Chase Your Adventure: Faith, Leadership & Life Insights from Jeffrey Sanow of the CIA

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Whatever your adventure is.

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Let loose the dogs of adventure and chase it.

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If it's going to the grocery store, make that your adventure, whatever, it doesn't

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matter, but chase your adventure because if you sit back and let the adventure

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get away from you, it's your loss.

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But if you go after it and you trip and fall on your face 10

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or 20 times, I've done that.

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That's just all part of the adventure.

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What did the Apostle Paul and a former CIA officer have in common?

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More than you might think.

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In this episode of Seek, go, create the leadership journey.

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We're joined by Jeffrey Eno, a former senior intelligence officer with

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CIA, whose career took him across the globe, including over 100 missions to

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Syria where he regularly walked the very road to Damascus that transformed

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Saul into who we know as Paul, brings a rare blend of deep faith and high

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level operational experience to the conversation, offering powerful insights

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on integrity, leadership under pressure, and how spiritual transformation can

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inform strategic decision making.

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is a conversation that will challenge, inspire, and reframe how you think about

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calling and the cost of conviction.

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Jeffrey, welcome to Seek, go Create.

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Thank you.

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It's my pleasure to be here.

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I am glad that you're here too, and I'm looking forward to hearing some of these

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stories and it's rare that I get like, first of all, it's rare that I get someone

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who's got CIA or a three letter attached, and then also that can tie in some of the

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spiritual conversations we love to have.

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Man, this is gonna be fun.

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Before we get too much further though, you rather answer the question,

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what do you do if someone's, you know, you're out and about or on a

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podcast and someone asks you that?

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Or Who are you?

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Which would you prefer?

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Go ahead and pick it and start answering.

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What do I do is easy and boring.

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Who am I?

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Is much more complicated and entertaining.

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I am a farm boy from Ohio.

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I grew up on a small farm there.

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my parents were divorced when I was 11, so I went through a lot of the entertainment

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that the children of divorce go through.

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And so at the age of 20, after I'd been at Ohio State University for

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two years, I decided to go ahead and run away from home formally.

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So I joined the Peace Corps and went to North Africa.

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and after two years there, I still wasn't ready to go back to Ohio

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'cause that was the only thing looking at me, more of that cold wind and

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whistles between those buildings at Ohio State University in the winter.

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No, no, no, no, no.

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My blood was too thin, so I went to another, country.

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I went to Gabon, which is right on the equator.

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And, just so you know how impressed my mother was with me, she was thrilled

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when I said I was going to Gabon.

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'cause she went, that's where Albert Schweitzer's hospital is

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when I guess what my response was.

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Who's that?

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So that's where Albert Schweitzer's Hospital is that,

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that I've never forgotten.

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I was there for a year and a half and then, due to some

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other family machinations, I just had to go ahead and leave.

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Went to school in Texas, finished up my bachelor's and master's degree.

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first job out of college was at, a poultry processing plant in Waco, Texas.

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After my second day there, I was pretty sure that was not the job

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that my mother had in mind for me.

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so from there I applied to various international organizations, international

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businesses, and I was very fortunate.

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I was able to spend, three years in India where I was selling

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irrigation equipment for a large company called Valmont Industries.

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I was there three years and ultimately we ended up signing a contract to export

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plastic components back to the us.

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So after that, I went back to the US and managed to find a job in Greece

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and went back over to Athens where the company was supposedly investing in

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a latex glove manufacturing facility, which of course never came to pass.

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So after two years it's like, okay, there's no job here.

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So I had to leave.

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I went back to Texas, got continued education certification in

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telecommunications management.

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This was back when the internet was still not barely a glimmer in Al Gore's eye.

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and, proceeded to get a job, working for a company out of Houston.

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But I was based in Abu Dhabi and I was selling telecommunication

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network management systems throughout the Middle East.

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Which is what brought me to Syria so many times.

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and I was there for six years, decided to come back and let my adventurous streak

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take over, applied to the agency, got accepted because by that time I'd lived

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in multiple countries, spoke multiple languages, and they really liked that.

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and I was accepted.

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And so, that's where I wrapped up my career, uh, doing God's work.

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And let me just tell your listeners one thing right now, the people, the LA rank

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and file people in the ccia a are the best that this country has to offer.

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They should take a great deal of confidence in that.

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I'm not talking about the leadership issues and all the

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political nonsense goes on.

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I'm talking about the folks who show up at, you know, 6 30, 7 o'clock in the

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morning, work until 4, 5, 6 o'clock in the evening, and do that five days a

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week, sometimes six or seven days a week.

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They are the best this country has to offer.

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And no matter what you see on tv.

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Your listeners should take a great deal of pride in the workforce That is at the CIA.

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I'm excited to do a little bit more of a dive into that CIA in just a little while,

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but there's so many parts of this story as, I think I told you maybe about halfway

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through your book that I've been reading, we'll talk about that as we go along here.

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Uh, hu hum.

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Human for Humanity.

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I dunno if I pronounce that right, but

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Yes, sir.

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that.

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I'm gonna ask about that in a little while.

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But first, I mean, there, how many countries have you been to because you

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rattled off some names that are not your, you know, Gabon and you know, Tia

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and all these, so, you know, they're not your average Joe Traveler country.

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You know, I, I went to France, I went to Australia.

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No, that's not what I'm hearing from you.

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How many countries and good gracious the

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I think the total number when I sat down and added them up was 33 different

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countries I've either lived in or visited.

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I think I've lived in 12.

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Somewhere between 10 and 12 that I've actually lived in.

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And, you know, I enjoyed it.

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It was a blessing.

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I'm not gonna deny that.

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and I like to think that I was doing good.

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and you know, the book, human Stands for Human Intelligence and Americans

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By and Large, have been protected by these two really big bodies of water on

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either side and a really cold neighbor to the north, and a river to the south.

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So we're very internally focused.

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You don't need to go any place to get what you need to eat,

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drink, sleep with whatever.

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We have all that here.

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And yet there's a huge world out there And I wrote it so that people could get

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a flavor for some of the world that's out there, the five foot elevation

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level, not the 45 seconds you'll get on CNN or Fox News or whatever.

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But to actually get a glimpse of some of the silliness that my wife, God, my

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now ex-wife, God bless her, um, put up with, when her first time outside of

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this country was in New Delhi, India.

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So, you know, she, that's who my book is dedicated to.

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And a lot of people look at me kind of cross-eyed going, you

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dedicated your book to your ex-wife.

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What does your current wife think about that?

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Well, that book ends about 10 years before I met my current wife.

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So she doesn't care either way.

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and honestly, I probably would've done it anyway, even if she did care, because

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none of that book, none of what you read would've been possible without my ex-wife.

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So that's why.

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I,

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I get that.

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I think I was laying in bed and I mentioned to my wife, I said, huh, Jeffrey

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dedicated this book to his ex-wife.

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I said, I bet there's a story there.

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And I said, you know what?

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I'm gonna ask about it.

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You just told the story so I don't have to ask about it.

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I said, because he put it in the front of his book, so it

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opens up the door for me to ask.

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But anyway, before we get too far though, this is where I want to go.

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I do agree that as Americans, I believe we're a little bit.

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Arrogant about our position in the world and things like that.

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I don't necessarily want to go down that path.

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traveled a good bit and I mean, you know, you know, when we talk about rose

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less travel, I shared with you in the beginning, my wife and I have essentially

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been traveling for the last 12 years.

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We've been homeless.

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We don't have a home.

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We live in this motor coach, and so we've been traveling all over the

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US for six years, but before that we were in Australia and New Zealand.

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And during the nineties I spent time in New Delhi and Mumbai and places like that.

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but I think it would be valuable, Jeffrey, to share maybe some of your favorite

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places, what are some places maybe that you would rather not go back to?

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Again, not that we're disparaging anybody, but you would.

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Probably rather not.

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So give a few, few of the highs and lows just of the travel, not jobs and

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stuff like that, but just the places.

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So I'm gonna give you two examples.

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The first one is one of my favorite countries, which is Oman.

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Oman is the country where some people claim Sinbad, the sailor sailed from.

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And there's actually a mock-up of his ship on one of the traffic circles in Oman.

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The people of Oman are hardworking.

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They don't have oil wealth.

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So, I mean, they have a tiny bit, but not like Saudi Arabia or the Emirates.

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I made the mistake of asking, the receptionist at the hotel

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I was staying in, I think the Hyatt Regency in Muscat, Oman.

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I asked her what country she was from and she looked at me

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like I had two heads, from Oman.

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So they work and they tend to be very polite.

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I was on the beach, with my wife, my cousin who was a flight attendant

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for United Airlines, a very attractive lady in her thirties.

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And, our two daughters who would've been, I don't know, 10,

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12 years old, something like that.

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So we were all on a beach in Oman and, a group of men come riding up on

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horseback and the leader of the group got off and came over and talked to me.

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Of course he's gonna talk to me, he is not gonna talk to the women.

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came over and talked to me and said.

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My uncle would like to offer 12 camels for this young lady pointing to my cousin,

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you know, you, you have that split second of, oh my goodness,

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what am I gonna do with this?

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Well, it was very, everything was courteous, okay?

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No, nobody should misread anything on this.

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They were very courteous, they were very polite.

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I was equally courteous back.

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I said, you know, we're very honored.

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That's a very generous offer, but we're gonna have to decline.

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And they said, okay.

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And they, and they wrote off.

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I have not let my cousin forget that I've not let my aunt,

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her mother is my godmother.

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And so she hasn't forgot that.

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So every time my cousin Deb is gonna go visit Jeff someplace, her mother's

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like, you know, you gotta be really careful going any, any place Jeff

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is, you almost got, it's hilarious.

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But that's all mine.

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That's very friendly country.

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Lots of good memories, beautiful beaches.

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the markets are great.

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It's always been an entree point for the Indian subcontinent.

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In fact, the Indian Rupe used to be their currency for a long time.

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So it's just a very interesting, very friendly country.

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I'll contrast this with what was once called the Pearl of the

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Mediterranean, and that was Beirut.

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And Beirut had all of the positive influence of North Africa.

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It had the positive influence from Turkey, it had the positive influence from Iran.

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It was a French colony.

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You know, it had all the positive influences and it truly

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was the pearl of the Orient.

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To this day, Lebanese women are still considered to be the most

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beautiful in the Middle East.

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I think that's in some measure because the.

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Crusaders were nice enough to drop off blue eyed DNA.

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So every now and then you get a very pretty blue eyed Lebanese woman.

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And then you fast forward to about 1985 when all the Civil War started and I

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compare Lebanon to Whitney Houston.

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Whitney Houston.

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You're old enough to remember when she came out.

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Was she not fabulous?

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Could that woman not sing?

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And she was beautiful as the day is long what the, I think the first song

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was called Jump or something like that.

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I remember her jumping up a not a lot and just phenomenal and beautiful

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and it did not end well for her.

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Very sadly.

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As with Lebanon, it's not ending well with them.

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So that's where I like to contrast and, and I tell those stories to,

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to try and bring it home to people.

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'cause everybody in the US knows who Whitney Houston is.

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Or was, and, and how most people know, you know, what she was like

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when she came out and how talented and, and they're very sad ending.

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So those would be two of my favorite countries to talk about because

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I like Lebanon, I like Beirut.

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I had the ability to travel to, to Damascus many times.

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when you walk down the street called straight and you realize it's written

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about in Acts chapter nine, I believe.

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walking down a street that's written about in the Bibles, that's gotta

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mean something to, to somebody.

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Even a, even a miserable Lutheran like me, we do take, take that part seriously.

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So it was always very, very nice to be able to do that.

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Yeah, we need to check Ensure with your in information you could

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gather to make sure Bobby Brown didn't visit Lebanon at some point.

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the one that messed up.

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Whitney Hu.

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I believe he messed up Whitney Houston maybe.

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Maybe we could blame that on him.

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I'm not sure about that.

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And then I wanna go back to the Campbell story though, because what's fascinating

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is I'm surprised you didn't negotiate.

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It's like 12 camels.

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No, but maybe 13.

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I guess a bit bigger question, was that like a lucrative offer?

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I mean 12 camels, is that a

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It was a very generous offer.

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Those generous

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that was a good offer.

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camels are valuable, right?

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So, anyway, those point to the cultural differences that I

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think we somehow get locked into.

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Another thing that you talk about a good bit in your book, and, I guess

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this is a good time to ask, is I think you are, a strong proponent of

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learning the language when you spend

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Yes, sir.

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time in these places.

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And these are not easy languages.

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But talk about, just in general, the importance of, as you go into a culture,

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being able to learn and speak, some, if not, all of their language, then

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maybe any other specifics that you want to around the language thing.

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But in general, why is it important to learn the language of a culture

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that you're spending time in?

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Well, there's really two reasons for it.

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The first one is simply respect, and you don't have to become fluent, in a local

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language if you can at least get through the greetings, the respectful high.

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How are you?

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just basic, minimal conversation.

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the woman who my book is dedicated to, as I said, her first time overseas

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was New Delhi and her first trip to the market, she came back with

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a moldy tomato and said, this is the only thing that I recognize.

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Okay, well, English is a national language in India, however.

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She learned enough of the local language that she could go to the shopkeepers

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and say, good afternoon, How are you?

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And she could say, I would like six of these.

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Or, how much does that cost?

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So just enough to engage them.

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So all of a sudden you have a white American woman speaking in Hindi

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that says a lot to the shopkeeper.

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Now he's not gonna give her the rock bottom price,

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that's just not gonna happen.

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But at least he's gonna give her a fair price.

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And once she's gone to that same vendor, you know, 3, 4, 10 times and he recognizes

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her 'cause she's five foot 10 attractive young woman, he's gonna recognize her when

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she comes back and he's gonna make sure that she gets at least what she pays for.

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So she's getting good quality he might offer and say, no, don't get that one.

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Try these over here.

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Because that's the way all vendors operate around the world.

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Once you are a regular customer, they're gonna take good care of you.

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And so you prove that by being at least able to greet them, say

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hello, ask how much, some just fundamentals of conversation.

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And you will benefit because the people will benefit you.

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They were gonna make sure that you have a good deal, you have a good

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day, whatever the case may be.

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And you know, if you get into trouble, could be a traffic accident, could be a

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trip and fell, whatever it might be that you, I'm sure you've been around enough to

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know that there's all kinds of trouble you can get to in this world if you've already

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established that you are a respectful person because you've learned to speak a

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little bit of the language, then there's gonna be people that are gonna help you.

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Out of respect for you.

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So they repay that respect.

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So that's why the language is so very important.

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I am not a linguist.

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you can ask all the people I was, a Peace Corps volunteer with or overseas with.

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Nope, I am not a linguist.

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but I could get by, especially when I was going into, Syria or Lebanon,

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because of all we talked about, the blue eye, DNA, they deposited my blue

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eyes, didn't automatically mean I was a foreigner, and they couldn't

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quite figure out my Arabic accent.

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So between my blue eyes and my Arabic accent, they were

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like, where's this guy from?

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but it wasn't automatically assumed that I was American,

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and I kind of liked it that way.

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learning the language is, as I said, it's an important sign of respect for the

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culture and the country that you're in.

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And it will benefit you immensely when you're dealing with people, whether

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vendors or police or what have you.

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it will benefit you because of the respect you're showing

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their language in their country.

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Yeah, I have a, and I also think it's helpful if you're doing business,

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negotiating, things like that just because you could lose a lot.

Speaker: 00:18:57

I've got, a business that I interact with and work with a good bit.

Speaker: 00:19:01

Right now we're about to be sending a group of people, I'm not going with them.

Speaker: 00:19:04

They're going over to Taiwan and then to China.

Speaker: 00:19:08

fortunately we have an employee with our company who is Chinese originally.

Speaker: 00:19:14

and she's been in the States for a while, so she's going to help

Speaker: 00:19:18

us greatly because there's some negotiating that's going on in this.

Speaker: 00:19:22

And so, that's important.

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I love the word you use, it just shows And I, I get discouraged

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when I see Americans as you travel Whatever the opposite of respect is,

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disrespect, obnoxiousness, whatever.

Speaker: 00:19:38

They show that as tourist and travelers to, to me, it sounds as if my wife

Speaker: 00:19:44

and I say this about ourselves, we're really not good tourists.

Speaker: 00:19:48

We do travel and we go places, but we like to hang out and spend time there.

Speaker: 00:19:53

Sounds to me like you're not really a tourist, you're a traveler.

Speaker: 00:19:55

You go places and you integrate into those places.

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Absolutely.

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if I just wanna see things, I can sit home on the TV and see things, but I want to

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connect with the people that I'm visiting.

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You know, I lived in Thailand.

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And I would go to the markets, and Thai is a very difficult language, trust me.

Speaker: 00:20:18

But just being able to say, hello, how are you?

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there's, I don't know if you know what, it's called Stinky Fruit.

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It's got a more formal name.

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I can't think of what it's called right now.

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but it's very tasty and it's very smelly.

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Hotels won't let you put it in their refrigerators.

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but you know, you go there and you say, I'd like some of this.

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And once you've made that connection, obviously I'm gonna stick out in Thailand.

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I'm a six foot two white boy from America.

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I'm gonna stick out.

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So they're gonna see me coming, they're gonna recognize me, and they're gonna

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know probably what I'm coming to buy, and they're gonna be able to give me

Speaker: 00:20:51

good guidance 'cause I'm a good customer.

Speaker: 00:20:53

Why not take care of this guy who's respectful?

Speaker: 00:20:55

So yeah, that, that bit of respect in the languages is very important.

Speaker: 00:20:59

Yeah, that's good.

Speaker: 00:21:00

And, one of the things in your story that I don't hear that often anymore.

Speaker: 00:21:07

I used to hear it more, and that's just people that have experienced with the

Speaker: 00:21:10

Peace Corps and so I think it would be valuable for me and probably the listener

Speaker: 00:21:18

just, know, give just a brief, you know, you don't have to tell the whole story

Speaker: 00:21:23

of all that you did there, the Peace Corps is one of these organizations that,

Speaker: 00:21:29

Kennedy early sixties had a purpose, and you obviously

Speaker: 00:21:34

have benefited greatly from it.

Speaker: 00:21:36

I'm sure it still exists.

Speaker: 00:21:38

I just haven't heard much from it.

Speaker: 00:21:39

What can you educate us on the Peace Corps, just so that

Speaker: 00:21:42

we understand more about it?

Speaker: 00:21:45

Sure.

Speaker: 00:21:46

the Peace Corps, as you said, was set up by Kennedy.

Speaker: 00:21:48

Sergeant Shriver was the first director and it was designed

Speaker: 00:21:51

with three tenants in mind.

Speaker: 00:21:53

First.

Speaker: 00:21:54

Take American values and demonstrate them at the village working level.

Speaker: 00:22:02

Second, take English language and develop it in the countries

Speaker: 00:22:09

where we wanna do business.

Speaker: 00:22:12

Third, bring the culture of whatever country you go to back to the United

Speaker: 00:22:17

States and educate the Americans.

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I was, I was working on farm machinery.

Speaker: 00:22:24

I was an agriculture mechanic and in Tunisia, I would've been

Speaker: 00:22:30

20 years old when I got there.

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Would you like to guess on how interested these farmers were and what some

Speaker: 00:22:36

20-year-old white boy from America had to say about how they used their equipment?

Speaker: 00:22:40

Not even a zero.

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If I hit a zero, it was a good day.

Speaker: 00:22:43

They had no interest in what I had to say, and they had their reasons for doing it.

Speaker: 00:22:49

And one of the toughest lessons that you learn in the Peace Corps and you learn a

Speaker: 00:22:52

lot about yourself is what do people need?

Speaker: 00:22:56

What's important?

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And you have a lot of time for self-reflection.

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I can assure you of that as you're trying to, you know, me, I'm

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sitting out in some little village I had electricity, but that's it.

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There was no tv.

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You read books.

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and we made friends.

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So I was able to do both of those things.

Speaker: 00:23:15

I studied Arabic more when I was there, in fact, compliments of the internet.

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I just got contacted about a year ago by my old Arabic instructor.

Speaker: 00:23:23

And so we, we've reconnected.

Speaker: 00:23:24

At any rate, the Peace Corps, the whole idea behind it is to put the best American

Speaker: 00:23:31

values, the value that's contributory.

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We're giving you, you're paid a little bit.

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you're paid a living stipend.

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Not just enough to rent a house and eat food.

Speaker: 00:23:40

Obviously if there was any kind of emergency, a medical emergency,

Speaker: 00:23:45

you are nominally a US employee.

Speaker: 00:23:48

Government employee.

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So the US government through the embassy's gonna take care of you.

Speaker: 00:23:52

That's a given.

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Short of that, you're pretty much on your own.

Speaker: 00:23:56

You're on your own to make the kind of impact you wanna make, to deal with the

Speaker: 00:24:00

farmers the way you wanna deal with them.

Speaker: 00:24:02

for me, and then we had guys that dug water wells.

Speaker: 00:24:05

We have a lot of English teachers.

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In fact, English teachers were my favorite 'cause they were mostly female.

Speaker: 00:24:10

And once again, let's go back to being 20 years old.

Speaker: 00:24:13

so, that's the contribution that they make.

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And, and it's, again, it's not terribly often that you go into a village and

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you see a 20, 22, 23, 24, 20 5-year-old or or older American working in that

Speaker: 00:24:28

village, living with the villagers.

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It is not a perfect organization, and no one should think that

Speaker: 00:24:33

it's not a perfect experience.

Speaker: 00:24:35

I mean, people leave Peace Corps early because they're not getting

Speaker: 00:24:37

what they want, and that's fine.

Speaker: 00:24:39

it's not a military organization.

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Yeah.

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It is largely an organization that is what you make of it,

Speaker: 00:24:43

do they still exist and are they strong now?

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I just haven't heard much from them recently.

Speaker: 00:24:49

actually.

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as I mentioned, my current wife is Ugandan, and I can assure you

Speaker: 00:24:55

that the Peace Corps is active in Uganda because I was there.

Speaker: 00:24:58

they actually invited me to, one of their big gatherings.

Speaker: 00:25:02

the law as written is you can go from being in the Peace Corps to being in the

Speaker: 00:25:08

CIA, but you cannot go the other way.

Speaker: 00:25:11

So I could go there and show up and shake hands and make nice, but they wouldn't

Speaker: 00:25:14

let me work for them, which is fine.

Speaker: 00:25:16

That wasn't what I was looking for.

Speaker: 00:25:18

but they are.

Speaker: 00:25:21

Still very active.

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They tended to, in Uganda, they're still working in agriculture.

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they work in fisheries.

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No, they're not quite as prominent now.

Speaker: 00:25:30

And I suspect these days in the US government, everybody's keeping their

Speaker: 00:25:34

head down ' cause they don't want it to go along with their budget,

Speaker: 00:25:37

you know, get cut, so to speak.

Speaker: 00:25:38

but yes, they're still very much there.

Speaker: 00:25:40

They are a part of the State department or an office of the State Department.

Speaker: 00:25:45

So they're very active, as I said, in Eastern Europe and former Soviet Bloc.

Speaker: 00:25:51

I believe they're more involved in small business developments,

Speaker: 00:25:55

but they're still active there.

Speaker: 00:25:57

Trying to think if they were in Thailand when I was there and I don't remember.

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I think they were.

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So yeah, they're still out there.

Speaker: 00:26:05

They're still doing things.

Speaker: 00:26:06

and again, for me, peace Corps offered me several escapes.

Speaker: 00:26:14

Number one, I could get away from my family who were crazy.

Speaker: 00:26:17

divorce, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker: 00:26:19

But it also offered me the opportunity to see places at the government expense

Speaker: 00:26:25

that I would never see on my own.

Speaker: 00:26:27

I had to work for a living, you know, I had to make a contribution.

Speaker: 00:26:30

I had to have some skill that I could offer.

Speaker: 00:26:33

And in return, they basically said, okay, you go live here,

Speaker: 00:26:35

call us at the end of two years.

Speaker: 00:26:37

and you did what you made of it in Gabon, which is right on the equator.

Speaker: 00:26:43

that was a different environment.

Speaker: 00:26:45

I was on an agriculture project and I supervised the equipment

Speaker: 00:26:49

for about a dozen volunteers that were specialized in agriculture.

Speaker: 00:26:54

And so I helped keep all the, the machinery working.

Speaker: 00:26:57

And again, it's phenomenal experience.

Speaker: 00:27:00

I'm living in a little town in the middle of Africa.

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And the only reason I had electricity was I controlled

Speaker: 00:27:06

the generator for the project.

Speaker: 00:27:08

So we ran a cable.

Speaker: 00:27:09

One of the pictures you'll see in my book is, is us running the

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cable all the way across town.

Speaker: 00:27:14

And I had to get over the big intersection.

Speaker: 00:27:16

So we put a gigantic pole up there to, to carry the cable to my house.

Speaker: 00:27:20

but in that kind of environment, you basically have two choices.

Speaker: 00:27:26

You can pull in and not do anything.

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Or you can put yourself out there.

Speaker: 00:27:31

Take your risk yourself risk embarrassment or whatever.

Speaker: 00:27:35

There's no harm's not gonna come to you.

Speaker: 00:27:37

but you'll risk maybe embarrassing, you know, again, there I had to learn French

Speaker: 00:27:41

and, there were plenty of challenges.

Speaker: 00:27:44

plenty of bathroom challenges, upset stomach challenges.

Speaker: 00:27:49

While I was in Gabon, the driver for the agriculture project I was on.

Speaker: 00:27:56

he owned a small farm 'cause they all own small farms.

Speaker: 00:27:58

he said to me one day that he was gonna go clear the land and would I

Speaker: 00:28:02

like to go with him, which translated into go chop down trees with him.

Speaker: 00:28:06

And so sure, you know, what am I?

Speaker: 00:28:09

You, let's go do it.

Speaker: 00:28:10

And so we went out there, we spent the day chopping down trees.

Speaker: 00:28:13

At the end of the day, I had so many blisters on my hands,

Speaker: 00:28:18

I could barely use them.

Speaker: 00:28:20

However, he would take my hand and show it to everybody on the

Speaker: 00:28:25

workforce at the agriculture project and say, do you see these blisters

Speaker: 00:28:30

that he got clear and land for me?

Speaker: 00:28:31

This guy's a stud.

Speaker: 00:28:33

Those blisters got me more credibility than any number of college

Speaker: 00:28:38

degrees could have ever gotten me.

Speaker: 00:28:40

The fact that I could work and sweat and suffer alongside a guy who had.

Speaker: 00:28:46

maybe a fourth grade education.

Speaker: 00:28:48

I mean, because of that, that's how you generate connections.

Speaker: 00:28:55

Anybody can talk.

Speaker: 00:28:56

How many people are gonna get out there and swing an ax all day?

Speaker: 00:28:59

That's the difference.

Speaker: 00:29:01

that's what Peace Corps lets us do.

Speaker: 00:29:03

It puts us in the field.

Speaker: 00:29:05

It puts us side by side with people who maybe, remember that white boy

Speaker: 00:29:09

that was there from America that helped clear the land so many years ago.

Speaker: 00:29:12

And, oh, you should have seen all the blisters on his hand.

Speaker: 00:29:14

I don't know.

Speaker: 00:29:15

But certainly that's why Peace Corps is there to make that impression on people.

Speaker: 00:29:21

And then to bring back these kind of stories to say,

Speaker: 00:29:24

Capone's a wonderful place.

Speaker: 00:29:25

No, they don't really have very much money.

Speaker: 00:29:27

They're mostly pretty poor, but they sure do have a respectable life.

Speaker: 00:29:32

They're happy.

Speaker: 00:29:33

they love to drink and dance all night long.

Speaker: 00:29:36

and they're drinking cheap beer.

Speaker: 00:29:37

While the government makes sure the beer is cheap, for obvious reasons.

Speaker: 00:29:40

drunk dancing people are easier to govern than sober, not dancing people.

Speaker: 00:29:45

So yeah, that, benefited me, it benefited them, and it cost

Speaker: 00:29:49

the taxpayer next to nothing

Speaker: 00:29:52

I'm getting paid a hundred bucks a month maybe, and, you know, a little bit of

Speaker: 00:29:56

housing, a little bit of transport.

Speaker: 00:29:58

If you bundled all together, you're looking at what, $5,000 for this

Speaker: 00:30:01

guy to go sit in the jungle for two years and make America known to

Speaker: 00:30:06

people who had never known America.

Speaker: 00:30:08

If it wasn't for meeting Peace Corps volunteers like me and my colleagues,

Speaker: 00:30:11

I'm not trying to hold myself above them.

Speaker: 00:30:12

I was not.

Speaker: 00:30:14

but the other folks who were there working and we all had different

Speaker: 00:30:16

strengths and all of our weaknesses came out, I can assure you, just because of

Speaker: 00:30:21

sitting in the jungle by yourself for 3, 4, 5, 6 months, it can be stressful.

Speaker: 00:30:26

But we had to learn to deal with that and it was all that together.

Speaker: 00:30:30

This is why I think the Peace Corps is a great experience.

Speaker: 00:30:33

You got a kid that's just graduated from college, doesn't know what to

Speaker: 00:30:35

do or whatever, just lost his job and they're Flo around for a new direction.

Speaker: 00:30:41

Look at the Peace Corps.

Speaker: 00:30:42

They will put you to work and they'll take care of you and your life will be changed.

Speaker: 00:30:46

that's really good.

Speaker: 00:30:47

that was a good PR promo here for Peace Corps.

Speaker: 00:30:49

We might bundle that up and see if we could do something with it.

Speaker: 00:30:53

you've mentioned a couple times, and also this is prevalent in

Speaker: 00:30:55

your book, is that you, I think you used the exact word escape.

Speaker: 00:31:00

You were looking to escape from where you were in Ohio and your

Speaker: 00:31:03

family This is what crossed my mind while I was reading through it.

Speaker: 00:31:07

When I went through some tough stuff after oh eight we actually lost our

Speaker: 00:31:12

home and stuff like that, we went through quite a financial challenge.

Speaker: 00:31:15

My wife and I started traveling and I had somebody ask me one time, They go,

Speaker: 00:31:19

are you running away from something or are you running to something?

Speaker: 00:31:25

I've looked back on that and I believe that.

Speaker: 00:31:28

Often, there was a season that I was running away, but then at

Speaker: 00:31:32

some point there was a click where no, I was then running something.

Speaker: 00:31:38

So I'm gonna kind of pose that question to you.

Speaker: 00:31:41

I know early on you were running away and maybe even you continued.

Speaker: 00:31:44

Are you still running away?

Speaker: 00:31:45

Are you now running too or, and at what point did that change or shift

Speaker: 00:31:49

in your life, if that is the case?

Speaker: 00:31:52

That's a phenomenal question.

Speaker: 00:31:54

without question, I was running away when I started at the age of 20.

Speaker: 00:31:59

I. I did my best to stay away from Ohio.

Speaker: 00:32:02

Even when I was back in the States, I had two daughters, and so we had

Speaker: 00:32:06

to take them to my grandmother's once a year, and I stayed in Ohio

Speaker: 00:32:11

for just as short a time as possible.

Speaker: 00:32:13

Now, I transitioned from running away from a life that I did not really like to

Speaker: 00:32:24

two, running towards my next adventure.

Speaker: 00:32:29

And I'm not trying to push my book, but what the last sentence in that book is cry

Speaker: 00:32:34

havoc and let loose the Dogs of Adventure.

Speaker: 00:32:38

That's a modification of Shakespeare, which is cry havoc

Speaker: 00:32:42

and let's slip the dogs of war.

Speaker: 00:32:43

I don't want war, I want adventure.

Speaker: 00:32:45

So am I running two more adventure?

Speaker: 00:32:48

Absolutely every chance I get, that's one of the things that makes my wife crazy.

Speaker: 00:32:51

Makes my kids crazy.

Speaker: 00:32:53

Where's dad going now?

Speaker: 00:32:54

I don't know.

Speaker: 00:32:55

I'm going someplace because I'm not a young man anymore, and I'm gonna keep

Speaker: 00:32:59

chasing adventure for as long as I can.

Speaker: 00:33:02

And if I'm blessed, right now I'm 66 years old.

Speaker: 00:33:06

I'm in good health, and, we're looking at going back to Uganda here in a

Speaker: 00:33:12

couple of months and we'll see what kinds of adventures come from there.

Speaker: 00:33:15

I've been very blessed because I lived in Uganda for a year where I was head of

Speaker: 00:33:19

the, third largest security company there.

Speaker: 00:33:21

But I met some good people, some great people.

Speaker: 00:33:24

One of the great people there is a gentleman by the name of

Speaker: 00:33:27

Daniel Lamar, who was a comedian, a real life standup comedian.

Speaker: 00:33:31

He was best man in my wedding.

Speaker: 00:33:33

Hilarious guy.

Speaker: 00:33:35

I met a, TV personality.

Speaker: 00:33:38

She currently has her own TV show there now.

Speaker: 00:33:40

And so I've already reached out to them and said, Hey, I'm coming back to

Speaker: 00:33:44

Uganda for my next adventure because the adventure here in Tampa, Florida

Speaker: 00:33:47

has pretty much played itself out.

Speaker: 00:33:49

and I'm used to the weather here.

Speaker: 00:33:50

I'm gonna go do something new.

Speaker: 00:33:52

So, I'm just looking at the next adventure.

Speaker: 00:33:56

the lady has already said, okay, I want you to start doing content creation.

Speaker: 00:34:00

That's a lot harder than it sounds.

Speaker: 00:34:01

So I sent her some of the stuff I'd already written, on leadership,

Speaker: 00:34:05

on how to persuade people, things that are from my background.

Speaker: 00:34:09

So we can start working on that.

Speaker: 00:34:10

And I'll work with the comedian who's a good personal friend of mine.

Speaker: 00:34:14

I've helped him out of some tough spots.

Speaker: 00:34:15

we've had a lot of fun together.

Speaker: 00:34:17

And so I'll go back there and see what my next adventure is I'm

Speaker: 00:34:20

very much looking forward to it.

Speaker: 00:34:22

I think everybody defines adventure differently, and that's okay.

Speaker: 00:34:27

Whatever your adventure is.

Speaker: 00:34:29

Let loose the dogs of adventure and chase it.

Speaker: 00:34:32

If it's going to the grocery store, make that your adventure, whatever, it doesn't

Speaker: 00:34:36

matter, but chase your adventure because if you sit back and let the adventure

Speaker: 00:34:42

get away from you, it's your loss.

Speaker: 00:34:45

But if you go after it and you trip and fall on your face 10

Speaker: 00:34:48

or 20 times, I've done that.

Speaker: 00:34:51

That's just all part of the adventure.

Speaker: 00:34:52

so I encourage people to follow their adventure no matter how small it is.

Speaker: 00:34:59

You guys are on your own adventure driving around in an rv.

Speaker: 00:35:01

I'm kind of jealous.

Speaker: 00:35:03

I wish I could.

Speaker: 00:35:03

You know, you wanna stay in my house for a year and I'll

Speaker: 00:35:05

drive your RV around for a year.

Speaker: 00:35:06

You let me know if you wanna do that.

Speaker: 00:35:08

What works Something out.

Speaker: 00:35:09

We have to not be afraid of challenges.

Speaker: 00:35:14

That's not to say that, that we live in a perfect world and that

Speaker: 00:35:16

we'll master every one of them.

Speaker: 00:35:18

I, my first marriage failed after two and a half decades, so no, I'm not perfect.

Speaker: 00:35:23

and yes, the book is in fact dedicated to her.

Speaker: 00:35:27

So we need to experience adventure.

Speaker: 00:35:31

That is what will keep us going.

Speaker: 00:35:33

And I'm not talking Watson TV experience adventure.

Speaker: 00:35:36

I'm talking go camping here in the, in the state of Florida.

Speaker: 00:35:40

We're blessed to have lots of places to go camping.

Speaker: 00:35:43

Gotta watch out for the Gators.

Speaker: 00:35:45

gotta be smart.

Speaker: 00:35:46

But there's plenty of places where you can go for a hike

Speaker: 00:35:49

in the woods, in this country.

Speaker: 00:35:51

And you can have your own adventure as you define it and

Speaker: 00:35:55

enjoy life and then cry havoc.

Speaker: 00:35:58

Let's slip the dogs of adventure.

Speaker: 00:36:00

I love that, and you know, obviously you're talking to someone who has maybe

Speaker: 00:36:04

a little bit different lifestyle also, Can you sit and be still for of time?

Speaker: 00:36:12

Is there a link that you've noticed?

Speaker: 00:36:14

'cause I have noticed that I, I don't want say adventure, but sometimes

Speaker: 00:36:17

adrenaline can be like a drug

Speaker: 00:36:19

Mm-hmm.

Speaker: 00:36:19

are addicted to it.

Speaker: 00:36:21

And I don't know that adventure could be similar, I guess.

Speaker: 00:36:24

But what have you noticed about your rhythms?

Speaker: 00:36:26

Obviously you're mature, you're in good health.

Speaker: 00:36:28

I'm 61, so at an age where a lot of people, a lot of our associates are done.

Speaker: 00:36:35

And when I say done, they're done in a lot of ways.

Speaker: 00:36:37

I don't really feel that now.

Speaker: 00:36:39

I don't go with the pace I once did.

Speaker: 00:36:42

but what would you say if I say, can you be still for a season?

Speaker: 00:36:46

It sounds like you have been for a little while and it's now time to go correct.

Speaker: 00:36:52

I used to get what my, my now ex-wife would call sticky feet.

Speaker: 00:36:56

You know, my feet start sticking to the ground.

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It's like, okay, I've been here too long.

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time to go, time to see what's next.

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And, and yeah, if I have a good reason.

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I mean, I was berated by my now ex-wife because when I was planning to go back

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overseas, I had just established a relationship with my youngest daughter

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and her daughter, my granddaughter.

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she was very displeased with me for doing it.

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Then she's thought I needed the same.

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We don't talk very often.

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In fact, I think that's the only conversation we've had in a long time.

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and she excoriated me for that, and she was right.

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I needed to pay attention to developing the relationship with my granddaughter.

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So my granddaughter will know who I am or who I was or whatever the case may be.

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And she was right.

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So yes, there are always reasons to be thoughtful about what

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you're doing and make sure that it is the right thing for you.

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And it's not the right thing for everybody.

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Not everybody should live overseas.

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Not everybody should be a Peace Corps volunteer.

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Not everybody should be a podcast host.

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you need to find the niche that you fit in.

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But when you find that niche, you need to also make sure you can enjoy it.

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I mean, if you've got my book and I know you do, my favorite picture is that one.

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'cause that's what 45 years looks like.

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And, I've had people look at it and go, who's the guy with all the hair?

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Smack, smack, smack.

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so yes, I, I, I think I. I can sit still, I would obviously sit still for my

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daughter or my granddaughter, either my daughters or my grandchildren, obviously.

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my sister maybe probably my two brothers.

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Probably not.

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That's just not the way it is.

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But that's okay.

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The thing about this country and the American persona, if I can use that term,

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and that's a really broad term, I realize I'm really going into a minefield here.

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Americans is, are, are highly mobile people.

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We don't live in our family home.

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Many places in Europe, they live in the fa in the home they grew up in.

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So we're a highly mobile people.

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Jobs are easily transported.

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Sometimes that means the job gets taken away.

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Sometimes that means we have to go find a job.

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But I think we have so many opportunities in this country to look at so many

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different things, to see so much of life and to experience so much of life

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that unfortunately we think we can see it on tv and that's just not the case.

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so I like, I do like to travel.

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I do like to move.

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Can I stay in one place for 2, 3, 4, 5 years?

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Yeah, I can.

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I have, I gotta mix it up once in a while and go out and get in trouble somehow.

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it depends on what's keeping me there.

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we all make the decisions that we make for my daughter and granddaughter, of course.

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We have people all the time ask us this question, when are you gonna settle down?

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I kind of get a little bit irritated by that because I'm like going,

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I don't know that I ever will air quotes here for those listening.

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I do wanna say this though.

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This is interesting.

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We are in our RV right now and we are in the alley behind our

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daughter's home in Colorado Springs visiting our five-year-old and

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three-year-old granddaughters.

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And last night I went to the valet recital and we kind of can combine

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it, you know, we're migrating north now as the weather changes.

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So, we do have to kind of, I guess, balance those type things.

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Jeff, I must admit, was something that you, first of all, the CIA, we're gonna

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talk about that before we wrap up here.

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But I wanna talk a little bit about all of your trips to Damascus I'm a Bible

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guy and there's, there are stories in the Bible, a lot of 'em that fascinate

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me, there is one in particular that you highlight and you have walked these

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streets, you've been to this place.

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And so I wanna preface it.

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I've actually got the Bible open right here to Acts nine.

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it's the, it's, they say that his name was changed from Saul to Paul.

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It technically wasn't.

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It was just a different, you know, it was basically who was

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talking to him at the time.

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But someone who was killing Christians goes to Damascus, has

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an experience and it changes.

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And then I'm really fascinated by this guy, Ananias.

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So you've got someone that had been killing.

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Looking for probably you.

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'cause he was a disciple in that area.

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And the Lord speaks to him and says, okay, I want you to go see this

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person, Saul Paul, and minister to him.

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And I'm going, what the heck would you, if you were Ananias, what

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would be going through your head?

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But have been there, walk the streets, been to the chapel, all in this area.

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What do we need to know about this geographic area?

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Ha.

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Is it just a cool spot?

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What do you wanna tell us about the road to Damascus?

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It is.

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First, let's caveat pray that the current political situation

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there fixes itself soon.

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The Assad family, Haasz and em Bashar, they were dictators,

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they were not nice people.

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They did, however, protect religious minorities in Syria because the

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alloys were a religious minority.

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So he did, they did a good job of that.

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I just wanna just put that, preface that now back to Damascus itself.

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Damascus, in the first a hundred years of Christianity was the

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second most important city in the Christian world, only after Jerusalem.

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So when you read about whoever got converted to whoever, however

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you wanna call their names, in Acts chapter nine, anus.

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The reason he did that, according to my reading, Is he had a vision

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from Jesus who said, go do this.

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Now, I don't think I've had a vision from Jesus in my lifetime.

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I hope if I do, number one, I recognize it, and number two, I act accordingly.

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So I think he was acting accordingly, and you have many, many religious

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people in that part of the world.

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Remember, Islam did not exist at the time.

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There was only Judaism and Christianity, and then Christianity was brand new.

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So Damascus is, I think, the oldest, continuously inhabited city in the world.

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If it's not the first, it's the second.

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It's been around a long, long time.

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So that history gives it a lot of fascination for me,

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it's importance in religion.

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When you read the story as you continue reading that Bible story.

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He was lowered over the wall so that the Jews would not kill him after

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his conversion to Christianity.

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Every time I went there, I went to St. Paul's Chapel and I lit a candle.

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I'm Lutheran.

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We don't like candles.

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I went and lit a candle every time and said a prayer every time.

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So it to, to be able to overemphasize the importance of just that sectional

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wall to our Christian faith, I don't, I don't think you can overemphasize that.

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That's where he was lowered over the wall.

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When you go down the street called straight, just inside, it's called

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Beb Sharkey, which is the city gate right there that the street called

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straight goes on about 700 yards off to the right down the street is St.

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Paul's Underground Chapel.

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And you can go in there and you can go to the chapel underground.

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That chapel's been there 2000 years.

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My goodness.

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Come on.

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How much more influence, how much more of an impact could

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you have on your own faith?

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And we all deal with our faith individually.

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You do it your way.

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My wife is Catholic and she's married to a Lutheran.

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So trying to figure out which one of us is the heretic here.

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Although my pastor does say that Catholics make the best Lutherans.

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You have to laugh about that if you understand what she's saying.

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You do good.

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So, the, the influence that's Syria and Damascus had on

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Christianity cannot be overstated.

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As you go north out of Damascus, you come to a town called Aya.

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This is where you have monasteries that were built by Emperor Justinian, the

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first in about the year 400 again Before Mohammed was a twinkle in his daddy's eye.

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they built these monasteries and just to visit them.

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If again, if it's not inspirational to you, then you need to

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kind of look a little harder.

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And these used to be big pilgrimage locations in that part of the world

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because there were so many, of these monasteries built at that time.

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This one monastery, I think it's called Our Lady of S, in there, number one,

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there's a painting of the Holy Mother done by the Apostle Luke, done by St. Luke.

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So he painted a picture of Marian that is hanging in that monastery and you

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know how steps wear with time to get these little depressions in them when

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they're, you know, hundreds of years old.

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Apparently some time ago they were carrying a vat of

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olive oil up those steps.

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And some of the oil spilled out into one of those depressions and they saw a

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vision of the holy mother in that oil.

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So now when you go visit, you go into the monastery, you go down into the basement,

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'cause that's where they keep the oil.

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That's also where the prayer room is, where you can go, you write

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out what kind of prayer for whom, and you stick it in the wall.

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They will dip a little wad of cotton into that same va of oil

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that they saw the virgin mother in.

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Put a little Ziploc bag and give it to you to take home.

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Now, I'm not saying that that oil is a little bit dilute right now,

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but it's not the oil that counts, it's the symbolism that counts.

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the symbolism that comes with taking a vat of oil where they saw an image of

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the holy mother, again, I'm Lutheran.

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We don't worship Holy mother.

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but that doesn't make her any less significant to me as a Christian.

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So I get to take that little bit of oil home with me.

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So these are some of the places in Syria.

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That's how important that place is.

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As I said, we gotta pray to God that, that they'll stop killing

Speaker: 00:47:36

each other soon and that we can go back to having tourists go to Syria.

Speaker: 00:47:40

'cause it is a fascinating country.

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As I said, Damascus is so important to our history.

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Our, our cultural and our religious history can't be overemphasized.

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And you know, when you're walking down a street that's written about in the Bible,

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that's kind of gotta get your attention.

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And when you go into St.

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Paul's underground Church, come on, that doesn't have an impact on you.

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it's just a fascinating city.

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The people are as nice as the day is long.

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I never had any issues there.

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My now ex-wife and two daughters went with me on one trip there

Speaker: 00:48:12

and they were so well treated.

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So courteous.

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it was awesome.

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I love the history and one of the things this is, I think this is speaking

Speaker: 00:48:22

to, we'll call it US Christians.

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We've been beaten up on folks.

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Let's just keep going, I guess, is that they will read the Bible and they'll read

Speaker: 00:48:30

the Bible as if it was, you know, directly written to them and without any context.

Speaker: 00:48:36

And I love that you were able to frame some context.

Speaker: 00:48:41

this real location that Saul Paul was transformed and that it is in scripture.

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I mean, it's right here in front of me.

Speaker: 00:48:51

And then Paul went on to write a majority of the New Testament.

Speaker: 00:48:55

That is, is so incredible.

Speaker: 00:48:57

wanna shift just a little bit in our last few minutes

Speaker: 00:48:59

Sure.

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we've got this CIA thing that's been kind of lingering over the conversation

Speaker: 00:49:05

that is also very attractive about history and things like that.

Speaker: 00:49:10

It's like, okay, these three letter agencies, are bashing them.

Speaker: 00:49:14

We're bashing 'em in the media and the press and, and there could be real

Speaker: 00:49:17

reason why they, they they need to be.

Speaker: 00:49:19

But whatever you can.

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Tell us about experience, and I know there's some things you can't tell

Speaker: 00:49:30

and, and I guess maybe let me ask it in a little bit different way.

Speaker: 00:49:33

What should we be asking about the CIA, what are some things that

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I should be asking that I may be missing that I'm trying to do?

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The things that I'm hearing in the press as I tell me about all the,

Speaker: 00:49:42

the y'all, you know, you brought your propaganda in and changed the

Speaker: 00:49:47

governments and this kind of stuff.

Speaker: 00:49:49

Tell, tell me what I should be asking about the CIA.

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My initial response goes back to my opening comment that has to do with the

Speaker: 00:49:57

caliber of the people working in the CIA, the sacrifices that they and their

Speaker: 00:50:04

families make, in the CIA yeah, it's a government bureaucracy job, but they

Speaker: 00:50:10

go to places that are not necessarily nice places to go, under Carter.

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And, you know, the PEACE dividend is that when that came out, And

Speaker: 00:50:20

they start shutting down offices and consolidating offices.

Speaker: 00:50:23

And then nine 11 happened and they realized that they'd made

Speaker: 00:50:25

a mistake of consolidation.

Speaker: 00:50:27

So I think it's important to recognize that the people that serve

Speaker: 00:50:36

overseas, they may be working out of an embassy and they may have the

Speaker: 00:50:40

security of being part of the embassy.

Speaker: 00:50:44

But that doesn't mean that they don't risk their lives when they go out to do a

Speaker: 00:50:47

mission, when they go out on an operation.

Speaker: 00:50:51

In the past, countries generally do not execute other countries.

Speaker: 00:50:57

Intelligence officers, however, terrorist organizations will,

Speaker: 00:51:02

um, even the incarceration, yeah, you're gonna get arrested if you get

Speaker: 00:51:07

caught by the Chinese and you'll be unhappy, or which pick a country.

Speaker: 00:51:11

I don't mean to pick on a Chinese, uh, you'll, they'll be unhappy for a

Speaker: 00:51:15

while, uh, a week, two weeks, a month, a couple months, but you'll be fine.

Speaker: 00:51:19

So I think we need to recognize the sacrifices that they make.

Speaker: 00:51:25

Let me see if I can bring home one of the activities that I was

Speaker: 00:51:32

very involved with when I was a senior officer at headquarters.

Speaker: 00:51:38

We work very hard to prevent.

Speaker: 00:51:42

The sale and distribution of weapons, of mass destruction.

Speaker: 00:51:48

We're talking missile technology, nuclear, chemical, biological weapons.

Speaker: 00:51:54

That is a very serious issue.

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And my last job was to supervise the identification and prevention of the

Speaker: 00:52:08

movement of some of these materials.

Speaker: 00:52:10

And I will give you an example.

Speaker: 00:52:12

I had an analyst come to me and say, we have a ship that is moving materials

Speaker: 00:52:20

from someplace in the far east to someplace in the Middle East, and we

Speaker: 00:52:25

don't want those materials to go there.

Speaker: 00:52:27

And this officer said to me, you know, it's already on its way.

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I don't know if there's anything that we can do.

Speaker: 00:52:36

so I'm not sure what to do.

Speaker: 00:52:38

And my response given to her, and I'd worked with this officer for

Speaker: 00:52:41

probably two years by this time, so she knew me and I knew her.

Speaker: 00:52:46

And so I very pointedly, but politely said, we swing at every pitch.

Speaker: 00:52:52

So you get the emails out to every place along this possible route, and

Speaker: 00:52:57

you find this material and you stop it.

Speaker: 00:53:01

And again, I was polite, but that those were her orders.

Speaker: 00:53:04

And I said to her, if you have any trouble getting the emails outta the

Speaker: 00:53:09

building, it's actually cable traffic and it goes through a long approval process.

Speaker: 00:53:13

If you have any trouble getting the cables out, you come see me and I will

Speaker: 00:53:17

go fix whatever's blocking the road.

Speaker: 00:53:20

And she said, okay.

Speaker: 00:53:22

The next morning she came to me and said, chief, we got it.

Speaker: 00:53:25

We got it.

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And we turned it around.

Speaker: 00:53:28

So she got an award for that.

Speaker: 00:53:30

What had I done?

Speaker: 00:53:32

I had empowered her to fail.

Speaker: 00:53:34

Failure is something that we don't like to talk about.

Speaker: 00:53:37

Nobody wants to fail.

Speaker: 00:53:38

Thomas Edison invented the light bulb, invented how not to invent the light bulb.

Speaker: 00:53:43

I think a thousand times before he invented how to invent the light bulb.

Speaker: 00:53:47

Did he fail?

Speaker: 00:53:48

No.

Speaker: 00:53:48

He simply invented something that was of no use to anybody.

Speaker: 00:53:51

So we have to accept failure as part, as a path to our success.

Speaker: 00:53:58

If we let failure stop us, then failure wins.

Speaker: 00:54:02

But if we simply redo it, then we can continue.

Speaker: 00:54:09

And that's, that was that lesson.

Speaker: 00:54:10

She got an award for it, and off she went.

Speaker: 00:54:13

Yeah, that's good.

Speaker: 00:54:14

And so much of me wants to just keep digging, but know

Speaker: 00:54:18

this one thing fascinating.

Speaker: 00:54:20

I wonder if the ca gets excited when they find out that one of their

Speaker: 00:54:23

former employees is writing a book.

Speaker: 00:54:24

I'm gonna hold it up here.

Speaker: 00:54:26

I'm sure they love that, don't they?

Speaker: 00:54:29

They have to approve it.

Speaker: 00:54:30

yeah,

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to approve it.

Speaker: 00:54:31

explain the title to me.

Speaker: 00:54:33

I'm holding up for those on the video, but

Speaker: 00:54:35

Yeah, sure.

Speaker: 00:54:37

that human INT for Humanity, A

Speaker: 00:54:40

Humin.

Speaker: 00:54:40

into the World, less Traveled.

Speaker: 00:54:42

Explain that and then I've got a question or two before we wrap up.

Speaker: 00:54:47

Sure.

Speaker: 00:54:48

Human stands for human Intelligence.

Speaker: 00:54:52

That was what we collect in the CIA.

Speaker: 00:54:55

We collect intelligence from human sources.

Speaker: 00:54:58

Cient is signals intelligence.

Speaker: 00:55:01

That's what the NSA collects.

Speaker: 00:55:03

They vacuum up every electronic signal out there.

Speaker: 00:55:05

They put it on a big computer and they look at it.

Speaker: 00:55:08

So Elint is electronics intelligence.

Speaker: 00:55:12

Osint is open source intelligence.

Speaker: 00:55:15

That's where the analysts get to read the newspaper, So this book is Human

Speaker: 00:55:20

Intelligence for Humanity because.

Speaker: 00:55:24

I want to try and bring to people the human perspective of what

Speaker: 00:55:30

many places we've talked about, a couple of 'em already, many places

Speaker: 00:55:34

in the world are like, what is it like in the jungles of Gabon?

Speaker: 00:55:38

What was it like for my wife going to the post office in New Delhi?

Speaker: 00:55:42

What was it like traveling to many of the countries I've been to,

Speaker: 00:55:46

I'm not very complimentary with one of our biggest allies in the

Speaker: 00:55:49

region, which is Saudi Arabia.

Speaker: 00:55:51

Saudi Arabia is, a tough place.

Speaker: 00:55:53

Don't kid yourself.

Speaker: 00:55:54

so that's why I wrote the book because I wanted to try and color in gaps that

Speaker: 00:56:03

you're not going to see any place else, you're not gonna get to read about the

Speaker: 00:56:07

challenge that my cousin had with the guys coming up on the beach in Oman, whether

Speaker: 00:56:11

my wife had to deal with going to the market in New Delhi for the first time.

Speaker: 00:56:15

Or those are not the kind of challenges that you'll read about or see in a

Speaker: 00:56:20

James Bond movie or on CNN or Fox News.

Speaker: 00:56:24

I don't mean to pick on either of them.

Speaker: 00:56:26

but you're not just not gonna see it because there's, that's not what

Speaker: 00:56:30

they're, that's not what they do.

Speaker: 00:56:32

So the idea behind this book, my motivation was to try and color

Speaker: 00:56:37

in the gaps that I know are there.

Speaker: 00:56:41

They're there because I can see them.

Speaker: 00:56:42

'cause I've actually been to these places.

Speaker: 00:56:45

I've been tooma, I've been to Yemen, what a terrible place.

Speaker: 00:56:49

and yet these are countries we read about all the time in the newspaper.

Speaker: 00:56:53

But if we don't have a really good flavor for what they're talking about,

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because we only believe what we see on the news, and I'm sure you would agree

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that you can find a news broadcast for every political belief out there.

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So what I'm trying to do is bring a, a little bit different perspective.

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I try not to push an agenda on either side, because that's

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not what the book is about.

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I do talk about my work in the agency because of my admiration for

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the agency, and for the employees.

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I think I've made it clear the respect I have for the people that I work there.

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What I haven't made clear is the disrespect I have for some of the

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leadership we've had in the past.

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the rank and file, they do great things and I wanted to bring this book home

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to people so they can see, they can read when we talk about Saudi Arabia.

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'cause I think Trump, wasn't he just in Saudi Arabia along with being Qatar?

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I think so.

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When we talk about Saudi Arabia, I mean you got these princely guys and you know,

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Saudi Aramco and oil money, but nobody really digs down deep and looks at some

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of the sad things, let's call it that, that have happened in Saudi Arabia.

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They had a girl school catch fire and they kept them locked in there

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because they didn't have on their headscarves and a bunch of them died.

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That's Saudi Arabia.

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Think about that.

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That's one of our biggest allies in the Middle East.

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Right?

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I hope that when they read that, that sticks in somebody's craw.

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'cause that's why I wrote it.

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'cause I want to try and color in the human angle, the human intelligence

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of some of these places and bring humanity back to the forefront.

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So we make decisions based on humanity.

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Yeah.

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And I could tell that you're, and I think this is cool you,

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this comes across in the book.

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You're quite the storyteller.

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I've enjoyed it here because you've done that.

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I'm sure Amazon, any other way to

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Yeah.

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you, if someone wants to, Amazon the best place to go to get the book.

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The Amazon, you can get the book.

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I have a website.

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It is Jeffrey, s as in Scott Ano.

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So it's jeffrey s ano.com is my website.

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they can get the book on Amazon, as you said.

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They can connect with me through there.

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I would encourage people to read the reviews that are up.

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so far I've gotten one four.

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I don't know why they didn't put any comments, but the rest are all fives

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and I would encourage you to go back and put your comments in there as well.

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That helps other readers know what to expect.

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Yeah, I'll go in and give a review.

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I appreciate it.

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The book is Human Meant for Humanity, holding up my copy here on my Kindle,

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A journey into the world Traveled.

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No doubt that Jeffrey Sano has lived a life and is continuing to live

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a life, of a less traveled person.

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I appreciate you being here, Jeffrey.

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This has been a great conversation.

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If you've been listening in, go check out the book.

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I'm gonna go leave a review for you, Jeffrey, so I'll go in and do that.

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And uh, and I know that as an author, we all appreciate that

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we are seek go create here.

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We've got new episodes every Monday.

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I appreciate you listening in on YouTube or all the podcast platforms

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and all that you're doing there.

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I appreciate it.

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And uh, and again, check out all of Jeffrey's stuff.

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We will see everyone next week on See Go create.