Name: Joe Rogan Experience #1800 - Gavin de Becker
Uploaded: 2022-04-01T00:00:00.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #1800 - Gavin de Becker' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-04-01. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #1800 - Gavin de Becker' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-04-01. Transcript available.

Joe Rogan Experience #1800 - Gavin de Becker

Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out.
The Joe Rogan Experience.
Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.
Hello, Gavin.
Hey.
Pleasure to meet you in person, in the flesh.
You too.
We obviously have a lot of friends in common, and I'm glad to be here.
I'm glad to have you here.
And I'm glad to talk about, we have a lot of shared interests, but this
survival signals
that protect us from violence.
Now, this is, I've always wanted to talk to you because you are truly an expert
on preparedness
and cautionary tactics and what to do and not to do, like in terms of security
and how
to protect people.
And how did, what is your background?
Like, how did you get started in all this?
Bad childhood, violent childhood is the way I started.
When I was 10 years old, my mother shot my stepfather in front of me.
Oh, Jesus.
And that was one of many sort of gun incidents in our family.
And so I-
Was your stepfather violent or something?
No, he wasn't.
My mother was.
Wow.
That's unusual, right?
It is.
It is the more unusual of the two, you know, the two genders.
Certainly men are more violent more often throughout history.
So I had that experience, but, and a whole bunch of others.
My mother was a heroin addict.
She committed suicide when I was 16.
And so I saw a lot of stuff.
I saw a lot of criminality.
I saw a lot of violence.
And I guess I developed kind of like an ambassador between the two worlds.
I spoke both languages.
You know, if I had a few other disadvantages, there's no way I would have, you
know, succeeded in life.
I would have died young.
Like if I'd been a black kid with the same circumstance, I'd have been in big
trouble.
And so that life brought me to a fascination with when John Kennedy was killed,
I was 10.
And I was home from school.
And it just absolutely captivated and fascinated me.
Not so much the issue of who killed him or the conspiratorial sides of these
things, which are very real.
Not so much that, but the actual physics of how you prevent assassination.
And that interest stayed with me throughout my life.
And I eventually, I've had an odd life.
So as I tell you this story, you'll be ready for it to be unusual.
But by the time I was 19, I had already read and devoured everything I could on
this subject, which was pretty limited.
Most of the stuff on anti-assassination strategies I wrote later in life, but
there wasn't a lot to read at the time.
And at 19, I got a job working for Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.
And they were the most famous people in the world.
Maybe not known to everybody today, but she was a big movie star and he was a
big movie star.
And at that time, there was really only Jackie Onassis and Elizabeth Taylor and
the Queen of England.
Those were the giant media figures.
Now we've got hundreds of media figures.
And Marilyn Monroe, who had died already.
And I worked for them starting as a kind of flunky.
Do you know the word?
A gopher.
And then through the course of everybody above me being fired, I ended up being
what's called traveling chief of staff.
And I traveled with them around the world.
I got to work with protectors and intelligence agencies in South Africa and in
Israel and in Mexico and all over Europe.
And I learned a lot.
And I observed everything.
And when I was done, I was 21.
And I wrote an article about public figure protection in the private sector for
a law enforcement journal.
And everybody assumed I was a 55-year-old ex-FBI agent, but I was 21 years old.
And so I used to get asked to come and give speeches.
And when I would arrive, they would look around.
You know, is your dad with you?
You know, they'd look around.
And I had a mustache.
I used to darken it because you could see through it.
And I gave speeches.
And I got better and better at it.
And giving speeches, you have to be right.
You know, you get tested a lot by audiences.
And so I was driven by the idea of accuracy and a good intellectual process
because I didn't have – I wasn't a former cop.
I wasn't an FBI agent, et cetera.
Later, I became all that kind of stuff.
Later, I got appointed by the president of the Department of Justice Advisory
Board and worked with CIA and FBI and all the things that have gone on between
10 years old and today.
By the way, the reason I mention that is sometimes when somebody wants to say
something shitty about me,
they say, oh, his whole training is that he had a bad childhood.
Could we count the 55 years between then and now, perhaps?
But ultimately, I developed a company that is a consulting company that advises
people at risk and wrote books on the topic and did a lot of research and study
on the topic.
So when you were 19 years old, how did you get this job working with Elizabeth
Taylor and Richard Burton?
It's a good question.
So I went to Beverly Hills High School.
We were on welfare and food stamps, but my grandfather got a one-room apartment
in Beverly Hills where we could lie and my sister and I would say we lived in
Beverly Hills, use that address.
So I went to Beverly Hills, and there I met a lot of friends who are still
friends today.
And one of them was Gina Martin, and Gina Martin was Dean Martin's daughter.
And so I went to work for her mother for $60 a week, which I still have, by the
way.
And one day, Elizabeth Taylor came over to their house.
And Gina and I, my girlfriend and I, we sat up at the balistrad and looked
through the railing, and I thought, Elizabeth Taylor?
I didn't really even know who she was, but I thought, this is going to be a big
deal.
And in came this giant, you know, big hair and all the stuff.
And then a few months later, somebody called me and said, she's looking for an
assistant, and will you go meet with her?
So I went to the Beverly Hills Hotel to meet with her, and she wasn't there.
Her boyfriend was there.
I met with him.
I got hired.
Can you type?
Yes.
Couldn't type.
Do you speak French?
Yes.
Don't speak French.
Why French?
They were going to France two weeks later.
So I got the job.
Then I went home, and I told my friends I got this job.
It's unbelievable.
I turned on the television, and Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton have gotten
back together.
She's left her boyfriend, and I see her, you know, going through the airport
paparazzi, and my career is over.
I never even met her.
And then a few months later, got another call, and this time she was back in
Los Angeles with the same boyfriend.
So her and Richard Burton broke up already?
Three times when I was with them.
Three times broke up and three times back together.
So I started working for her.
She was great to me, very, very nice and kind.
And one day she came into my office, and she said, I was working at the house,
and she said, can you take me to the tropical fish place tomorrow?
And I thought, yeah, sure, that would be great.
And her boyfriend was a guy named Henry Weinberg, and he used to take her.
And so I thought maybe he's going to be a little jealous or something, but I
figured I'll take her.
This means driving some Rolls Royce.
I've never driven.
I didn't have a car at the time.
And I was supposed to pick her up at her house, meet her there at 10 a.m.
About 10.45 in the morning, I wake up at home.
Fuck.
I have totally blown it.
I have missed the appointment completely.
I rush like crazy to get to the house, get there by noon.
She's gone to the fish place.
And she comes into my office afterwards, clearly to fire me.
And she says, Gavin, thank you so much for what you did this morning.
That was a very admirable thing to do.
But, you know, I don't know what it is yet.
And she says, you knew Henry would be jealous, and so you stood back and let
him take me to the fish place.
So that was great.
Okay, world, I'm in.
So I kept the job.
Wow.
And then home one night, and a friend of mine calls and says, put on the
television, and it's Elizabeth Taylor, back with Richard Burton, has left her
boyfriend, and my career is over again.
So I'm done, finished, it's over.
And a few weeks later, she calls me, and she says, would you be willing to come
to work for me and Richard in Europe?
I don't think I'd ever been to Europe.
Maybe I'd been one time to England at that point.
And I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And I say, you know, Richard Burton was an intimidating British actor, and so I
said to her, what should I call him?
Do I call him Richard?
Do I call him Mr. Burton?
And she said, Richard, he wants to know what he should call you.
And in the background, I hear, I don't give a shit, love.
Fuck, I'm going to have a rough time with this guy.
And then I show up, and we live in Switzerland for a year, live with them in
their house.
And the very first night, he comes to talk to me, and we talk for like six
hours.
I'm 19 years old.
Wow.
And I love him, and he loves me.
I don't just mean in that moment, I mean through our lives.
And we stayed, even after I left working for them, we stayed friends until he
died at maybe 50, 50 years old from alcoholism.
Wow.
So that was an interesting start, just the way things went.
Well, he must have been close to death then, right?
Because how old was he then?
He was 45 probably when we met, or maybe that's an interesting question.
I have to look.
You know, I was in Jerusalem a few years ago, and I stayed at the same hotel
where Elizabeth and Richard and I had stayed when we made a trip to Israel.
And she had converted to Judaism in the 60s because she was married to a guy
named Mike Todd, and so she was an enormous big deal in Israel.
There were Elizabeth Taylor theaters.
And we landed the entire tarmac of the airport, hundreds of thousands of people,
and I thought, wow, Israel's really a disorganized country.
They let everybody on the tarmac, but it was obviously because of Elizabeth
being there.
And so I was learning quickly about this and this kind of stuff.
And while we were there, many experiences went out with the Kissingers and
crowds and blah, blah, blah.
But many years later, as an adult in my 60s, I was at that hotel, and I was
looking around at all the pictures they had of famous people, and there I find
Elizabeth and Richard and me.
Oh, wow.
So it gave me the idea to download the diaries of Richard Burton, which I had
never read.
He used to keep a diary all the time when we were traveling.
If he was drunk or in trouble, I used to go get the diary out of the room so it
wouldn't get stolen by pop photographers or news media people or housekeepers
or whatever.
Handwritten?
What?
Handwritten?
Yeah, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny.
He'd be writing all the time.
And so I had two experiences with that diary that are good teachers for my kids
now.
One is that one day he went to sleep, and he was on a bender.
He was an alcoholic, and he was having a hard time.
And I saw the diary sitting just folded over the armchair, and I thought, well,
I better grab that so a housekeeper doesn't get it.
And I pick it up, and I turn it over, and I read it, curious, like, what does
he always write in here?
And my eyes land on these words, must get rid of Gavin when we get back to
London.
Good teaching.
Oh, boy.
So anyway, now, years later, I'm at the King David Hotel, and I download this
book, and it's a book of his diaries.
And I think, oh, am I in there?
So I start looking around.
And I find passages that, you know, by this point, it's been 45 years or so
since I worked for them.
And I find these passages from him.
And one of them says, Gavin gave us a long letter yesterday telling us that he's
right about everything and we're wrong about everything.
I have no memory, but it sounds like some young Gavin move.
And then, you know, other entries regarding me.
But one of them that really struck me is that he said there were days and days
without any entry.
There'd be five days with no entry.
And at the end of it, he would say, lost five days.
Five days gone.
And I realized that I was a kid living with this couple and really had no idea
what they were going through and what he was going through with alcoholism and
what she was