:20] In fact, if anything, that's the opposite of targeting.

[00:11:23] That's a very diffuse.

[00:11:24] It's a very wide-ranging approach.

[00:11:27] Targeting is much more, as the word suggests, specific.

[00:11:33] It's about working out that group of people, that group of potential allies who may be in a position to help you achieve what I call your goals, your life goals, whether or not they're life goals in five years' time or 20 years' time or five months' time or a week's time.

[00:11:52] That they're going to be able to help you.

[00:11:55] That they're going to be able to help you do that and motivated to help you do that.

[00:11:58] And that's a very different exercise to building relationships, building networks.

[00:12:05] It's about being very focused on who are the people who, A, can help you and, B, want to help you.

[00:12:14] And, C, that they're able to enter into a collaborative relationship with you as well.

[00:12:19] Because I do make the point consistently through the book that this is about collaborative ethical relationships.

[00:12:25] So we're not talking about manipulation here.

[00:12:27] We're not talking about undue use of influence.

[00:12:29] This is about working with people who will benefit.

[00:12:33] They have something to draw from that relationship with you too.

[00:12:35] And that could be all sorts of things.

[00:12:37] The targeting process is the first step towards building a relationship with those allies.

[00:12:43] And it's so important.

[00:12:45] Obviously, intelligence agencies actually have their whole departments devoted to this skill, don't they?

[00:12:50] It's such an important part of the process of espionage that, yes, I would imagine that every agency has a department devoted to it.

[00:13:01] Or within different sections, they will have operatives who are devoted to that process.

[00:13:08] But it's something actually that needs to be inherent in every officer and every one of us.

[00:13:15] You know, it's not because let's remember often officers are operating overseas and they haven't necessarily got, they don't necessarily have the ability to rely on support and guidance and advice from their teams back home.

[00:13:31] And so they need to have that targeting skill, that targeting instinct for themselves on the ground.

[00:13:38] Can I tell you a story that will, I think, illustrate that a little bit?

[00:13:42] And this took place in Zimbabwe.

[00:13:47] I was traveling in Zimbabwe some years back at a particularly difficult time in that country's political development.

[00:13:55] We all know that they've had a series of unfortunate political leaders.

[00:14:01] At that time, it was shortly after an election, which was widely seen to have been stolen by the ruling party of the day.

[00:14:11] And one of the features of the ruling party was to blame Britain for everything.

[00:14:19] They had this political message that any problems which the country was suffering were down to Britain, the history and the legacy of colonialism.

[00:14:31] And I went in downtown Harare to see a friend of mine who worked for the ruling party of the day.

[00:14:40] And I was coming down from that meeting with him and climbed into a lift.

[00:14:47] And we went down one floor.

[00:14:50] And then a group of people climbed into the lift with me and they were all arms to the teeth with pangas, you know, this wide curved blade implements that they use for everything from shearing hedges to shearing people's heads off.

[00:15:06] Lovely.

[00:15:07] And they were all high or drunk.

[00:15:12] And they seemed to be giving themselves up for conflict and stood in that lift with them wearing a suit and looking particularly British.

[00:15:25] I felt somewhat exposed.

[00:15:27] And eventually I was hoping we will get to the ground floor and the doors will open and I can go my separate way.

[00:15:37] Unfortunately, the lift ground to a halt and then the lights went off between two floors.

[00:15:42] And I had a mobile phone with me.

[00:15:44] So I took the mobile phone out and I used the torch on that phone.

[00:15:47] And that, of course, drew attention to me.

[00:15:49] And it wasn't particularly pleasant attention.

[00:15:52] There was a lot of hostility.

[00:15:57] It was quite quickly worked out.

[00:15:59] God knows how that I'm a Brit.

[00:16:01] And it brought to the fore all of that political wellspring of hostility and anger.

[00:16:10] And I felt very, very exposed at that point.

[00:16:13] I thought it could have turned quite ugly given the state of the people in there, their emotional state, the fact that they were probably quite high or at least drunk.

[00:16:24] So I had to do something in the moment.

[00:16:26] And there were two people in the lift with us who were dressed a bit more smartly than the others.

[00:16:33] And one of them had on his lapel a little enamel badge and it said United.

[00:16:39] Now, I'm not a football fan, but I know enough about it to work out that that was probably a reference to Manchester United.

[00:16:46] And I also, based on the way that this individual was dressed and his demeanor, my working assumption was that he was probably quite senior.

[00:16:57] So I turned to him and I simply said, oh, how was the game the other night?

[00:17:01] Now, I have no idea.

[00:17:03] I had no idea whether there had been a game the other night or if there had been, you know, who had been playing in it.

[00:17:08] But I've thought there's a pretty sound bet that Manchester United has been recently playing a game.

[00:17:14] And it did the trick.

[00:17:16] He turned to me, sort of looked at me a bit suspiciously and he said, yeah, it was great.

[00:17:21] And, you know, he talked about how Rooney, I think it was, had played the better game.

[00:17:26] And then somebody said, no, no, you know, it's Ronaldo who's the better player.

[00:17:29] And what had been a very unpleasant situation with me at the heart of it suddenly became a debate about football, a debate about soccer and quite a good natured debate about soccer, which I took part in up to the point I could not being a football fan.

[00:17:48] But the effect of it was quite profound.

[00:17:53] It absolutely defused the situation.

[00:17:55] And that was targeting at work because I was looking for that person who was able to help me and motivated to do so.

[00:18:02] Yeah.

[00:18:03] Yeah.

[00:18:03] Well, thank you for sharing.

[00:18:05] Yeah.

[00:18:06] Because I don't know how I would have coped in that lift, but you did a very good job there.

[00:18:11] I can't say that I wasn't terrified.

[00:18:13] I was.

[00:18:13] But it's amazing how quickly your mind starts to work in your favor when the adrenaline is pumping.

[00:18:18] Yeah.

[00:18:19] This is, in a way, what I prefer about the sort of true stories of espionage, because I don't think anybody would have written a scene like that.

[00:18:26] And just using those sort of the power of human connection, I just find that really interesting.

[00:18:31] Funny you should say that.

[00:18:32] I've recently started writing a substack, julianfisher.substack.com, on Sing Like a Spy.

[00:18:40] And what I do in that substack is explore the uses of the process of agent recruitment in both espionage and non-espionage settings on the screen and in books and in real life.

[00:18:54] And the first article I wrote made the point that actually espionage is not visual.

[00:19:01] It shouldn't be visual.

[00:19:03] You know, if you are aware that somebody is engaging in espionage and it was in your view, something's gone wrong.

[00:19:13] You know, so in a sense, it shouldn't be dramatic.

[00:19:16] So the question to me has always been, given that it's a non-visual, apparently undramatic process, why is it so often on our screens?

[00:19:27] And I think you hit on the right point there.

[00:19:29] It's on our screens because ultimately it is about interpersonal relationships.

[00:19:33] And what is drama if it's not interpersonal relationships and the way in which we work and collaborate and conflict with one another?

[00:19:41] Yeah.

[00:19:42] And of course, in the movies, it's made to be more visual than perhaps it might be in real professional life.

[00:19:52] But the heart of it remains the case.

[00:19:54] You know, espionage, we're talking here, of course, about human intelligence.

[00:19:58] I'm not talking about signals intelligence or open source intelligence or all of those other, you know, equally valid forms of professional endeavor in the espionage field.

[00:20:07] But talking about human intelligence, it's about interpersonal relationships and interpersonal relationships are inherently dramatic and interesting.

[00:20:14] And that's what I find so fascinating.

[00:20:17] I must, if you haven't seen it already, I must share my film, The Dry Cleaner, at some point with you and get your thoughts on it.

[00:20:22] I would love to see it and maybe write a sub stack on it.

[00:20:24] Yes, that'd be really good.

[00:20:25] That'd be helpful for the sales of the film on Apple.

[00:20:27] So thank you.

[00:20:29] Very welcome.

[00:20:29] Congratulations.

[00:20:30] So let's move on to the transformative power of cover.

[00:20:34] Can you talk to us a bit about that?

[00:20:35] Cover is an interesting one, isn't it?

[00:20:37] Because we assume that it's about deceit.

[00:20:40] We assume that it's about pretending to be something that you're not.

[00:20:44] And actually, I don't think that's a very helpful way of looking at it.

[00:20:49] Of course, I make a distinction between defensive and what I call offensive cover.

[00:20:55] Defensive cover is something that's necessary for spies in the field, for intelligence officers working abroad, for instance.

[00:21:03] They may need to adopt a form of defensive cover, which just helps them to avoid too much focus on what it is that they're actually up to.

[00:21:17] I'm not particularly interested in that form of cover.

[00:21:19] You know, it has its place, but that's not what I write about in the book.

[00:21:23] What I'm more interested in is the use of offensive cover.

[00:21:27] What is it that draws somebody to you?

[00:21:31] How do you present yourself in such a way that when you're looking for your goals ally and you are presenting yourself to a potential supporter, ally, fan, whatever, what are you doing?

[00:21:47] And you have to present yourself in a way that is attractive to them.

[00:21:53] And my view, my strong view is the only way that you can do that is to appeal to certain aspects within your personality and present them in a particular way to draw them to you.

[00:22:03] So I think I use the analogy of a Rubik's cube.

[00:22:06] You know, our personality is a Rubik's cube.

[00:22:08] So there are all sorts of parts of our personality, some good, some bad, some indifferent, and we work hard to adjust the way in which we present ourselves in different contexts.

[00:22:19] So in actual fact, if you go to an interview, you're presenting one form of cover.

[00:22:24] If you're going on a date, you're probably presenting another form of cover.

[00:22:27] If you're having a podcast, you're probably presenting yet another form of cover.

[00:22:33] In a way, cover is simply an orientation of your personality.

[00:22:38] So what I mean by the transformative use of cover is the ability to look into yourself and find those parts of yourself that authentically engage with your target, with the target goals, ally.

[00:22:55] And that's a really important distinction because I don't want anybody reading the book to come away with the idea that they need to pretend to be something they're not.

[00:23:06] Yeah, fake it till you make it kind of thing.

[00:23:08] Yeah.

[00:23:08] Now, there's another aspect to that fake it till you make it concept that you can indeed almost transform your own personality by choosing to emphasize certain aspects of it.

[00:23:21] Again, if I may, I'll tell you a story about that.

[00:23:23] And this is from my young adulthood when in some ways I wasn't a very likable character.

[00:23:29] You know, I'd sort of got very drawn into, as a bit of a Thatcher's child, I got drawn into that sort of take no prisoners approach that she adopted.

[00:23:38] And I was using it in my day-to-day life.

[00:23:40] And, you know, in some ways that worked for me, but in other ways it didn't.

[00:23:45] And one way it didn't work for me was getting girlfriends.

[00:23:49] So I was quite flattered when I think I was 18, maybe 17, 18.

[00:24:00] And I was quite flattered when I was working in a student job.

[00:24:05] I mean, it was nothing particularly special for adding up marks on the exam paper.

[00:24:10] One of my colleagues, about to go to university, started showing what I thought was some form of romantic interest in me.

[00:24:17] And we chatted and we got on really well until I decided to ask her out.

[00:24:21] And she said no, which was a bit of a knock, because I think it was probably the first person I'd ever asked out.

[00:24:27] So I asked her why not.

[00:24:28] And she said, well, I think you're interesting, but frankly, you come across as not very nice.

[00:24:35] Okay.

[00:24:36] I was a bit of a blow, you know, sort of kicking the teeth.

[00:24:40] And I went away and I thought about it.

[00:24:42] And I thought, that's quite an interesting, I was quite an analytical kid.

[00:24:47] And I thought, there's quite an interesting phraseology there, isn't there?

[00:24:50] You come across as not very nice.

[00:24:53] Which perhaps suggests that she thinks somewhere within me there is niceness, you know.

[00:24:58] So I set about looking at what makes somebody nice.

[00:25:02] What parts of your personality do you present so that you are an agreeable personality in a social context?

[00:25:08] And that's all I was doing.

[00:25:09] You know, I wasn't pretending to be something I wasn't.

[00:25:11] But I was taking those elements of my personality, looking around at the way people who generally got on and were seen as agreeable and nice and friendly characters.

[00:25:21] How they were presenting themselves.

[00:25:22] And I sought to present myself like that.

[00:25:26] And actually, it did have a transformative effect.

[00:25:29] Because I realized after a while that I wasn't making it up.

[00:25:33] I wasn't putting it on.

[00:25:34] I was just, I was tapping into those parts of my character that were already there.

[00:25:39] But I'd just chosen to suppress for whatever reasons of emotional self-defense.

[00:25:44] And once I started tapping into them and using them, a wonderful thing happened.

[00:25:48] I became transformed.

[00:25:50] I became nicer.

[00:25:52] And the end to that story was when this young woman, about a year later, happened to be at the same party as me.

[00:25:59] She was with a boyfriend that she'd acquired in between times.

[00:26:03] And we chatted, the three of us, for many hours until eventually her boyfriend had to head off.

[00:26:11] And it was me and her left.

[00:26:12] And she said to me, you're not the person that I knew before.

[00:26:15] You're totally different.

[00:26:16] And, you know, can we go out sometime?

[00:26:19] And I said no.

[00:26:21] Because Nice Jules wasn't going to do that to her boyfriend.

[00:26:25] And that was genuine.

[00:26:26] Yeah.

[00:26:27] Yeah.

[00:26:28] Thank you for sharing that.

[00:26:28] That's very good.

[00:26:29] Is there anything else you'd like to add to that section?

[00:26:31] I think you've covered quite a lot there.

[00:26:34] I think on the cover side, that's the key message that I want to get across is please, please, please don't try to be something you're not.

[00:26:45] But, you know, there are, in professional espionage settings, there are, of course, whole departments devoted to helping officers build a legend, able to present themselves in particular ways.

[00:27:01] But that's for very specific reasons and done for the right reasons.

[00:27:07] I don't recommend that in day-to-day life.

[00:27:10] What I do recommend is understanding that within all of us, there are elements of personality that can be accentuated and developed.

[00:27:22] And it's up to us all to become sufficiently self-aware to use that transformative power of what I call, in inverted commas, cover.

[00:27:34] Yeah.

[00:27:35] And no fake moustaches.

[00:27:36] They always look terrible.

[00:27:40] Yeah, I took mine off before I came in.

[00:27:42] So we're just going to take a quick break and be right back.

[00:28:01] So let's move on to the bonding power of cultivation.

[00:28:05] What can you tell us about that?

[00:28:06] So cultivation is basically making friends.

[00:28:12] You know, again, I want to go back to my start point.

[00:28:16] These are things we all do all the time.

[00:28:18] There's nothing particularly magical or different or secret or classified or clandestine about cultivation.

[00:28:27] Cultivation is simply orientating yourself to the needs of another person.

[00:28:32] So let's start with where it sits in the whole process of agent recruitment.

[00:28:37] Once the targeting process has been completed and the spy, by which I mean the intelligence officer, has narrowed their attention, narrowed their focus to one or two people, then they embark on a process of cultivation.

[00:28:53] And that might be making sure that they're in the same place at the same time, making sure that they understand that person's interest and aligning their own interests with them.

[00:29:04] And this is where you get a crossover between the considerations of cover that we've just talked about and cultivation.

[00:29:11] So offensive cover is a presentation of yourself in a way that is interesting to the person, the interlocutor whom you want to attract.

[00:29:22] And it may be that you, I'm not saying you fake an interest, but you develop an interest in an area of culture that perhaps isn't necessarily something you've been drawn to previously.

[00:29:37] But you can't do it in an inauthentic way.

[00:29:41] You really can't.

[00:29:41] You can't pretend, I couldn't really, except for a very short period in extremists, in a Lyft somewhere in Harare, I couldn't really pretend to be interested in soccer.

[00:29:53] You know, I just wouldn't be able to.

[00:29:54] I'm with you on that.

[00:29:56] And I probably just lost half the audience there.

[00:29:59] My wife and her entire family are all soccer fanatics.

[00:30:03] They're actually from the Middle East.

[00:30:04] And I learned a very interesting lesson because I didn't realize soccer was so big in the Middle East.

[00:30:09] It's very similar across Africa.

[00:30:11] You always need to be able to at least use three or four sentences, know two or three players, so that you can break the ice in pretty much any context in Africa.

[00:30:22] And that goes from Mauritania on the West Coast to Somalia on the East Coast.

[00:30:26] It really is a very powerful thing.

[00:30:28] But I can't pretend.

[00:30:30] I couldn't in a form of cultivation, which is a, the point about cultivation is it's not a one-off use of cover.

[00:30:38] It's a process.

[00:30:40] It's a process of engagement with somebody in a way that draws them closer to you.

[00:30:50] And hopefully establishes the groundwork, which will incline them to be positive when you ask for their help or whatever that help looks like.

[00:31:03] And so it can be relatively simple things.

[00:31:07] It can just be remembering somebody's birthday or remembering somebody's children's birthday and taking note of what interests them.

[00:31:15] And sending them links to stories that perhaps they haven't seen about that area of interest and showing a shared area of curiosity.

[00:31:30] Yeah.

[00:31:31] It's about making yourself likable at the end of the day and making yourself available and being attentive to the needs and the motivations of the other person.

[00:31:42] Yeah.

[00:31:43] And I think also going through that process, by exploring other people's interests, and should we say you adopt some yourself through natural osmosis, I think it makes you a more rounded person as well.

[00:31:55] Because I've met through networking and friends, you sometimes meet these people who have zero interest.

[00:32:00] And it makes it very hard to bond with that person sometimes.

[00:32:04] So I think there's something to be said for that as well.

[00:32:07] I absolutely agree that it makes you a more interesting, rounded person if you can look outside of yourself.

[00:32:14] And this is actually about focusing outside of yourself.

[00:32:18] And one of the most important things about self-awareness is the ability to get yourself out of the way.

[00:32:26] And there are certain interesting psychological ploys, shall we say.

[00:32:31] I don't want to say tricks.

[00:32:33] Maybe ploys is the wrong word.

[00:32:34] There are some psychological realities that are worth being aware of.

[00:32:37] But the idea of transference, for instance, where if we talk about, if I'm talking to you and I refer to a friend in common or an associate in common, and I use a phrase about them such as they're a really interesting or they're a fascinating person.

[00:32:56] Psychologically, studies suggest that you will tend to think of me in the same light.

[00:33:04] So now that sounds a bit sneaky, but it's just a reality.

[00:33:08] And what I'm saying, the reason I raise it is because it shows how taking ourselves out of the equation often has very significant positive benefits of whether people perceive us.

[00:33:22] Now, I'm smiling slightly as I say this because I absolutely understand how that can be seen as being quite manipulative.

[00:33:29] And indeed, in the wrong hands, it can be.

[00:33:34] But what I want to get across is the importance of, by being a rounded member of society, by being a curious person.

[00:33:49] I think it was Bill Maher who said, curious people are interesting people.

[00:33:53] I wonder why that is.

[00:33:55] And I think it is precisely because of what you say, Chris, that we can find common cause with people who are curious about the world.

[00:34:03] Yeah.

[00:34:04] So looking outside of yourself and looking up from your screens, I think is vital to the process that I'm talking about here, whether it's in a professional espionage context or in your day-to-day life or in your professional life.

[00:34:18] Being a rounded member of the community.

[00:34:21] Yeah, I agree.

[00:34:22] I agree.

[00:34:22] And I think, yeah, because I've always sort of said it's our humanity that kind of gets us into situations and it's our humanity that will get us out of them as well.

[00:34:31] Quite so.

[00:34:31] Absolutely.

[00:34:32] And in the end, this is about humanity.

[00:34:35] What I'm talking about here is about shared interests, shared endeavors, positive outcomes for everybody.

[00:34:41] You know, I mean, I'm passionate about social mobility.

[00:34:44] I really believe that we have a bit of a problem in this country and in many countries with social mobility.

[00:34:49] I think there's a whole panicky of capability and talent which is held back by social structures which have developed over hundreds and hundreds of years.

[00:35:06] And it's in all of our interests to unleash that creativity, to unleash that talent, whether it comes from a South London council estate or the poorest postcode in Birmingham or indeed from a manor house somewhere in Yorkshire.

[00:35:24] I don't, I don't care.

[00:35:25] Yeah.

[00:35:25] But I think it's incumbent on all of us to work in a way to unleash the creativity that is there.

[00:35:32] Because if we were, if we managed to do that, we would be a far more powerful, far more compelling force in the world as a country.

[00:35:40] I'm talking about the UK now, of course.

[00:35:42] And so there's game for everybody in what I'm talking about.

[00:35:47] This isn't, this isn't a zero sum game.

[00:35:49] This is about improving and making more accessible for everybody in our society, the gains and advantages of unlocked creativity and talent.

[00:36:03] And just building on that and talking widely, what I've noticed when I've looked at terrorism and things like that over the years, a lot of, a lot of its roots in the individuals responsible for it does tend to come from a sense of unfulfillment.

[00:36:18] Absolutely.

[00:36:19] I was, I had lunch the other day was a producer, screenwriter, in fact, who's looking at the problem of what we call far right extremism right now.

[00:36:30] And, and the roots of that, I think are in too much screen time often.

[00:36:38] It's too easy to get caught up in, could get caught in echo chambers.

[00:36:42] And it's too easy to see the world in a, in a very skewed way.

[00:36:46] If you are isolated.

[00:36:48] So most important thing you can do, I would say to anybody out there is just get out there.

[00:36:53] You know, don't get stuck behind the screen.

[00:36:55] It's it, of course it's for certain careers, certain professions.

[00:37:01] It's very important, but please, please, please see social media and technology as enablers of the much more important thing, which is human interaction.

[00:37:13] You know, in the end we, we, we, we reach across that chasm to one another.

[00:37:17] Don't we just, you know, if anything, a, a highly developed it system is basically an accelerated means of communication and communication is only important when it's communication between two human beings.

[00:37:33] And we, do we forget that at our peril.

[00:37:36] And the more people are isolated, the more they sit behind screens, especially in, in their younger years, the more we are likely to have problems with extremism.

[00:37:46] It doesn't matter what side of the political divide we're talking about.

[00:37:49] Yeah.

[00:37:49] It comes from isolation.

[00:37:51] Yeah.

[00:37:51] Yeah, indeed.

[00:37:52] And just to quote John Le Carre, he said the, the, your desk is the most dangerous place to view the world from.

[00:37:59] And it's very true, isn't it?

[00:38:00] I not heard that.

[00:38:02] I shall add it to my growing.

[00:38:04] I hope I got that correct.

[00:38:06] I'm pretty sure that's what you're saying.

[00:38:07] Yeah.

[00:38:08] He features quite heavily in it.

[00:38:10] Yeah.

[00:38:11] But it's absolutely right, you know, because it, it is a, it's a one dimensional view.

[00:38:14] Yeah.

[00:38:16] And I just, I go back to it.

[00:38:17] Just get out there, you know, just go and talk to people and meet people and develop your range of interests.

[00:38:22] Be interested.

[00:38:24] Be interesting.

[00:38:25] We're going to talk about one more skill because unfortunately we're a bit pushed for time today, but.

[00:38:29] Sorry, I do, I do tend to go on a little bit.

[00:38:31] Not at all.

[00:38:32] I think if anything, it's good because I think a, people should read your book because if we give away the whole thing, then there's less motivation.

[00:38:39] And I think actually we've kind of got into some very interesting territory.

[00:38:43] It's always nice just to be in the presence of somebody who's very knowledgeable about this topic and be able to sort of talk about these things.

[00:38:48] And there was one more point that you did want to talk about before we wrap up today, which was sort of motivation, which I think is an important thing.

[00:38:55] So I'll hand it over to you.

[00:38:56] I wanted to end on the subject of motivation while we're still talking about the book, because in the end, that's the core of it all.

[00:39:04] Everything from the targeting and the use of cover to cultivation and use of elicitation techniques is aimed at one thing.

[00:39:17] It's what I think is the nexus of the recruitment process, which is motivation.

[00:39:25] You know, so you are trying to appeal to the motivation of, in the spy's case, a potential agent.

[00:39:31] In day-to-day life, the motivations of a potential goals ally.

[00:39:36] And so it's really important to understand what is driving the other person.

[00:39:42] And historically, academics who write about espionage have talked about mice and money ideology, coercion and ego.

[00:39:50] I think that's a little bit limited.

[00:39:52] And I certainly don't think it applies in the non-espionage context.

[00:39:57] And I've developed a different model, which I call GRADE, gratitude, responsibility, altruism, desire to please and ego.

[00:40:06] And I think it's a much more, it's a wider model.

[00:40:09] And I think it's a much more useful model because it enables us to get to grips with what might be driving people to be supportive of you and me or a young person going out into the workplace for the first time to achieve their goals.

[00:40:24] And that gratitude and responsibility and altruism, they're sort of all bound up.

[00:40:27] I've done well, so I want to help other people to do well.

[00:40:30] And actually, funnily enough, as a slightly ironic point, a lot of those motivations were in play when I started writing Think Like a Spy.

[00:40:40] Because I feel very grateful that I was able, with Mayer's help and with the help from some extraordinary other people that I've met in my life and from my amazing family,

[00:40:51] that I've been able to do some incredible things, some really exciting, really interesting things.

[00:40:56] I've had a rich and fulfilling life, and I want others to have that as well.

[00:41:00] So I'm driven by a number of those motivations to write this book.

[00:41:04] And I hope people will see in its pages that that's where it's coming from.

[00:41:10] And I invite readers to think carefully about the whole subject of motivation because it's right at the heart of the really important word,

[00:41:21] and what I'm writing about here, which is alliance.

[00:41:24] You're not simply looking to exploit somebody else's goodwill.

[00:41:30] You're not simply looking to gain an advantage for yourself.

[00:41:33] You're building an alliance.

[00:41:34] So to do that, you need to tap into somebody else's motivations.

[00:41:39] What do they gain from this relationship?

[00:41:41] What do they gain from this alliance?

[00:41:43] Because in the end, thinking like a spy is about thinking collaboratively.

[00:41:48] Yeah.

[00:41:49] Thank you very much for that.

[00:41:51] Where can listeners find out more about you and your work and your excellent book?

[00:41:57] Which is right here.

[00:41:59] Yes, think like a spy.

[00:42:02] I have an author website, julesfisher.com, J-U-L-E-S-F-I-S-H-E-R.com.

[00:42:08] And I've recently started sub-stack, julianfisher.substack.com.

[00:42:14] And there are various means of contacting me through those two means.

[00:42:20] I'm also on LinkedIn.

[00:42:21] Yes.

[00:42:21] So I positively encourage readers to contact me, actually.

[00:42:27] We're all learning.

[00:42:29] Yeah.

[00:42:29] And I love to hear what readers make of what I've written.

[00:42:33] And I really love to hear feedback.

[00:42:37] Excellent.

[00:42:38] Well, thank you so much for your time and joining me on our first video sort of podcast in the studio today.

[00:42:42] It's been a great pleasure.

[00:42:44] Thank you so much, Chris.

[00:42:45] Thank you.

[00:43:17] Thanks for listening.

[00:43:18] This is Secrets and Spies.