Ask Dr. Drew - Navy SEAL: How To Make Your House A “Bug-In” Fortress Before Disaster Strikes w/ Joel Lambert + Matt Waltz & Fred Santor – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 439

Episode Date: January 3, 2025

“Except for a few unlikely cases like a raging wildfire or tornado barreling straight for your house, bugging out is a very bad idea,” warns former Navy SEAL Joel Lambert, who says the safest plac...e to secure yourself and your loved ones during a national crisis is the fortress you already know: your own home. “Why would you ever want to leave your amazing home where you probably have a half full fridge, maybe some cans, a warm bed, a roof over your head, as well as neighbors you know, and terrain you’re familiar with, … only to run OUT THERE to some place you know nothing about and try to forage your daily meals?” explains Lambert, who authored “A Navy SEAL’s Bug-In Guide: How to Turn Your House into the Safest Place on Earth” to help others prepare for the unexpected. Joel Lambert is a former Navy SEAL, author, and television personality. He starred in Discovery Channel’s ‘Manhunt’ (known as ‘Lone Target’ in the US) and ‘Predators Up Close.’ Lambert authored ‘A Navy SEAL’s Bug In Guide’ (available at https://amzn.to/3PyXa4t) drawing from his military expertise in security, crisis management, and survival tactics. He currently works as a consultant and speaker on security preparedness and resilience. His television work has aired internationally on Discovery Channel and Animal Planet. Follow him at https://x.com/joel5326 Matt Waltz is a founder of New Freedom, a pioneering behavioral health and re-entry facility in Arizona. Matt is also an Arizona State University graduate and founder of Waltz Construction. New Freedom is a comprehensive facility offering integrated services for formerly incarcerated individuals, including therapy, job training, case management, and on-site parole services. Find more at https://newfreedomaz.com Fred Santor is a Shop Manager at PHP, a leading Arizona painting contractor, following a remarkable career transformation through New Freedom’s program. After facing multiple incarcerations and four decades of addiction, Fred completed New Freedom’s 90-day vocational program in 2022. In just 27 months, he advanced from Painter to his current leadership role. Read more at https://newfreedom.org/success-stories 「 SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS 」 Find out more about the brands that make this show possible and get special discounts on Dr. Drew's favorite products at https://drdrew.com/sponsors  • FATTY15 – The future of essential fatty acids is here! Strengthen your cells against age-related breakdown with Fatty15. Get 15% off a 90-day Starter Kit Subscription at https://drdrew.com/fatty15 • PALEOVALLEY - "Paleovalley has a wide variety of extraordinary products that are both healthful and delicious,” says Dr. Drew. "I am a huge fan of this brand and know you'll love it too!” Get 15% off your first order at https://drdrew.com/paleovalley • THE WELLNESS COMPANY - Counteract harmful spike proteins with TWC's Signature Series Spike Support Formula containing nattokinase and selenium. Learn more about TWC's supplements at https://twc.health/drew 「 MEDICAL NOTE 」 Portions of this program may examine countervailing views on important medical issues. Always consult your physician before making any decisions about your health. 「 ABOUT THE SHOW 」 Ask Dr. Drew is produced by Kaleb Nation (https://kalebnation.com) and Susan Pinsky (https://twitter.com/firstladyoflove). This show is for entertainment and/or informational purposes only, and is not a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Happy holidays, everyone. Great to be here. Merry Christmas. This is our end of year show. We're looking forward to 2025. We appreciate you joining us as always. And as always, we appreciate the people that have supported us. Today, we're going to end the year talking a little survival and preparedness and also treatment for PTSD and veterans.
Starting point is 00:00:23 So it's going to be a very interesting survey. We first have a former Navy SEAL author and television personality. He's from Manhunt, and he's going to talk a little bit with us about preparedness. And Susan is very interested in that these days. So see if she has any thoughts as well or any questions. And then Matt Waltz is going to join us with one of his alumni. He is the founder of New Freedom, pioneer behavioral health and reentry facility in Arizona. He is also a founder of the Waltz Construction.
Starting point is 00:00:53 New Freedom is a comprehensive facility operating integrated services for formerly incarcerated individuals. So it's about bringing people back to themselves, back to the world. We'll be back with you right after this our laws as it pertain to substances are draconian and bizarre psychopaths start this right he was an alcoholic cuz of social media and pornography PTSD love addiction fentanyl and heroin ridiculous I'm just saying you go to treatment before you kill people. I am a clinician.
Starting point is 00:01:27 I observe things about these chemicals. Let's just deal with what's real. We used to get these calls on Loveline all the time. Educate adolescents and to prevent and to treat. If you have trouble, you can't stop and you want help stopping, I can help. I got a lot to say. I got a lot more to say. I'm excited to bring you a new product, a new supplement, Fatty. I take it.
Starting point is 00:01:54 I make Susan take it. My whole family takes it. This comes out of, believe it or not, dolphin research. The Navy maintains a fleet of dolphins, and a brilliant veterinarian recognized that these dolphins sometimes developed a syndrome identical to our Alzheimer's disease. Those dolphins were deficient in a particular fatty acid. She replaced the fatty acid and they didn't get the Alzheimer's. Humans have the same issue. And we are more deficient in this particular fatty acid than ever before. And a simple replacement of this fatty acid called C15 will help us prevent these syndromes.
Starting point is 00:02:30 It's published in a recent journal called Metabolites. It's a new nutritional C15, pentadecanoic acid it's called. The deficiency that we are developing for C15 creates something called the cellular fragility syndrome. This is the first nutritional deficiency syndrome to be discovered in 75 years and may be affecting us in many ways and as many as one in three of us. This is an important breakthrough. Take advantage of it.
Starting point is 00:02:58 Go to fatty15.com slash drdrew to receive 15% off a 90-day starter kit subscription or use code dr drew at checkout for that 15 off or just go to our website dr drew.com slash fatty 15 first up today is joel lambert you can follow joel on x and instagram at joel5326 or check out buginguide.com As I said, Joel Lambert authored Navy Seals, a Navy Seals Bug-In Guide, that's thebugin.com He drives from his
Starting point is 00:03:33 military experience in security, crisis management, survival tactics. He currently works as a consultant and speaker on security preparedness and resilience. His television work on Manhunt was on Discovery, where I have a long history with as well. He has worked internationally on Discovery Channel and Animal Planet.
Starting point is 00:03:53 You can also, as I said, follow him on Exit Joel, J-O-E-L-5-3-2-6. Joel, thank you for being here. Welcome to the program. Dr. Drew, thanks for having me. Good to see you. Good to see you too. So let's start with wherever you think is the appropriate place to start with bug in. Now, one of the things that Caleb told me before the mics heated up was that a lot of people get very focused on go bags and getting out of here and get scram. You have a different philosophy. Exactly. And that is what I wrote my book in
Starting point is 00:04:27 response to. When I was doing Manhunt, especially, I'm doing escape and evasion. I'm inserting in foreign countries. I'm dropping in places I'm not supposed to be. I'm coming up on beaches. I'm crossing borders under trucks. And then their special tracking force or fugitive recovery team would come after me with everything they had to try to capture me before I'd make my extract point, which would be three to four days away. And I'd be doing tracking, counter-tracking, booby traps, primitive skills, all this stuff to try to get away. And being followed by, did you do your own filming or was there a camera crew in tow? There was one cameraman with me. They never let me go alone.
Starting point is 00:05:02 So the cameraman, sometimes he was pretty good, sometimes he was not. He got me caught on a couple occasions. But about that time, the people, you know, they just kind of, the people and civilians kind of got enamored with the concept of bugging out. Which was, you know, you have a bug out bag in your car. You have a bug out bag by your door. Something bad happens. You grab the bag and you get out, you bug out until danger is over and you have enough stuff in your bag to survive and get along. And, you know, being that I'm doing this internationally on a global television
Starting point is 00:05:34 series, people would always ask me, you know, what's in your bug out bag? What's in your go bag? What do you have? What would you recommend? And I'd say, that's a terrible idea, except in very specific cases like a tornado is barreling straight for your house or or something is coming specifically to you we we have we have in this in this part of the world we have fires and so you actually have to have you have to have fire safes you have to have a fire you know sort of uh you know important documents and stuff ready to go. Everyone knows to do this. It's not like it's a special thing.
Starting point is 00:06:07 You just got to get out of the way. Exactly. And in that case, obviously getting out, you have to. There's no choice. In fact, LA may tell you you have to go. But in most cases, your house is where you should stay. Your house is shelter. You have food here. You have water. You have your tools. You have your weapons. You you should stay. Your house is shelter, you have food here,
Starting point is 00:06:25 you have water, you have your tools, you have your weapons, you have your family. It's a rally point, that is everyone knows where it's at. You know your neighbors, you know the terrain, you have a community there that's built in. It makes no sense to run away and leave that to try to establish that someplace else under extreme circumstances. So why not build
Starting point is 00:06:47 your house and supply your house and prepare your mind and your family for settling in and staying in for an undetermined period of time where you're not going to be, you're not, maybe you don't have access to pharmaceuticals. You don't have access to the grocery store. You don't have access to an ATM. I mean, whatever the circumstances might be, civil war unrest world war three who knows what any you know natural disasters any of that your house is the best place to be set up and of course if a wildfire comes or a tornado comes or something like that you can always grab the go bag and get out but why leave all the things you need to go someplace else to try to establish them so i wrote a book no you uh you triggered me to this i work with a company that sets up these uh emergency pharmaceutical kits you know for this they have an emergency kit i have one they have a they have
Starting point is 00:07:35 oh good you have the wellness company they have a killer a killer box this thing has everything in it yeah this thing will withstand the coin airstrike uh what is this one called it's called the field emergency kit there it is um and uh that one's just i mean you you're good with that it was like an er in a box and um so you know it's weird to me that in a weird way because much as i bristled against staying at home during COVID, the fact that COVID made us think about staying at home and preparing ourselves for whatever the government might be doing to us. I mean, that's where Wellness Company came from.
Starting point is 00:08:18 It's like, just to try to prepare ourselves, because they started restricting everything, and I want to be ready for them. Exactly. And being a bit of a prepper my whole life, you know, I would get, you know, flack from, from friends who thought it was weird and strange and, you know, but now nobody, nobody questions me after COVID and after, you know, the summer of love and all the things we've experienced over the last five years, nobody questions preparedness. Now everyone's stocked up on toilet paper and everyone gets it that something wrong might go at any point in time.
Starting point is 00:08:52 So what do you recommend we be prepared for? Is there sort of a priority list? Yes. I'm glad you asked that. As far as events, it could be anything. It could be natural disasters. It could be a government situation. It could be some sort of conflict.
Starting point is 00:09:09 It could be an EMP. It could be a banking crisis, anything like that. But that doesn't matter. What we need to think about is I like to divide survival and escape and evasion and preparedness into five essential components. And if you address these five in order of precedence, you'll be covered whether it's out in the field or whether it's in your house or whether it's in an apartment or whatever the circumstances might be. And those five are- I'm writing them down as you say them. Order of importance. Don't go ahead. I'm writing them down.
Starting point is 00:09:38 They're shelter, water, food, communication, and navigation. and shelter being anything obviously we have a house that's shelter but shelter is also closed shelter is anything that protects your physical body from the elements or from from any kind of anything that can threaten your physical safety so your physical body preparing your physical body water is very important as in we can only last three days without water in um the the we're going to put ourselves in. So water is, and everyone, you know, we're used to turning on the tap, but what happens if even a power outage, that big pumping station in your city center now can no longer provide the pressure to get to your house? People don't think about these things and storing water. Water can go bad. You need to know how to store. How much water? Well, it depends on how long you want to prepare
Starting point is 00:10:28 for. And so I have, I always set up for a primary tertiary or primary secondary tertiary and emergency and tertiary and emergency can be the same, but I always like three levels of preparedness in the SEAL teams and in many other military groups, we'd always talk about two is one and one is none. And basically, that means if we're going to make a plan, a mission or an operation, we can only plan for having, say, a GPS unit to navigate with if we have at least two of them. We have to have a redundancy before you can factor it into your planning.
Starting point is 00:10:58 And so I always like to have at least three levels where I can, and some of these are, you know, physical tools that I might have in order to start a fire, or there might be the knowledge that I have where I can start a fire using a bow drill or some sort of other primitive means. And so I always like to have redundancies and you know, you got to think through when you approach these things, you divide everything into those five sections, like I said, and you're going to get a primary, secondary, and tertiary
Starting point is 00:11:30 for each of those things that you need. And we start thinking through, and this is what I've done in the book, you start thinking through all the possible contingencies. In an EMP situation, what's going to happen? Well, I'm going to have no electricity. What's going to happen to, you know, how am I going to navigate? How am I going to drive my car? How am I going to get my kid from school? You know, you got to think through all these things and prepare um contingency plans and they don't have to be they don't have to be thorough they just have to be i've thought about this and i've realized that i can't go i can't take the freeway because such and such and so then you have these these these thoughts in your mind and it's going to guide you and you're going to improvise at a much higher level than you would if you hadn't already thought through these these aspects you said water goes bad i don't think about water going bad what what
Starting point is 00:12:11 happens there well you know things grow things grow in the water you need to put things you need to rotate we rotate our water and we also store it in a manner that the algae and stuff that can go that can grow in the water and all the creepy crawlies that will take over are not going to be able. So there's things you can put in the water. Obviously, we purify with chlorine and iodine, also silver, copper, things like that
Starting point is 00:12:39 actually prevent algae growth and mold and things like that. So there are lots of ways that we can store in conditions that we store them in the containers that we store them and the things that we can add and rotate. Rotation is very important that we can rotate through. And then also what happens if all of a sudden the pumping station goes down? Where are you going to get your water? So you got to source the water. You have to purify the water and you have to store the water.
Starting point is 00:13:02 Those are the important things you need to do. Excuse me. And I just had a thought about it. Would you recommend that you mentioned weapons and things like that. Do you recommend some sort of place within your home, provided you have space to retreat to, like a plan for, I'm trying to imagine what that would be like. No, you're thinking of a safe room or something. Yes, or fortifications.
Starting point is 00:13:33 Yeah, something of that sort. Fortifications are a double-edged sword because one, you're fortified and it makes you safer, but it also pins you down. You're now dependent on that location. So you can no longer move as effectively as you could. So I'm not a big fan of fortifications. I'm a big fan of setting things up ahead of time. For instance, for my family in the house, you know, bullets go through walls very easily. And so one of the things I recommend in the book and that I'll have is frangible ammunition. And this is something we trained with quite a bit in the SEAL teams when we're doing house runs. A frangible projectile is a bullet that is basically made of compressed copper or some
Starting point is 00:14:14 other metal that's pressed together. So it's lethal, but as soon as it strikes a hard object, it just fragments into a cloud of fairly non-offensive dust. And so there are things that we need to think of in the house, and obviously we don't want to get to the point where someone's in our house. That's, we've messed up if we're at that point, but we still need to plan that contingency. So how am I going to deal with this?
Starting point is 00:14:37 Where are my family going to go to? How am I going to get my, yeah, there we go. Yeah, where am I going to get my kids, my wife, my parents, my pets to, so we go. Yeah. Where am I going to get my, my kids, my, my wife, my, my parents, my pets too, so that I can clear this house and I can deal with the threat without having to worry about where they're at and if they're in my line of fire. So there's all kinds of things we've got to think about. You want to ask any questions? Susan, you were here. She was thinking about building a safe something. Those are great ideas i think this house
Starting point is 00:15:05 i think this house is like a fortress like we have a long house with windows and we're going to invite emily bars over with all our guns if anything happens just to get here if they have a plan for that here one of the biggest you don't want to do i was go ahead one of the biggest things i always tell people for basic house fortification before you do anything else is go go down to home depot or lowe's and buy some three inch wood screws the big long heavy suckers and then go through all of your your doors and replace the the strike plates for the the panels and the hinges take out those little one and a quarter inch screws or three quarter inch screws whatever they put them there, that one good kick will put those right through the wall and put three
Starting point is 00:15:48 inch screws into that big, that big support lintel all the way around. And that is going to, I went to breacher school. And when we're learning to break in places, you know, the difference between the little tiny screw and a three inch screw will give you at least 10 minutes of 10 minutes of, depending on how prepared they are, it will give you time to realize someone's coming in to retreat to make sure that that reactionary gap between something happening and us being able to respond to it is as long as possible. So we're able to mitigate whatever circumstances are happening, get our loved ones safe, and then engage in whatever manner we need to to deal with the threat. Yeah, Susan, we're going to have to get rid of those hollow core doors too. Because the three and screws are not going to save you from those so um so what are we expecting is world war three coming in your mind oh nice um well we're certainly barreling towards the kinetic ass i
Starting point is 00:16:57 think we're in world war three right now which is a war of narratives it's fifth generational warfare however um you know the kinetic aspect of, we are barreling towards with total abandon. And so I don't know what to, and really one of the things I hit in my book all the time is I don't want to sell fear. This isn't about World War III or, you know, civil war or even, you know, a nuclear explosion or EMP. What this is about is about getting back to the things that we can be empowered with in our own life. Take care of your house. Take care of your food.
Starting point is 00:17:28 Take care of your water. Take care of your community. Build community. Connect with people that provide things that you don't provide and build that so that then we're living in a way that these things that we're worried about, if they come to pass, we're already set up for it. I believe in creating a life that we live and these things are just natural outgrowths of the way we live. Yeah, this has been said to me more than a couple of times.
Starting point is 00:18:00 And you mentioned communication as one of the top five. Presumably cells would be out. So what form of communication should we have on hand? Well, when you talk to all the experienced preppers, everyone talks about ham radio, HF radio, which is absolutely the gold standard. However, it's very difficult to learn. It's not something you have to get licensed for it. I mean, in a shithead hitting the fan situation, nobody's going to be worried about licenses, but you you have to get licensed for it. I mean, in a, in a shit hitting the fan situation, you know, nobody's gonna be worried about licenses, but you still have to operate that.
Starting point is 00:18:28 And it's, it's not something that you can just, you know, go out and switch it on all of a sudden be talking, you know, worldwide. And so, um, for my, my family, I have family still in LA. And so I'm out in middle Tennessee now. And so communicating with them is the most important thing for me in a situation. And so there are several things you can do. The thing i did is i got on starlink so um you know if if things go down starlink is going to i believe stay up much longer and be able to communicate through starlink um when you know you need power for starlink too do you have to have power in
Starting point is 00:19:01 order to receive from starlink so we get then you need a backup generator, right? Exactly. And gasoline, solar power? Whatever. There are all kinds of ways to do it. All the go. We out here, we're on a generator system. And then I have smaller generators if my big goes down. But we have Starlink as our primary. And then one of the other things we communicate with is we have a satellite, Iridium satellite network.
Starting point is 00:19:27 And Garmin bought recently a company called Delorme. And Delorme had these location-based units that they put them in my backpack in Manhattan after the first episode when I got lost in Africa. Or they lost me in Africa. I knew where I was at. They didn't. But you can text using the Iridium Satellite Network, and there's an SOS button that you can, anywhere in the world, anywhere in the world on the network, they will send out a rescue for you.
Starting point is 00:19:55 So that's my secondary. And then tertiary, we have some other radio mesh communications is another really good way, depending on one of the things that people always ask me, what is the best way for this, this, this, there is no one best day. The best way is whatever the situation dictates, you know, the situation will always be different and each person is always different. And so you need to stack your preparedness plans based on you and the place you live and the circumstances that you're in.
Starting point is 00:20:25 And so everyone's going to be different. I'm just telling you what I have set up. So I have, you know, I have Starlink and then I have, you know, the Iridium satellite network. And then I, I of course know how to use HF and, and, and ham radio stuff. So I have a setup for that. And the ham radio network, the other cool thing about the ham radio network is these people live for natural disasters. That's what they do is they communicate. And that is the greatest thing that could happen to a ham radio operator in his world is the world ending. Because then they're going to be communicating with everyone, passing everyone's messages.
Starting point is 00:20:59 They love this shit. They really do. And so if you can connect with ham radio operators, they will help you out. If you understand the basics and can connect with them, they will help. They will break their hands. Don't you need a big tower for that? There are big towers.
Starting point is 00:21:13 Those are repeaters. And so what you need to do is you need to be able to connect to one of those. That's all that you need to do. I see. Yeah. I see. We're probably in the wrong demographic. We're also sort of in a valley here.
Starting point is 00:21:24 We're sort of surrounded by stuff. We're also sort of in a valley here. We're sort of surrounded by stuff. We can't even get cell service up here. But Caleb, do you know about that second backup, the Iridium? Is that what you called it? Iridium, yes. Yeah, I think, if I remember correctly, it has something to do with like Russia has those satellites or it's like a backup network that's not based on our GPS.
Starting point is 00:21:44 No, it's GMRS. Okay, I'm based on our gps or a nice gmrs okay i'm thinking of the different ones yeah you're thinking of the different gps location that is the the russian thing um glonass or i think it's called glonass anyway that's all open up and our gps uh uh units now operate on glonass and on the us-based system but what i'm talking about is the iridium satellite network satellite phones almost all'm talking about is the Iridium satellite network, satellite phones. Almost all of them operate on the Iridium satellite network. And governments use this, you know, for, I mean, we would have satellite phones in Afghanistan when we were deployed, all that. So the Iridium network is pretty robust. And I don't expect that it would be taken down
Starting point is 00:22:19 because the people that would be taking it down are dependent upon it. So I'm gambling that our secondary will be able to communicate on Iridium satellite. And, you know, nothing is 100%. You can try to cover the greatest percentages you can in the best overlapping you can so that when, you know, if something were to happen that you're not covered for, it's a very, very small percentage of possibility. And I have to ask, just because I think it's on people's minds, given the New Jersey situation and all the chatter about drones and whatnot. Is there a procedural sort of protocol to go through for radiation?
Starting point is 00:23:01 For radiation? Well, we had... That's a good question because I did, I actually did two specials on Fukushima for Discovery Channel that were amazing. And I got to go to Fukushima, Daiichi and Daini and see where everything went down. And the amount of radiation that I got, I was wearing a rad meter the whole time and I could only get a certain amount of radiation before we had to shut down the filming. But what's interesting is I got more radiation on both of my flights to and from Japan than I did actually in Fukushima. So the radiation is something that we get a lot of radiation as you're well aware, Dr. Drew. I mean, there's a lot of radiation that's not just going to come. I mean, there are supplements that we can
Starting point is 00:23:40 take to keep the radioactive isotopes from binding to, you know, binding to those receptors. Cement and potassium iodide. Exactly. But for most people, we already have, we have enough in our system. So I'm not too worried about the long-term radiation. What I am worried about are, you know, what's going to happen, the other things that are happening if a radiological event were to occur, you know, that's, that's going to be nuclear air bursts or, you know, something that I'm going to have
Starting point is 00:24:10 priorities. But yes, that's a great question. Yeah. It's, it's, it, my understanding is a little different than people think. I mean, they, you know, first priority is getting it off of you, like washing off, leaving everything outside. And then it's staying covered, right? And then after about three or four days, you can kind of venture out a little bit, right? Isn't that sort of how it works if it's not the major center of things? I'm no expert,
Starting point is 00:24:39 but as I understand it, yes, you're correct. And like in Fukushima, we did all the CBR, chemical, biological, radiological did all the CBR chemical biological radiological drills all the time in the SEAL teams and that was the big thing is you got to clean we had a whole we had a man portable cleaning station that was set up where we clean our feet all right we go through a whole procedure stripping everything off and cleaning
Starting point is 00:24:58 all the rads off of you and then and then going on and getting someplace where there's a shelter. But in Fukushima, yeah, that's what happened. But then the radiation that was in the topsoil, you know, that's the long-term stuff that they have to deal with. It was in the topsoil. And I actually went and interviewed this Zen monk who ran a Zen church. He was amazing. And he was trying, he saw all the children walking to school where all the radiation was, he was really concerned about it so he did some research and he learned that sunflowers process the cesium whatever the isotope of cesium was pull it right out of the soil and so he went and with his own money bought all these sunflowers and planted sunflowers all across his village and all along the side of the roads to absorb all the cesium and make it safe for the kids to walk to school. Very charming story. Very interesting. I mean, it's stuff like that that I'm interested
Starting point is 00:25:51 in, these little nuggets that can make a big difference in these situations that seem overwhelming to those of us that aren't familiar with all the details of how to respond. Well, listen, I appreciate you being here. I appreciate your service, of course. I appreciate you trying to help everybody else out with preparedness. As we head into the new year, is there something top of mind for you that we should keep top of mind for ourselves? Personally, I think everything is going to get incredibly beautiful for the human race going into this next year. I think we're beginning a beautiful phase of our existence. I think it's going to be bumpy for a little while
Starting point is 00:26:29 before that starts. So I would say, you know, building some community and getting prepared for just even a couple of weeks. In my book, I cover apartment dwelling. You know, obviously it's great if you're on a big spread of land, but, you know, stack yourself up for a little bit. So if you can't go to the ATM and you can't go make a run to the grocery store and you're stuck inside for two, three, four weeks, you're going to be absolutely fine. That's my advice to everyone. And get a Navy SEALs bug-in guide so you can go through specifics of how to prepare yourself, which I think we should do it. I'm up for it. I'm already hoarding food and water. I don't know what you're so worried about.
Starting point is 00:27:08 That's all we're doing. We always make fun of it. You know, everybody has recommended we get a generator. We've just not done it. Yeah, we need it. And we're in earthquake territory. We're in fire territory.
Starting point is 00:27:19 I got Starlink, but we're still trying to find somebody who can set it up. So we're in the contemplative phase. You know, there's just like every change, right? You go through thinking about it, contemplating it, preparing for it, executing it, and then maintaining it. I want to have the generator so that we can keep the studio on and we can have the Starlink and we can still. This is Susan's ham radio.
Starting point is 00:27:42 This is her version of ham radio. Which is what we did during COVID, frankly, how this started. Yeah, you're great. Get a whole house unit and then get a couple small units that you can run freezers and things in if the house unit goes down or whatever. So that's what I have. A couple small ones and I have a big whole house. Emily's going to take me shooting and then I'll know how to shoot a gun. I'm a good shot apparently.
Starting point is 00:28:04 So I've been told. And those three-inch screws. Joel, is there a place other than X and Instagram you'd like people to go to find you? Oh, you can find me on Facebook, too. I think it's joel.lambert something. You can find me on there. I've got a business account.
Starting point is 00:28:21 But buggingguide.com and bugginginguide.com. And I look forward to interacting with everybody. Thank you all. You know, I think things are going to get beautiful. Are the Discovery shows still on Hulu or something? They are. They're on Apple TV and Max, because that's part of Discovery. That's on there. It's on Amazon. I think you can find all of them. You can find Manhunt. It's called Lone Target in the US and in France, but it was Manhunt everywhere else.
Starting point is 00:28:49 But yeah, you can find all the shows. It was a great show and I'm pretty proud of it. So check it out. Oh my gosh, it sounds magnificent. Discovery is hardcore. They do good work. They really do.
Starting point is 00:29:01 The executives are really very thoughtful about what they put on the air. All right alright my friend good to talk to you have a nice new year and 2025 onward sounds good well Lambert everybody
Starting point is 00:29:11 thank you everybody cheers thank you again we can always eat the bunnies and the squirrels in the yard too now you're thinking but you gotta
Starting point is 00:29:18 capture them first then you have to have a fire to cook them on a knife to clean them with. If you're a doctor, you can do that. This is the point about preparedness. We got knives. We got plenty of knives.
Starting point is 00:29:31 Yeah, yeah. I am. You know, in the seer training, they teach you to catch rabbit and skin them and eat them. Yeah, good times. Caleb, we're going to- We have a lot of extra dog food out there we can cook up first. We're going to eat our dog's food.
Starting point is 00:29:47 That's fantastic. All right, next up is Matt Walsh. He's the founder of New Freedom, pioneering behavioral health, reentry facility in Arizona. It is a comprehensive facility offering integrative services for formerly incarcerated individuals,
Starting point is 00:30:03 therapy training, case management, onsite parole services. It's a comprehensive program. You can find out more about it at NewFreedomAZ. They're in Arizona, NewFreedomAZ.com. You're going to follow Matt on Instagram at NewFreedomAZ as well. And he'll have a alumni with us here as well
Starting point is 00:30:26 to talk about the program. Be right back after this. Wellness company knows that taking charge of your family's healthcare is a top priority and being rationally ready, who knows what the future will hold for us. Now TWC has a service to cover your family's medical needs, including and especially prevention.
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Starting point is 00:31:26 membership. Check out One Wellness at drdrew.com slash TWC and get 10% off your first payment, drdrew.com slash TWC. It's all there. Dr. Drew said the best way to quit drinking is by going cold turkey, and he's a doctor, so why would you question doctors dr drew called me unfixable reminder again about the field emergency kit and the various preparedness opportunities that wellness companies check out there it does so much in there just trust me go to the website you'll check it out by the way in the new year i'm going to have a store set up on our at dr.com we'll be able to quickly find all these things and in terms of preparedness we also think we keep paleo valley beef sticks around and if you're like a lot of us and you've been indulging during the holidays
Starting point is 00:32:19 the things that aren't so good for you a new year's resolution uh paleo valley excellent way to get back into your health regimen and of course, help your body recovery from maybe the indulgences of the holidays. Make your first meal of 2025 nutrient-rich,
Starting point is 00:32:33 high in protein, low in calories, delicious. Thinking about this last night, I got to get more nutrient density in my diet. This is the new year. Maybe a smoothie
Starting point is 00:32:42 with grass-fed and finished beef bone broth made from actual bones. Dot Hyatt's comes in four variety flavors, chocolate, vanilla, plain, and the new salted caramel. Go to dr.com slash paleovalley for 15% off your first order or 20% off when you subscribe. Discount applies to everything at the website,
Starting point is 00:32:58 so stock up on your protein sticks as well. As we said, beef, venison, there's also a pasteurized chicken and pork. Way better than the jerkies. They're sour, beef, venison, there's also a pasteurized chicken and pork. Way better than the jerky. They're sourced carefully, nutrient dense. Paleo Valley also has superfood bars and that is all at drdrew.com slash paleovalley for 15% off your first order, 20%
Starting point is 00:33:16 off when you subscribe. Get it in the go bag or the emergency. Yeah, I was going to say in the bone broth, it's a great source of protein. Just put in some warm water and you're good. I have a bunch. We would never go hungry. Yeah, we don't. That's true.
Starting point is 00:33:30 We don't think about it as disaster preparedness, but it definitely is. Protein is such an important thing. You know, like you can have like a lot of pastas in the pantry and stuff like that, but having that protein is really important. You don't have to kill the rabbits in the backyard like Susan wants to do. Yeah, that's right. Barbecue squirrel. Let's get to our next guest. It is Matt Waltz.
Starting point is 00:33:47 It is newfreedomaz.com. Matt, welcome to the program, and thank you for your work as well. So great to be with you, Dr. Drew. So tell us about the program, how you got going, what the history is. Is it something that can be reproduced? You know, Arizona compared to California is a very, I would say, encouraging environment compared to California where you can't do anything. But what's the history?
Starting point is 00:34:12 So the history of New Freedom, a banking contact of mine about six years ago said, hey, I've got three guys you should meet with. They've got a really unique idea. So these three guys came to my office, sat down. These three are my partners in New Freedom today. So one of them was serving a life sentence in prison. And he got sick of seeing these young guys just come back over and over, leave for two months, come back, leave for four months, come back. He became aware there were some federal funds
Starting point is 00:34:40 available for recidivism programs. He applied for those funds, got them, and started teaching a class inside the prison, basically how to not come back to prison. There were two guys in the addiction recovery world who heard about this. They started writing letters, supporting the guys in the program, started to have tremendous success. At the same time, a partner who was serving a life sentence was working on his appeal. Much to his surprise, he won his appeal and got released. So these three guys then said, hey, let's take this program and let's scale it up. Let's find a way to do a lot more good, help a lot more people.
Starting point is 00:35:19 So they wrote a fantastic business plan, went to some banks. The banks said, great idea, great business plan. No fucking way am I giving an ex-conv next convict and 2x addicts any money and about the fifth banker said no but i know a guy you should meet so they came to my office they presented this plan it was a fantastic business plan they figured the funding out and i just couldn't understand why it hadn't been done already so we decided to push forward with this idea at the same time try to answer the question why didn't this exist already and I think what we found talking to ESG funds and family offices is people don't love the idea of helping ex-convicts and so when I learned that meeting
Starting point is 00:35:59 with these fund managers and family offices I became even more encouraged because I think that was the answer to why new freedom didn't already exist. Yeah. And also finding a place where you could put things like that. And again, in California, just the legal barriers to doing something like this are profound. They've just done everything possible not to make it something that can be done in this state. Did you have any encouragement or resistance from the state of Arizona? No.
Starting point is 00:36:34 You ever heard of this thing called the coronavirus? Yeah, yeah. So when we would look for a space, the coronavirus lockdown happened the day before. So we walked into a 250-room conference hotel that was empty. The owners basically begged us to buy it. They sold it to us for an incredible price. In order to get licensed, the city had a special use permit hearing.
Starting point is 00:36:59 No one attended because it was in the dark of COVID. So we got approved. It came together faster than anything I've ever been involved with before. It was incredible. Wow. And how do you staff it? In other words, I'm sure there's quite a range of mental health issues, substance issues, as you said. How do you figure out how to do that?
Starting point is 00:37:24 So the way New Freedom works, it's a combination of clinical staff, licensed clinical professionals, also peer support. So we have over 220 employees today. 85% of them are formerly incarcerated, formerly addicted. What this population believes that if you haven't been through what I've been through, I don't want to hear it. I want some college students to learn this in a book. I want to talk to people that know what I've been through. So in our facility, we have guys, men and women who used to be shock collars in the prison gangs. I mean, truly terrifying human beings who are now generous, successful, charismatic, capable people.
Starting point is 00:38:06 And so when someone comes walking through our doors and they see this man who used to be an absolute terror and he gives them a hug and says, hey man, you can have a different life, it sparks this hope that's just incredible to see. But I want to get back to this well a little bit I mean I definitely knew it would be alumni driven and also
Starting point is 00:38:29 you know recovering people both recovering from incarceration recovering from drug addiction this is critically important in running a program like this but I'm thinking there's going to be also a range of psychiatric problems and trauma for sure how does that all get managed yeah so the
Starting point is 00:38:49 big picture of how new freedom works is we're trying to reprogram a formerly incarcerated person's day so it matches a successful professional so that they starts off with exercise first thing then breakfast then about six to seven hours of clinical programming, group therapy, individual therapy, you know, dealing with the traumatic events that probably cause someone to have this incredibly self-destructive behavior, right? After that, dinner, then the night shift. And the night shift consists of secondary education, the same way a young professional would be improving themselves after hours. We have vocational job training programs, GED, commercial driver's licenses. So we're really training people to use what they already have. A lot of people have these skills
Starting point is 00:39:36 already. Let's address what the root of the problem is that causes self-destructive behavior, give you tools to deal with that, and then give you a real future, training you for not just a job, but a career. Do you have to have been incarcerated, or have you thought about maybe mixing it with just straight drug addict cases? You know, we've thought about that. We've talked about it.
Starting point is 00:40:01 It's a really unique population set that's just, that that's formerly recently incarcerated. You know, it could be possible that people that haven't been incarcerated, they just they wouldn't have the same needs. They wouldn't have the same challenges. And I mean, good news or bad news for us in Arizona, there's 40,000 people who are incarcerated, over 18,000 coming out of prison every year. And we're helping about 15 percent,000 coming out of prison every year, and we're helping about 15% of people coming out of Arizona prisons. So there's still so much more work to do.
Starting point is 00:40:34 Yeah, again, I've asked that question because I'm thinking about California where drug addicts do not go to jail, and so they die on the street. And so, yeah, they may have gone through prison at one time, but there's not anymore and uh and they're just dying like crazy um and you're not allowed to do anything for them or with them before we rolled into this episode today we uh caleb put up a little tape of an interview i did with rfk
Starting point is 00:40:56 jr i don't know if you had a chance to see that matt but in there he was talking about his vision for these sort of recovery spaces it's very similar to what you're talking about if if i can get his ear is there something i could tell him that could help you provide this other places or scale this up in some way because i it it feels like i've seen stuff like this in various states around the country like indiana has great stuff like this but it's all inside the prisons and how do we how do we get someone's ear who's enthusiastic to provide these kinds of services on a larger platform throughout the country i'm so glad you asked that question yeah both robert f kennedy jr or dr oz who's going to be
Starting point is 00:41:43 in charge of medicaid in the incoming administration the majority of our funding in Arizona comes from Medicaid. And there's so much talk in today's world about government waste and inefficiencies and all these things. And what I'd like them to do is, this is one of the successful programs that uses government funding. So they should know there are amazing things happening at New Freedom. In fact, we have some outside consultants coming in to analyze our funding. For every $1 of government funding New Freedom gets, we return $10 to the citizens of Arizona in value, almost $200 million a year back to the citizens of Arizona. So for RFK Jr. and Dr. Ross, just know we exist we're creating miracles we're
Starting point is 00:42:27 helping people become good citizens good neighbors good fathers good sons and helping the community with adding to the GDP reducing crime there's so many benefits and are you familiar with the so-called IMD exclusion on Medicaid and Medicare? And how do you guys get around that? I'm not. That term does not ring a bell for me. So I'm guessing this must come through the state of Arizona, right? They must get a block grant.
Starting point is 00:43:03 Yeah. I almost don't want to tell them what you're doing because there's something called the IMD exclusion. When President Johnson set up Medicare, Medi-Cal, he specifically excluded institutions for mental disorders of any type called the IMD exclusion. And it's been a point, an issue forever. And one of the things I want to talk to Oz about is getting rid of that. So there may be more funding. Now stuff comes into the individual states and sort of a block grant. They kind of get around it a little bit, but I almost don't want to tell them what you're doing because it might be
Starting point is 00:43:41 in violation. You might cause more trouble than not. them what you're doing because it might be in violation. You might cause more trouble than not. So what we're doing, we're providing discrete services, peer support, group therapy. So it's just the clinical services that are being reimbursed. I got it. But that's, again, that's not for medical disorders. It's for mental disorders. And that's how you get into trouble with these guys.
Starting point is 00:44:06 So interesting. I'll go feel that all out because this is obviously an area that RFK Jr. clearly is passionate about. I don't know if Oz, he's a very bright guy, so I won't be any trouble communicating this to him and you'll see it immediately,
Starting point is 00:44:22 the importance of all this. And I understand you have an alumni with you to talk about the program, what the experience was like. Correct. Shall we bring in Fred? There's Fred. Fred, welcome. I appreciate you being here.
Starting point is 00:44:38 We are great. Tell us about your experience with the program and what your life was like before that. A living hell. I've been locked up 17 years. I've been down three different times. Every time you get out, there was nothing out there for us to go back to,
Starting point is 00:44:58 but our old life, you know, doing drugs, robbing people, whatever we were doing, that's what we did. This last time I was locked up, I got a little three years old. I was 58 at that time. Then there were some flyers from New Freedom being passed out on the yards. And I started to write them. I wrote them for a year and a half. They put you on a mentorship program. So you get a letter. They send you a newsletter. They're feeling you out as much as you on a mentorship program. So you get a letter, they send you a newsletter. They're feeling you out as much as you're feeling them out. Okay. They accepted me.
Starting point is 00:45:37 They came to the prison and picked me up. They brought me to new freedom. And the funny thing is I grew up less than a quarter mile from that place. My parents still live at that house, or my brother does. I go there. The first night I'm there, it's a little overwhelming because everybody is so giving and caring. Oh, welcome home, welcome home. Well, you know, I'm thinking to myself, this isn't my home. So I get overwhelmed. I go to my room. I go to dinner.
Starting point is 00:46:03 I see some of the fellows from the yard. I talk to them. They say, hey, just open your eyes a little bit and see what they got to say. I go to my first class the next morning. And there are the counselors asking for anybody to get their life story. So I jump up and give my story. And from then on, it was all, it's a family. They treat you like family. I went through the vocational program. My employer was running the program. There was a PHP, John Morris and Greg Quinlan.
Starting point is 00:46:38 They came in two nights a week. They taught us how to be better people, better employees, better citizens to begin with. I was hired two weeks into it and I stayed there 90 days and I went right to work with PHP. I've been working there for two years. I believe without New Freedom
Starting point is 00:46:58 I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing right now. I'd probably be back in prison. You're helping other people you're helping other people stay out of prison what what is the number one barrier you face in getting because i i know when i work i work with drug addicts all the time i have no problem working with drug addicts but when drug addicts become sort of criminalized they become sort of committed to their criminal thinking i i noticed that they've become very, very difficult to reach,
Starting point is 00:47:28 probably just because I'm who I am. I've not been through what they've been through. But they will not trust. I cannot get them to trust what I'm saying. So for me, that's the biggest thing I face when dealing with somebody out of prison. Is that the same for you, or is there something else that you have to overcome? It's the stigma of being in prison. Like he said, when I got out, I went to that program,
Starting point is 00:47:54 and the first people I see are people I used to do crime with. I know those guys. I know them from the streets. I know them from the prison system. You can trust them. And that is a fact that we have a hard time trusting people because so many people have said shit to us to get us to do things,
Starting point is 00:48:09 but they don't care about us. All they care about is what we're going to do for them. New Freedom's not like that. When those guys said something from the janitor to the head guy, they care. And it's the same with the vocational people.
Starting point is 00:48:28 Excuse me. My boss, he cares. We have a family-run business. Six of the upper echelon people are from New Freedom. Project managers, supervisors, our head estimator, all graduated from New Freedom. Fred, I want to bring you. So, I mean, it's just- Fred, I want to bring you, I'm sorry, Matt.
Starting point is 00:48:48 I want to bring Matt back in for a second. Matt, you know, Fred really emphasized something you emphasized was the importance of the peer program, which again, doesn't surprise me. But it must have taken some time to get to a critical mass with that. Or did you have enough, you know what I mean? You needed to kind of get to the, that must have been really challenging.
Starting point is 00:49:11 Well, I'm a serial entrepreneur. I've started and exited, you know, about five businesses in my career. I've never seen anything come together the way New Freedom came together. You know, the employees love working there. The second we started hiring, we're lined up out the door to get in there. Great people who have turned their lives around. It's been nothing short of amazing. I would love to give you a tour in person, Dr. Drew, because you hear about this
Starting point is 00:49:42 program and it sounds amazing. Every time I've given a tour, people tell me, I can't believe what's happening here. You're walking, you feel the energy. The employees are fired up. The program are fired up. You feel this energy of success and hope and change that's hard to describe. Fred, do you think we can reproduce this other places? Yes. Yes. If Matt Watson's involved with it, then it can get reproduced anywhere. And they need to because...
Starting point is 00:50:15 He's going to give you more work, Matt, just so you know. It's just ridiculous. Go ahead, Fred. I'm sorry. Well, it's just ridiculous with the recidivism rate of people going back to prison for nothing because they don't have nothing when they get out. They give you the structure. They give you what you need to succeed. And if you just follow the recipe, you're going to succeed. I mean, I'm living proof.
Starting point is 00:50:38 I'm 60 years old. And Matt, one of the complaints I hear from people that have been convicted of various significant crimes is the employment issue, trying to get back into the workforce. How do you get people over that hump other than the vocational training you provide? It's like nothing I've seen before. So we didn't realize when we first started, we didn't even plan on doing vocational training. It's something that evolved. People are saying, hey, we want jobs. Can you help us get jobs? So we developed this vocational training program.
Starting point is 00:51:12 I've been in construction development for close to 30 years. So I brought some of my trade contractor partners in. They started teaching classes and then hiring these people. Today, there are over 90 employers who hire out of new freedom some of them exclusively hire from new freedom because they they're the best employees i've ever had i mean the average that's a major piece of this that that is the one thing that on the drug addiction side in particular we fail uh because it is a very specialized thing to be able to provide, which is A, vocational rehab,
Starting point is 00:51:48 and then B, jobs. That is a major, major milestone that you were able to do that. I wonder, do you do other things besides construction or the other sort of vocational opportunities you provide? There are about 15 different vocational tracks, commercial driver's license.
Starting point is 00:52:08 We offer peer support certification so they can go out and work in other behavioral health facilities. We have a commercial kitchen, so we're training people how to work in restaurants and do food service. But the overwhelming majority are in the trades. I mean, it's a natural fit. Talk to any general contractor or subcontractor. Finding people who want to work in construction is incredibly challenging.
Starting point is 00:52:33 And the men and women coming out of prison love that work. They're not afraid to work hard. They roll up their sleeves. Again, you hear all the time, they're some of the best employees that our employer partners are hiring. You mentioned women. time. They're some of the best employees that our employer partners are hiring. You mentioned women. Is this both sexes in your program? That's correct. We started with our first facility was men and women. And about three months ago, we opened our women's only facility. So we have two facilities in
Starting point is 00:52:59 Phoenix. We're serving just over 400 people total. So we're really proud of our success. Yeah, I'm just thinking about some of the programs I've seen around the country. And Texas, you would find, would be very welcoming to this kind of thing. Also, the other thing that happens, I imagine this happens at Phoenix as well, is the community wants to support it. So there's a funding source there sort of to just be a part of it. The community wants to contribute. Well, you're right. And I told you when we first started, you know, the coronavirus affected, we went through our special use permit process without a person
Starting point is 00:53:35 showing up. Well, a few months later, the neighborhood group found out about us and they came with the proverbial, you know, pitchforks and torches. But once they came inside and saw what we were doing, the neighborhood group is now our biggest supporter. They love us. They support us in every way. So it's just been magical to watch what happens. When you help people get better, the American people at large, they want that. I mean, when you hear these stories of friends. These are the kinds of things that we have to,
Starting point is 00:54:06 we can wish for just to solve some of our problems. We just, you know, again, we support a program in our community that's a therapeutic living environment for essentially kids that are pulled out of the home because of abuse and trauma and all this stuff. And I just always think to myself, God, if we could have a hundred more of these
Starting point is 00:54:25 just around the country. And you're providing the same challenge here. Let's figure out how to do this elsewhere. Now, one of the things that Fred mentioned was this sort of enrollment process. How do you select people for enrollment? So we've got a team of people that does nothing but write letters to incarcerated people in Arizona prisons. In fact, we write over 7,000 letters a month.
Starting point is 00:54:52 And so what happens is we build a relationship with people inside prisons. And when they say, hey, I'm done with this life, but maybe I don't know how to be done with this life, our mentors say, great. That's exactly what we're here to do is help you do that. So the first thing we do is we send them six courses, there's a six course curriculum, that is basically homework. They do the homework in prison, they send it back to us. And for the last six to 12 months of their incarceration, we require that they don't get into trouble. So no gang activity, no drugs, no fighting.
Starting point is 00:55:28 And those two things are the cost of admission to new freedom. And if those two things can get completed, then they can fill out an application to be accepted at new freedom. Okay, that's interesting because that explains why you haven't had the need for some of these more higher-level clinical services because you've selected people that can participate, that can stop taking drugs, can do these things. Yeah, that's good. I mean, that's... This program is not for everyone, right?
Starting point is 00:55:59 You need to fit a specific criteria. You can't be currently addicted. You know, you can't, we don't take this MI. There's a few parameters. And again, we're helping about 15% of the people that are coming out of Arizona prisons today.
Starting point is 00:56:16 And Fred, what is your hope for the program? Oh, by the way, before I say that too, but for both of you, I know how rewarding it is to help people with these kinds of disorders and this sorts of condition. Matt, it's probably not like anything you've ever done before, but I see how you're completely turned on by it. And you'll always have this.
Starting point is 00:56:36 You'll always be able to make a difference because of this project. And Fred, you too. I imagine this is sort of a surprise for you at this stage of your life. Yes, it is. It's a big surprise because I never figured I would be on the streets this long. You know, it's a nice deal that there's someone out there that cares about us enough to do what he did. And hopefully someone watching this will start something like this in another state and get it on the ball. Because it's a game changer.
Starting point is 00:57:05 If people want to change and they're given the opportunity to, I think most of us will change. My family's back in my corner. I've been with the same woman for 28 years and she said the most beautiful words to me she's ever, ever said was, you're a man of your word. Because I wasn't a man of my word for a lot of years. So I take care of it. It's very important.
Starting point is 00:57:28 Honesty, trust, gratitude. Fred, is there a spiritual component to this? Sometimes people find great satisfaction or importance of some sort of spiritual something. You know, I'm really not going to bullshit. I'm not a big believer in
Starting point is 00:57:43 any of that crap. You're going to change if you want to change. You don't need it. That's informative to me. Yeah, it's fine. Matt, do you find that people need it? I don't do any. I don't do AA.
Starting point is 00:57:56 I decided I wanted to change, and this is what I did. I go to work every day. I go home. I go to the gym. I'm building a motorcycle. And I do whatever my girl needs me to do. That's, I guess that'd be my spiritual deal, if that's what you want to call it.
Starting point is 00:58:10 Well, that is, Fred, that actually is. Service, service, accountability, all these things has a spiritual component to it. But Matt, what do you say? Yeah, so there are a lot of options at New Freedom. It's not compulsory. There are some faith-based options. You know, there's a lot of options at New Freedom. It's not compulsory. There are some faith-based options. You know, there's a lot of different paths.
Starting point is 00:58:28 Fred's a great example. Not everyone chooses the path of faith. A lot of people do. But really, and Fred's right. You know, the people that come to New Freedom, they want to change. You know, one interesting thing I want to tell you, Dr. Drew, is the thing that I've come to realize, especially as a business owner, the skill set that it takes to be a successful criminal in the criminal world is almost identical to what it takes to be successful in the business world. The main difference is the stakes are so much higher. Someone like Fred, who was a leader in the criminal world, if he doesn't do his job right, his life might be at risk.
Starting point is 00:59:07 In the business world, if you don't do your job right, you lose a client, maybe some people quit. So what we're doing is we're taking those skills all these men and women already have and repurposing them for good and success in the business world. Gentlemen, I appreciate you being here. Fred, congratulations on your work. Thank you. Matt, congratulations on this organization. I hope to shake your hand in person and see the facility. Thank you so much. All right, gentlemen, thank you so much. And for everyone else, Caleb,
Starting point is 00:59:41 let's throw up the schedule going forward. It's a little, it's, it's, I'm not sure it's filled in yet, but we got a lot of stuff coming our way, just sort of getting everything put together. I've got some travel coming up too. Jeff Dye finally is going to get here, Salty Cracker. We're going to have Peter McCullough back in. Tom Wren's coming in, first of the year.
Starting point is 00:59:58 He's got some updated materials for us. Just a dumb old guy from, you know, what does he call himself? A simple country lawyer. Just a simple lawyer fighting the government in a billion dollar lawsuit.
Starting point is 01:00:14 Like every simple lawyer does. A billion dollar lawsuit. Tom, you can't fool me with that crap anymore, my friend. But in any event, always interested to hear what he's digging up, what he's coming up with. And as I think we all know, I was just listening to Mark Andreessen
Starting point is 01:00:29 from an interview he did about three weeks ago about just stuff is just coming up now. There's more and more. All the things we have had the great privilege of sort of touching on this program over the last couple of years in terms of talking to people who were canceled, who had seen things, who had ideas, who had brought stuff up. Lo and behold,
Starting point is 01:00:45 they're all coming to bear fruit. It's all turning out to be, for the most part, accurate. We have the justice in the sense that now RFK Jr. is in Washington, which is what I was hoping for all along. HHS,
Starting point is 01:01:02 Jay Bhattacharya at the NIH, which is this great gift. I almost couldn't imagine this happening, but here we are. Now let's see what these guys can do with it in 2025. I'm going to reach my hand out to Oz and Kennedy and Jay and just see
Starting point is 01:01:18 if there's anything I can do to help. We appreciate you all being here this year in 2024. Let me quickly look at, yes, the real man, the salty crackers coming back. So look forward to that. It's towards the end of the month. On the restream, yep, people are happy with the McCullough following up and seeing us again. And there's a lot more coming, trust me.
Starting point is 01:01:38 Emily has some great, interesting guests that are, some of them are top secret. I want to tell you about you, but you will enjoy no doubt. And of course we'll be revisited by some of our friends like Jimmy door and Dave Rubin and people that have supported us throughout the year. Susan, anything in the upcoming new year for, from your standpoint, what you want to say to people?
Starting point is 01:02:02 Happy new year. Happy new year. Appreciate you being here, Caleb. Thank you for all you do. Emily, New Year. Happy New Year. Appreciate you being here. Caleb, thank you for all you do. Emily, thank you for all you do. Susan, for you and for all you've done and for being who you are. I appreciate it very, very much.
Starting point is 01:02:15 And Caleb, thank you for thinking of this thing. I'm doing gratitude lists every day. And you and Susan came up with the idea of doing this show and it's been a great experience all the way along. So let's keep it going and build to the next level with this. Everybody's happy when Drew's happy. Well, it's,
Starting point is 01:02:33 it really turned out to be a really interesting, it's just a surprise that, you know, I was sending some gratitude to the, your mom's house people yesterday. I think it was, I've seen, it really was a surprise and a gift
Starting point is 01:02:46 that we ended up working with you guys and then it ended and so fine, but it was still this great gift. And I feel very much the same way about this, which has taken over. And I would argue, I don't want to use pejorative language about what I did at Your Mom's House,
Starting point is 01:03:03 but I feel like this is a more important project we're doing here. And we're going to keep to treating it asative language about what I did at your mom's house, but I feel like this is a more important project we're doing here. And we're going to keep to treating it as such. One time I was telling Tom, you know, well, we're doing this kind of, you know, boring stuff, you know, over here. And he goes, it's important. Oh, he's seen it. That's good. I appreciate that.
Starting point is 01:03:19 You got to do it. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it is important. And it has proven itself to be important. Like I said, this idea, we became free speech advocates, particularly this year. The word
Starting point is 01:03:33 platforming was leveled at me for the last three years. That is a disgusting term. Let's just call it speaking in public together as we should always do. And you all, you arrive at your own conclusions. I give it to you to should always do. And you all, you arrive at your own conclusions. I give it to you to arrive at stuff.
Starting point is 01:03:49 And by the way, please do give us feedback. Let us know where we fail. Let us know who you'd like to see going forward. If there's other guests that you might like to see in here. We're going to be going back around and seeing some of our old favorites too. Let me just quickly look at you guys
Starting point is 01:04:04 on the restream uh hold on let's see sorry you guys i just want to just look at this anything um a lot of interesting stuff in here in the restream today. Susan, did you catch anything on the rant? I'd just like to remind everyone that QR codes are again not the mark of the beast. It's just a fancy barcode that your phone can read. They've been around
Starting point is 01:04:38 for a long time. That is not the mark of the beast. You don't need to worry about it. Please. So let me leave you with this thought for the new year. We'll be back with Tom Renz on the second, right after the new year, which is
Starting point is 01:04:53 don't do, don't become, don't do what they did to us. The excesses of COVID should be an absolute reminder at all times of what excess and ideology and hubris and sort of totalitarian impulses and centralization does to us. that maybe aren't supported by the facts, which I welcome that, that's fine, but don't impose them on other people
Starting point is 01:05:31 any more than we should have been imposed vaccine mandates and lockdowns and all the things that were imposed upon us. So try to develop some irrational uncertainty in all things. Certitude is irrational. We've been through this massive wave of irrational certitude.
Starting point is 01:05:50 It's collapsing, thank God. Rational uncertainty should prevail. We should all have a certain amount of hubris, excuse me, of lack of hubris and humility instead that gives us, and you by all means share ideas with other people, but don't insist upon them. Caleb, am I getting somewhere with that?
Starting point is 01:06:10 Does that make sense to you? I was thinking about the QR thing in that context. Yes. Yeah, and we don't want to be like the rest. Things were foisted on us that we got to the point where we were having to defend free speech. Think about that. This is an unbelievable moment,
Starting point is 01:06:28 a wind that blew in the history of this country that must be fought against at all times. And we must not be the way that those that did that unto us were. We must develop much more humility. And Joe Fink says, there must be brutal justice. Well, that's a different topic. I understand you may want some justice
Starting point is 01:06:54 and we can mill through that process given the excesses of what happened and how people were hurt. I get it. People were hurt and they'd like some justice on that. But that still is different than imposing our will. And I don't know. Let's just keep our equanimitas in place.
Starting point is 01:07:12 Thank you, everybody, again. Happy New Year. And we will see you on the second. Ask Dr. Drew is produced by Caleb Nation and Susan Pinsky. As a reminder, the discussions here are not a substitute for medical care, diagnosis, or treatment. This show is intended for educational and informational purposes only. I am a licensed physician, but I am not a replacement for your personal doctor, and I am not practicing medicine here. Always remember that our understanding of medicine and science is constantly evolving.
Starting point is 01:07:39 Though my opinion is based on the information that is available to me today, Some of the contents of this show could be outdated in the future. Be sure to check with trusted resources in case any of the information has been updated since this was published. If you or someone you know is in immediate danger, don't call me. Call 911. If you're feeling hopeless or suicidal, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255. You can find more of my recommended organizations and helpful resources at drdrew.com slash help.

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