“It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt.” ~Mark Twain

Many “men” these days can recite decades of sports statistics off the top of their head and manage to stay abreast of the latest celebrity gossip or reality television program but have no idea what is really going on in the world.

If this is you, you need to take a step back and reevaluate your priorities.

You need to be informed on things that matter. News. World events. Politics.

Read the newspaper or spend time online every morning to stay abreast of what is going on in the world.

Stay away from the standard American (or otherwise local) news outlets like Fox, CBS, NBC that will give you sensationalized, politicized, and polarized versions of events and ideas.

Opt for Associated Press, Reuters, CNN International, BBC, or the Wall Street Journal which will give you better global coverage, more information, and less politicization and polarization.

Going a step further, subscriptions to private intelligence organizations or think tanks like RAND, Strategic Forecasting (STRATFOR) , Oxford Analytica (OXAN), or OODA will give you a more solid understanding of what is really happening globally than any news outlet will.

You will get better background information and more comprehensive evaluations of what events mean. Not just the news, but detailed analysis of world events: what happened, why it happened, and what it means in the bigger picture.

Billed as private intelligence agencies, the information STRATFOR and others provide is as good as — and often better than — the analysis delivered by state intelligence agencies to government policy makers. For the global man of adventure, this kind of information and analysis is invaluable towards painting a picture of what is really going on in the world, rather than the sensationalized or glossed over versions you'll find in the "news."

To get started, sign up for the free subscriptions here:

RAND: go to RAND.com and register for an account. Once you've registered, you can sign up for RAND Policy Currents (weekly), RAND Review (six times a year), and special reports from RAND divisions, Health Quarterly, policy updates, congressional updates, and more.
Stratfor: go to Stratfor.com. Click the "Sign In" button — there's a link there to register for free access. Once you've registered, you'll receive an e-mail to sign up for The Brief, a tri-weekly newsletter highlighting major events and trends, as well as a link to read their annual forecast, the big-picture evaluation of the upcoming year. The Stratfor Horizons blog is also good reading.
Oxford Analytica: sign up for the Weekly Brief (sent every Friday) first. You can also request trial memberships to their Daily Brief and Global Risk Monitor subscription analysis services.
OODA Loop: sign up for the OSINT Daily newsletter. Also check out their cool concepts and cool quotes pages.

Other good options include Matt Devost's Global Frequency newsletter (sent every Sunday), and Bruce Schneier's Crypto-Gram newsletter.

With specific needs, come requirements for specific information

Whether it's getting more information on the places you want to travel, or knowing everything you can about the company you want to work for (or buy, negotiate with, etc.), you should go armed with all the information you can gather.

For those that travel internationally you will need to check out the travel warnings published by the US Department of State, the UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office, or your government of choice. Travel-warnings.org provides compiled information from US, Canadian, UK, Australian, New Zealand, German, Austrian, and Swiss government sources. Choose a source, sign up for e-mail updates, and adjust travel plans as required.

The US Central Intelligence Agency’s World Factbook and World Leaders publications are excellent, easy to digest resources to get a quick big–picture overview of the areas, people, and issues facing the locations you’ll be traveling. They are, of course, biassed towards a US intelligence perspective, but are worthwhile reading no matter where you're from or where you're going.

Combined, the information covered in the World Factbook, World Leaders, and travel warnings for a particular country or area of the world make you much more prepared to travel, or change plans if required.

Also covered in the Social Engineering module, you will want to use Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) and Human Intelligence (HUMINT) to your advantage when a specific requirement presents itself.

Whether you're going to a job interview or a business meeting, or planning a date, event, or vacation, you owe it to yourself to go in armed with as much relevant information as you can. Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, blogs, news articles, and more will often reveal valuable information about your target. This isn't limited to just the official channels — a bit of research will often give you names, locations, associations, and more that can all be useful. Even the personal pages of executives, key players, employees, customers, and more can help your search.

Whether it's knowing about an upcoming merger, that you and the manager share the same hobbies, or that the CEO's kid has a problem that you can help with, there will often be something you can use to your advantage that you can find in just a few minutes of research.

Human Intelligence is the next step. Whether it's somebody you just met at a bar, on the bus, or in passing, or it's an engineered meeting to get close to somebody you want or need to meet, you can gain valuable insights via human interaction that you wouldn't get otherwise. Inside company gossip, personal affairs, work headaches or breakthroughs, and more can all be gleaned via simple human interaction.

Whether you're going on vacation, doing research for work, planning a date, getting started in a new hobby, or changing careers, using good intelligence gathering skills to your advantage will go a long way towards your success.

More than simply consuming information, you need to be able to critically evaluate the information you receive.

Chances are, the vast majority of the information you consume is biased. In production and consumption, it is engineered to promote or perpetuate an already held belief system as well as generate an emotional response:

You watch MSNBC and CNN and you read The Huffington Post.
OR...
You watch Fox News and follow Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, or Glen Beck.

In most cases, you consume and surround yourself with information that confirms and engages your existing biases, rather than providing the full story or any nuance necessary for a bigger picture understanding of the world.

This doesn't do you, or anybody around you, any favors. With the information age and 24-hour news cycle, this tendency is only getting worse.

So what do you do about it?

1. THINK instead of FEEL about information. If an article, video, news story, etc. seems written to elicit an emotional response, AUTOMATICALLY VIEW IT — AND THE INFORMATION WITHIN — WITH SKEPTICISM.
2. Clickbait and "manufactured outrage" is the new normal; don't let it be your normal. If a headline sounds crazy, too good to be true, or too bad to be true, it probably is. Headlines from formerly reputable news sources claim countless exaggerations and outright lies as facts or intentionally don't tell the whole story to make a run of the mill story seem worse (or less bad) than it is.
3. Verify information. Many (most) people take information that confirms their biases at face value, no matter how outlandish it is. This is how misinformation and lies become "truth" for millions of people: because it plays on their existing belief system, hopes, or fears, and they never bother to check for themselves.
4. Look for the back-story, especially where politics are concerned. In the age of manufactured outrage, information is often omitted or glossed over to generate a negative emotional response.
5. Look for root causes and solutions, not knee-jerk reactions. Root causes can go much further than most people want to admit, and solutions to problems are often the opposite of what most people believe:
   • The "War on Terror" and many other international conflicts exist or are exacerbated because of decades of interventionist/exploitative foreign policy: actions in Iran in the 1950's; shooting down Iran Air Flight 655; financing, training, and equipping guerilla and proxy wars including the groups that would later become Al Qaeda and ISIS/ISIL; current geopolitical problems exist because of decades or more of poor choices.
   • The "War on Drugs" is directly responsible for millions of deaths throughout the United States, Colombia, Mexico, and others; from internal problems in foreign countries to inner city violence and border security, many of society's most pressing problems are related to prohibitionist policies.
   • Root causes for almost all financial crises exist for only a few base reasons: the creation and use of fiat currency, out of control government spending, and/or unintended consequences from attempting to regulate complex economic systems.
6. Question assumptions, "common knowledge," and authority. Common knowledge often isn't true, and just because something "makes sense" doesn't make it correct or true.
7. Look for relevant comparisons
   
   • "Statistics don't lie, but they're used by liars." EVERY hot–button topic is full of disingenuous comparisons and conclusions, often comparing intentionally misleading figures to drum up support for a cause.
   • Gun control, immigration policy, criminal justice reform, LGBT rights, economic policy, and more; there are many who use fear–mongering, inappropriate comparisons, or outright lies to support bad policy.
   • With very few exceptions, MORE FREEDOM is the best option; only those advocating for restrictive policies need to resort to name calling, made-up arguments, apples to oranges comparisons, or omission of relevant data to attempt to prove their point.
8. Look at the data, not just the conclusions.
   • The most well–meaning people sometimes cherry-pick data to support an already held belief, even if the data does not at all support that conclusion.
   • It's common that raw data does not lend itself well to one point of view or the other. That, in and of itself, is useful: a hypothesis is wrong, the methodology is wrong, the problem is defined incorrectly, there are more (or fewer) variables to consider, etc.
9. Be consistent and intellectually honest. Basic principles and human rights don't change because the person infringing upon them aligns with — or not — your political group.
10. Learn and change. When presented with new data, it is up to you to verify its accuracy and relevance, then update your knowledge and belief system. While this is difficult for many people — see this comic — this is how you grow. Adapting your belief systems to new information is the difference between intentional ignorance (or stupidity) and true intelligence.
11. Do not share headlines/news/stories until or unless you have verified both basic truth AND honest intention by checking the backstory and tone to make sure what you're sharing is truthful, helpful, and relevant.

Living the Gentleman Spy lifestyle means staying informed of the information that really matters. But that doesn't mean being thrown off guard by all of the BS that masquerades as "news" in the global information marketplace.

In The 4-Hour Workweek, Tim Ferriss recommends a low-information diet. You don't need to be inundated by news, blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and more 24/7. Unless your life revolves around being plugged into the news for work (e.g. you're a reporter or intelligence analyst), you will be just fine by spending a few minutes each day — or even just a few minutes per week — catching up on the relevant news stories.

No matter what, you should not engage in the now-common cycle of psychological manipulation and extremist rhetoric that comes through your news feed all day every day.

Find a few good, reputable, neutral news sources. Spend a few minutes every day keeping up with the topics and trends.

Whenever there is something new of interest — an event that seems important, an area you want to travel to, an activity you want to engage in — don’t regurgitate headlines or assume you know what is going on. Use Wikipedia, the World Factbook, news sources, blog entries… Get the big picture, then dig in as deep as you want to go.

Educate yourself so you can always make informed decisions on the things that matter in your life.