#1800 - Gavin de Becker

Gavin de Becker (0:04)

The Joe Rogan Experience. Hey.

Joe Rogan (0:14)

Pleasure to meet you in person, in the flesh.

Gavin de Becker (0:16)

You too. We obviously have a lot of friends in common, and I'm glad to be here.

Joe Rogan (0:19)

I'm glad to have you here. And I'm glad to talk about, we have a lot of shared interests, but this survival signals that protect us from violence.

Now this is, I've always wanted to talk to you because you are truly an expert on preparedness and cautionary tactics and what to do and not to do. Like in terms of security and how to protect people and how did, what is your background, like how did you get started in all this?

Gavin de Becker (0:50)

Bad childhood, violent childhood is the way I started. When I was 10 years old, my mother shot my stepfather in front of me.

Joe Rogan (0:59)

Oh, Jesus Christ.

Gavin de Becker (1:00)

And that was one of many sort of gun incidents in our family. And so I-

Joe Rogan (1:05)

Was your stepfather violent or something?

Gavin de Becker (1:06)

No, he wasn't. My mother was and-

Joe Rogan (1:09)

Wow, that's unusual, right?

Gavin de Becker (1:12)

It is. It is the more unusual of the two genders. Certainly men are more violent more often throughout history.

So I had that experience and a whole bunch of others. My mother was a heroin addict. She committed suicide when I was 16 And so I saw a lot of stuff. I saw a lot of criminality. I saw a lot of violence. And I guess I developed kind of like an ambassador between the two worlds. I spoke both languages. If I had a few other disadvantages, there's no way I would have succeeded in life. I would have died young. Like if I'd been a black kid with the same circumstance, I'd have been in big trouble. And so that life brought me to a fascination with when John Kennedy was killed, I was 10, and I was home from school. And it just absolutely captivated and fascinated me. Not so much the issue of who killed him or the conspiratorial sides of these things, which are very real. Not so much that, but the actual physics of how you prevent assassination.

And that interest stayed with me throughout my life. And I eventually, I've had an odd life. So as I tell you this story, you'll be ready for it to be unusual. But by the time I was 19, I had already read and devoured everything I could on this subject, which was pretty limited. Most of the stuff on anti assassination strategies, I wrote later in life, but there wasn't a lot to read at the time. And at 19, I got a job working for Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. And they were the most famous people in the world, maybe not known to everybody today, but she was a big movie star and he was a big movie star. And at that time, there was really only Jackie Onassis and Elizabeth Taylor and the Queen of England. Those were the giant media figures. Now we've got hundreds of media figures.

And Marilyn Monroe, who had died already.

And I worked for them starting as a kind of flunky, do you know the word, a gopher?

And then, and through the course of everybody above me being fired, I ended up being what's called traveling chief of staff. And I traveled with them around the world. I got to work with protectors and intelligence agencies in South Africa and in Israel and in Mexico and all over Europe. And I learned a lot. And I observed everything. And when I was done, I was 21

And I wrote an article about public figure protection in the private sector for a law enforcement journal. And everybody assumed I was a 55-year-old ex-FBI agent, but I was 21 years old. And so I used to get asked to come and give speeches. And when I would arrive, they would look around, you know, is your dad with you? You know, they'd look around and I had a mustache. I used to darken it because you could see through it.

And I gave speeches.

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