Andrew Schulz's Flagrant with Akaash Singh - MrBallen Explains What Dying in War Feels Like

Episode Date: September 16, 2026

YERRRR we are BACK with MrBallen! Part 2 is crazy: - Training to be a Seal - Captivity training - Being ambushed - Surviving a grenade attack - Readjusting to civilian life - Becoming a pariah in the Seal community - HIs transition into becoming a YouTuber and more - PEACE! Timestamps: 0:00 "I should have died" + Becoming a Seal 5:11 Hazing, Shut Up Shakespeare + Roasting 12:56 Tolerating death + This is your job 17:55 Training vs Being a Seal + Risk of death 24:41 This is not for me, Seal Team 6 + Dark side 31:30 Surviving "captivity" + Boots, Boots, Boots 35:44 Afghanistan, Adjust immediately + Primal state 38:39 Trained immaculately, Teamwork + Being shot at 41:14 Zarghun Shar, Just look different + Rules of engagement 47:51 Engaging the enemy, Ambushed + Clearing a building 58:12 Andrew's undefeated streak + Jay-Z for Super Bowl? 1:05:12 Tunnels + Watch the live feeds 1:07:42 Drone spotting enemies, Grenade attack + Facing death 1:21:35 Danger close airstrike 1:30:12 "Not sad, not bad, just is" 1:31:50 Am I going to die? Almost an*lly compromised 1:35:35 Acceptable blackface*** + Another close call 1:41:53 Afghan fans, Being so removed + Re-adjusting 1:47:42 Adjusting to civlian life, Talking openly + Reputation 2:00:38 Does MrBallen regret it? Not being respected 2:04:30 Transitioning into a YouTuber + The Dyatlov Pass This episode is sponsored by Kalshi. This episode is sponsored by Sesh. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's up everybody? Welcome to Flagrant. It's your boy Schultz. I'm here at Alex Media, Marky Gagnon, Miles Media. And our guest today is one of the most compelling storytellers on the internet, maybe the most. Okay.

He's focusing on these dark, strange, mysterious stories, but he also has a whole other life as a kind of badass Navy SEAL. And you have a, and I want to get into a lot of these stories because there's a lot of things I'm very curious about. There is one story that I've been edging myself on. Okay. That you've told. Yeah.

Okay. What type of edging? I've been edging. Okay. This is, and I don't even know what it's called a grenade attack. Like someone threw a grenade at you. Oh, yeah. You're here.

You have all your limbs and everything. I do. I do. And a grenade is exploded and hit you. That's right. So take us through that before you tell us about the dark twisted stories on the internet. Okay. Yeah, jump right in.

Yeah. So I should have died. in 2014, like arguably should be dead at this point. What a hook. That's how you look. You know, I almost want to redo the interest. I often think about how much I've done in my life since 2014 to now. Anything, like anything I've done from April 19th, 2014 to now feels like I don't even

know how I'm still here, really. So I was a Navy SEAL before. before I was telling scary stories on the internet. I joined in 2010. It takes about two years to finish training. I was not good in training. I barely clawed my way through training, but I did it. I passed the test, became a seal.

And then in my first deployment, I had the, it's the good fortune, if you put yourself in the mindset of being a Navy SEAL, this is like 2012, I had the good fortune of joining a platoon that was slated to go to war. Because it's not always a guarantee at the time that you're going to actually go employ your skill set that you've been trained for years to do. So we're all, like, jazzed up, like, we're going to go to Afghanistan. We go to Afghanistan. So you're not where you could die. You're excited that you get to use your skills.

That's the mentality of people in the military, especially the seals. Yeah, well, I would say, you know, for those that don't, like, know what a Navy SEAL is beyond maybe just hearing about it on the Internet or whatever, I mean, you're trained how to kill people. That's the job. Yes, there's more to it, but like, that's the job. Seems pretty easy, though, right? Like, how much training is there? It's like, I might have to move.

But it's like, it's a level of, it's, okay, so you have your target here. We're going to teach you how to get to that target and prosecute that target under virtually any scenario. Whether it's cold, whether it's hot, whether it's via the air, or sea air land. the acronym for SEAL. Obviously, there's more to being a SEAL. I mean, we do reconnaissance missions where you're just like gathering intel. You'll do winning the hearts and minds.

That's something that like Green Berets, the special forces in the Army are known for, which is like village stability operations and working with local populaces to build up their infrastructure. But at the end of the day, there's this thing known as direct action, which is like DAs are doing raids or doing missions where it's kinetic and shooting is, the killing is done. That's the job. So when you go through training, a lot of the training, now I can say this confidently, having been through it, it's not propaganda. Like, you better be excited to go kill people. That's not how it's set up.

But there's an entire world that you gradually are let into as you get through training because there's so many test gates. It's very gradual. Like you have to pass this test to get to this test. And it's constant. So as you're like sort of earning your stripes, you're sort of being more and more. welcomed into the fold of this brotherhood of trained assassins, whatever you want to call it, and your instructors increasingly view you as you're going to not just be somebody I trained,

but you're going to potentially be going out the door with me to do missions with me. Because you can't fuck up because you're being judged like, you better be good at this because you're going to do it with me. I need to know you'll protect me on deployment. So it's like a very intense couple of years where there's this thrill of, of passing the test. Because some of them are like, I don't know if I can do that. And when you pass it, you're like,

holy shit, I can't believe I made it. And so there's this incredible sense of accomplishment. I mean, when you get pinned, when you become a Navy SEAL, that's like this very low-key ceremony, but it's like there's only so many people that have ever not just been to a Navy SEAL graduation, but gotten a fucking gaudy gold trident pinned to their chest.

It's just like it's an incredible thing you're doing. And so when you finally, you cross the finish line and you're a trained Navy SEAL and you get sent to your team. And I know I haven't gotten to the story yet. This is what I do. I just talk. I'm in. I'm holding back asking questions about the training, which we will get to later.

So we wrapped up and I became a Navy SEAL in September of 2012. And then I was told to go to my team. I was going to check into my team on the East Coast by like that Christmas. And so there was a period of time where I had to go through language school and then I had to move from San Diego where the training was to Virginia. beach. And I, because I knew I had heard stories about like the check-in process at your team is, it's like hazing on another level is sort of the idea because it's like the seal teams, so you get to your, you get to the base where your team is. And it's like there's a big military

base. So you have to get through that, which is, you know, it's a basic military base. And then like within the base, there's another base. And you get through those fences. And then within that, there's another building with security access codes to get you into your seal team, which is totally nondescript, like there's barely any windows, like it's this totally nondescript space that is the seal team. And inside, it's like, that's, that's it. You're surrounded by the active duty seals. And when you check into your team, you often have to check in when the active duty veteran seals are there. And they know when you're checking in, because there's only a handful of you that are coming to the team at any given time. And so there's just all

these stories about, like, what to expect when you check in. It's like pretty gnarly. It's like, you're the fucking brand new guy, you know, walk into the room filled with your seniors and introduce yourself. No one wants to do that. And so, like, I decided I would, I would, like, you know, jump ahead of the power curve and I would rush and get to Virginia as fast as I could, like drive there across country with my wife and my cats and in the truck, barreling across the country, get there as fast as I can so I can check in during break because it was like winter break and all the guys, they'd be gone. And it would just, I just go in, like, punch my papers. and then I could then, like, a week later.

Yeah, I could avoid the hazing. Not what happened. Yeah. It wasn't too much hazing, but it was like super intense. I get to the team and my first exposure to like actual Navy SEALs beyond my instructors who are SEALs and whatever is I go through the first gate and then I get to the SEAL team gate and then I finally get into the quarter deck of the SEAL team, SEAL Team 2. And there's this dude lumbering down the hallway and he's still wearing his like beat up camies from, they just. just got back from Afghanistan, and they had a very kinetic deployment. It's like lots, lots of gunfights.

And this dude straight up has a scar from an IED blast that blew up in his face that runs the length of his face. So he has this vicious scar that looks like, if you did it, if you put this like on your main character in a movie, like here's the main character, here's their scar across their face. It would be too unbelievable. Yeah, come on. It's too on the nose.

So this dude's like fucking yoked with a scar across his whole face. And he walks down the hole and looks him and he goes, who the fuck are you? I'm seaman Jonathan Allen. He just walks past me. And then I made my way up to my platoon. And, like, the whole team has just gotten back. And they're, like, bullshitting in the space. And, like, they're all...

They just got back from Afghanistan. And I had to go in and be like, hey, everyone, I'm the new Navy SEAL that's joining your team. Like, get the fuck out of here. And, like, there's some stuff that happened in there. But... You can't get into it. But, yeah.

Some gay stuff? No, I know. You guys... You guys are all the... All the fraternity. That was my... Harsh question. It's gay.

It's white. Not all. Not all. Not all. You were in a fraternity. Yeah, barely any. It's barely made out with strength. I filled you.

Yeah, I was close. I thought you would seem it. Okay, okay. So I check in, and it was more than anything, it was like a, when you finish training in San San Diego, there aren't really other competing seals. You're sort of like the top of the, it's like when you're in high school. You're like a senior in high school. You're like the coolest guy there.

you know and so that's what it was like graduating seal training those like few months where you're the top of the food chain everybody thinks you're so fucking now you're right back to fresh you're like pathetic you're at the bottom of the barrel but the cool thing was is so again coming back to like being excited about going to war you check into your team you find out effectively pretty early on where you're slated to go and there's a workup cycle where you're preparing for this deployment and you sort of slowly come to realize that as much as the guys that you're with are more experienced than you if nothing else They've done this stuff in real life, but you realize you can keep up for the most part. And it's actually a little unknown fact is the brand new seals tactically are brilliant because they just left the schoolhouse.

Shooting on point, everything's on point, but you've never used it in real life. Yeah, and so you're really skilled, no experience. And so you're sort of realizing that these guys, some of them are like being great at hitting the pads. Yeah, that's probably true. And so the guys that, you'd see some guys at the team, and I'm not cast. I'm not asking shade at all. This is just true. Who, like, you're like, I don't know. Like, he's not, like, the best at this, or he's not the most athletic or whatever.

Then you deploy. Yeah. And it's a different story. Like, the level of expertise was just unbelievable. But by the time we were about to actually go to Afghanistan, it was like a year and a half of training with this platoon and our guys. And I felt like I was part of the gang now. I'd, like, earn my stripes. When did you think you won them over?

Was there a moment? You did something where you gained their respect. You know what? For me, I think that I was I was pretty I was actually honestly I told a lot of stories My nickname was Shakespeare

In the team Just because That's not even really a fitting name For a storyteller kind of is But like I just like Shut the fuck up Shakespeare He's telling stories all the time In the platoon space

But I was We used to do like Skits for the older guys Like out of nowhere They were like Yo new guys do skits And we'd be like in Walls, Mississippi, like, the shooting course off out in the backwoods, and, like, all the

new guys had, like, 30 minutes to come up with skits about the older guys. It was, like, sort of roasting them, but, like, gently. And, like, we would always go too far and, like, fully make fun of a senior guy who'd get, like, really fucking pissed, but the other guys would think it was funny. Yeah. So, but it was just, like, you know, by the time, so skits, I got pretty good doing skits. I just was, like, outspoken a little bit. Like, I was comfortable talking, back to some of the older guys. I was not a dick at all, but there was this one guy who just

he rode the like, shut the fuck up new guy, like too much. Like, bro, I've been on your fucking team for a year and a half. I'm better than you at a lot of things at this point. We're about to deploy together. Like, at this point, I'd like to be viewed as your fucking teammate. I get it. I'm still a new guy. I get

it. But like, stop acting like I'm a fucking idiot all the time. And so I'd call him a fuck to his face. Stuff like that. But ultimately, dude, I definitely was not nearly, like, the best shot, far from it. Like, the most tactically sound, far from it. But I definitely had, like, an aptitude for aggression, I suppose, I would call it. Like, I was good at turning in and on, you know?

And I think the guys, I think that the older guys saw that in country, somebody who has an aptitude to be aggressive, someone who's ready to be aggressive, then not for play. But like, like, you're into it. You can be a valuable asset. You can be, you can be a liability too. Yeah. So we find out we're going to Afghanistan early in the workup cycle. So right when I got to a team, and then it was a little bit in flux. We were at one point slated to go do maybe some drug interdiction stuff in South America.

And then we're like, shoot, that's kind of a bummer. And then we, again, we're told, nope, you're definitely going to Afghanistan, like maybe six weeks before we actually went. And it was like, it was really exciting. But I would say the first sort of IOC. experience for me, maybe the first time I realized the seriousness of the job is there was this dude on my team, this like jacked dude. He looked like a professional like W.W. Wrestler, like comically jacked guy.

Couldn't have been more like intimidating. He was on his fourth rotation, which puts him at like pretty senior guy. He's been to Iraq and Afghanistan. Like he's a combat vet through and through and he didn't speak much. Like he just kind of kept to himself. He always had a fucking shaw in his mouth. It was like this big. stayed away from that guy.

He was cool, though, but he was, like, really intense. Even the older guys were a little bit intimidated of him. And we were out in Nevada. We were doing some training out there, and one of a guy in another platoon was killed in training. And we had a safety stand down. We all went into the classroom, and it was actually a guy who was in my class.

There was a rollover in Kentucky, and he was killed. His name is Jonathan Kaluze. What is a rollover, man? He was in a Humvee and he was standing outside of the Humvee. Now we have mostly covered Humvees, but he was standing outside of it and it flipped. He couldn't get down in time and he was killed. And so that in of itself was like really shocking. I mean, we're in this classroom in the middle of like the middle of nowhere Nevada.

It's like a training place for SEAL teams. And our troop commander came in and was like, you know, there was an accident last night in Kentucky. Our sister platoon, Jonathan Kallows, he called him. That's not his name was killed. And everyone's looking around, like, who's that? And then it was like, oh, shit, that's, that's colloosed. He was killed. And the first thing I noticed is the older guys in the room, which comprised, let's say,

of the, you know, 90-some-odd seals that are in the room that we were just about to start training today. We were all rushed in here. Everyone's, like, kidded out, like, ready to start the day. Everyone's solemn, but, like, the 70% or so of the older guys, to hear this news that someone's been like horribly killed. This is like a horrible death. And no one was making light of it by any stretch, but it was much more routine.

There was like a reaction to it that was like, man, that's a real shame. That's a shame. And it was like, okay, now we need to move on and keep training because we're going to Afghanistan six weeks. It wasn't like the way I just said it to you, but the feeling in the room was not catastrophic. It was not all stop, what do we do? Whereas like me and the other new guys were like,

well, wait a minute, what are we doing? Like, we can't go out and train. It just became very real to you guys, whereas they're probably more accustomed to losing life. One of the guys that we was our, one of our senior guys at the platoon, told me that by the end of your career, you'll memorize the funeral procession for Navy SEALs. Because of a very specific order of things you do for a SEAL funeral. That's a little bit of an exaggeration. It is the case that I've been to several, and I only was in for the minimum amount of time.

But anyways, we get out of this classroom in Nevada, and we're supposed to go out to these 50,000-ton up-armored vehicles that we're going to be driving around in Afghanistan with. And this terrain out in Nevada's meant to sort of mimic the terrain in Afghanistan. So it's like really important training. And I knew that. But I mentioned before being a little bit outspoken, I was sort of offended, I guess I would say, that we aren't at least taking today off. This is a multi-week long block of training out here. Today's training is not crucial in and of itself. Why aren't we stopping confirming plans to go to the funeral, talk to his family?

A lot of the guys in this classrooms were very close with him. I mean, I was close with him because there was only so many of us in the class. But I know some of his best friends were in, were next to me as we found out. And I remember being really annoyed. But like, who do I even direct this at? And so we leave the classroom and we're walking over to one of these huge vehicles. They're all turned on. So the diesel engines are like,

and you can barely hear anything. And the dude I was telling you about, the jacked guy, he was going to be my, the passenger seat. I was going to be driving one of these vehicles. He'd be my shotgun guy. He's like your senior director. I forget what the position's called. And I was basically bitching to him. Just in generalities, like, what the fuck, dude?

Like, I can't believe John was killed. Like, what are we doing here? Like, we should be taken today off to like make plans or whatever. And he goes, dude, shut the fuck up. He was like, what do you think we're going to go do? He was like, what do you think this deployment is about to be? What do you think is going to happen in deployment? Like, somebody here is going to die, if not more than one person.

Like, if we go to Afghanistan, which is what we're doing, you better believe that at least one person in this group is going to get killed. At least. He's like, shut the fuck up. He's like, this is your job. He's like, pig with me? I don't even want to go. He's like, fuck this. Like, I don't want to go.

And, like, believe me, this dude has every combat mission you could imagine. But it was like, oh, shit. Like, this isn't just, like, this cool thing you do. It's, like, super hazards. Why is he still in, you think, if he doesn't want to go? It's a weird thing where I would say there's a steep drop off. There's sort of, in my limited experience, and this is probably heresy to some people, it's sort of like you have the guys that join, that view it as like this incredible challenge.

Of course, there's some element of wanting to serve. You can't not want to serve to some degree. But like, if I just wanted to serve, I could have just joined the military and just gone where they said me. serve. This is a really intentional choice. And so there's a group of guys that fall into the category of you get through the training, you get to a team. And being a seal is so different than training to be a seal. There's overlap. I mean, we do lots of tactical stuff in training and you learn how to do the job. But the application of the job is you don't spend every day just like shooting your gun. There's so much administrative crap you get to do. There's, there's like sexual harassment training. There's Sapper.

There's all these things that just come with the environment of you're sort of in corporate military, if that makes sense. And then also I would say that like the risk to life and limb is extremely high. I mean, like we were doing probably the most hazardous thing I can recall doing. I sometimes think about like, what the fuck are we doing? This is just routine training, guys. We're going to go out out into the bay in Virginia. We're going to take a SWIC boat, which are these super high-powered boats that they

go so fast that there's no seats. There's just boards put up that you get G-forced against the board. And we're going to pull up alongside an actual moving tanker ship that's at full steam. So a fucking huge ship they know we're doing this. They're not

being surprised. And they're called hook and ladder. So if you look up special operations hook and ladder. So that's a SWIC boat. These boats go so fast like you hydroplane and you're going. It's crazy. But you need to match the speed of the boat.

Yeah. But when you look at a tanker from, like, the shore, like a huge freighter ship, it looks like it's going pretty slow. Yeah, but you're next to a freighter ship. Yeah. It is moving so much faster than you realize it creates all this weight. Yeah. And we would take this, this janky, homemade, like a literal pool stick.

Oh, wow. No, this is high speed. We'd not do that. So we would take this pool. They're called hook and ladders, I believe it's called. Like Navy Seal Hook and Lackers. ladder, you have a pool stick that you attach a literal like coat hanger hook to, a big hook. And then inside of this tube that is the pool stick is a, it's a ladder that unspools.

It's like spooled up inside of the stick. And so you literally, you extend this fucking huge like 15, 20 foot long hook and ladder and you throw it over the edge of the moving vessel while you're on this unstable platform and you hook it, you hope it's solid. and then you yank the tubing, the actual stick, if you will, off, exposing the ladder which unspools, and now you have this metal ladder that is hooked to the side of this ship. And by the way, this is literally how you board a ship. You want to board a moving ship, this is how you do it.

And then you start climbing up, and you're like, you have a carabiner, you got your kit. It's sort of like that, but imagine moving really, really fast. And then as soon as you board this vessel, if you were to do this in real life, I've never done this real life, although I know some guys that have done this in real life, you're on a ship where you have no fucking clue what you're getting yourself into. And the first guy over the wall, you're on your own, dude. Good luck. But one of the things that you train for is, well, what if you fall off the ladder as you're moving?

And in training, unfortunately, there's not really a good way to simulate it. It's like you just got to, if you fall. If you fall, you fall, and so this one kid on this really choppy day, and he lived, but we're going up these climbs, iterations of circling around. and hooking, because a lot of it's just the teamwork of getting it hooked, pulling it off, stowing our gear, climbing up. It's not really even the clearance of the ship.

But this one dude, he fell off the ladder because he got bounced from the wake. He fell and he fell between the SWIC boat and the tanker. The props on these ships are like, I don't know, 10, 15, 20 feet each, and they're spinning at full tilt. He survived because

he's underwater being pulled into the props, which was pretty far back towards the back of the ship. And he said he opened his eyes and he's seeing the props. He's being sucked into the props. And he pulled at the last second, his emergency inflatable device, his little CO2 cancer pumps it full real quick. And it jettisoned him out the side of the ship, like narrowly missing the props at the end. But it's like when you're doing training, and I'm, this is obviously, this is very dramatic the way I'm telling. Not everything. It's like sometimes you just do dry runs with no bullets being fired and that's not dangerous. But it's like you do

you do stuff where the risk of death and injury is really high. Like we would do the, we would do these, we'd learn how to do ambushes at night in, out in like the, where were we, I think in Nevada or somewhere out there where, you know, you train during the day, you learn how to tactically set up, who's going to be over here, who's going to be over here, and with an ambush, you basically set up an L ambush. If you're, if you're the enemy, and I come at you like this, you have every opportunity to like go in any other direction to avoid us. But if I come over here and I have someone at a lazy L over here and you're sitting in the middle,

if you come this way you get shot, you come this way you get shot. If you go in either directions out, we have an angle on you. So this is not a SEAL team specific thing. This is like wartime 101. But imagine trying to coordinate that in the dark on night vision in real time. Like how do you know where everybody else is? Because the beauty of an L ambush is that this guy over here and this guy over here on the outer ends your L ambush, they have to be able to shoot pretty aggressively in this direction to cover all

eggs. Oh my God. But you can't give up your position without giving up to the enemy as well. Where everybody. Holy moly. And so we would train how there's ways to do it. I honestly couldn't even remember exactly how we would communicate it, but we would shoot not live rounds. They're called Serta rounds, which are like, I think they're like clay tipped rounds.

So you could feel it if it hit you. Oh, you'd kill you. But don't worry, it's technically not around. I mean, what? So, but like, there's a guy who was killed out there, you know, just because he got shot in the head doing an al-ambush. And so that's not to say they're like, oh, my God, I can't believe this job is dangerous. This is so eye-opening for me. But you have a group of people that when they join, it isn't that the hazards are suddenly apparent.

They were always apparent. But it was masked behind this. You're doing it. You're going to make it. Like, so few people get this far in training. Like, you're so caught up in, I can't believe I've gotten this far in training. And the achievement, yeah. So that when you actually start doing it full time, it's not a letdown.

It's more like, what the fuck are we doing? Which group did you fall in? I was in the first group. I was in the like, so there's two groups, the group that is like, I don't know if I want to do this in general. Like I don't know if this is for me. Not I don't want to do this, but more like this is not the same thing as what I set out to do. I just wanted to know if I could kind of do it. Right.

And then the other group, to be honest, is like the hardline dudes that are like, this is what I do. And there are some ungodly talented people that fall into this group. And those guys typically go into SEAL Team 6. And that is a whole other world. Really? It's like JV to varsity doesn't even cover it. It's JV. This is like you don't even know how to shoot a gun.

Professional level gun shooter. Wow. How many people are in that? I don't even know. It's very small. We're talking about like 50? I think it's a little more than that. And there's a lot of support people that it's very difficult to get over there as well.

And they also, I think they work closely with other special operations as well. They are fucking unbelievable. A guy like that walks into a restaurant. I think you would know. But like, let's say, for example, he needs to clear out the restaurant. There's no. So like I, give me the level of lethal force that these human beings. When people find out that I was a seal, there is an assumption that what you've described,

I'd be capable of like, oh, like, he can survive in any environment and he can kill anybody. No. I mean, there are things that I could do as a result of training, but, like, put me up against, like, a decent MMA fighter and I'm probably getting my ass kicked. I'll fight until I die. Right. Like, I'm prepared to do things that are sort of from training, but, like, I don't possess some special ability to protect myself or I can do things with a weapon, you know? Like right now, can you take out all three of us? I don't know.

Probably not. He's been training pretty heavy lately. I don't know if you're saying. But what would you do if you had to? What would you do? Well, the Team 6 guys, they train in like every discipline of war fighting. And it is, it's a professional sport. Like, I'm not saying that they call it the white side and the dark side.

The white side is everything non-Team 6 and Team 6 is the dark side. So on the white side. This is military rule. The white side, like, there is definitely a very serious attitude about doing the job. No doubt. Soft. Offer. Offer.

A lot of laws, pay their tax. A little soft. You know, but like the dark side, dude, like you meet these guys. There's one guy that is in my mind, like, and I'll name drop him because he's public now. Just fucking talking the movie. DJ Shipley. Do you know who DJ Shipley? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So DJ Shipley is he went over to DevGrew. I want to say when he was like, did DevGrew as Sill Team 6? It's called Development Group is the name. I think he joined Siltim 6 at like the youngest age anyone ever has. And so the gist is like you first have to go to the white side and do a certain number of rotations before you're even eligible to maybe try out for Team 6. And so he basically went over there at the start of the war on terror. He's like at Team 6. Wow.

And so this dude is like one of the most. physically gifted people. He probably could have been a professional athlete. He's that level of physically gifted, just good at everything. And really, he was in that camp of like, this is my profession. I never served with them. I'm sort of inferring a lot of this stuff from other people who worked with him.

And I know him now, but post-military. But like, this guy has been on like all the missions. He's done all the stuff. And he knows everybody who's been on all the missions. And he looks like a G.I. Joe. I mean, like, I remember I was at Starbucks in Virginia. And, like, team guys come in to Starbucks all the time. And, like, he walked in.

And I know who he is just by reputation when he was still active. But immediately, you're, like, you're looking at him. Like, there's something different about that person over there. He's also, like, completely covered in tattoos and just look super intense. But, like, DJ, comparing him to, like, a white side team guy, it isn't that one is better than the other. It's just that this guy has devoted his entire essence to being an operator. And he's doing it around other people.

that have dedicated themselves at a level that's just not comparable. And their level of training is insane. Like these dudes, again, this is me. I don't even know. I've never even been in the building. So I'm very hearsayish right now. But I believe even now, they have a pager system still. Where you're periodically put on like, I think it's like notice or something where you

literally have a pager that if you get paged, stop what you're doing, time to go. And like they act. But unlike the white side. where we would periodically get like spun up for something and we wouldn't do anything we'd like come in the team and like what are we going to do and they're like ah nothing we're not going we're not going to go these guys it's like they're on a plane that night and a lot of times like they can't even necessarily tell anybody where they're going and they don't know how long they're going for is there a part of them where it's like hey you're on a need no basis i'm sure they i'm sure they're brought into the fold but this is like yeah so just an extremely high level and these guys if you want to talk about who could like handle themselves in all environments a steel team six guy is that guy. Drop him in the woods. He can set up shelter, food. He'll find a way to make a weapon.

Like out of a movie type of survival. He's making it back home. Yeah, for sure. So for me, though, when I finally go to Afghanistan, I was like so pumped that I got to go when I got the nod that you're going to go to Afghanistan. And I actually, I did sort of fantasize a little bit about dying in combat, like before I left, which is, it sounds really dark, but. How?

Like, how does it sound dark? Or how did I... No, like, how did you fantasize doing it? I thought that being a Navy SEAL was the end-all, be-all. Like, so I thought... Kick in Bin Laden's door. His wives fuck you to death. Yes.

It was like the best outcome I could have, dude. As you guys already know, we're back in the lab this fall, getting this new hour ready. Houston, we're here this weekend. Show sold out. Thank you guys so much. West Nyack next weekend. Show us sold out. Thank you so much.

Helium in Indianapolis, Indiana, October 23rd and 24th, Star Dome, in Birmingham, Alabama, November 6th, and 7th, Cleveland, Ohio, November 13th, 14th, Raleigh, North Carolina, December 4th and 5th, Columbus, Ohio, December 11th, 12th. Those are all these shows for the fall through the end of the year. The Andrew Shultz.com for tickets, if there are any tickets left there, go grab them. Let's get back to the show. Ever feel like car shopping is designed to make you second-guess yourself? I know I have. You find a vehicle you like, then immediately start wondering, is this really a good price?

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That's c-ar-g-U-R-U-S-S-C-A. Car gurus.com.ca. Sear is something that loads of people in the military do. It stands for survival, evasion, resistance, and escape. And there's different levels of training, but within the military, if you're a unit, if you're attached to a unit that has the potential to be effectively captured by the enemy, you are trained in advance by going to Sears School. And there's a bunch of different sear schools all over the country. There's one in Washington. There's one in San Diego.

And it's basically like how to survive captivity, like the shitty parts of captivity. So we went through sear training proper. At the end, the last block of training, when you are about to become a seal, you go through actual sear school. And in virtue of being a seal, you go through like the highest level of sear school because it's like you're going to be behind enemy lines. You have to know what to do. And believe it or not, there are tactics and strategies to how to basically look like a complete pussy and make people think that you're kind of worthless and you're not even worth interrogating. And it's remarkably effective, not that I've had it happen in real life. Could you share?

I don't think I can actually. But you play possum a little bit. Yeah, a little bit. But they put you in these scenarios where it's like, you know, simulating torture. And one of them includes they put you in a closet. Things in your butt, right? Yeah, things in your butt, right?

Actually, dude, they give you to humiliate you to a prostate exam. Like you're right at the start. And it's to humiliate you. Really? Oh, yeah. Like in front of your brethren. That's one of the things during the end-over. Was there a guy that like it just went in too easy?

It was just like that thing's deep Come on, dude Come on, bro. We're both playing it. It's also someone's job which is crazy. Yeah. It's like, okay, you're the guy

that does the exam. But did one of your boys moan? Like, when it was just like... There were dudes fucking around. This is guys being like, come on, do it again, do it again. But they put us in these closets in this dark, like, probably inside of a hanger or something. So it's like pitch black.

And they put us in these closets, like a broom closet. But it was too short. to stand up all the way. Yeah, yeah. It's like all the, all the, you're sort of like trapped. You can breathe, you're good,

and they gave you a bucket, and that's like your bathroom too. And we were in there. I lost track of time. I've heard as long as 10 hours, 20 hours, but like you're in there. But the whole time, the whole time,

you are listening to, it's called Boots, Boots, Boots, Boots, Boots. This is worth listening to it. It's so fucked up. It's a poem. It's definitely called Boots, Boots, Boots, Boots. And if you look up, Boots, boots, boots, boots.

Sears School, somebody put a YouTube video together that plays this song, if you will, Rudyard Kipling, that's the poet. Rudyard Kipling, it's Boots, Boots, Boots. How the Leopard got its spots. Listen to this.

It gets more and more intense. And so it just goes in this loop and they play it at as loud as it would go. But is it meant to be like all. I don't know what this is. Yeah. The imagery is not included.

But it was like that loop on repeat as loud as it could, it interspersed with a little girl crying. And you're like, okay, this is sort of like on the nose of all. You're like torturing us. You're in this little room. It's pitch black. You're like, by this point, you've got to pee and shit in this bucket. And like you're periodically being brought out to have your butthole examined.

And like that's what you do for like 10, 20, 30 hours. Not 30, it's like 10 to 20 hours. Anyway, so I'm giving you a sense of how like in, tent sears school can be, which is not even a seal pro. That's not even a seal school. That's like a military school. What are you wearing when you're in the closet? I think you had like beat up BDUs on. They give you like a cammy or whatever. Another one they had you do is you just had to like sit on a hardwood floor, but you couldn't sit with your hands back. You had to sort of sit on the bone of your butt, but for like 10 hours. And then in the middle of the room is a single bucket.

And there's like 30 of us. And you sat there for like 10 hours. You got to pee or poop. You got to do it in front of the whole group and then you go back to your sitting on the bone of your butt and you just sit there. So a lot of Sears School is just being physically uncomfortable. I say all this because then you get to a team and it's like, hey, we got to be refreshed on Sears School. You can just do the digital version and so like you'd hop on line and you'd get your little avatar and you'd march them around into the torture chambers. But, you know, I don't even know how I got on the topic of that though. Well, you go to Afghanistan. You're excited to be there. excited to be there and then you almost die i did almost die i did yeah so we're finally getting to the opening

question uh yeah so we get to afghanistan and i and and i had fantasized about dying you know before a little bit i even told my wife i was like too honestly if i die over there that wouldn't be so bad that's pretty fucking what does she say to that she's like just pissed like really thanks thanks for the send off there dude do you have kids at that point no we didn't we didn't we've been married for several years though But so I get to Afghanistan and like even just the the arrival in Afghanistan was it was jarring You know like anytime you expect like in my this I had a one combat tour of my whole life I'm sure other guys that have done like 50 have a very different experience But with my singular deployment if you expected things to happen it usually didn't

If you didn't expect things to happen if you're like oh there's nothing there's a dry hole as they call it invariably you're going to get shot at. That's sort of how it went. And honestly, over the course of our deployment, there was not like a cascade of gunfights constantly, but it happened. But the thing that was crazy is so quickly you adjust to that environment. It's sort of, I don't know how to say it. It's almost disturbing how easy it is to within a matter of weeks, it was, I was at peace

in Afghanistan, like utterly at peace. I practically blacked out everything going on at home. Not that there was anything going. I was married and, you know, sorry to my wife, but like I just, my mind was fully focused on Afghanistan. I mean, if you think about it, we were living in this base that in theory could be overrun with a suicide attack at any moment. Other bases while we were there, that happened.

People were like blown up and killed. It happened. You're in a war zone, right? We had like this thing that flew over the top of our base called a P.D. tids blimp that's really its whole purpose was to look for suicide bombers and warn us before a fucking vehicle came up and blew up a hesco and then a bunch of fighters rolled in here and killed us all and so at night you'd go to bed knowing that you might literally have to just wake up and grab your gun you have like seven guns next to your bedside rockets you name it and just run out and start

shooting like that's the that's the environment you're in but because that's where you live your brain just simplifies it and makes it it could it's i have not slept better in my entire life than I did in Afghanistan. Ask most people who have gone and spent any time in a war zone, it's not, you can't function unless you're able to sort of enter a primal state. And that primal state is effectively, it's us versus them. It couldn't be more simple. Holy shit.

It is us versus fucking everybody else. And like we would go on these operations and just seeing your teammates, even now, gives me goosebumps, like going into buildings in real time. Like when you're clearing a house for real, like live rounds and you're watching your teammates like masterfully moving through the house. And a lot of times nothing happened, but you just feel fucking invincible. Like nothing can touch us. Why?

The training is much better for the, even the white side teams. I've sort of degraded them relative to dev group, but make no mistake. Like special operations is special operations. Like the training is immaculate. Our gear is exceptional. We train as a unit a lot. So like we would, when you clear a building, a lot of the clearance, and this is true at every level as far as I've heard and have seen, a lot of clearing any structure, being inside of any

structure where there's potential bad guys. It's watching other people and reading their body language because you don't have time to like, hey, Andrew, I'm going to go left, you go right. Nope, it's little taps. It's flashes of your laser, which you can only see on infrared. It's literally getting to know your team so well and doing so many runs with them that you know what they're going to do before they do it. And also everyone's trained on how to do everybody else's job in the train, so to speak. So you enter a house, which is fluid and you have no idea what's going to be in this building.

You don't know if there's going to be obstructions, like shooters. It doesn't matter, but you're trained for all of it. And so you go in in silence and everyone just peels off and does all the things they're trained to do. seeing it in real life and being a part of that, it's like an adrenaline rush that's hard to match. And then when you get shot at, again, it hasn't happened an enormous amount, but it did enough. Seeing people react to it and like being able to respond to a threat and knowing that you're fucking winning is just, it's incredible. It's like you feel like a Navy SEAL. I guess that's the way it is.

What's the first reaction when you hear a bullet whiz by? Do you remember your first? I remember the first time we got shot at, but only because it was sort of comical, like, they were shooting at us from, like, a mile away. So, like, level of effectiveness, zero. We can't even see you. But someone's shooting at us, because we're up on this fucking ridge, and some poor kids, by firing his AK-47 at us from, like, a mile away.

So, like, utterly ineffective. We'll never know who shot us, but shot at us. But you sort of follow the protocol of, like, what to do, which is, like, you take cover and you figure out where it's coming from. And, okay, now that we're being engaged, what can we do? Because now we have air assets that we can call in. We have all these things that open up to us. because now we're in a tick.

Troops in contact. Like now the rules of engagement are sort of out the door because we're defending ourselves. But honestly, the only other time that I would say I really remember the feeling is like early on we would go into this village and this is where I nearly died. It's called Zarganshar.

And it's like it was right across the street from where we were actually based. So our Hesco barrier base was on one side of Route Utah. And you get a picture. It's like desolate wasteland in all directions. maybe a couple of mud huts here and there, but it's like a really wide open space where our base was situated and we're on one side of the road. And Kabul is the direction the road is going.

It's north of us like an hour. And that's like the one city in Afghanistan. It gets bombed constantly. And then on the other side of the road from our base is Zarganshark. And it's like the one pretty heavily populated, you know, it's a town, I guess I would call it. It's not quite a city, but it's dense. You know, it's mud huts, but it's multi-story mud huts. They're right on top of each other.

It's like you would look at it and you wouldn't think, oh, that's a little village. You'd think like that's a small city. And Zarganshar had been fighting with whoever was at the base we were at for years. And the base we were at was set up by special operations, either ODAs, which is Green Brays, or like the Polish grom were out. There's the Grom. There are special forces, seal teams. It's been a rotation of very high caliber war fighters that have been sitting here. And in virtue of being right across the street from you,

and we know you stage suicide bombers and there's gun caches over there, there was a steady stream of operators, like going in there and stirring shit up with the fighters in there. And so now what you have is this group of people who have survived, or it's their lineage, who are hard as fuck, don't give a fuck about getting in a gunfight with you. There's tunnels that run out from the city, that they just escape into the tunnels,

which, by the way, sometimes they'll get trapped in those tunnels and they'd get them sealed off. And then it's like drop a grenade down there. It's like horrible things are happening to these people. But they're totally battle-hardened. And so every time, just about, not every time. Most times if you went into Zarganchar, it was the one place where it was like they were okay,

they being the combatants you'd run into, they were okay showing you that they were armed and they were ready to fight with you. And I say that because anywhere else we went, if you brandish a gun, and heaven forbid, you shoot at us, we have immediately, I told you, rules of engagement are gone.

We have targeting assets that can immediately find you. We have people all over the place. If you try to shoot at us, you're fucking dead. Yeah. And the thing is, is, like, there was this one guy who shot at us one time, and I'm in the up-armored vehicle that has a 50-calibre machine gun on it,

and it's a remote-controlled 50-caliber machine gun. And it jams all the fucking time. It's called the Crow's system. It was sort of a mess, but you have a video game screen that's like every type of camera that's coming off this gun. And this guy took like three pot shots at us. And it's like, I have a tracking device on the camera. I can lock it on to him and just let it aim at him and just hold the trigger. It would only fire if it saw him.

How does it know it's him? You basically, it's a little bit. you could potentially shoot some other people, but there's only one. But you basically, you lock it on to him, but he was running to get away after he shot him.

It's just like you lock it on to him, you pull the trigger back. Yeah, I think he probably was killed, but he managed to run behind a house. But it's like a 50 caliber round could like blow you apart. And this is just belt-fed 50-calibre. What does a 50-calibur look like?

It's like a cigar, bigger than a cigar. Yeah, it's big. This is totally probably not the case, but I've heard that like even 50 Cal going, even if it doesn't hit you, if it went near you, you could have like impact injuries from the round. That's probably some bullshit. But 50 Cal is like closer to a very small rocket. Shit. But it's just like, so as a result, if you're going to take a shot at NATO, especially by the way, we found. out from interacting with a lot of the folks that we would get in these gun fights with,

because you'd finish prosecuting the target. Invariably, there'd be people on target that we'd wrap up. We'd hand over to the police, whatever, and you'd talk to them, and they knew you were special operations, because you look different, even at a distance. We drive different vehicles. We have different weapons. We literally physically look different. We move differently.

And so if you're going to brandish a weapon in front of any special operations, that is a fucking bold move because you basically said, go ahead, try it. So that's the place that Zarganshaw was. Dudes openly walking up and down the street with AK-47s, which I got to be honest, I give an enormous amount of respect

to the people, not respect for the things that they did, but the idea that you could do that, that's, it was like our adversary in that village was formidable, at least from a mental perspective. That was scary. I'll just say it for what it is. I'm kidded up to the net. Now,

I'm dialed in by this point. Yeah. You know, I'm fully protected. We have like 10 air assets overhead, and this is a dude with AK-47. And sandals, probably. Yeah. And he's ready to jump into his tunnel and face death in the tunnels if he has to. But it's like, so, but one of the times we got shot at in Zarganshar, I was, at the time,

because, again, because of the rules of engagement, the first rounds that are shot at you are the most hazardous because you're not engaging anyone. You're waiting to get shot at. And so the first round, typically, and also you have to understand at the time, the other side was aware of these rules of engagement. So they'd take their first shot really carefully because it's usually the first one they're going to get. And so the first rounds are sort of the stressful ones. And then you just sort of do your training and you fight. But I was walking through this little intersection and there was a little bell tower or something.

I wouldn't even call it that. It was a tower in Zarganshar. and there was a shooter up there that we didn't see and he took shots I believe at me or at least the people I was with and you know the sound of the round happens after the impact and so I saw rounds

I saw what looked like rocks skittering around like right next to me and it was like snap ooh and then it was like immediate adrenaline dump where I actually felt like I had just sprinted a race I was like suddenly out of breath dove behind cover and you know it was just it is what it is

but it was on one of the days were in Zarganshar at the end of deployment, this is April 19th, 2014, by this point, our platoon was very battle tested for this deployment, you know, especially Zarganshar, was almost, it was the place you went knowing what you were getting yourself into. Other places you go, it was a lot of nothing, but Zargansharr felt like a place you went, and pretty good chance somebody was going to engage with you, especially by the spring, which was the fighting season. So there's more fighters that are in the town.

And the reason we would even go into Zarganshar beyond presence patrols was there were, like, that was a staging spot for suicide bombers to go to Kabul. And there was known weapon caches over there. And so one of the things we were somewhat responsible for was stemming the tide of those things making it up to Kabul. So there was like a reason to go in there. But we went in there and we ended up walking in on one side of this village in broad daylight because there also were rules that said, couldn't operate at night. It was a whole ethical thing. So it's like broad daylight and it's like maybe 20 some odd seals. Remember like even less 10 or 15 seals and then all partner force Syafghans who, you know, God love them, but they were utterly useless from a tactical perspective.

It was like the skill level was, was, he'd lower than amateur to professional. But they were with us when we start making our infill into this village and we get into this alleyway that dumped out into a courtyard where there were these, I think, one or two buildings that had two-story, you know, windows that looked down on the courtyard. And at the same time, we began hearing chatter on the radios that were, you could listen to these, these radios, there were open-source radios. And so we could hear chatter of the combatants in the city, or in the, in Zarganshaw. When we had rolled up and our vehicles got out and began the infill on foot, we had seen women and children running out of the village, which is, you know, a clear sign that there are

fighters that are now waiting for you. And so we know that, you know, there's definitely fighters here. We hear the chatter. And we start to pick up that they're up in those windows in the second floor there. They're talking about things that suggest they can see us making our movement right now. And our team lead, who was one of the most brilliant dudes I met in the teams, he immediately stopped us. He pulled us back like maybe 20 or 30 yards. And we sort of ducked down in this little like ravine that was next to this bridge that gave us a little bit of cover from these buildings. And the reason he did that is he's like our vehicles were too far back and we couldn't really drive them up to then climb in and take the vehicles. So if we wanted to find another way in,

we really had to do it on foot. There wasn't another way in to speak of. It was sort of go forward into the courtyard or retreat all the way back to our vehicles, but it was all exposed. And if these guys start shooting at us, like they have a really open shot at us if we retreat. And so we're sort of pinned down here. And I should have said this before. The guys in the guys in the in the windows were very aware of don't shoot until you have a great shot. It was like very clear. They're not just going to start spraying. Don't waste it.

They know. They got one really good shot at us. And it's like they're saying their prayers and stuff on the radio. These are men preparing to die. And they're talking about how they're going to go about trying to take out at least one of us. And I remember the predicament was it felt like we had really put ourselves in a bad way. You couldn't call in an airstrike. one, you'd be blowing up people that

shouldn't be blown up to begin with, but it was like, there's really not much you can do. You could wait indefinitely, but to be honest, that's not really an option because one of the things that happens, if you stay out too long in an area, as more fighters begin showing up, you run the risk of being overrun. So it was a really bad situation,

and for maybe like 30 minutes or so, we just hunkered down in this ravine, and it was weirdly like calm. No one's like, we're not hugging the wall. You know, oh, God, don't let them see me. They see us. They're talking about us. And our team lead, he comes around and just tells us all like, hey, take a piss, like get ready.

You know, our best move here is just to go forward. Like go through the alleyway. We're going to just prosecute the target. We're going to continue the mission. You know, we're Navy SEALs. We're here to do this. Like, be ready. Like, be ready for whatever happens.

And I remember, like, taking a piss in this ravine and wondering if it was the last piss I was ever going to take, you know. But it wasn't like, oh, my God. It was like, damn. Like, this is an unfortunate position we're in here. So we eventually begin making our movement through this alleyway. We leave the cover of this ravine. The guys out in the vehicles, several hundred yards back, they're sort of covering our infill, but they can't do much. It's sort of on us, and there were body cameras rolling.

So I've seen the footage. Make sure we have a platoon video from that deployment. This is a big part of the video. But it's like eerie. It's like we're all walking in, and it looks like nothing's happening. It's like it's daytime, like there's nobody out. and there's one row of guys on one side close to the wall, another guys on the other side of the courtyard,

and we're alternating one Z, Tuesday, and we're walking straight through. And when we got most of the way through the courtyard, machine guns opened up on us, which was expected. And it was just madness for like a few seconds. It was just, it was hard to tell who was shooting at us from where. Granted, we all were really expecting this to happen, so it wasn't really like shock and awe.

It was more like, oh my God, it's really happening. I usually preface this by saying I'm not trying to be crass, but the people who were hit immediately were our dog and two Afghan partner force. And I think it was just sort of that was just the way the bullets landed. And that ended up probably saving other people's lives. None of those people died. I believe the Afghan survived. The dog did survive.

But if we're going to survive, what amounts to an ambush at this point, the only people that are getting us out of here are going to be the SEALs just based on skill alone. This requires like fighting your way out of this area and securing the area and then effectively getting out without getting fucking leveled in the process. And so the team guys, the SEALs, myself included, just jumped into action. We began sort of clearing the nearby buildings because as soon as you can clear a building, you can take the roof. Yeah.

And so like me and one guy, we went in one building. And it's like the process of clearing. a building is normally you go in with at least one of the person. You're doing solo building entries. And you know there are fighters here. You're just going in. Every single room you're kicking in a door. You're running.

You're not even checking all the rooms. You're just running to get to the high ground because at this point it's like we don't know how many fighters there are. We don't know if other guys are down. But you're worried somebody's going to come back up the building you're in and then tip you up? The first move is like get suppressive fire. Like figure out who's shooting at us and start shooting back.

So that they stop and then you guys can start taking positions. And so like we ran up. to this rooftop and there be like me and my buddy we like took a knee next to this low wall that looked down another alleyway that was sort of like an ambush. It would have been a good spot to set up an ambush on us

and there's a dude there and we start shooting at him he's shooting at us and suddenly we're pinned down on the roof and like there's a video of him looking at me laughing hysterically as like rounds are hitting he was a fucking psychopath All right guys let's take a break for a second. We've been optimized but does that mean we stop here? No.

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It sent you. It's the best way to support the show. Also, before we get back, I just want to say my undefeated streak has continued. And I didn't take much of a risk. I just want to say this week, right? Who did you go with? The Eagles. Say the Eagles.

Very, very, listen, I'm not about to let my love of the Jets or Giants. Passionate love. That passionate love that I really do not have to. whoever's worse I root for every single year. But I will say the undefeated street meant more to me. But it got me thinking about like this year's Super Bowl halftime show. Yeah. They got to go.

They're going white woman, I think. White woman. Was Kendrick last year? Yes. That's great. No, no, no. Bad Bunny, bad. Bad Bonnie.

Yeah, yeah. They got to go white. I don't know if they go white boy, but I think they'll go girl. Like Adele-esque would be like a crossover. They got to be Taylor. I just don't know if they can afford that. I don't think. They don't get paid.

Exactly. That's what I'm saying. That's like pricing. You think they're going Taylor? I think they have to. Because it should have been her past couple years, really. The biggest fucking tour. So you think white, if you were to put money, you?

Yeah, because we got it for. You got a nice run. Yeah, we had a great run. You guys had a good run. I think it's probably going to be white. I don't think Taylor. I think there's too much like, she just got married. Like, she got to keep it going.

What's the next big thing? I mean, that is the biggest thing. It's either that or a baby. The market is very split on this. Okay. Cali has, like, the percentages are all over the place. 20% post Malone. I could see, I could see that.

19% Morgan Wallen. That's, okay. So everybody thinking like... 24% Lady Gaga. 27% L. Langley. L. L. L. Langley. Oh. Who's that?

That's the one. White woman. I can tell, by the way, he's just laughing around the room. I heard it, but I... That person's that big? It is the song is the biggest song of the year. No, no. It's the biggest song in history.

I think it's been in history. I think it's been number one longer than any other song in history. It hasn't even been that long. earlier before. Look it up right now. It hasn't been that long. Look it up right now. And if it is, that's bots. That's bullshit. I haven't even barely heard of this song. There's no way it's a biggest song. If we play it right now, you would know it immediately. It's tied right now. With all I want for Christmas is you. Wow. For the longest run at number one, right? Two weeks. How much? Bots. How much? Bots.

22 weeks. 22 weeks. Bots maybe. And you haven't heard it once. It's shocking. I know. It's a banger. Oh, it's such a bang. I'm sure. I would love it. But she's not even the number one. At 43% Luke Combs. Luke Combs? This is what I'm saying. I think that the NFL feels like they got a over-correct. 64% Justin Bieber. It's not over-correct. It's just balancing.

No, I mean, over-correct to white now. Yeah, it's not a correction because that means they did something wrong previously. Oh, yeah, that's a good. Balancing. But you know what I'm saying. Yeah, I know what you're saying. Yeah, correct is the wrong word. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, motherfucker. That's fair. That's fair. Good point. Good point. But 66% Miley Cyrus. She actually has sufficient hits to do it. Yeah. She has sufficient. Justin, does it go higher? It goes higher. Oh, shit. There's one more at the top. Do you want to guess? Beyonce. Jay-Z. That's the number one person. So I was thinking that he's on a run.

There's rumors that he's dropping an album. But he can't hire himself. Why not? The fuck? Nah, you can't hire yourself. Why not? You can't hire yourself, man. Can't hire yourself.

There's going to be too much screwing me. So how much longer does he have is like the NFL's halftime guy? Lo-key. He's doing the best job. But he's doing the venues that would prepare him for a halftime show. Exactly. Doing baseball stadiums and shit. Like he's filling the space.

Also, how hard is that job? Couldn't anyone do that? What? Be like the halftime person. It's like, yeah, this guy is the biggest person. Yo, yeah, yo. Shut up. Is it hard to be like, oh, who's the biggest?

Who's the biggest person? Yo, Jay-Z is interesting. He got the job, and now they've had the best halftime show in the best half-time show in history. Let me say this right now. Every single one does better than last. Fair. Come on. If Jay-Z wasn't the fucking boss of who does the halftime show?

the right answer is probably Jay-Z because you're going to get free Beyonce with that you can't not like And free Rihanna probably I mean it basically would just be It would basically just be the Yankee show It's the most value You're going to get the most

And maybe If you can pull it off free M&M Oh and they come out too Yeah So there is a world where They would be crazy to not do that show because nobody on the planet,

especially if M comes out, nobody on the planet would be upset at that halftime show afterwards. It hurts me to say this. NFL has been trying to go more global

and Jay-Z's not as global. He is not. He is not. He is not. But he has enough global hits where he could do it. He could do it, yeah. That hurt my heart.

If they want to go, With the moment you get Ella to just do Choosing Texas and it goes crazy. Yeah, but she got one song. No, with all their respect. Be her? I want to be her so bad it hurts so bad.

That's a vanger. I'm just saying it's a little tough. It's a little tough though. You know, you need others. I think she's got a feature. I think you've got to bring out Jay Z and then he does a song with Ella Lang. Now we're talking.

Or maybe a tribute to the big titty bitch that just died. Exactly. Dolly Parton. Oh. I have a bunch of people do covers of her. Morgan Wall. Morgan Wall probably got a song with Ella

then Ella goes choosing Texas and then they do Dolly Parton tribute as well. Miley Cyrus as Dolly Parton tribute. Yeah, take that, Jay-Z. This is the easiest job in the world. That's my point. That's the easiest job in the world, bro.

Yeah. Come on. We just did it for you. All right, let's get back to the show. Great news. The federal EV rebate is back. Eligible customers get up to $5,000 with the federal EVAP rebate on select 2027 volt and 2026 Equinox EV models. Visit your local Chevrolet dealer today for more details.

But it was just like this just totally chaotic, but at the same time, highly coordinated several hours of not constant fighting. There was like the initial volley and our initial response, and then it was like quiet. But now like we had begun taking footholds. We as in the seals had broken up into what we call fire teams, which are just little groups of seals. and we had sort of begun taking foot holes.

We'd spread out. And there really wasn't good command and control. There wasn't a central person who was really aware of exactly where everybody was. Now, there is someone who was in charge of that, but it was so fluid and there were constantly little skirmishes popping up that it was like it was nonsense to try to track every little detail. And so it's like we're all sort of spaced out. It's nighttime. You know, we're on night vision by this point. And then after like six hours of just the skirmish fighting throughout the city, it's, it's.

It sort of was like almost anticlimactic. It was like suddenly the fighters are just now gone. And we're all spaced out across the city. And it was, if you, the only time you would have this experience probably is in a wartime environment. But like you're in a place that's normally, like heavily populated. And it's like a ghost town. And it's just weird.

Like it's nighttime. And it's like there isn't a soul anywhere. And it's just this bizarre thing. And the feeling amongst us on the radio is like, We sort of just got our asses kicked, you know, in a way. Did you guys feel like you were outmatched in that? We did, and I think it wasn't even that we were outgunned. It was more like they clearly had seen us, set up on us, took some really good shots,

and then the fighting, I think we only ended up shooting maybe one of the guys or maybe a couple of the guys that were actually actively engaging us. But they mostly, I think, escaped via the tunnel system. And so when I say that the city went quiet, it was like they had escaped. It was gone. There was a couple guys down, but that was about it. And so we now, this is late at night, we as in the whole group of guys, you know, we have air assets over. Like at this point, like there are probably like seven air assets flying overhead. We have eight tens.

We have a, we have everything you could imagine overhead. And also when there's a big enough contact or when there's a big enough tick, as they call it, a troops in contact, other operations by NATO in country wind down. Because basically, as something escalates and gets bigger and bigger, there's the opportunity that more people have to be sent to backfill to help to just track it. And so by this point in the night, according to some of my buddies who were also SEALs, they were like watching the live feeds from some of the cameras overhead at their respective basis because there was no operations that night. Everything had been shut down because of us. They're like, yeah, you guys are getting fucked up in Zarganshars. We're all just like watching your operation. Oh, wow.

And at some point, as we're getting ready, we as and the guys in the ground were getting ready, we as and the guys in the ground were getting ready. to leave. One of the air assets overhead, I think it was a drone being flown by a guy in Las Vegas. He called out that he saw what he believed were maims. So military-age men or people at a minimum crouched in this field that was in the direction we likely would be ex-filling. So we would pass by these guys on the way out.

And remember, we're in up-armored vehicles. Small arms fire is not going to do much. but like an RPG or something like that theoretically could. So there's risk there to us on our X-Fill, and it just so happened that when this information came across the line, my fire team, I'm not in charge. I was the most junior guy within the fire team, but the one I was a part of,

we were physically closest to where these maims presumably were. And you've got to remember that this is after effectively six hours a pretty intense urban combat. This is like we're warmed up. I hate to say it that way, but we've been like, we're warmed up. We sort of felt like the night has been lost. And the idea that we have dudes setting up to take us out right now, it just made us all like, fuck these guys. Let's go figure out.

We have to go, they could be kids. That's the other thing. Kids could have run back in and been hiding waiting for us to leave, right? But we're like, let's go see if these are some of the dudes that have been shooting at us. because we're in an engagement. We're in a tick right now. Like we can be offensive. We've been shot at.

Like we don't have to wait to be shot. We can shoot you if you have a gun. So we decide that we're going to sneak our way over and we're going to look over this wall that was apparently at the end of this T intersection. We could look over this wall and we could look out onto this field and we would see this cluster of men, whoever they are, and we could make a call about what we're going to do.

And so my buddies who watched this live via the line, five feeds, they were watching it and they would later tell me, they were like, I didn't understand what you guys were doing. Like, it made no fucking sense what you guys were doing because he was watching the feed. And what we were being told in the ground was not exactly what was happening in real life. So we sneak our way down this, this T intersection. It was like there was a sewage runoff, walking in like a half a foot of sewage, walking our way, like quietly as we can.

It's late. We're on night vision. And we get to the end of this intersection where there's this wall right. in front of us that has openings on either side. And once you go out those openings, there's this huge field, sort of straight up ahead of the tea, right above the tea, there's this big field. And we were operating on the idea that there would be maims on the other side of this field. So we could get to that wall that's like six, seven feet tall, look over it, like, oh, there they are. Let's get our glass out. Let's look. Let's see what they are. And make a call. We sneak to this wall.

We haven't prepared for any other situation. And as soon as we reach the wall, the seven of us, we hear speaking. We are talking. And it's Pashtun. It's not English. It's someone speaking Pashtun. And we realize that these people are on the immediate other side of the wall. And one of our guys who was like six foot three, he sort of peeked over the wall.

And he just like nodded. Like those are maims. They have weapons. Right. But they haven't heard us yet. And so now all of us are looking at each other, almost like bracing for them to start shooting us, because how have they not heard us? Like we snuck down here. We're Navy SEALs, but like, give me a break. We definitely made noise. But they apparently didn't hear us. Since there's this really intense moment where we're looking at each other and we're all turning to our team lead who's really, he's like a tactical genius.

Calm as can be under fire. Like, what do we do? Because it's sort of apparent that we can't really just leave. because if we leave, there's the opportunity to hear us then. And then they have a better angle at shooting us that way. And so what do we do? And you got to remember, too, that we had that same drone, or one of the drones overhead had an infrared spotlight that was being cast down on us. And it was flashing.

So it's like imagine if God had a flashlight, a really powerful flashlight, was shining it straight down, but was like flicking it on and off. And you can only see it on night vision, but you're within that cone of light. And so it's like the strobe effect, which it shouldn't have been.

That's typically if you're targeting something. It was like, I don't even know why they were doing it, but I'm standing on a disco strobe. But only to you because you're on night vision. You would have seen nothing. Got it. And they, the maims didn't see anything. And apparently they don't hear or see anything. It's like silence for them.

And why is it advantageous to have the strobe effect? It's actually for aircraft to be able to shoot. It's like a way of marking targets for aircraft. They can see where things are being shot. It's called sparkling, I think it's called. All that they should have been doing was using an infrared spotlight to simply illuminate the space for us, but it was like on sparkle. So it was like a strobe light. And like at this point, there's so many other issues that no one's calling out to the aircraft. So in this strobe, I'm looking

over at the team lead and he just looks at the tallest guy and he, the team lead gets down on one knee and without making a sound, he just like goes like this, like step on my knee and like start engaging. And it was just like just like that. The dude stepped on his knee, put the gun over the wall, shooting and the mams which we don't know how many there were i think there were two could have been as many as three or four i don't know but there was at least two they were holding grenades with the pins pulls they're holding the spoon down on the grenades the way of a frag grenade i don't know if it's a frag grenade but the way grenade works is there's a pin in it you pull the pin out but as long as your thumb is holding this a little clip thing yeah just called a spoon nothing happens you can hold

this for the rest of your life and nothing would happen but once you release it it doesn't instantly detonate, it flicks the spoon off, and then it starts a timer, it detonates like five seconds later. So these grenades get chucked over the wall. The pins have been pulled, so now these are live grenades, and I'm not shooting, I'm not doing anything. I'm just next to the guy who's like actively shooting, like in those intimate environment you can imagine. And I remember in the strobe light, I watched this grenade come over the wall, and I see it for a second in the strobe, and then it disappears because the strobe goes off and then back on it.

This was in a fraction of a second. It's like time slowed down and I see this grenade coming toward me. And there's just nothing you can do. Like I'm so fucking dead, right? A grenade is coming over to my face like that you're dead, right? And so time slows down. I felt it hit my shoulder. And I remember actually actively thinking, fuck, like it's going to blow up and blow my head off,

my face off and my mom's not going to get to see me again. And then like the strobe kicks on and the grenade now is falling to the ground. And I remember it reached like my waist. And I remember thinking, oh, shit, maybe my face will remain intact and my mom can see me again. And then it falls to the ground. And again, this is all in a fraction of a second. It detonates. And by the time I had the ground, I thought maybe I'd have a fighting chance here.

But it detonates. And it just felt like someone took a handful of rocks and just threw them at the back of my legs and my hip. It really didn't hurt at all. I would imagine there's an enormous amount of like chemical dumping going on in your body when you're truly bracing for impact like that. So I didn't feel anything. My memory of what happened turned out to be a little bit wrong. I believed this is my active memory as I fall to the ground from this blast. It's fucking madness. Some of this is definitely true. The city just sort of erupted. There were fighters still in the city that now began arbitrarily firing rockets just generally in the

direction because it's like, fuck it, we'll martyr ourselves as long as we take out one of you. It's just arbitrary gunfire being fought shot in our direction. And I have no idea the status of the rest of the team. I have no clue if I'm the only person alive at this point. I have no idea. And I also know that this intersection that I'm in, there were openings on either end of that T that fed out to this field. And so unless our guy was able to shoot all of them and they're all incapacitated,

they're coming around. And so I'm like trying to move. I can't move. My helmet had been blown off. I think I didn't have the buckle on, so it just sort of fell off. So I have no night vision, but it was pretty well illuminated that night from the moon, so I could see reasonably well. My gun, the strap had been blown off, which is a little piece of fabric, but it blew off.

So I had no weapon. I have no night vision, and I couldn't stand up. I kept trying to stand. I couldn't stand. And I just like, I didn't pass out. I was just like, I can't go anywhere. And I'm waiting to get shot. And then somebody picked me up and dragged me into,

the stem of the tea, if you will, where there was a little wall. They put me up against it. And this is one of my teammates. They went back down to continue to fight and rescue people. And I, on my kit, you have tourniquets, which are designed to stop the bleeding. You put it on your limb, you can stop the bleeding. The way we fasten them to our kit is specifically for, if you're fucking dying, you want to be able to pull these off really easily and quickly because it's like a life-saving mechanism, and I was too weak to pull them off of my kit. And so I had this realization of I can't stop the bleeding. I know I'm bleeding to that, and I'm just sitting in this alleyway.

There's not really a good chance that someone's going to like, oh, let me go help Alan real quick as we deal with this really intimate gunfight with who knows how many people. And I also know that at any point, someone could come up the stem of the tea from the main city, which is right there. We already know there's fighters everywhere. So it's just like a waiting game of how I'm going to die. The caveat is, I didn't clarify this on another interview I did. The real thing is close to what I just said.

It's that I was knocked unconscious pretty much immediately. I did lose the helmet, the gun. But our medic, who's a seal as well, he's a seal medic, they're known as an 18 Delta. He triaged me. He essentially looked around. He's one of the few guys not immediately incapacitated and saw what he thought was ice initially, even though someone tried to say this was not true because it was the springtime. but he thought there was ice under me and then realized it was blood and he's like i can't save him and so he

left me thinking i need to save other people who have a better chance at survival but it was somebody else another one of my teammates down there who had been very badly concussed who picked me up and brought me to the stem so basically i was left to die and it was fully saved by a teammate who brought me down there but then i and then reality still bleeding out still bleeding out and i'm up there and this memory of mine is accurate once i was sitting there and this memory of mine is accurate once i was sitting there because I thought I was lucid the whole time. I basically was just knocked unconscious immediately and didn't realize it. As I'm sitting there waiting to die, my hearing went completely like deaf. And I had had Peltors, which are your headset that's connected to your radio,

and those were off now. And so I'm just listening to the ambient noise, which is gunshots and fucking RPGs and it just goes away like absolute fucking deafness like silence but I'm fully lucid I'm totally alive and I know almost instinctively that I'm I'm shutting down I'm dying I haven't but turnic gets on I'm dying and then my vision went completely as well so I'm blind eyes open blackness but I have this weird like super like I was very aware of being alive but I'm definitely alive. I'm not dreaming. I'm not sleeping. I'm alive, but I'm dying. The things that crossed my mind as I'm nearing death's door here were I wondered if they were going to say, John Allen killed an action in Afghanistan or Jonathan Allen killed an action. Just how they're going to

spell my name. That's a very important distinction. And then I also, I did think about my wife. We didn't have kids. And that was sort of on my mind that like we had actually said, We'll have kids later. And it was just sort of like, fuck. Like I'm like 25, six, whatever I was. Like I'm 24. I'm going to die. No kids.

She's going to move on. Like she's going to have a family with someone else. And then I physically remember a sensation of letting go. This sounds cliche, but it actually felt like there was something in me that was like holding. And then I like let go. And then I felt the impact of my shoulder hitting the ground. And then it was like, and now I'm dying.

This is it. And like seconds later, the 18 Delta, the medic, comes running over under a fucking hail of gunfire. He pulls me up. He finds the bleed. He puts a tourniquet on my leg, puts him on both legs. And I slowly, like, because I'm no longer rapidly losing blood, I slowly get my vision back. And I'm like sitting here looking up and my hearing comes back. And this medic of mine, who's just the most, you would know,

never think Navy SEAL. Just the most normal looking dude is just like this highly trained Navy SEAL sniper medic. And I'm not kidding. There's literally like rounds impacting all around us. And he's the one guy who can save us. He's the medic. Everyone else is fucked up. He's like, hey, I was going. I got you get your turnicets on. Hey, I think we're going to call on an air strike here in a second. Just sit here. You got your gun. Here's your gun. Like just hold on for a minute. We're going to be out of here. No, no problem. You just hang tight right there. Bedside manner. Yeah. And I'm like, okay. And I'm like sitting here, like, looking around, like, what the fuck is going on? I just died in my head.

And then, dude, the team lead, and by this point, they had shot the guys on the other side of the wall, but there was now around sort of coming in. The rest of the town, yeah. And we didn't really know if the guys on the other side of the wall were, if there was more coming, we didn't really know. And so I'm, like, sitting here and my team lead

to give you a sense of, like, calm under, under fire. Not me. I was a fucking shit show. I was out. But like, this dude, our team lead, he has his headset on. And overhead, like, in the sky, this guy was known as a J-TAC. It's a joint terminal aircraft controller. You're in charge of calling in strikes from different air platforms.

And the liability for who gets hit, what gets hit is entirely on the J-TAC. So if you tell a pilot to fucking drop a bomb over here and you kill fucking 50 people, not the pilot's fault, that's your fault. So the school, I went through that school, never used it in real life. In one of his years, he's listening to what must have been at least seven or eight different aircraft. at least that are all literally flying overhead at different altitudes. They're called different blocks. And it's your job as the J-TAC to know where they are because they don't really pay attention.

If they're going to do a gun run or something, they're coming in guns blazing at speed in the designated altitude block that you've given them. If you did not properly de-conflict with the other aircraft, you can absolutely hit another aircraft. So there's a huge amount of just organizational skill that goes into being a J-TAC. But he had to call in an airstrike, but he had to call in what's known as a danger-close airstrike, which is in the world of Jay Takery, this is the most sketchy thing you do. It's where you're calling in an airstrike that's effectively on your position.

You're not trying to hit your own position, but we were so close to that wall where we believe these fighters still were that the only way to do it was to call in a hellfire missile, which is relatively precise, fairly small ammunition, but like we're talking from me to the cameras, like maybe even a little bit closer. And so you have to give a very precise description of what you want them to hit. And remember, the pilot, they're using special devices and stuff, but they're really looking out the window. And they're trying to make sense of what you're telling them. And you're basically saying, hey, you're going to see a T intersection and there's a group of guys on one side and a group of guys on the other and everybody's fucking shooting at each other.

We want you hit those guys over there. And don't fucking mess. So in one ear, he's deconflicting the other aircraft. to move to various airblocks to be clear so the one pilot can come in and drop this precise airstrike. Jesus. Which you also need to get,

that's called commander's initialing. You need someone senior than you to approve the drop. You don't do that for any other drop. All while receiving gunfire and protecting the rest of the guys. And so he was doing that. His other ear, he's doing that

with the commander on the ground saying, here's where we are, here's what's going on. I need your initialing to get this drop. And he's trying to coordinate with everybody else who I told you, we broke into fire. teams. He is one of the most senior guys in the ground. He's trying to describe where we are and how best to move through the city to get to us and where to provide contact.

Dude, it was like the most, and he's doing it literally while being shot at. And several of us are down. Like one guy, his lung had collapsed and he needed what we're called needle decompressions every like few minutes, which imagine taking a needle and putting it into your third and fourth intercostal space. And it's like you just pull out the back of it and it creates an air pocket. and you basically relieve the pressure in your lung, but you keep them in your side. So you have like a porcupine of needles poking out of your, and you have to keep doing it or else you'll suffocate.

And so like the medic is like treating me, and he's putting more and more needles into the other guy. We're getting actively shot at, but he calls in this beautiful airstrike. He hits the guy on the other side. And then he called in the, like an underfire, like hey, we need a medevac right now, but you can't come here.

There's nowhere for the aircraft to land. And so he called in a mediciope. in a Medevac, like a mile away, but like the crew coming in, like they're coming into a context and they're coming in, not just to evacuate you, they're coming into an active gunfight where they can get shot down. They're really skittish. They want all the information of what the fuck they're getting themselves into. And so on the same year where he's dropping an airstrike, he's filtering on that ear with

the Medevac platform, giving them what's called a nine line, which is like all the details of where we are, what you need to do, what you need to bring, what the mechanism of injury is. It was just fucking brilliant. So we call on this medevac. I'm back to life, sort of amazingly. And I was picked up on people's shoulders, and we sort of ran but held on to others. We ran to this medevac. And like there wasn't a whole lot of shooting.

We got there. But when we got there, like these are the pararescue jumpers, the Air Force PJs, who were like, this is their job. It's special operations in the Air Force who do special rescues. And they're like, cowboys, like fucking shooting their guns and shit as soon as we get there. flying like they land their helo with like one wheel like touching the corner of like a fucking wall so they can get a quick it was crazy shit so we hop in the in the uh the uh the helicopter and and me and the other guy with the the lung thing going on we got dropped in the helicopter but like the other guys there's no there's no space for you you're not you're not leaving here you gotta go back to your team so like all the dudes who weren't badly injured but who had just been like fragged and concussed and fucked up now you have two less combatant, two less people and me and the other guy, and you need to go

all the way back through, like the Hornet's Nest to reconvene with the team and fight your way out. And so they're like, all right, bye guys. And we fly off and they just go running back into the contact zone. Fuck. All right, guys, let's take a break for a second. Rock hard. 15 minutes or less. Do I need

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She thought she saw a canoli down there, head first, teeth out. It wasn't that. Now she got to go scoop her out. We got to get the 3-1-1 involved. The whole city is trying to get this poor girl out of a gutter. 15 minutes or less, you're already doing the business while her friend is faced down in a sewer trying to get a canola. that's not even there. She had an illusion.

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adrenaline's flowing. I thought I just fucking died a second ago. And I tell people, like the, you get up every day and you live and you don't really actively think about like, well, today I'm going to breathe. Today I'm going to pump my heart. And it just happens. You just live. Your entire experience.

is living. You don't ever really think about it. You don't know it yet, but you're just as good at dying. It just hasn't happened yet. Your body is just as good at shutting down. When I was in the active stage of dying, it was just like, oh yeah, I'm dying now. That's it. Not sad, not bad, just is. And so I knew I had that experience. It didn't seem real that I hadn't. And I'm laying on this helicopter and we're flying out of this Zarganshar. It's like chaos. There's gunfire everywhere. and they asked me if I wanted morphine and I said no because I was like if I die I want to feel it

I want to be aware I don't want to be fucked up when I die again I could have been completely stable I probably was by this point but we land at Fob Shank the same place that I landed when I first got to Afghanistan and by this point they had radioed to the people on staff this is the middle of the

night of all the nurses and doctors that were at Shank and there was this medical tent that you know had all the equipment you could ask for and we get off the chopper and they rush us in on like gurneys and by this point my clothes have been all clipped off of me i'm like a fucking i'm like half naked like all fucked up i got no idea what's going on and i basically was under the impression that i'm i'm okay i've made it this far i made it this long i'm probably going to live and so i'm feeling pretty confident but we get wheeled in

from like the dark outside to this like really brightly lit up tent and there's all these just like dozens of doctors and nurses that are just waiting for us because they're like whatever surgery they need we're going to give it to them and that was a little alarming but I'm like okay that's cool like it's great we have such great you know a team here but in the back corner of this tent waiting as well were a bunch of my teammates other seals that were in country they weren't at our station they were basically stationed here at fobs shank but they're guys I trained with some of the guys were from team two they were like you know pretty pretty like my friends, I would call them. And they had on uniforms and like you wear civilian clothes pretty much the

whole time. And they had put on, I would, what I would call like their best uniforms. And they're standing in the corner like solemnly, almost at attention, watching as we come in. And so we have this tracker in country where you can see what's happening with, it's like a text thread of like all the call signs of who's doing what, where they are. And you can just sort of track an operation. And I told you that By this point, operations had really shut down in that part of Afghanistan. So, like, no one was doing anything. They were just watching the feed. And they saw us walk down that T intersection.

And they're like, why are you walking right up on those fucking people on the other side of the wall? They didn't get it. And so they knew it had gone bad. They knew that they saw my call sign and the other of, you know, potential pretty serious injuries. And so they'd come into this tent in case we died. So, like, I'm basically being wheeled into the closest thing to my own funeral as you're going to get. Because I don't know. For all, I'm getting in here, realizing as I'm staring at my teammates who were like so serious and no one's serious at the fucking team.

Everyone fucks around constantly. They're so serious that I'm like, wait a minute. Like, am I about to die? Like, did I not realize that this was actually quite serious? And then they're like, all right, we're going to give you some ketamine. Good luck. Ketamine fucking out. And then I woke up in Germany.

Actually, I was in another part of Afghanistan. Then I went to Germany, like later that same day. And then I survived. And seven days later, I was back home in Virginia. no transition just at home depot push pushing my cart down the island home depot hobbling you know a bleeding ass you know just just living my life dude fuck what were the injuries uh luckily for me it was just like what amounted to just pretty serious flesh wound you know like i have a nice crater in my ass like a nice fucking scoop taken out of it uh and then the back of my leg as well i have it's just shrapnel

I mean, effectively, I got really lucky. The thing that was actually the closest thing to killing me that didn't actually hurt me at all, but it almost did was I almost had anal compromise, which would have been really bad. What is that? So the way the shrapnel shot into me, which is basically the grenade,

it has a blasting cap in the middle of it, and when it detonates, the grenade body itself. It becomes the shrapnel. Exactly. And they're all different sizes, and they're like jagged pieces of metal. flying in every direction. When it goes into you, it sort of tumbles.

It like tumbles around inside of your body and like goes zigzags. A piece went into me when they were debreding it. They saw it like went around. It went into my side of my ass and like narrowly missed my like my anal tract, if you will. If you lacerate your fucking, you're an asshole. Septic. Yeah. Yeah.

Your poop, feces is going to get into your body. You're getting sepsis and you're done. Yeah. And they said pretty much across the board when they see dudes come in here with shrapnel injuries to their ass that's usually fatal because of that. And they're like, you, it was like right past your fucking asshole. That's what they were training in. Yeah. They did.

They did. Get that asshole tight. Yeah, dude. Wow. A wise man once said that Navy SEALs performing a nighttime mission, the only way they can get out of there is if they do blackface. Is that true? Is that true? Yeah, no, I don't know, dude.

Would you guys get to put on the black face? We did put on lots of face stuff. We definitely did. Was it fun? Like, would you guys goof around? There was this one time, speaking, as stupid face paint stuff. So when we got back from that deployment,

and I actually, I did another tour, I went to South America for the next workup, but we had our own, new guys. So suddenly I'm not a new guy anymore. And so the right of passage belongs to these next, the next wave of new guys. And one of the things you do when you're a new guy is there's so many

briefs that have to be given, just stupid shit. Like, just like administrative crap that like somebody has to brief the platoon about, you know, today, hey guys, make sure we're down there. Like when you use your fucking ear protection at the shooting range. It's like safety briefs and whatever. But periodically, there

are these pretty serious briefs that have to be laughing, thinking about this. There are these pretty serious briefs that have to be given at this other, like, command center on base to, like, visiting senior members of the military. And for the team guys, they're great at giving these briefs. And so, like, the seals would get tapped to, like, talk about the state of NSW. Like, little, like, stupid stuff. But it was, like, we were great representatives. And we would all take it, like, really seriously.

But it was always the new guys when I was a new guy that would get tapped to, like, go give the fucking brief to the one star. Like, go do the talk about how NSW. is doing whatever. And there was this one shoot who is like the worst public speaker. Just the fucking worst. And he hated it so much. And we're like, you're fucking doing this brief. And we painted his face.

It was all green, but this just inexplicable black box over his eyes, like all the way over his mouth. Yeah, yeah. And we were like, at no point, can you reference it? You can't explain it? And it was just, and so we went over and watched him to do it as this huge auditorium, all these people. And he comes out and like a superhero.

And he was such a moron as in his dress uniform with his face paint. And they did ask. And we're, don't you say it. Don't say it. Don't explain it. No way. That's probably helpful. And if you're doing public speaking, you're thinking about that the whole time.

Yeah. Actually, he would later tell us that that destroyed his fear of public speaking because he's like, I can't get worse than that. And I got through that. What happened to the guy with the lungs? He survived. Yeah. So for him, he had a collapsed lung.

Actually, he and I, we had another really, actually him more than me. We had another super close call earlier in the deployment. We went into this building that we had been trying to, we went like there was this metal door that was super loud and we were trying to breach the door. And it like clearly had woken everybody up. This is like in the early morning hours. And we knew there was somebody in there that was like a gun. I figured out what he had like a bomb maker or something, but he was a known bad guy, right? And so we're like making all this fucking noise.

And now we're like sort of pot committed. We made a lot of noise out here. We got to go in there and prosecute the target. And so I was, you know, waiting. We finally get the door open. And we threw some crashes in there, which are non-lethal concussion. And then the way it works is everybody knows everybody's job. You just sort of like, if you go in as the one man and then you wind up being the two-man,

like everybody can just pick up the pieces. And it just worked out that I happened to stack on the door as like the two-man. And so we are, yeah, actually, I was the three men. Either way, I wasn't the first guy in. And so we make entry and there's a dog barking somewhere. It's pitch black inside of this house. And there's this little like foyer right as we walk in. And there's a stairwell that cuts up to the right and there's a hallway straight ahead.

But we were on night vision. And so when you're watching through your little tubes that stick off your helmet, you have, I think it's called parallax. I forget the term for it where like you think you're looking at this level. but just given the way the night vision sits on your head, it's either slightly higher or slightly lower than how you perceive. So basically, you think that you're at this level, but you're actually looking like an inch higher or an inch lower. I've got the difference.

You're slightly off, and there was a low ceiling, and I start walking forward, and my nods, because of this, I thought I had to duck down enough that I'd clear this low ceiling and be able to walk down this hallway straight ahead of me, but my nods clipped the overhang. I walked, and this is a live clearance.

Like you came up, oh, hold on, guys. And I clipped the overhang, and you're taught anytime you have any sort of gear malfunction of any kind, just get the fuck out of the way. Somebody else behind you will see you pick up the spot and they'll continue on. And so I turned and I realized right away, it's because of my, my, I just, the parallax, and I begin making my way up the stairs because I turned, I figured it out and I just start clearing up the stairs. And like a second later, not even.

There was just like it sounded like a bomb going off inside the house and it turned out it was there was a shooter at the end of the hallway laying down prone with a slug shotgun just and he fired one shot into the breach into us in a row into where you were supposed to be yes into where we were supposed to be but literally where you were supposed to be but literally where you were supposed to be literally where I had been because the guy who followed behind you who was like six foot three get shot he got shot like here does he have a yes oh my but If he was a little shorter. So if I stood where if I was standing next to him, that's my headshot, gone. Yeah. And the guy was shooting blind. He was just waiting for a sound and shooting into the dark. And so it fucked him up. I mean, the dude who got hit in the plates.

It shattered his plates. He had shrapnel in his neck. And, I mean, he was compared to the collapse. He's the same guy that collapse his lung. Jesus, poor guy. But yeah. But, yeah. So, like, he and I had gone through that.

Yeah. Yeah, dude. Did he get to go to Home Depot also? Like, where's he at? Dude, he's an intimidating guy. Like, he looks, he almost like feels like a Navy SEAL just the way he carries himself. He's like real big, a big guy, just like a mean motherfucker dude. And just he was so, like, bitter about getting shot more than they hurt multiple times.

But do you think there's a kid or now an adult in Afghanistan that watches your YouTube videos? He's like, dude, I remember fucking them up, man. Yeah. guy man? Yeah, I don't know, man. Isn't it possible? You can see the YouTube data. He loves the scary stories.

He loves the strange things. Like, he's just watching and then he hears you tell this story. He's like, there's no way, dude. My past life is different too, man. Yeah, I don't know, man. It's crazy, though. It's so weird now, like being so removed from it now, you know? It's so different in your life.

Oh. Does it feel like a different person, like when you think about it? In fact, now I've thought so much and talked so much about my past, life, if you will, that I almost can't quite separate, like, how I view it in story form. Like, literally, when I talk about me getting hurt, I see it in the form of the way I tell the story. But there's a lived experience there. There's stuff that, like, happened that I don't often think about, like, smaller details.

But it just feels almost like I'm watching a movie in my head. It doesn't feel like that was me. But, like, I'll take a shower and be like, oh, yeah, that fucking huge scar on my ass. So you still have all the scars. Yeah, there's, I mean, they're little. For a while there, there was, like, little bits of shroud. That felt like sand like coming out of my leg Oh, that's right. They worked themselves out. But like the main stuff was pulled out right away and then I mean other than

You know I had to go to to wound care with the Navy like I remember the thing is is I came back from that deployment and I Thought I was the fucking just a man just like I was a way But because it you spend so much time and energy like trying to become a seal and then like your your you're your you're you're you're you're welcomed into this community, this elite community, right? And then you go to war, like the thing that sort of separates the men from the boys, at least in sort of the, from inside that community. And I did that. And now I even have like a wound to show.

I was in it. Undeniably I was a part of it. And I am not, I hope, I don't think I'm a very egotistical person. But at the time, I was like, fuck yeah. Like, I'm a fucking Navy SEAL combat bag on my, fucking purple heart everybody fucking knows that i felt like really cool and especially so in the the weeks immediately after getting home i also there was no transition period yeah i was a fucking lunatic when i first came home oh really you felt oh dude like i was still i was living in afghanan not not flashbacks

like i had not regulated my ability to like not treat every single threat like it was a full-blown crisis oh shit how did that present itself uh i got home and my wife she's like oh the uh the uh the uh the Homeowners Association called our chimney caps a little rusted. They need is to fix it. Oh, fuck. Call them is trying. You fucking calling it. I call the fucking homeowners association.

You have any fucking clue where I've been the last fucking six months? And they're like, sir, why would we know that? Why would we have any idea about what you've been doing? I was like, that's fair. That's a sketchy night for your wife, the first night you get back. Oh, yeah. Well, she's pretending to my wound as well. Yeah.

So the thing about the, so I got wheeled in to Bethelian. has the Maryland in the hospital. And she hasn't seen me. And I'm like ragged looking. I was not even just from the injury. Like I got really lean. Like a lot of guys like kind of just like they get jacked up. I didn't.

I worked out a lot but I got real skinny and like wiry. And I had like this horrible facial hair. I grow a real patchy beard. Like a combat mullet. And like I looked like I wanted to be intimidating to locals. I wanted to look not locals, but to the people who were up against. I wanted them to think. Like this dude's unhinged, you know?

But I've done no, that's actually the day I got hurt. That was pre-Mohawk. I cut it. Oh, wow. That's the day I got hurt. So I didn't have the Mohawk. There is a Mohawk picture of me. But either way, I was ragged when I got home.

And when I got wheeled in, the doctor who was so fucking callous, he's like, all right, Mrs. Allen, go over here. She's like, hasn't seen me. This is her first meeting. And I'm laying on my stomach, my ass hanging out. And she almost faints from seeing the wound. And he's like, I'm going to go over here. And she's like, no, it doesn't get helped up.

She didn't faint, but she's, like, really shocked by it. And he's like, you're going to learn how to do this. He needs to have this packed with gauze twice a day because we can't have the cavity forming inside. Like, it needs to heal from the inside up. And so her job was not just to clean it, but it was to, like, open it up and, like, push gauze deep into this, like, hole in my ass. Oh, no.

And so really, initially, that was her interaction with it. But then it's like, she's like, caring for me, like physically, like cleaning me and taking care of me. It was like sort of a weird, awful, you know, segue into civilian life. And I was like utterly ungrateful, just like angry, still sort of harboring. Like I, it's almost like I had, because the team that I was with, they were all still in Afghanistan. Did you want to be back? Was it? Desperately. Really? Desperally. And it wasn't like I felt like I had let them down or something. It was like, now what do I do? I would have been okay leaving with them. You know, then it's like the natural.

time that it ends and you're like, hey, we're done. We're going to like decompress and go to, but it was like, wait a minute. Like, I was there. I was literally like doing shit a minute ago and now all I want to do is go back. Did you feel any like guilt? Like you let them down because you got hurt and you can't be out there with them? I was worried somebody was going to get killed in the final month and that I theoretically had I been there that would have done something. Yeah, which is maybe a hero complex, but it's just like logical. Like me not being there affects everything that's going to happen for them. It has to. And so like it just made me feel worried that something bad would happen When they came home it was an enormous relief because it was like thankfully their home

But but yeah dude it was it was fucking madness How do you transition to like being a Youtuber and I don't need that to be I'd be reductive but like it is so Mind-bogglingly different from the life that you just described to us Even though as you describe it is very similar to what you are doing right now you're telling these like insane crazy stories, many of which are true stories. Some are like, how would you say, like, it's not that they're not true, but... Or they're like POV, like somebody's perspective.

Exactly. It's like this person said that the great story that you told about the, what is it, the Canyon? Bells Canyon. Yeah, classic. These different things. So like, where does this happen? Yeah. Yeah, dude, it was so fucking weird.

Like I got medically retired in 2017, so which so this got, I got hurt in 2014. Right. I ended up sort of fumbling my way into another rotation. But physically, like I, the blast dislocated both of my shoulders, which sounds nasty, but it just gave me slap tears in both my labrums, which is just sort of a nuisance. So I had surgery on this, this shoulder. I had shrapnel injuries, which, you know, once they healed, it was basically okay. But I felt physically like I had really stepped backwards. Yeah. Like we had to do a stress, a stress test one time, which is just a shooting course where

you're like doing push-ups and shit before. And I like could not do a pull-up with my kid on. And it's because of my shoulder. Yeah. And I remember thinking like I'm like 26, 25. And I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, yeah, what the fuck is going on? So I ended up getting medically retired, sort of a long story, but made short. I just was not fit for it.

I didn't want to do the teams anymore. and I got medically retired. But when I got out, I had been told the way medical retirement works is you sort of artificially get the 20 years where you get a pension, but you get it right now because it's like a medically, you can't do it anymore, so we're going to cut you off now, but you get a pension as if you were fully retired. So you got a couple bucks, you can feed yourself. It's pretty, I mean, the pension is, I'm not diminishing it, but it's enough you could live

on it for sure, but not comfortably and not with kids. I don't care where you live. It's just not enough. But it's amazing. It's tax-free, and it's an incredible benefit, and I was extremely grateful for it. But I was told that I'd be exiting the military on one date, and then I got moved way up, which in a way was good, because I was sort of in a holding period, to a degree. I was teaching some diving class to other seals, and it was like, what am I doing?

So it gets moved up, but I'm sort of thrust into the civilian world a little bit earlier than I expected. I have two kids living in Virginia. And I didn't really even know what to do. I wound up connecting with this dude in New York, Jordan Selleck. He was a former investment banker who's a very roundabout thing. His buddy was a transitioning veteran as well, a former fighter pilot, connected with him. And he's like, oh, dude, you got to like network with people to get a job because that's what I was trying to do. I have a pension, but I need a job. I ended up with Jordan. We put together this networking event that we called elite meet in New York, where selfishly it was actually just so I could meet with potential partner, like business partner or like companies that might want to

hire me. Like he, Jordan, recruited companies who were hiring and might want to hire vets. And I brought my buddies from the teams who were getting out and we like met. And it was like, here, network, get jobs. This is a popular thing though in the better community. It's a great idea. A lot of big corporations will specifically want to hire like elites, you know, seal guys. Rangers, I don't know if that's because of a trust element or...

I think there's a little bit of a belief that in virtue of having been through selection or whatever selection course they went through that they must possess soft skills that are really hard to teach. We can teach you the hard skills. I think that's the way it's described. But anyways, we have this really successful networking event, but no one really, none on the corporate side really approached me for a job because the assumption was my job is hosting an event like this.

And I sort of unintentionally pushed myself outside of the market. But I sort of leaned into it and I turned it into a charity with the help of Jordan. And I was like doing a lot of fundraising and hosting these networking events. I was like a vet who needed a job helping other vets get jobs for a while. Were you looking for a job to get like back into action? Like those black sites. No, not at all. Some guys, a lot of guys get out and they'll do something on like the civilian contracting side like Blackwater or whatever.

if that's even still a thing. I didn't want to do that. I actually what really excited me was like a corporate like nine to five. I was like that's so fucking sick to just like go to your job and then like get to go home and be with your family. I was like really like I really wanted to do that. But it was fun doing this networking thing because I liked raising money for a cause I believed in. I knew personally the guys I was trying to get jobs for.

But the pitfall was I needed to advertise sort of what this even is to get donors to get companies to show up to build legitimacy. And the issue I ran into in terms of marketing effectively the product, which is the elite special operations guys, is I need to talk about their experiences. I need to talk about how they translate to the corporate world, all that. And so I ended up doing some content when I had no following nothing. I was doing on LinkedIn, just like little anecdotal stories that I would get from some of these guys about their experience. And I would like wordsmith it to be like, and that's why as a comms guy, he'd be great. at sales in fucking tech or whatever.

And it just wasn't very effective. And I'm like, dude, I know these dudes have fucking six stories that are totally G-rated, can be used to strengthen their case, can make everybody look really elite. Because right now, all we're saying is, oh, veterans. What I want to do is be like, no, these are like really special people that went through specialized training. Let's highlight that stuff. But no one wanted to give me their stories.

I felt uncomfortable asking. And so I was like, oh, I know. I'll tell my own stories. I'll tell my Navy SEAL stories that are all sort of tailored towards being a sort of a description of the whole community at large. I'm not saying I'm so great hire me. I'm sort of now saying, look, I represent this group of people. Here's an experience that happened to me.

It's all written form. I'd write it up. And it was designed to be like, through this situation, like, here are the things that I learned. And everyone in elite meet has skills like these. That was sort of the gist. And it started with good intentions. But it got a lot of buzz, not anywhere near, like, Mr. Ballin, but like in the world of, I don't know, corporate recruiting, this became somewhat noteworthy in the northeast of the United States. And there was like quite a bit of traction on these LinkedIn posts.

And I was like, great. I'll do more posts about, you know, my experience. And I was like super fucking blunt about my experience. It was at least I thought I was being. I wasn't telling stories that were out of control. It was like stupid shit, like things about boot camp and whatever. But it rubbed people the wrong way in the SEAL teams, big time. Why?

There is a thing that I totally understand and I knew I was doing, but I was sort of acting like I was better than it a little bit, which is even though it is the case that there is seal stuff everywhere. If you Google Navy SEAL, there's no shortage of pictures, movies, books, video games. That's all true. And I am clearly in the group of people that is part of the proliferation of the SEAL brand. But there is a far greater number of people that are in the SEAL teams proper or who have gotten out who have extraordinary stories to tell, extraordinary experiences that if they were to share with the world, likely would get quite a bit of notoriety, quite a bit of affection from the world could probably have pretty incredible opportunities. But there is a silent professional ethos that definitely exists in special operations. and since Bin Laden happened till now, that has gotten really gray in the teams where there's a group of people, and I'm one of them, that talks openly about their experiences.

And I was sort of going from being an active duty guy who's always helping out, he's getting guys' jobs, to like more and more of my anecdotes were becoming a little bit more like making me out to have my own brand, making me out as like the face of elite meat. And it was sort of frustrating that nobody else would give me their stories. And I was like, fuck it, I'll just tell my own. And I was becoming the guy that's like, look at me. Like, I'm a Navy SEAL. This is, again, from the active.

Cardinal sin in the teams? It's actually, it's unforgivable. Oh, really? Yeah, you are, you're disowned, basically. And what is the logic behind that? There is a pack mentality when you're in the teams that I think is, it's necessary. That's what probably makes it so prolific and deadly. You are, everyone talks about when you're in the team.

that it's all about your reputation, that your reputation is all that matters. And that sounds sort of top level, but that really is the case. Your currency, everywhere you go in the teams, is what do people think about you when you're not there? And if you have a great reputation, you get the best jobs, you get the best mission sets, you'll get promoted more frequently, you're well-liked, the world is your oyster within the world of special operations. If you are viewed as a liability, as a piece of shit in the teams, there's like a process

to kick you out based on just your reputation. We would have peer evaluations periodically at the team. We've all done selection. We're at the team. This is our job, right? And they're like, yeah, we're going to do a peer evaluation. You have to score every single person on your team from one to ten or whatever in terms of how they performed either in terms of how they conducted themselves or skill set at

the last training block. You put your name on the evaluation and everybody's name is being evaluated and the results are public. And at the end, those who are the lowest of the low can be kicked out of the teams. You'll still be in the Navy, but yeah, you're not a seal anymore. Go fuck yourself. Oh, my God. So there's like a very intense, you're always trying to prove to your teammates that you belong. And as soon as you leave the teams, it isn't that you're disowned in general, but you're not part of the pack anymore. I felt it right away when I left, that even though I was like working closely with guys who were trying to leave the military and get jobs, I was interfacing with guys

at the active duty level a lot. It already felt like, wow, even just a month or two, and I already feel like I'm a total outsider because it's just this hive mind. They're completely of their own accord. Also, there's just like a desire to like go to war. There's a desire to go do the job. And when you're when you're actively employed, you're not doing social media. Like you'd be, I don't think right now it exists that there is an active duty seal talking about their experience. I don't think it exists because I don't think it can. So when you don't need a job because you are an active duty Navy SEAL and you're in the pack and you're doing your thing, like, of course it's so easy to chastise and view anybody who talks about their experience who's out there as having done something wrong.

Because one, you don't need to talk about your experience right now. You're in the pack. You're in. You're accepted and you're gainfully employed. You know exactly what you're going to do next week and two weeks and a year. Everything's mapped out for you. The team is the only thing that matters. Only thing that matters. And if it seems like you're doing something for yourself, then it's like, fuck you. Wait, hold on. This is about the team. And so when I started getting bigger, again, on a very small scale, bigger within that small recruiting scale, I began receiving just the worst messages from not anonymous people. People you know. Teammates. I got a Medal of Honor recipient who wrote me like a fucking long message

because I had done a post about someone who he personally knew who had been killed. There's a tradition where when you graduate from seal training to give you a K-bar knife with a teammate of a fallen seal. And mine was Louis Langlis who was this prolific seal team six guy

who I didn't know him. All I have is his knife. I have his knife. I have his name. When he was killed, I think it was in Kandahar. I'm not sure. but he was like beloved.

This is like one of the most beloved people in the teams. He had a family. Like he was sort of like the all-American, the perfect Navy SEAL. And I did a post where I took a picture of the blade in a shadow box and it was on my LinkedIn. And by this point I'm sort of I'm hamming up being Mr. Navy SEAL. And I can totally see how it's like, oh, I see you're just putting Louis Langlitz and the fucking blade there on your LinkedIn to make yourself look. To promote you. Yeah.

And so I got, you know, a very stern talking to from him. I have people that approached me in real life in Virginia. It's like I became persona non grata. That's what it's called. Do you regret it? Yes and no. I think that I know that when I was doing it, I knew what I was doing. I'm not, I was in the pack.

I know what it feels like. I remember hating dudes who wrote books and did shit. And then honestly, what happens is you get out of the military and it isn't like, oh, fuck, I better cash in my seal equity. That's not really it. It's more like it is probably the case that in very, of having gone through this training and had these experiences that I probably possess a lot of things that maybe companies would want to hire me for.

I'm sure there's opportunities out there. The problem is, is, okay, how are they going to know unless you tell them or are able to explain what you bring to the table? Just because I walked out of the teams and I'm Mr. Navy's, who the fuck's going to know? Oh shit, there's John Allen. I know his resume just from looking at, no, you have to share it with the world. the way I was doing it was was a little bit too much. I would I would definitely say that.

But there's this, when you're active, there's no reason for you to be sharing anything about who you are, what you've done with anyone. No one has social media. No one even has a fucking email account for the most part. You have like your fucking bullshit military email account. Like you're at a bubble. And then what really has begun happening is guys get out. Social media exists.

The internet exists. They're like, fuck, what do I do with my life? I can either go right into contract work, which you're just. just sort of readily available to you, like go, you know, be security on a cargo ship in Djibouti or something. Or I can create a brand around the grit and determination and all this stuff. So I see it from both sides. I think that the upshot of that is I got a message from a guy that I trained with a lot before I joined the Navy. And I don't begrudge him for this, but I train with him a lot. He was a close friend

to mine and I had had a really just bad day of lots of messages from I had guys like messaging me who were like I'm a fucking new guy at Seal Team Blah and you're a joke at the team like I don't even know you. We're just shitting all over you in the platoon space and signed like their name their cell phone number like they want

you to get in touch with them. That's right. And so I'm having a bad day and this one dude text me and I hadn't heard from him in a long time and he had gone over to the team six. and he just wrote, you suck. And it's like a small thing of all the things, but that is like, I know what you're really saying.

What you're really saying is, I don't respect you. I see what you're doing. And I, this guy, is at the pinnacle of the Navy SEAL hierarchy. And he's like, I basically do not respect you. And it like hurts so bad. Everything hurt. And I got a long message. That same guy I was taking fire with in the, yeah, he wrote me.

message too that was very deep cutting again signed you know fucking come to my house if you want to talk about it like no one's avoiding conflict with me I go to the gym and like dudes are mean mugging me from across the gyms that see in the these are trained killers like they're ready for conflict it's also something interesting which is like you go through this process probably on some level for the validation and the respect of these people yeah you know it's like you're submitting yourself to the toughest training that exists in the United States of America, arguably. And it proves that you're a badass,

and your acceptance from these other individuals who have already went through that training are the ones that are validating you. And then losing that validation. Yeah, it was a tough blow. And I got, dude, I was so out of shape, too. And then you just made so much money, dude. It doesn't help, though.

I can't imagine that the boys are like, around like actually no you're sick again yeah dude by the way bro yeah they found out millions you're like hey man dude it was crazy so like i mean mr ballin like it came into existence because of how i realized if i'm going to do anything on the internet yeah it has to be completely divorced from being a seal because i at the time this is like you know when i when i posted for the first time and sort of went viral this was like right before covid happened and i was still doing my i was do even though i was facing the ire of the community. I was hosting events with the guys who hated me to try to get the jobs. It was something else. But the events, they shut down because of COVID. But COVID really

wasn't a thing yet. It was like, oh, this will be two weeks. We'll just stop events for now. But I was like, you know what, I'm not going to just give up on using the internet. Because I saw, I had raised, you know, I think in the span of a couple years, like several hundred thousand dollars on micro donations via LinkedIn. Like I was getting people to donate 30 bucks, 50 bucks, 100 bucks, but it was all I did. And I'm like, I've seen the strength of the internet to some degree. I don't want to just bail on it, but I don't want to do seal stuff. It's so bad. It hurts so much. It's not worth it. And so I did this one. Did you do any get ready with me? Those were like divorced as if you had no idea that I had anything to do with the military. And all of it was fucking horrible. Oh, so bad. What was the worst? I did this one. Did you do any get ready with me? No, I did. I should have. Those would be better. I did some dancing ones. Those have been a eradicated from the internet. There were a couple dancing ones.

But I sort of brought in like a Nerf gun to it somehow. And then I did, there was a trend on a... You sure they didn't send you that you suck email for that? Yeah, yeah. I did this... We did a dance. We did it dance.

We did it dance. Everybody goes to the dance. We did a dance. But we were in Navy Seals before that. You were treating it like the Seals. He was very serious. If anyone was a bunch of the dance, he's like, dude, you're getting it wrong.

What was the dance? It was in the old. Yeah, quarantine. Yeah, quarantine. Yeah. And he put cities in the background and shit. Well, you guys were crushing. We did all right. We did all right.

But I did some cringy stuff like that. But then I remember on my computer I had, I had these two documents that were like my ideas, my things that I could do on the internet that are again divorced from the teams. And on one of them, it was like every trend that I had seen. I was like studying social media. Like, is there something I can do? Actually, I think you were at one point one of the reference. points because you had like biting commentary. That was really good. I didn't nail it.

So that didn't work for me. And then the other one, it was just all I wrote was Diatlov Pass. And it's this fabulous story that I find myself, I am so interested in true or purported to be true, strange, dark, mysterious stories. And I had just, for whatever reason, never even considered. What if you just told one of those stories you really like to the camera? And I am someone who tells stories. I knew I was.

And it never really clicked. And then I was at this water park with my family in Pennsylvania, this indoor water park, Great Wolf Lodge. And I was like, fuck it. I'm just going to do a quick 60-second version of the Diatlov Pass mystery. And, you know, I have no followers. It's TikTok, you know, TikTok before people even were really using TikTok in the U.S. And I tell this story and I post it.

And I really wasn't like, oh, boy, I nailed it. This is it. I finally figured it out. It was like, oh, cool, it's something new. It's totally different. It's not seal-related. And then I left my phone in the room to go down to the water park with my wife and kids. I came back.

There was five million views. And I couldn't even open my phone. There was so many notifications. Are you familiar with the story? Can we, okay, hold on. I got used bathroom, but then can we do like, this is, it's pretty. It's a great story. I think it's good entryway into a lot of the other content, which I'm sure we have a bunch of questions specifically on.

Nice.