Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Episode 170 - Wil Willis

Episode Date: March 1, 2021

Wil Willis is a former Army Ranger and Pararescueman as well as a tv show host of military shows such as Special Ops Mission, and Triggers: Weapons That Changed the World. Most recently, he was the host of the History channel program Forged In Fire for seven seasons. Willis was born into a military family and raised on a military base until his father's retirement in 1991. Willis enlisted in the United States Army after he graduated from high school in 1993, serving with the Army's 3rd Ranger Battalion on active duty from October 1993 until February 1998, then in active duty as an Air Force Pararescueman from June 1998 until March 2007. Better Help Helix Sleep

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better H-E-L-P as in Papa and join the over one million people taking charge of their mental health with the help of an experienced professional counselor. Special offer for the listeners of the podcast, 10% off your first month at betterhelp.com slash cleared hot. My guest today is Willis. You might recognize that name and the face if you watch the podcast on YouTube from his work on television, perhaps America's greatest rifle or special ops mission, or most recently as the host of Forged in Fire. But let me tell you right now, there's a hell of a lot more to Will than just that. Prior to even getting into the entertainment industry, he served in the military, first as an Army Ranger, and then he transitioned to become an Air Force PJ or Pararescue

Jumper. He's actually the only person that I know of that has made that transition from Ranger to the Air Force, and he explains why in the episode, so I will not attempt to speak for him. But all I can say is I was really looking forward to meeting and sitting down with Will, and he exceeded all of my expectations. He is an awesome individual, fascinating background, and experience. And with that, I will shut up and let you enjoy episode number 170 with Willis. Oh, that could be the best start of the podcast ever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Only one time, just to know.

Yeah. Just to know. That is true. How are you going to know unless? It's like a brussel sprout. Think about it. You just suck on it a little bit. If you really like it, nibble it with your teeth, and then swallow it. Why would you suck on a brussel sprout? My dad used to boil the shit out of a man, and I hated them. I would cheek them and spit them out. I could buy that.

So I'd suck all the juice out, cheek the brussel sprout, like the actual roughage. and then I would spit it out when I left the dinner table. They were terrible. I used to hide spaghetti on the support beams underneath our table. That's awesome. Yeah. Well, until the dogs got onto it. And then my parents were wondering why the dogs wouldn't leave the table alone.

Then they got under the table. And then my career and crime came to an end at a young age. My brother had a Spanish rice incident where he took a Spanish rice errone. He literally put it on the floor thinking the dog would eat it. The dog didn't reject it. There are five of us, but only one person you could blame. That's where you were sitting. And my stepmother served it to him for breakfast.

It was disgusting. In the modern day, I think there might be legal ramifications for doing that. But I can, as a parent, support that 100%. You know, I can agree with the illusion that that's what you're going to get for breakfast, but they actually physically shove it down the kids' freaking throat. That's where I think the legal ramifications might come in. Wow. I'm jealous of your hair.

It's well out of regs. You know, I haven't gotten a hair cut in a year. Not in a year. I haven't gotten a haircut in a year. You know, been quarantined. I'm tempted to go back down that path too. I had almost four years when I was in where we were on relaxed standards. And it was amazing. Well below the shoulder blades flowing. I couldn't grow a beard to save my life. I could go undercover in an Amish community or like impersonate Abe Lincoln. But that's about it when it comes to a beard. But that hair, I miss it. You know, some, you're surprised at how much how much hatred you can get. you know, having long hair, man. It's like the bald community comes out against you. Like, there's always somebody, like, that bald's versus the freakie, the hair guys. And they're like, get a haircut, hippie. And I'm like, no, I'm not going to do that. I miss it, but I started doing jujitsu a couple years ago.

And it's not awesome for that. Yeah, yeah. It gets in the way. It collects sweat. And oftentimes people will use it as, like, a door handle. Yeah, yeah. That's where cornrows come into play. I'll cornrow my hair.

I don't care, man. Good God. Here's a... I was working for a guy in Navy SEAL who thought he was going to use my hair as a handhold when we were tussling in the yard one day. And I got strong roots, baby. Like, you can grab onto it all day.

I don't care. If you're grabbing here, it means you're opened up someplace else. And he felt that. Yeah. I mean, if he's got both hands on your hair, at least you know where they are. Yeah, well, that means I'm going to fucking punch him in the nuts.

So you just came from South Carolina, you said, right? Yeah, I got invited to the Sorinix Winterstrong event. I love Bert, by the way. He and I have crossed past many times, a couple times at Shot Show, a couple of times through my buddy, John Welwyn, through the strength and conditioning world. He's awesome.

Dude, he's one of the most uplifting individuals I've ever had the pleasure of listening to speak. You know, he really talks a lot about community, about working together to achieve common goals, you know, to help other people with their goals. And, you know, I didn't know if I, if I, because I didn't know what it's getting into. I got invited by way of Neil Camer Murrah, who was invited by way of Jason Knight or, you know, the knife making community, Bird had invited them.

And it really is kind of like, it's all about who you know, you know what I mean? And Burke called me up and he asked me if I'd like to come out after talking to Neil. And I said, sure. I was like, I'd love to come out and check it out. But I think the week leading up to it, I hadn't really gone out. and socialized with anybody. I have an end of the driveway policy. If it's not important, I'm not leaving the end of the driveway.

Is this a new policy? No. Well, since Flash was born, you know, back last March, it seemed like Flash was born, COVID hit. The timing, you know, was amazing because I've been able to spend every day, every day up until this weekend at home with my son and my wife, you know, working on our personal projects. And what a different experience.

compared to my older two kids and the way the things were back then. I can't say I've ever been able to do that. My kids are older now too. And like we're talking about in the car, you know, divorce and custody limits the amount of time you can have. And honestly, at 17, 15, and 12, let's just say the time with their dad may not be the apex of their priority list given the social circle. Oh, yeah, yeah. I'm envious. That's awesome that you were able to be there.

Yeah, yeah. And, you know, it's a blessing and a curse. I mean, certain things have to occur for me to have that kind of time of bail on the lesbian. But, you know, mostly I just focus on the blessing part of it, you know, just, and if you don't learn to do that, I think, especially as a veteran, you can kind of, you know, go into some dark places. But back to the Bert Soren thing. Yes, I have many questions, because I've never been. How long has he been doing it for, do you know? I think just a couple of years, you know.

He does a Summer Strong event. It's a little bit bigger and there's a lot more attendance. But this was a really small event, a good mix of veterans, athletes, different personalities. I met some guys that were just straight construction guys out of Colorado, just really good individuals. And, you know, you get kind of put into this environment where you just meet and talk to people who are kind of like-minded individuals. You know what I mean? They're all about the outdoors. They're all about, you know, fitness and doing things.

And, you know, just kind of this energy gets generated. and you don't know what it is, but it feels good. And I remember telling Bert, like the first morning that I woke up, I walked down to his pond and there's an alligator in the pond. And I'm like, is that a real alligator? I am in South Carolina, and they have alligators. And I'm like, is Bert the kind of guy that would buy an alligator and put it in his pond? Yes, he is.

And then I realized it was just a target. My eyesight isn't what it used to be. And then first thing in the morning, there's guys down there shooting. arrows at this target, you know, trying to see you can hit closest to the dot. And I haven't been in that kind of competitive environment in a long, long time. And I was like, well, that's cool, man. Reignited the fire. Yeah, yeah. And I wasn't going to do any of the competition stuff. I was like, ah, I'm going to stay away from that stuff. You know, I'm 40-something years. I'll leave that for the young guys. And then when it came time to compete, I found myself kind of like, I want to play.

And the way that they did it was straight up grade school. Like, I was down to like the last four to be picked. What kind of? competition where they do it you know it was it was a little bit of a run uh run lift shoot competition is what i would call it run lift shoot um a little bit of a run you had different stations where you have to do uh lifts with kettlebells and and stuff like that and i was a personal trainer at equinox uh for a while so i got good fundamentals yeah and uh but like it seemed like the young guys like i'm gonna do all 30 of these reps i'm gonna do all 50 of these squads with them i'm sitting there i'm like okay i'm old enough to let you yeah and then uh i felt pretty useless in to

we started shooting. And then I was like, okay, give me that pistol. Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. And they're like, oh, yeah, that's right. You're a PJ. A little bit of experience. And a ranger before that. Yeah, yeah. Which, I'm going to be honest, I have many questions. I don't know of anyone who started off as a ranger and then went over to the PJs side of the house. There's a lot of guys and guys with a lot more combat credibility than me. I think there's a guy, Webster. We call them Webb. I think his first name was Josh and he went on to work for a Rubicon Team Rubicon, I think. And, you know, there were a few guys that came through

when I was an instructor, you know, who were from the Ranger Battalion, but I didn't care then. I just like, I don't care where he came from. PJs now. What I will say is that in my mind now, looking back, combat to me gives nobody credibility. I know some absolute fucktards

who have a lot of combat and no credibility. Yeah. Because they're a complete and utter piece of shit as a human being behind the uniform. And it was a shrewdarder. shift in mindset that I had posts getting out or towards the tail into my career. I used to look, you know, you'd see guys in uniform, just a quick glance over the left breast pocket to see,

check the old rack and stack. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Where have you been? What have you done at a wavtop level? And then realized that none of that matters. You can really perform well in combat and not perform well as a human being. I got my first exposure to that in the Ranger battalion. I was a, there was a guy and I'm not going to say his name. He doesn't, I mean, he's He's doing his time or has done his time. But there was a guy there that was in combat, was generally considered to have been a hero in Mogadishu. I got there right after,

and he did some stuff that I'm not going to get into. And I went to Ranger School with this guy, and that's where I learned. That's where I learned. Like, this motherfucker's a piece of shit. I don't care what combat he went through. And you know the worst part about it? Dude, he had his wife smuggle him cookies

up to the mountains when he was in the gulag. I mean, that's acceptable. Hold on, so far, everything so far is fine. Yeah, the Ranger School sends him home and then somehow he got sent right back to the same phase and he got rolled in with me and I was coming out of the desert at the time. And then he got put with our platoon.

And I remember, like he, there was a point, I think in our final ruck march where he just refused to carry something. And I believe it was his saw. And I ended up carrying his saw down the mountain. Which is fine. Those aren't light people, by the way. He's not talking a bandsaw or like a wood saw.

The M249 squad automatic weapon is what I'm talking about air cool, belt-fed, gas operator, fully automatic machine gun and fired from the open-bowl position at a rate of about 600 rounds per minute on cycling. You obviously paid much more attention than I did at that class because I know how to use it, but I could not have rattled. Well, I mean, here's the thing. Anything that is belt-fed, like your M-249, your M-60, your 240 golf, which is what we, we, we ended up cracking the, crack in the battalion when we replaced the 60. It's all the same description. The only thing that really changes are the rates of fire

and maybe some of the components. Like we didn't have hand guards on our 240s. They don't get hot. You don't even. No, no, no, no, not at all. I think the M60 for me has the most beautiful cyclic rate of fire. Yeah, man. Just a touch slower.

Just dat, dat, dat. That's so... It's so... Awesome. You know what I mean? It's like shooting a B-A-R. Yes. When you shoot a BAR, that rate of fire is like, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop.

And, like, you can really follow through on your shots rather than being freaking shaking up, you know what I mean? Like, sometimes you grab those weapons with a higher rate of fire and it's like hanging on to a vibrator. It's true. I mean, don't get me wrong. I put a few rounds over the horizon with those things. A little bit of creep. Yeah. But I remember doing immediate action drills, you know, down man drills.

I used to love it when the 60 guy would go down. I'd like rush over there. Yeah. People were thinking I was coming to save him. I'm like, no. Take that sling off your shoulder. I want to shoot your gun. Well, let's talk a little bit about what an immediate action drill is.

I mean, what is that? Well, I mean, I'm assuming that your background would describe it the same. We're talking, well, this can be done vehicle or foot, but I'm talking dismounted. So we're usually in an element of six to 12 or 16 cut into two elements. Contact from the enemy. Obviously, the first rule of the firefight is to win the firefight. Second rule should be maneuver. So that is the immediate action drill.

immediate action shooting back and then it's, you know, at a simplest level, fire and maneuver. So one element's going to shoot, the other element's going to maneuver. Generally, linear. You can go oblique if you want to, but I mean, that's what it is. You know what? Same. It's the same thing. No matter how you look at tactics, whether it's Marine Corps, Army, Navy, Air Force, the tactics

are the same. The only thing that really changes are some of the weapon systems and some of the communication. Yeah, the terms. Yeah, the terminology. And that's where things can get confusing. but specifically, you know, you talk about the 60 going down. That's the most casualty-producing weapon on your team. So, of course, the first thing you do is go over there and pick it up and put it back in the fight.

How do you do that? How are you able to do that? Because you cross-trained, you know what I mean? It's always the sharing of information, you know, the forced sharing of information. Like, you have to learn this right now because it's important. Yeah. They would send, so we would go out to the desert. There's a desert training facility, Camp Billy Macon, out in the middle of nowhere,

near the Chocolate Mountains in Cali. Okay, never heard of those. Yeah, it's beautiful and, I mean, 300-degree range, field of fire. I mean, pretty much just don't shoot at the camp and you're going to be okay. Yeah, nice. And so they would send the 60 gunners for, God, it must have been a week and all they would do. I mean, they were stuff feeding. They were, you know, running out of, you know, because it comes for 60s, it would come traditionally

in 100 rounds of belt fed. And they would, you know, work on timing it and only leaving like a little bit of excess brass, snapping it in there, dropping boxes in. I mean, fixing malfunctions with screwdrivers, changing out the barrels. Yeah. Well, it's a crew-served weapon. You know what I mean? In some services.

In some services. In the Army, it was definitely a crew-served weapon. Usually two guys manning that thing. But in the teams, it's a... Yeah. You're all in your onesie. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So they would do that, though, and then we were off doing, when I first got in, guys were still shooting M4 teams, which that's a great rifle too.

Oh, yeah. But, you know, M4s, ARs, the carbine type stuff. And then we would all come back together and the 60 guys would teach us the stuff they had just learned. We would teach them. And then cross-trained for a couple of days. And then the instructor cadre, just during those drills, constantly guys going up and down, forcing us to understand that weapon system. And so now as a combatant, you know, that's when you start to realize that. It's not just knowing one weapon.

You have to know all these weapons. You have to know schemes of maneuver. You have to know command and signal. You've got to know how to communicate on the battlefield. Being a warrior isn't just about the fight. You know what I mean? It's about being able to maneuver and think and react in that fight. You know what I mean?

And being able to – I'm big on weapons. You know what I mean? Being able to pick up any weapon and put it in the action. I don't got to know every little detail about that weapon. All I have to know is the fundamentals of that system. If you've got a belt-fed weapon, I'm going to figure it out. You know what I'm saying? I need to introduce you to a man named Brian Shantosh.

Okay. He's a Marine Corps officer, Navy Cross recipient, for essentially taking the enemy's weapons and killing them with them. In the early days of Iraq, and I'm probably butchering the citation horribly, but I think I'm going to get the gross parts of it correct. In a Humvee ambush, he had his Humvee driver go directly at a trench line, basically crash the Humvee into a trench line. Yeah, because that's what you do.

He exited the vehicle and personally cleared about 400 meters of trench, I believe, killing people all along the way with like AKs. I believe he just picked up an RPG7, sent that bad boy downrange, because he was Winchester on his own rounds. Exactly, exactly. And that's what being an effective combatant is all about, not just being an expert with your weapon system, but also being able to just grab another weapon system and be an expert with that.

you've been trained how to engage. You know what the, I hate to tell people this sometimes because it seems to ruin their idea of what an Army Ranger and Air Force Pararescuemen or any of our combatants, you know, the idea of them. But your job as a combatant is to kill quickly and efficiently in those combat situations. You know what I mean? And you want to do it fast. You're not going to draw it out.

There's not going to be a lot of dick dancing around. You know what I mean? You're on your trigger. You put the targets down as quickly as possible and you nullify the threat as quickly as possible. There seems to be this theory, and that's true for knife fighting as well. You want to know what a real fencer or a real knife sword fighter looks like. Watch guys fence in the Olympics. It's about precision, it's about speed, it's about ending it as quickly as fucking possible. That guy's a sword fighter. The shit you see on Robin Hood, that's not sword fighting. That's tippy tap, it's a

dance. It's a literal choreographed dance. Nobody's doing that stuff. You know what I'm saying? It's about engage maneuver, engage maneuver. And you know this. Yeah, I would describe my job as trying to be a jack of all trades, a gross understanding of almost everything that we might be able to encounter. Yep. And a mastery, if I'm being totally honest, of none of it. Yeah. But an operational capacity across the broadest spectrum. Udo Fisher was an old PJ and he drew a picture of a guy, you know, and it's 1950s style.

It's a PJ. He's wearing his beret and he's got a parachute on. And then there's a med kit underneath the parachute. then there's a snowshoe sticking out over here. There's a ski over here. There's scuba fins on his feet. He's got a cramp on on another foot. You know what I mean?

There's ice climbing gear and all of this stuff. Radio antenna sticking up like all that stuff. I mean, think about it. If you're an expert in search and rescue and recovery, who's also scuba qualified, it's recovery anywhere, anytime, any place, using whatever means you need to get there. That's why you're, you know,

that's why you get your military free fall calls. That's why you got your static line qualls. That's why you get your scuba quals. If you need to recover something that's the bottom of the freaking lake, sea, ocean, whatever, then you can recover that. And it's not just personnel. It's you're a recovery specialist. Anything that they need recovered, you should be able to recover it.

Agreed. You know, motorcycles, quads, you know, all that stuff, jet skis. It all came along with it. That was the fun stuff. You know what I mean? But at the end of that, you got to be able to do your job, you know. Yeah, the tool you have access to is only as important or useful as the individual actually managing it. Right.

So it's really, when you talk about Jack of All Trades, what I call it. Jote. I put jote. I think I even have it on my Instagram as a joke. I like that actually. Yeah. You know, that's that's what we were. It was is a par rescue. Jack of all trades. It's right there on the poster. And I do feel like it's a like it's a gift and a curse at the same time. What led you to that path? My dad was in the military. He was an Air Force guy. I grew up on an Air Force base and I lived next door to SR 71 mechanic. And I thought I wanted to be a pilot because the SR-71s were flying over all the time. I thought that was the most badass. I was going to say, they're badass. It's like a sky dagger. You know what I mean? Like, it just

looked freaking awesome. I wanted to freaking go so fast. It peeled my skin off. How loud were those things? They weren't. They weren't. Really? I mean, you could hear them at night and you could see the purple afterburners in the sky and you're like SR 71 and you felt really special because you knew it wasn't something that was happening everywhere. It was a big time. It's a spy plane. You know, and we had the U-2s on the base two, spy plane. So at Beale Air Force Base in California, I think as a kid, I felt like I was like the son of like spies. You know what I mean? Like this is what our parents did.

We spy on other countries, you know, and we collect information. But my dad was just, he was a comm squadron guy. He was a first sergeant. But the neighbor's dad was a green beret. And I started hearing some of these green beret stories while my dad and this guy shot the shit back and forth across the common carport because we live in a duplex, right? And I was like, well, that just sounds awesome. That sounds like Rambo shit, because I was a kid in the 80s. Rambo, Commando, freaking diehard, all that stuff.

You know, one guy versus the world. You know, I was like, man, I want to, that sounds like Rambo shit. Like, that's legit. Rambo was a green beret. Maybe I could be a green beret. So I talked to my neighbor about it. And he said, don't be an idiot. Go in the Air Force.

He said, go in the Air Force. They have special forces. It's called Pararescue. You'll get a medical background. You get to do all the same shit that Special Forces does, but you'll get all the Air Force stuff. I'm like, well, that sounds like a wonderful thing. And I like the idea of being a paramedic, you know,

or getting into trauma medicine because my granny was a nurse. And then I took my ASVabs for the Air Force in high school as a junior, and then the recruiter changed. And then the next recruiter was like, you can't just be a PJ. If the Air Force needs cooks, you've got to be a cook. And I said, I'm not slinging chow for anybody. It's not my jam.

It's not my thing. There are a lot of people that are into it, man. My roommate's brother, when I was in Virginia Beach, he started slinging chow and became a chef and his cook for presidents. You know what I mean? There is a career progression there. It just wasn't my progression. So I left, and I was like, ah, screw it.

I'm not going to do it. About a year later, I'm air hammering cement out of the back of cement mixers on my job at the Rock Yard, which my friends thought was hilarious because I'm dumb as a post. He used to call me a rock. You're a rock. And so I was at the rock yard in Uba City, California, and it's like 106 degrees outside. I'm in the back of this thing all day.

No ear pro, just like air hammering this shit. No ear pro. Well. Controversial move. Let's just say that when you're 18, it was provided but not used. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. So I crawl out of the back of this thing.

I'm super pissed off, hot and sweaty, and I drive directly to the Army recruiter. office. This is a, this is, I'm not, I'm not going to tell you anything that's not true. I drive directly to the Army recruiter's office and I walk in and I'm covered and just dust and like it's streaked from sweat and just ass. And the guy's like, what high school did you go to? I said, went to U.S. City High School and he said, your recruiters back there and he's the head of the recruiting station. And this guy's on the phone and I had the audacity to just walk into his office and sit down. And I swear when I sat, a little cloud of dust. And the guy looks at me

And he goes, hey man, I'm going to have to call you back. I got somebody I could deal with. And he hangs up the phone and he said, what can I do for you? And I said, I want to jump. I didn't say I want to jump at a plane. I said, I want to shoot people in the face and blow shit up.

That's all I said. I'm going to shoot people in face and blow shit up. He's like, have I got the job for you? He didn't hesitate, man. This guy was there. A recruiter's wet dream. Oh, man, dude. Oh, yeah.

He showed me, he took me into a little room, popped in a V8. of Rangers and one of the guys actually turned out to be my platoon sergeant later on but uh showed me a video of these Rangers going down a river like you know freaking all the cam all the shit that we never did in the Ranger Battalion I never got on the Zodiac and paddle down a river in the Ranger Battalion it never happened that's a good thing you missed out on nothing I did that a lot and you missed out on nothing yeah well I got it as a PJ yeah but but uh but uh and you know they show me all the shit blowing up and guys shooting guns

I said, that's it. Let's do that. And he said, when do you want to leave? I said, well, get me out of here as fast as possible. And so we started the paperwork, and he said, when's the last time that he said, have you ever smoked weed? He done any illicit drugs? And I was like, absolutely.

He goes, well, what drugs? I said weed, because, you know, alcohol, of course, because it was the 80s, you know, can you drink a beer with your dad? And it was fucking normal. Nobody gave a shit. It's your dad. So I had smoked weed.

and hash like one time. Which is a derivative of the weed, I believe. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I didn't know what the hell it was, and it was not a good experience. But, you know, he was like, okay, shouldn't be a problem, you know, whatever. When was the last time?

I said, yesterday. Well, he had me going to MEPs on Friday. Oh, shit. Yeah, yeah. So this is like a Monday, and he showed up at my work every day with like a gallon of water and would make me drink a gallon of water,

and he'd tell me to keep drinking water, keep doing this, and I went to Meps on my, dad's birthday and we were supposed to go fishing but I went to MEPs instead in Oakland I passed the urinalysis and and I enlisted in the army with an RGV4 infantry contract and when I was there at the Meps I was like I want to be a medic because that PJ thing was in my head I was like I want to be a medic you know can I be can I be a medic and there ain't no such thing as a ranger

medic either you want to shoot people in the face or you want to be a medic which is it gonna be so I picked shoot people in the face because I was an angry young dude, you know, who just wanted to get out of his town. And, you know, I was gone in three months. In three months, I was on an airplane. I went home that night. My dad was pissed. He was like, we're supposed to go fishing today.

And I said, well, you know, happy birthday. You got rid of me. I joined the Army. What did he think about that? He said, go to your room. How were you at this time? I was 18 years old. I was 18 years old.

And, hey, man, I was, you know, I had a job. I had my own car, you know. I could have been living on my own. You were adulting. Yeah, and he was like, go to your room. And I went to my room, you know, because he's my dad. My dad's a very, I was, I love my father, but he was an individual you did not argue with. Yep.

And so I went to my room, and I'm sitting there. I'm like, what the fuck? I thought he'd be happy to join the military. And about half an hour later, he comes over, and he's got his Coors light, you know what I mean? And he's like, all right, all right. you went into the army, I know you can pick your job. What job did you pick? I said, I'm going to be an airborne ranger.

He said, you're the stupidest son of a bitch alive. And he walks away. And he's pissed. He's angry. And then he comes back. He goes, I don't understand how you can throw yourself out a perfectly good airplane. I was in the Air Force for 26 years. And I can count on one hand the number of times I got onto a military aircraft.

I'm like, on one hand pop, like, come on, man. And he's like, on one hand! And, I mean, he let it go. And I think ultimately he was really proud of me. He was just really worried about me. Which is a natural parental instinct. Well, I got a taste of that when my son joined the Marine Corps or enlisted in the Marine Corps. Unfortunately, he broke his collarbone, which delayed his enlistment.

He was in the delayed enlistment program, broke his collarbone. He had a little conflict with his recruiter about his shipment date and recovering. And then he broke it again recently. Oh, shit. he's been on the men for a while. So I don't know what he's going to do, but I felt that pang of like, I told you not to join the Marine Corps.

You know what I mean? And not because the Marine Corps is bad or anything like that, just because I've been exposed to all of the services, even the Coast Guard. I've been exposed to all of it. And I told him, I'm like,

what do you want to get out of your military service? You know, after he told me. I took him to the warrior games. You know what I mean? I was like, here's the real deal, buddy. Yeah, there's a real aftermath. Yeah, this is the real deal. Look at the stands.

How many Americans do you see up there? How many Americans are supporting these veterans, you know, as they're running up and down the track? I support them. I'm a veteran. I'm one of them. To me, they're my brothers and sisters who got effed up in combat, and I wish I could have freaking done something more fun.

I mean, I feel pain for them. You know, it's that empathy. And then I was like, but how many other Americans do you see up in those stands right now? It's the warrior games. And he was like... Probably was a ghost town. Yeah, man, it's a ghost town. He's like maybe like 400.

I said, okay, we'll be generous. We'll call it a thousand. We'll call it a thousand. How many people show up for a football game where people are kneeling, you know, you know, for the national anthem? How many people show up for that? And he was like a lot.

I'm like 25,000, 50,000, you know, whatever. Depends on what the stadium will hold. I said, know what you're getting into. Because if you think you're going to go out and just be a hero to the fucking country by kicking in doors and shooting people in face. That's not what it is. You got to go because you understand what you're getting into.

It's like if you feel like you need to get it on, you feel like you got a fire burning in your belly and you need to go get it on and you're angry or you're passionate about what you're doing, by all means, go in the Marine Corps. Absolutely fucking, you want to go freaking be a savage. Be a savage. Go to the Ranger Battalion.

Be a savage. Take that, take that energy and have somebody help you temper it. You know what I mean? What did he want to do in the Marine? Or what does he want to do? He want to do straight infantry. Straight infantry.

And it's what I did. You know what I mean? And here's the thing. He's an angry guy. You know what I mean? He's got a lot. And he's fit. He's fit.

He's fit. He's capable. He's got a lot of a drive and determination. You know, he didn't do the best in high school. But like, I didn't either. It wasn't for me. Same. And but he doesn't know.

He's at a time in his life where he's looking for leadership and he doesn't have it. He's looking for mentorship, and he doesn't have it. And he thinks, you know, all of this anxiety that he has, you know, he's going to get it out by going and getting it on. Well, he'll get the leadership. He'll get the mentorship. And I caution people the same way. I've never tried to talk anybody out of military service. All I will ever try to say is be sure you know what you're getting into.

There's great benefits from stable economics, health care, education, lifelong stuff that can help you. But understand, the military will get there. pound of flesh first. Oh yeah. Absolutely. And you might end up in a place where, you know, just it's a profession of arms and never forget that. Exactly. And for me, I grew up in it. You know, I grew up in the military. You know, it's like being a Spartan baby. You know what I mean? When you grow up on a military base, everybody's geared towards combat. Everybody's geared towards national defense. I mean, everything, I don't care if you're a PAC clerk, you know, who's just filling out, you know, making sure that I or you,

the boots on the ground get paid. I mean, that's an important part of the entire process. You know what I'm saying? So you're part of that big machine, the big military machine, and I love it. I love that culture. The warrior spirit runs through every culture, you know what I mean? And there are people who are like us in every culture throughout the world. And I love that we live in a country that can kind of take those individuals like us who have that and shape us into capable leaders. it's just unfortunate that sometimes it's too big almost. You know what I mean? Things get overlooked.

I was going to ask, as I'm listening to you, describe that. What are your thoughts on how, because I agree with you, the military is able to do amazing things with young men and women and to be able to mold them and direct them in that purpose? How do you think they do if you had to give them a grade on their job when people are leaving the service to prepare them for the after? F, F minus, minus. And here's why.

In 2016, I was having a really hard time. I was hosting Forged and Fire. I had done a couple of TV shows prior. I was having some real identity things going on because now my job was becoming full-time entertainment industry. I didn't have time for my personal projects. I was having trouble finishing my college degree and, you know, kind of on the outs with the actress that I was dating at the time.

And, you know, he was in and out, up and down. and I also was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, which dates back to my childhood, you know, and is enlightening, you know what I mean? What is that? Borderline personality disorder is a disorder. It's an actual mental illness is what they call. It's a mental illness that develops in primarily females, interestingly enough, but I think it's overlooked in males a lot at this point.

And it's one of the, it basically is a, it comes from abandonment issues. My mother left when I was very young, four years old, and the woman that stepped in was not a good person to us. You know what I mean? And my father wasn't the type of person that hugged you a lot. Yeah. You know what I mean? I think that the guys who came up during the Vietnam era

and went through service during the Vietnam era, they're different kinds of dudes, you know what I mean? My father, among them, he was in the first squadron of patrol boats in Vietnam. Yeah. He's where I heard about Seals from because he was an insertion extraction platform for them. Yeah, they're not emotional. Nobody was talking about like some of the damage that was done. And my dad had, you know.

And they got treated like shit when they got back. Different than the modern era of being a veteran. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So my dad, he just wasn't that kind of a guy. So I had abandonment issues from a small time as a kid, but you know, these things coupled with, you know, abuse, like physical abuse. And then just the way that we came up, you know, really developed a problem. And I didn't recognize it because when I joined the military, all those things I want to do,

all the anger that I had, all the impulse control problems that I had. You know, I really became a junkie for like getting it on, like just doing shit. Just getting it on. Just like, let's be active all the time. Let's always be doing something. And when I wasn't doing something, I create something to get into. You know what I mean? It's something to keep, you know, my impulses just firing, firing, firing,

all the time and then drinking, you know, substance abuse is part of this as well, because now I've got something to blame my impulse problems on, you know. And you see people do it all the time. Oh, I was drunk, you know what I mean? Like I was the drunk. I was the guy that would facilitate madness. Now, nothing I ever did or facilitated resulted in any criminal charges or any kind of arrest. I got arrested one time but not charged.

I got handcuffed and taken home. And it was one of those things where... I've done that once. I think I was in handcuffs just as a precaution. And then I decided I was uncomfortable and wanted to sit down. So I pushed the handcuffs under my ass and was sitting on the trunk or on the bumper of the car. And the cop thought I was trying to slip the cuffs and skip my forehead off the asphalt. And so I was bleeding.

And then I think he felt bad after that. And he offered me a ride home, but still in handcuffs, mind you. And then by the time he got me home, I had slipped at least one leg out. And he was like, what are you doing? I was just drunk guy, you know what I mean? Just drunk nonsense, mayhem. And, you know, I struggled a lot. And my relationships were terrible, my interpersonal relationships, you know, borderline personality disorder.

They called the disease where, you know, the guy looks fine from far. But, you know, once you get involved with them, shit turns into a roller coaster ride. So really hyper-sensitive. I can, you know, my emotional mood swings were crazy, like hyper-reactive and angry about something than laughing my ass off another second. And really, I could move past anything that I was angry about.

Like, it didn't matter that. Oh, I wasn't that angry about that. So it flash, but then go away quickly. It flash and go away, and you go through manic episodes as well where, you know, it's almost like a disassociative thing where it's almost like you're outside of your body looking in it yourself,

and you can see yourself kind of just, like getting fired up. And I'm not saying that the things that I get fired up don't have merit, but I let them affect me so much more than a normal person would. You know what I mean? Like say, let's say somebody called me Yol-Qaeda. Yep. As a hypothetical.

As a hypothetical. Let's say somebody referred to me as a Yol-Qaeda M-Fer. Well, you're going to get a hypersensitive reaction. You know what I mean? And then in the aftermath, I always, you know, There's always this remorse. There's always this regret. There's always this idea that like, okay, I shouldn't have handled it like that.

And it's easy to go back and be like, yo, I'm sorry, man, you know, whatever. But that's that swing. That's that hyper elevation. And then afterwards, boom, right after, you know, it's the mood swing that people are like, okay, this guy's fucking crazy. Is there, so the diagnosis, is there a treatment that comes with that that has helped you? Dialect behavior therapy is the best, is the best treatment. and I don't go to a group or anything like that.

And really what it is is just talking about impulse control problems are my biggest thing. The compunction to like drive fast. You know, suicidal tendencies are part of this disorder as well. I thought everybody thought about suicide my whole life. I started thinking about it when I was very young, very, very young. As a, when you say that, do you mean you were thinking about the concept of suicide or you were thinking about killing yourself? Oh, I was thinking about killing myself as very, very young child. You know what I mean?

Fuck. I'm talking maybe as young as eight years old. Like if I just freaking took myself out of this equation, I wouldn't have to deal with this stuff. You know, I wouldn't have to deal with this, you know, what's going on in my house. My dad turned into kind of a little bit of a different person at some point. And, you know, where I shared a bed with him when I was really young

and he was divorced and raised him five of us on his own, you know, after he got remarried, all of a sudden this distance was created. And he became almost like an infarced. enforcer for abuse, you know what I mean? He'd come home from work and, and I mean, for a while there it seemed like we were getting beat with a bodeo or a belt or there was a lineup

like nightly. And as a little kid, you know, even if it wasn't nightly, it makes a huge impression on you. You know, you don't love your parents, you're scared of them. You know what I mean? And I was really scared of my parents. I was really scared. And there were broken arms and not mine. My kid's sister had a broken arm one night.

that was explained away somehow. And we went to school with welts and bruises. And my dad had a belt. It had the name Terry on it. And I called it the Terry Up Your Ass belt because his name wasn't fucking Terry. The only thing he used it for was beating our asses. And I think that at the time,

I mean, it's just people doing the best that they can. You know what I mean? So my dad, he has a lot of issues and regrets about it. And that marriage didn't last after we were all gone. There was nobody else to focus your issue. on, you know. Have you talked with him about that shit? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

We've talked with it. And a lot of things he didn't know. He didn't know, like, when I was in fourth grade and I was emptying the dishwasher before school, my mother, my stepmother for no reason just busted a glass on the back of my head. Had no idea that that happened because she said, go take a shower, whatever, and you don't have to go to school today. Don't tell you dad.

I was too scared to tell. I was scared of the repercussions that would come from her for telling him. You know what I mean? So there were some things that he didn't know. How did he rationalize the things? things that he did know. For example, the Terry belt. Yeah, well, you know, you kind of laugh it off. And then also, you know, there's the perspective. Like, ah, you were just a kid. It wasn't that bad. You know what I mean? But here's, here's, here's, here's the truth of it. It doesn't matter.

I mean, when your parent is, is, is violent towards you for, you know, shit, there was a Twinkie incident in our house, a Twinkie incident. We're all five of us kids lined up like we were at the fucking amusement park and got beat with a boat. over a fucking twinkie. You know what I mean? There were all kinds of little things like that. When I say I thought about killing myself when I was eight years old, this is a fucking true story.

My stepmother gave me a house key. I was a latch key kid. I was the first one home from school, from elementary school every day. I'd walk home and I'd open the door for everybody else. I gave my stepmother the key. She needed it. Gave it to her.

And then I went to ask for it back. And this is after maybe a weekend. I was like, I need the key so I can let everybody in tomorrow. I'm eight, mind you. and she's like, I don't have it. I'm like, yeah, I gave it to you. I gave you the key. And she's like, no, you didn't.

Where's the key? I was like, I gave it to you. So I get a beating for losing the key. And I'm upstairs looking, I'm in my room, like looking for something that I know I don't have. You know what I'm looking for it. I'm dumping out my freaking toy box. Probably doing the best you can to find something.

Yeah, I'm rifling through my drawers, looking for something that I know I don't have. She calls me down to the dining room. and pretends to pick up this key off the floor. At the same time, it's hung up on the key ring of her own keys. And I see her taking it off of the key ring. Now, I watched her put it on the key ring, which is why I know. Is that me or you?

It might be me. Oh, shit, that might be me, man. I have my phone on silent. Key ring. I have no idea where my phone even is. Perfect. That's probably me then. All right.

You're watching her put the key on the key. Yeah, I'm watching her. put the key on the key ring and I know exactly what's happening. And she's like, I found the key right here. And me being the guy I am or the guy I even, you know, grew up to be. I was like, no, you didn't. It's right there in your hand. And she's still struggling with it.

She's like, no, it's not. She like turns, snaps it off the key ring. And I get another beating for lying. For lying. And this kind of set the tone for like, you know, like if I'm going to get beat anyway, I wouldn't light be a L. Air Force Base on fire. Yeah. Yeah. Like, no, it really did kind of set the tone for like, you know, I had two older brothers,

my parents, and God bless them, you know, in a lot of ways, because they both had to work jobs to feed us. You know what I mean? So we were at home by ourselves a lot. My big sister really became the matriarch in our lives for me and my brothers and my sister. And what a burden to place on a teenage woman, you know what I mean, you know, raising these other kids. And really, that was our saving grace was my big sister. She was the one that took us into a room was like it's not going to be like this forever you're going to get out one day and it's going to be amazing and we never heard from my mother again after i think i was like six or seven years old maybe you know so how um how is your relationship with your dad now great uh you know he lives in alabama

he lives the kind of life that he wants to live i tried to steer him in a different direction at one point you know what i mean like you know i didn't want him drinking and you know he drinks about 24 freaking coer's lights a day he's he's a good man my dad is a good man he's a good man he's a good And he really tried his best. I think that he was just a little, I don't want to say submissive. I think he was a little bit, he didn't know what to do. You know what I mean?

He's got five kids. He couldn't do it on his own. You know, and he married this woman that he thought was going to be a certain way, and she was another way. And I think with his old school kind of mentality, you just kind of tough it out. I love my father.

He's like one of the bravest individuals in some ways that I've ever, met in my life. And in other ways, you know, I think, like, why are you such a pussy? Like, why didn't you stand up for us? Why didn't you, why didn't you step in and do the right thing, you know? I mean, he broke a bodeore my kid's sister. The bodor that he beat us with, our whole lives, he was beaten my kid's sister the week before I went into the army. She's fucking 16 years old. And he's beating her with a bodor and I can hear him saying, stand up, stand up, stand up. And at the same time, I'm like, I'm hearing him hit her.

I'm like, if she's not standing up, you're not hitting her on the ass with that fucking Bodor. You know what I mean? What's happening? And I go to the freaking door and he comes out of the room and the bodor split in two. Not like snap, like in half. It's literally split. And it was my, oh, man, I just remember looking in his eyes. And I think that that's when something shifted in him and in me.

And I packed up my sister and I took her out of the house that day. He took her to a friend's house. I said, you can never go back there. You can never go back to that house. It's poison. And my dad was doing what my stepmother wanted him to do. You know what I mean? Yeah.

Like the fight was between my stepmother and my sister. My dad had no, you know, he's just. How's her relationship with him now? Oh, my kid's sister and my dad, you know what? I'm always amazed at how much my kid's sister is able to just, she loves them just the same as I do. You know what I mean? She has no ill will towards him. And you can't, you can't do that.

There's somebody, you got to forgive people for yourself. You know what I mean? If you carry around all that trauma from your childhood, all of that stuff, you know what I mean? And you never are able to say, okay, on some level I understand. where you're coming from. You have to. If you can't understand from some level, maybe the frustration, undiagnosed conditions that they had, if you can't understand that they were living in an era where they couldn't or weren't getting the help that they needed, then you can forgive that. You can say, okay, I understand that. I didn't know I had dialect or not dialed, but a borderline

personality disorder. I didn't know about dialect behavior. behavior therapy. I didn't know, I didn't know about the medicinal effects of marijuana. You know what I mean? And, you know, I just drank. And my dad just drank. And that's how you dealt with the stresses in your life. And and that's what it was. And like, I don't fucking feel sorry for myself. I don't because all of those things, all of the trauma, all the good, because there was good too. You know what I mean? All the good, all the bad. They shape you into the person that you are today. And that person doesn't have to be a good person or a bad person or whatever. It just has to be a person that you can live with. I don't have to live my dad's mistakes. You know what I mean? That doesn't have to be my mistake. It's his mistakes. Did it, did those

experiences shape who you became as a father? Yeah, but I also, when I say I understand, I understand. I have a 23 year old and a 20 year old. I started having babies when I was, when I was 23. You know what I mean? And, and I made mistakes. I made a lot of mistakes. I made huge mistakes. I I spoiled my kids, you know what I mean? When I physically, I did physically discipline my kids. I lost my shit one night with my son. Right before he went into high school, he failed math or something. So I only had them for the summers.

And actually, I only had them for six weeks because football camp would always creep into the time that I spent with him. So I'm trying to teach this kid an entire year's worth of math in six weeks, which means he's getting up with me. every day. Like, five in the morning. He's getting his school books together while I'm getting ready to drive to Camp Pendleton to teach tactical emergency trauma care. He rides in the truck with me doing math on my laptop, online the whole way.

He gets to work. He sits at my desk or outside the classroom a lot of times. There's probably some guys out there that remember my son sitting outside of your classroom or at a desk outside while we did emergency trauma care stuff. teach C-T-T-T-T-T-T-C stuff. And he would do math. And then when we drove home in the middle of the night, or at the end of the night, he would do math all freaking day long.

And it really got to a point where I was trying to get him to show his work, man. I was trying to help this guy get into high school. You know what I mean? Like, this is a huge impediment to your progression, educationally. And there was one night that I just had enough, man. And I think I smacked them in the back of the head a couple of times. I didn't even a freaking smack them on the face, you know? And I don't remember exactly.

I know that I was getting really, really at the end of my rope with this. And like I knew he was capable. I knew he was competent. He just wasn't inclined to do the work. And so I'm making spaghetti and this pencil comes flying. Pencil hits the cupboard and freaking lands. And then he said he wasn't doing this shit anymore. And I said, you are doing this shit.

And he got out of his chair. And the second he got out of his chair, I felt like he gave me the up down. sizing me up he's like i'm about what you weigh at 14 he's a big dude you know what i mean and it is but he's maybe 185 pounds i'm about 190 and uh but it's 1805 pounds a chewed bubblegum like you know so he came at me and i knocked him down and i grabbed them by his hair and this i remember it in full detail smacked them three times hard and then i picked them up by his hair and i slammed them against the wall and i let go and he made a run for it he beeline it for his bedroom

and I chased him because now it was on. You know what I mean? Now he ignited something in me that had been dormant for a while. And he jumped on his bed and I grabbed him by his pants and I pulled him out of his bedroom by the back of his pants, you know,

and he's hanging on to the doorway and I'm yanking. And finally he lets go. And I roll him over in his eyes, man. Saucers. Right? Yeah. And then I smelled that smell.

You know that smell. You know that smell. If you're a hunter, you know that smell. You know, if you've ever been around somebody that's really scared, you know that smell. And I remember that smell from when I was a kid. And I stopped. And we called his mom, and he said that I was being abusive. I, you know, I tried to laugh at off.

But at the same time, you know, I mean, looking back on it, fucking, he was straight up, man. Yeah. It was straight up. And then that's when I really, I think, I don't know what year it was, but it was. It was 10 years ago, roughly. And that's when our relationship with my son got really ruptured. And he didn't come to see me for about another 18 months after that. He would not fly out to see me.

And I had to, you know, point all of that outward kind of, what do you want to call it, criticism, back at myself. And really reevaluate, like, what kind of a parent are you? What kind of a parent are you going to be? and I was struggling with a lot of things. I was struggling with my own transition from the military. And it never again. You know what I mean? Like never again.

And my other son saw the whole thing. So I never had to again in a lot of ways. Yeah, that's a tough journey of self-reflection, though. Yeah. And I can sit here and I can tell people in, you know, in a lot of ways it's funny. You know, when you talk about the big step he took towards you and he's going to make this monster swing and I stepped on his foot and I pushed him down. And then it was also the realization that he had no idea who I was.

We hadn't shared that much time together. And I was like, have you ever been in a fight before? He's like, yeah, won, did he kind of won? And then we go down the hole, have you ever been in a fight with a guy in high school? A grown man, a guy that shaves, an Army Ranger, an Air Force pararesciman. You know what I mean? Have you ever been in a fight? You know, if you've never fought those people, why would you start with me?

You know what I mean? Yeah, don't pick a fight with somebody who's immersed himself in a vital. culture for a long period of time. Exactly. And I'm not going to sit here and say I'm fucking, I'm not Tim Kennedy. I'm not the guy that's going to go out there and freaking like rock somebody. Tim's a savage, by the way. I've rolled with him. Yeah. I did not win. Yeah, yeah. I'm not that guy. You know, I got a little cauliflower ear from my days grappling

and stuff like that. I was a Ranger Battalion champ, but I'm not that I'm not the guy that's going to win every fight that I'm in. I just like it. You're not uncommon. I think that occupation draws people who have that experience or who have that, well, there you go. The locks, yeah. Yeah, the people who, they're drawn to it. Yeah. It's part of it, you know, when you're a recruiter, like, I want to blow things up and shoot people in the face.

He was like, oh, let me finish soiling myself because you're a recruiter's wet dream. Yeah, yeah. And I don't understand where that compunction comes from. And I'm not a badass. I'm not a badass. Am I a good shot? Yes. Do I understand weapons and tactics and maneuvers and stuff like that on a level that a lot of

lot of people don't retain. Yeah, I do. You know, I retain a lot of stuff. You know what I mean? I really do. And it's just part of who I am. And, but I will in no way ever say that I'm on the level of some of these other guys. You know, I respect them. I've never met Tim or anything like that. I respect him. He's got an energy that seems to be pinging right up there with with some other dudes that I know. They broke the mold with him. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I respect that too.

And I know he's worked in this business that I'm in, the TV business, and he's probably had a lot of the same problems that I've had in this business. You know what I mean? And that's where you talk about the transition. Nobody teaches you how to not be what they turned you into. They spend weeks and months on the on-ramp.

And then I did, there was a five-day course of which I had, attended about four hours when I got up. Yeah. Yeah. And here's the thing. You're like, I'm not going to that. Everybody tells me it's BS. I already know how to write a resume. And that's what they're doing. And they might say, hey, these people hire veterans. These people hire veterans. And then you're like, I don't want to work for Amazon, dude. Yeah. Like, I don't want to work for this multimillion dollar corporation that didn't even pay taxes last year. Like, I don't want to work for them. You know, but that's the

job that's out there. I transitioned out of the Army in 98, like I I said. So you did four in the Army? I did four years in the Army. Okay. I went in on October 20th of 93, 17 days after Mogadishu. I got out. I think the official discharge date was either February 14th or 18th of 98. Why did you decide to get out? I didn't want to sleep in the dirt anymore. That wasn't in the video you watched? I know the moment. I know the moment. It's in my head. We were on a training operation. We're on Fort Benning. You know what I mean?

We're doing training. We're basically road marching from range to range to range. You know, in the wintertime. And it's fucking cold, man. It's cold. It's nine degrees outside. So it's pretty much the same temperature. But it's in Georgia.

So it's like wet, cold. You know what I mean? Yeah. And the packing list comes out. And it's the RSAAP. Ranger standard packing list. No snivel gear. No fucking.

Like, you know, you got your poncho liner and puffy chet. No, no, no. Poncho liner was part of it. Good. But like, your smoking jacket, that's snivel gear. The polypro top, snivel gear. Don't have any unauthorized snivel gear. Boots, jungle boots, always. Which are great for cold weather.

Jungle boots are just designed for it. Oh, yeah. Your BDUs, you know how you had the summer and winterweight ones? Yeah. Always summer weight. 24-7. You had winter weight BDUs, but they just hung in your freaking wall locker. You never used them.

You had six issue sets. of summer weight BDUs, and that's what you use for the field, for starches and spits for whatever. You know, it was very, very regimented. Attention to detail was everything. Don't have anything that's not on the packing list. And if you have, and if you've forgotten anything on the packing list, you're effed. You're getting your ass handed to you. And that's okay.

I'd rather do a billion freaking push-ups, you know what I mean? And take an ass to you and then have somebody write me up some piece of paperwork and put it on a counseling statement. You know what I mean? Like, come on, man. Now you're just documenting that I was dumbass one. day you know and but uh but uh yeah we were on a bit we were in a patrol base again we're walking from range to range to range we had the radio set up i forget what it was i forget what the kind of radio it was and we had a a revolving guard on the radio and uh so it was my turn for

radio watch and i get up and i'm sitting there by the radio and i'm freezing my ass off and and nobody's calling and i'm just like fuck Hey, it's so cold. And like, this is one of those nights where you prearrange a spoon with like two or three other guys like, like, yo, we're going to be fucking spoon. Are you want to come spoon later? Like in your squad, everybody's like spooning up. Like, the gayest shit I ever did was in the Army. I'll tell you that right now.

Like, I did some really gay stuff. And it's fine. It's fine. I'm good with it. I'm comfortable with myself. But like, but anyway. So, uh, all of a sudden I started hearing these. I was like oh shit somebody's awake I'm gonna go talk to that guy

you know I'm just gonna walk the perimeter and talk to that guy and I walk over to this guy and he's laying on it's my platoon sergeant he's laying on the ground and this is the guy that's like fuck that you don't need no goddamn snivel gear I jumped into panama motherfucker I was like Panama was like 190 fucking degrees you know what I mean accurate you didn't need your snivel gear yeah and he's laying there on the ground like his head on his rucksack underneath his poncho and poncho liner and he's in his dead sleep and it just kept happening over and over and then as I walked the perimeter

there were other guys same thing yeah for absolutely no reason other than to say that sucked let's go drink a beer and talk about it you know what I mean I was like it cut enlistment short yeah I was like it doesn't make any sense and of course every time we got alerted it was to fucking try to find some ammo that somebody didn't turn turn in or like we were counting to go to war palettes or it was all bullshit. The Haiti thing, you know, I remember being on the plane, fully kidded up with the freaking rotors turning. Socom commander comes on board.

Missions go. Mission's a go. Hope you come back, son. Missions ago. Why would you say that? Missions ago. And then he walks off. And then as soon as he walks off, somebody else comes on.

They're like, all right, we're spinning down. You know what I mean? And we're on two hour hold. Now we're on 24 hour hold. Now we're just counting ammo. I'm just counting ammo back into the bin. So nothing really was like popping off. And I felt like we were doing a lot of training with no really clear thing, you know,

no thing that we were training for. And then we worked with the PJs. And I remembered back to those days of like the stories about the PJs and the medicine. And then when I was working with them, they all smelled like soap and had long hair. And, you know, they called each other by their first name. And they had the coolest gear. And they were getting free fall pay and scuba pay. hazardous duty allowance pay and fly pay and all of this stuff and I was like I'm getting 110 a month for jumping out of a plane and nothing else and I think I'd do a lot of hazardous duty I was like you know this is maybe the better option they're they're on the missions too yeah they're shooters too except they work in smaller teams and then of course you know you know the stories of Mogadishu and stuff like that and so when I got out that was actually my backup plan can you imagine that somebody saying my backup plan

and life is to be a pair of rescuement. You know, I got out and I was supposed to work for the DeVos family, or I thought I was going to work for the DeVos family's personal security detail. And then they were like, ah, you know, you're a little young. You know, your resume looks like a freaking mercenary resume. You know, Stinger Missile School. Why would you put that on a resume? But I did.

I put everything on the resume. If I had that school, I would put it on the resume. Yeah, advanced military operations on urban terrain. You know what I mean? Like these are things that don't translate into the civilian world. and they were like okay go to college well I had a new baby how am I going to go to college what am I going to do so I got a construction job when jobs over you go on unemployment that's just the way of things in Michigan back then you know you're going unemployment you you know or you get right

into another job where you could be unemployed and I didn't like the stability the instability had a car repossessed I was like I got to go with what I know which is what I grew up with military service so I went back into the air force and uh I was like I'm going to be a piece DJ smoking two packs a day. I had no idea. I had, I'm going to be, I had no idea what the endoc was. The recruiter was like, ah, you got to go to an in-doc, but that shouldn't be, that shouldn't be a problem. Indoc for the Air Force?

Indoc for the Air Force. Indoc for the pararescue, you know, the 10-week pool pre-scuba thing has like a 90% attrition rate. And when people say, how do things compare physically, it's the physically the toughest course of instruction I've ever been through in my entire life. So you really did your research before going in? No, no, no. I fly by the seat of my pants everywhere I go. I have, I don't know what I'm doing most of the time. How was it, was it easy to get back into the military? I'm assuming, I mean, it was an honorable discharge from the Army. Oh, yeah, honorable discharge from the Army. Do you skip the boot camp portion of the Air Force or what do they do with you? I did skip boot camp, but I lost a pay grade. I was an E5 in the Army. And they were like, okay, you know, the rank progression is slower in the Air Force. They're going to take away a pay grade. But you'll get it right back when you test.

What a fucking lie. I couldn't even test until I had a skill level commensurate with my grade in my chosen career field. The pipeline for Pararescue is fucking a year and a half to two years long just to get your three level. What is the pipeline? The pipeline is when you become a PJ, they want you right out of PJ school to be fully capable of integrating with any special operations team and fully capable as a rescue specialist. So you go to a 10-week indoctrination course, which is an attrition course, just like Buds would be. And for that 10 weeks, you know, there's a lot of pool work, there's a lot of physical activity, there's a lot of mental development. It's a grind.

It's a grind. Yeah. And it is a grind to see if you can handle the opt tempo and the stresses that come with being a pair of rescuemen. And me being prior service, very easy. But we did lose. We only graduated 18 out of, I think, 120 that started. And of those 18, even fewer became PJs, because after that, you got to go to the Army scuba at the time for me down in Key West. We lost a couple of guys there.

Then you got to go to airborne school, you know, behavior problems. You lose a couple of guys there. You know, survival school up in Washington. I went to the Army Sear, so I didn't have to go. Just like airborne school, I'd already done that in the Army. And then at the time you went to Somsey, the Special Operations Combat Medical course in Fort Bragg. and you did the half course. You didn't do the full course.

Is this equivalent to 18 Delta? Yeah, you start the 18 Delta course, but before they get into their rotations, like doing the PA level stuff, they pull you out. You get in, you get the trauma, you get the ER rotations up in New York. Or ambulance rides and stuff?

The ambulance rides. You get all that stuff. And back then, they were doing the paramedic licensing as well. So, you know, you went to that course of instruction, and you lose a few guys. Because at the time, they're teaching dirt medicine, and street medicine at the same course. So you had to de-conflict those things

and how you handle all that trauma. And there was a lot of medicine that was revamped since then. You know what I went in 98-99 time frame. Oh, dude, the battle, what's coming off the battlefields in both Iraq and Afghanistan has, I remember when I first got in

and even my sister, who's a nurse practitioner, if you use the word tourniquet, they're like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, you better get that thing off. And now it's like, turnicate there, turnicot there, turnic there, turnicot there, like, get those suckers on there.

Yeah, well, you know, and the the tourniquets even at the time, like the one that I carried around as an issue ranger, it wasn't a fucking ternicate. It wasn't a tourniquet. It was that thing with the little teeth and you pulled it. Yeah, it was garbage.

It would have been a shit show. Yeah, but anyway, so after you do your medic course, you know, you had the free fall school and then eventually you arrive at the par rescue school, which is 100 days where you take all these little individuals, skills that these guys went out and got certified in and you combine those into what what a rescueman does, which is search and rescue recovery and combat versions. So you do all of that stuff

before you get to the, yeah. Is that PJU? Yeah, PJU, PJU, the PJ school at the par rescue and combat rescue officer course. Of course, when I joined pararescue, there were no officers. Well, now there's crows. You got to deal with those guys. It was part of the appeal, I think, for me. Having carried a lieutenant's fucking coffee into the field as a RTO I I had a healthy amount of disdain for some of the officer corps I had great officers too though you know what I mean yeah and but but I like the idea of an all-enlisted career field you know what I mean like because I felt like it was even more focused on just the Js you know what I mean like if if my boss is a PJ and that's his whole job and he's an enlisted guy then he understands me

implicitly and the pipeline yeah how the sausage is made all that stuff yeah so what do you do at PJU? Well, it's a combination of all that stuff. I think it initially starts off with PJ Medicine. And I don't remember the flow exactly. Like I said, it's been since 2007 since I was there. But it starts off with like PJ Medicine and then you get into jump operations and mountaineering and land navigation, stuff that, you know, they should know, but, you know, survive. There's a little bit of survival in there as well. Assist the evasion. Because that's what we do. with pilots who punch out. You know, you seem bat two, one.

The whole idea is like hit the ground. Recover anybody that you got to recover, or if you cannot airlift them out to be able to assist their evasion. So you become an invasion expert, you know what I mean? And so there's an evasion portion. And then there's weapons and tactics where we take the guys out to the range.

And it's their first exposure to shooting because they don't shoot in basic training the Air Force. Really? No, no, they do duck hunt, man. It's a pretty solid game, though. Well, I mean, they might have changed it since then. But when I was in the Air Force, they were still, AETC was running the shooting range like it was duck hunt. And then when you did do your Air Force 9 mil qualls, it was pretty much a joke.

I think the security forces, SF. Yep. It's a different type of SF. Yeah, yeah. They were the only guys that were really keeping up regular qualls besides PJs, you know. And there could have been other career fields in there. But so it was like taking a guy who had maybe never even really touched a barretta or touched an M4 carbine and teaching them in two weeks how to shoot tactically, how to get into a stack even, you know, kind of the basics of CQB is introduced. And then there's also an FTX portion where they're supposed to start working as if they're PJs.

Now when I got there, I got there right after 9-11. They wanted somebody with tactical experience to come in and help with this, you know, kind of revamp this new program. And I didn't know what to do because I hadn't necessarily been deployed myself. So I started just running a lot of long range overland movements and operations, recovering and casualties. And then actually, like if you set it up so there's two clicks to your ex-fill, you've got to carry that guy two clicks. I mean. It's a long hike. Look, it was brutal. It got to a point where I built it up so much that the guys were jumping into Magdalena out in New Mexico, doing in the field planning, and then executing 17 kilometer overland operations to recover pilots and do evasion stuff. And then the operations be ongoing. I ran it almost like a mini ranger school. I would just keep it going and keep it going and keep it going and just really put these guys under a lot of stress because that's the only thing that I could do. And then a guy named Rich Oberstar came in later and he revamped that whole program and turned

it into what they were seeing downrange. He's like, okay, you know, now we're bringing in more helicopters, you're standing alert, you know, and they built it up into what it became. But like when OE, when it all first kicked off, I mean, the information I have was like, you know, was like Roberts Ridge. That's how things were going down. You know what I mean? So I taught tactics like that. Yeah. I taught guys how to shoot maneuver, lay down bases of fire, shift fire, lay in intermediate support by fire positions.

I taught infantry style tactics and then tried to incorporate the pararescue job into it when in reality what Rich did when he came in was flip that all around. He's like, this is what PJs do, and we know all these infantry style tactics. It's amazing how much it shifted from the early days to a decade later or beyond. We had a massive, I would say, tactical shift in somewhere between, I'd say, six, seven, or eight. Yeah. Due to people, catastrophic loss of life. Yeah.

And, like, you know, maybe we shouldn't be using Vietnam era tactics going forward. Maybe we should reevaluate why we're running into every room as opposed to clearing it from the threshold of the door. Exactly, exactly. So, and that's what we're teaching, you know. where you're teaching the idea that, you know, one man through the door freaking take the path of least resistance, and then you're just button-hooking or following, you know what I mean? And you're moving to points of domination in the room. And then, you know, I started talking to some guys, and that's what I learned, and that's what I was teaching.

And then you start talking to guys who are out there actually throwing lead, and they're like, no, we don't do that shit anymore. Yeah. We don't run into that room anymore. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And a lot of things changed. And it was nice to, nice, but at the same time, I ended up at the, PJ school for so long, for so long that it soured me. Within a year and a half of being there, I was just dying to leave. I was just dying to leave. I was like, I gotta get out of here. I can't

I hated the students. I hated them. I hated them. I hated the training environment. And then I knew the guys were out there deploying and I wanted to deploy. I even got on the horn with the two-four and like started trying to get myself onto a deployment, like not even talking to my commander. You know, to backdoor the system every way I could. I put in a package for the two four without a commander's recommendation letter. That came in back and bit me in the ass. I mean, everything. I can see that happening.

And I think that with a leadership that's like cut that shit out and you keep trying to do that, it really does put a damper on their opinion of you. You know what I mean? Regardless of if you're going to do your job and you're good at your job every day, regardless of that, you're a freaking pain in the ass. and I was and I am I am a pain of the ass I want what I want and and that's why I think eventually I decided to leave you know because my personality fit in in certain ways when we're doing operations absolutely fuck dude I'm I'm there I'm with you I'm on point off duty in the office

anything like that disaster disaster like my friends are my friends in spite of I will tell you right now that the, all of my friends from the military, all my closest homies are friends in spite of things that I did, not because of, you know, I was this great, you know, guy outside of work, you know what I mean? I try to be. I try to be. But ultimately, I was really selfish impulse control. Again, was a huge problem. And just a handful. Like my commander, hey, I saw you ride in your motorcycle without your helmet, you know, this weekend. And you know, that's a against UCMJ, so like put your helmet on. Roger that, sir, you're just mad that you have a bitch bike.

Instead of just saying, yes, sir, moving out, follow the rules like everybody else. I said, it's because you have a bitch bike, sir. They remember those things. You know what I mean? And then nothing's ever my fault back then. And so I'm sitting here, you know, just being honest about like who I was and what kind of an operator I was.

I think it was a kind of guy that, you know, when it came to like jumping out of planes and doing the do and stuff like that guys were happy to happy to work with me you know freaking good to go when it came to interpersonal relationships or hanging out with me you know outside of it was more like let's see what fucking happens like this guy's going to explode let's wind him up and point him in the correct direction and that's another thing dude that's another thing i would fight everybody's battles for them i if you had a problem with the chain of command and i liked you and you told me about your problem with the chain of command I would fucking light the torch.

I would light the torch and I would lead a charge, man. I would freaking, there was, man, are we getting, is this going to go forever? We can go as long as you look. I love to tell stories, man. I love to shoot shit.

Fire away. There is a time that our chief came to us at the PJ School and he wanted to have a vote on whether or not a female who was assigned to the unit got a beret in a shadow box when she left the unit. And everybody in the room was opposed to it.

We all knew it. But Captain obvious here is the only one that was like, well, Chief, let me tell you. And I gave him my opinion. I was like, look, you were at the PJ school where these guys worked their asses off. They worked their asses off. And they put up with a lot of shit, including like hazing from this guy. You know what I mean? And to earn that beret.

They earn that bray. And it's something that they don't wear when they go to combat. I used to tell them all the time, the bray isn't it. your job doesn't stop when you don that beret. It's just something that tells other people from a really far distance that you're special. Because you are a fucking special. You know what I mean?

I was like, and now we're going to give that to somebody who hasn't earned it in a shadow box. That's something you give to a guy when you retires. Beret in a shadow box, a flag, rack of ribbons. You know the standard. I was like there has to be some amount of respect for the things that symbolize us, you know. And I might not have said it as nicely.

But that's definitely what I meant when I said. Well, he pulls me out of the room afterwards, and he was like, I need you to support me on this because everybody else will support me. And I said, absolutely not. I'll support you on any lawful order, but you're asking me my opinion. And you're asking the opinion,

and all of these guys who've earned this beret. I said, it's just a beret in a shadow box. To her. When you tell me, it's just a beret in a shadow box, to her it is. To everybody else that doesn't have one, it is. But to the guys that, actually fucking earned it is so much more than that.

And that's why when the Army switched from the black beret to the tan beret, I was in the Air Force by then. And I was stationed in Iceland. I remember I called my homie. And I was like, yo, man, like, what's going on? And I called them on the unit line. You know what I mean?

It's a 505, 5454-4-4-4-3 if anybody wants to call the Ranger Battalion. But anyway, I called them and I was like, what's going on? And there They had a gag order put on them. They weren't allowed to say anything. And he was like, look, man, if you call me at home, I'll tell you all you want to know about it. He's like, but I'm not going to talk to over a live line.

And there was a lot of stink about it, that this new, what do you want to call him, the new commander, the overarching commanding general. Yeah, commanding general had just said, hey, man, everybody gets a black beret now. Well, it doesn't mean anything to you. It doesn't mean anything to any of the guys that didn't have. have one before that. It's just a uniform change for them. It's another, you know, 21-9-5. They got to shell out for a new cover. But to a, but to a ranger, man, what an insult. Yeah. What an insult. And those are the types of political decisions that you also have to live

with and deal with in the military. You got somebody who doesn't have any idea of culture or tradition or something like that or it doesn't care about it. Who makes a blanket decision like that and you're like okay you know this is what I got to roll with now and we're still dealing with that stuff today there's a shitload of guys you know female Rangers I've had my ass kicked by

my big sister who I know if she wanted to be a fucking ranger all you guys suck her big penis she's gonna freaking get like she's gonna like this I've seen her take grown men and dump them right on their fucking skulls she did judo with us when we were kids she's a badass she had

three wild ass younger brothers she had to fucking rain in. If she wanted to be a ranger, she could absolutely do it. I got my ass kicked by a chick when I was a freshman in high school. I'll tell you, every dude who's ass I've kicked since then, you got your ass kicked by a guy who got an ass kick by a chick. There you go. So like, you know, it happens. It happens. So the culture changes, and it's like, how are you going to shift with that culture? You know what I mean? How does that affect you? How long do you stay in as a PJ? For the better part of 10 years, I would say, between, I guess, two enlistments on active duty and And then I did a reserve enlistment.

It was supposed to be six years, but ended up just being one. What was it that made you or what was it that changed your mind and you decided to hang it up and move on? Okay. So I wanted to leave the PJ school. And the only way that I could seem to do that on my terms was to just leave active duty. They wanted me to re-enlist a year out from my E.A.O. Yeah, my ETS date. And you know, there's a bonus calculation and all that stuff. Everybody's got a timeline in their head. If I do this many years to this date and that and I'll get that money and it takes me to this. And then they're to retirement, right? So they were going to, they wanted me to reenlist and leave me a year short of retirement. You know, a year short of 20. And I said, look, I said, I'll reenlist at the end of this year. I'll even do a no cost to the government move to my new assignment. I said, and I'll reenlist there at the end of it. And then that way I'm maximizing my bonus. and it takes me to 20 and then if I want to get out I can get out no no you can't you can't do that

and I'm like well what are my options here I was I and they were like well you can turn down the assignment which means you've got to probably stay at the PJ school for another year and I said but I can reenlist at the end of that year and and and then get reassigned or whatever and I had a I had a new assignment that was like they were assigned to Moody Moody Air Force Base you just have to reenlist to take the assignment. This is the leverage that they have. Also knows the dangling carrot. Yeah, yeah, man. Like, here's the assignment that you're asking for that you want, you want to go there, but we want to make it so that we pay you less and do all this stuff. And I tried to like negotiate with these guys and you can't negotiate in the military. So I was like, well, what happens if I just

turn down the assignment? I said, well, then you're up for force reduction. I said, and then what, happens then they said well you probably won't be force reduced because you're in a critically manned career field i said okay i'll roll the dice we'll see what happens so within about a month a force reduction letter comes in and they're like well you can go to your commander and your commander can maybe wave this so i went to my commander's name was joe barnard at the time and i think he i know joe do you know joe yes so joe's doing the forge school down in uh down in uh Tennessee now he's trying to help with some kids there. And he was my instructor at the PJ school.

And he had heard some stories about me and my attitude and antics and behavior. And he had heard that, well, this is a fucking asshole. And I was. I was. I had no time for bullshit. Like, well, you and I, this laughing thing back and forth, man. If I didn't know you for a year, Rich Oberstar can tell you this. He came to the unit.

I went through PJ school around the same time as him. We were in some of the same courses of instruction. He showed up at the PJ School. I just watched them for a year. I was like, let's see what this guy's all about. And I swear to God, for a whole year, I just watched it. And then after a year, you know, I was like, okay, he's here to make changes. He's here to make things legit.

He's here to freaking really work because there are a lot of guys that were there to take a break. Because I had never been over or anything like that. I didn't need a break. I needed, you know, I needed somebody that was motivated, in my opinion, to like, really get after these guys. really push a really great course of instruction. And so, you know, I didn't really talk to anybody. And they're like, you know, Will Willis, it's a fucking asshole. Joe came out to the range one day, and I'm teaching pistol stuff.

And, you know, it's a pretty dynamic course of instruction for the students. You know, safety is a huge thing. And I used to kick guys off the range for doing stupid shit. Send them straight back to the barracks. I'm like, you pointed a weapon at your own fucking face. Yeah, you're done training for the day. I'm not kidding. change of magazines on his nine mill and he's doing a he's doing like an admin reload or whatever it is so or a tack

he's got a round in the chamber yep drops the magazine tack reload tack reload and he grabs a full magazine and he's got the one magazine in his hand he's got the full pistol in this hand he's like what do I do with this fucking magazine and he looks at his vest and I'm watching this happen and he reaches with this hand grabs the Velcro tab lifts up stuffs the magazine and drops it back down and gets back on his gun

and I didn't say anything while it was happening I fucking froze you know what I mean yeah because you're watching something happens and then the second he got back into that position

I was like go ahead and freaking drop your magazine clear the weapon that bad boy I was like you're off the range I was like you're off the fucking range now that's the kind of guy I was so Joe shows up to evaluate you know my course of

instruction. And then afterwards, he takes me, you know, behind a con ex-box, you know, and he's like, he's like, look, man, heard a lot of stories about you coming out here. He's like, I know you were one of my students. You know, you've been at this fucking PJ school for a long goddamn time. He said, uh, you just keep doing what you're doing. He said, I don't care if you're a fucking dick. I don't care if you're a dick. As long as you keep teaching on point like that, he's like, just keep doing what you're doing. Stay out of trouble. Roger that, sir. Move on. You know, move on. And we had that relationship. And when it came time to re-enlist, you know,

for that force reduction thing, Joe was my commander. And he's like, look, man, you either want to be in the Air Force or you don't. I'm going to force your hand on this. He's like, I'm not going to make this decision for you. You have to make the decision. And everybody knew that I had been in Beer Fest kind of fucking around on leave, you know what I mean? And everybody knew that I had gone to command directed anger management

where I was kind of turned on to like the idea of learning to express myself through acting classes and that I had gotten a few calls about it because New Mexico at the time was like popping off with some stuff. So I'm not going to say that outside of the Air Force, there wasn't this interest in this other thing. You know what I mean? So I think he did that. And I was like, look, sir, I was like, I said, I feel like I feel like I'm not appreciated. You know what I mean? In the sense that, you know, why can some, it seemed like there was some favoritism in a lot of ways it seemed like there was I just felt and again

this is my borderline it's all conspiracy theories up here you know what I mean like they're doing this to me because this that the other thing and there's a lot of pointing fingers and I never really pointed the finger back at myself and said you know you would probably be so much easier to work with if you got your personal life

under fucking control you know what I mean and it wasn't it was out of control man my personal life was a fucking mess and I and and it ended up eclipsing other people personal lives and getting involved in other and other people getting involved in my shit and uh so it almost like a pariah you know what i mean like don't fucking talk to that guy he's you know great on the great when you're freaking at the unit but outside of that it's trouble you know so and then even when i got

to l.a there was a lot of that there was a lot of that like i couldn't let go of the that dude that i was off duty i mean that was my identity to be a fucking wild ass the wild ass drunk who's getting in the and fighting people up and down the streets of Albuquerque. Like, so, you know, it's only when you're laying on the floor surrounded by your friends, pissing on your own fucking chest. I'm talking like straight up in the air and onto your own chest. And you wake up from that. And you realize, man, I have really hit rock bottom.

Like, this is it. I have not experienced that. I'm going to take your word for that. that particular evolution. Yeah. What a small world, man. So I met Joe working with young PJs and crows at the end of their pipeline. So I did about two years of military free fall instruction.

And it was a bridge gap between what they got at the end of the pipeline and then really trying to get them operational. You know, all hey-ho, so jump clear and pole, getting to the stack, navigating, landing appropriately, and then moving on with their mission. So the AST, the AST portion. So AST came online somewhere, I want to say, between 2005 and 2007 when I got out. And that was all run out of Herbert Field Air Force Base. And they were sending all the PJs and all the combat controllers and all the crows there where they furthered their education. So this was way later.

This is like 14, 15, 16. Oh, okay. Yeah, and I worked for a private company. Oh, okay. And they outsourced it. And Joe was the skipper. I've met him for the first time, I think, in the middle of nowhere in Wyoming, where they were doing this remote camp where we flew in a Huey. And we would go jump out of a Huey to these unknown DZs.

And, yeah, I worked with him for a few years. He was awesome. I really like Joe. Here's what I like about Joe. Joe also has some things in his background, like PJ Legend-wise, that weren't necessarily, you know, cast the greatest light. You know what I mean? I trust men more with a touch of dirt under their fingernails. Well, I mean, there was an incident with another PJ where they were jumping together and the other guy, where the other guy frapped in.

And so I think that there was a little bit of that shadow that followed Joe around a little bit. I know that he didn't get along with the first chief that I worked for at the Paraly Rescue School. And I know that he had had some personality conflicts. I love Joe. Joe reminded me of a ranger. You know what I mean? like when I was a student and he was my instructor, he reminded me of like a no bullshit kind of guy,

you know what I mean? And you could see him off to the side laughing and joking with the other instructors and having a good time. You're like, okay, this is a guy who's, you know, when it's with the students, it's about that relationship. Student instructor, I'm going to hammer your ass or whatever. But he's really a real guy. I think I tried to do the same thing with the students

and they came back to the school to fight me. You know what I mean? They're like, fuck this. guy, I'm going to kill him. So it sounds like you made the choice on your own to get out because you were any eye on the ball out in the Los Angeles area. Well, yeah, Ray Cologne Lopez, who's now the chief master sergeant of enlisted affairs at the fucking White House or something like that.

He's got some crazy made-up title. I'm sure he wrote it for himself. Sounds amazing. Yeah, I mean, Ray Cologne Lopez came from the 24th STS to the unit. and you know he's he's a very he's a very he's very he's very good at the business of the air force you know what I mean I do on on yeah I do what I mean it's very very good at the business of the air force as proven by his position now you know and he he showed up to the PJ school and we had some conflicts you know he and I and he was always upset or angry about some

what I call political shit political shit fire extinguisher training you know what I mean like Like, you haven't done your fucking fire extinguisher training? You got to be signed off. I'm like, fuck, dude, unknit your eyebrows, relax, you know. We'll get to that fucking all-important fire. You know, so he had to enforce a lot of things he didn't like to enforce. And, you know, he was a little bit of a cowboy too. Like, hey, we're going to do the point break jump today.

We're jumping at Lake Mead, 12-9-999-9-9-9. And we're going to do a jump with fins and all that stuff. I'm like, okay, great. Do you have the waterproof altimeters? I'm a jumpmaster, too. I know my regs. And he's like, no, man, we're going to count it off. I was like, you're going to count off.

The fuck you are. Yeah, I was like, you're going to count off. A fucking halo jump where I'm going to count off? I was like, no. I said, according to the regs, you cannot do a jump over, I think it was 5,000 feet at the time, 5,000 feet without waterproof altimeters. So unless you have waterproof altimeters, we're jumping at 3,500 feet today, and it's going to be standard ramps procedures. And he looked at me, and he was like, you're going to have to show me that in the reg. So I showed it to him.

And he's like, damn, dude, you know you know you're going to be. shit. And I was like, yeah. But I was also the dick for for pissing on his fucking point break jump parade. We got waterproof altimeters and then we start jumping. And then the the PPPM, the parachute program manager that came up from Lackland is duct taping fins to his legs, which is something that we had thrown out. I said, we don't do that anymore. Look at this motherfucker. I was like, he's over. I was like, you're listening to this guy who's the PPPM, but look at him duct tape and those fence to his feet. I was like, it's unauthorized. You don't do that. He's the PPP. It's fine.

No, it's not. That's not how that works. Sure as shit. We jump. This guy's freaking Fentcon's unraveled and he's like, awesome. And he flips over onto his back because I'm like, that's a horseshoe. Oh, yeah.

That's a horseshoe. He flips over on his back and he manages to get it cut away. You know what I mean? But that's the kind of thing I felt like I was battling with a lot of time. Like, yeah, I'm a cocky dick, but there's regs. You know what I mean? And in the Ranger Battalion, that's one thing that was really enforced. Yeah.

You could be a cocky dick. You could be whatever. You could be a shoo. shitbird, whatever. But when it comes to like conducting operations or when there's regs that are set, you follow the regs. You know what I mean? And for me, I thought that some regs applied and didn't. Of course. There's the motorcycle thing. There's the hypocrisy. I mean, there is the hypocrisy. You know what I'm not going to lie. I'm all about looking for gray area. Yeah. Black and white is very simple. You're not doing a fucking halo jump or you're going to count it off. Yeah. Yeah. And so there were

little moments like that and Ray you know I think once he found out that I was getting out he sent me a sarcastic email from this company that was looking for a PJ the host of a show called true stories of pararescue and the email said this looks like it's right up your alley Hollywood Hollywood now my teeth didn't even get fixed until I was in my 30s so like the idea of being Hollywood to me was ludicrous like I was the guy that chewed through the fucking concertina wire like I was my call sign in the Army, Phil Simpao made this one up with this, because my teeth were all over the fucking place. Snagletooth?

Yeah, exactly. So, uh, so the idea of being Hollywood or anything like that was just like, whatever. But, uh, I called the guy. I called this producer. I said, you know, my name's Willis. I'm a former Army Ranger Air Force pararescue man. I have a lot of experience speaking in front of people, having hosted or emceeat graduations and, and, you know, just teaching in general.

And, you know, there's a certain amount of confidence that comes with, you know, being an operator. And you're older too. Older, yeah. And they were like, well, you know, do you have a reel? And I was like, I didn't know what that was. But I mean, I have a fishing reel. Yeah, exactly.

I was like, I don't know what that is. And they told me, they told me what it was, and I filmed a jump. I filmed a jump. I hosted a jump. We talked about the parachutes. We talked about the little wingsuits and stuff that we were wearing at the time. And then I jumped out of the airplane and I did a little wrap-up. You know what I mean?

Three minutes. edited it on my home computer. Shittiest footage you've ever seen your entire life. Like, just, like, and the guy who's filming is literally holding the helmet of his, you know, his skydiving rig. You know what I mean? And I put it together and I sent it to these guys

and they were like, it's fucking fantastic. Probably the first time I've ever seen anything like. Yeah, yeah, they're like, that's amazing. When are you coming? When are you going to be in L.A. again? I was like, oh, as a matter of fact, I was going to be there tomorrow. As you're looking for your ticket?

They're like, really? I'm like, absolutely. My brother lives in California. Northern California. I was like, my brother lives in California. I'll be there tomorrow. I said, would you meet with us? I said, absolutely. Hung up the phone, made a freaking flight, flew out to Burbank. These guys picked me up from the airport, drove me to these offices in Burbank where I met the owners of Morning Star Entertainment. And I sat down with them. I talked to him and Gary and Panini. They were really nice mom and pop operation. I had some crazy ideas. And then I got driven to this location where they handed me six pages of script about Cortez's push into the United States, how we got as far as like Kansas. Yeah, right? And they're like, memorize this. And they drove me up this hill to this location that looked outdoorsy. And I memorized all this dialogue about Cortez. You know, it's like an operation.

You know, memorize these facts real quick. And I regurgitated everything they said on camera. and they're like, take your shirt off. And I'm like, okay, this is starting to feel a little bit like that modeling gig I did. And at that point, they're out there, people. I'd have been like, see it. So it was like down to my A shirt, but some people would call it a wife beater, I guess. Down to my A shirt, and I'm kind of doing this thing.

And they're like, they wrapped it up and we go to get something to eat. And I remember that it's like, take me to McDonald's. I need some cheeseburgers. Five cheeseburgers. That's my standard. So I get five cheeseburgers from McDonald's. and these guys are like, you're going to eat that shit? I'm like, hell yeah, I'm going to eat it.

This is joy for me, pure joy. McDonald's to me is bliss. So I freaking go back to the studio, wrap things up, catch my flight out in the afternoon. About a week later, I get an email that's a contract to host a TV show, a TV show, not anything specific. A generic host contract. Yeah, yeah, generic host contract.

It paid $1,500 an hour. episode if they ever made an episode of anything like in and i sent it to a lawyer because i don't know anything about lawyering legalese or anything like that and and he was like a like a what do you call it real estate lawyer or something and he was like dude it looks like a real contract to me i'm like should i sign it he goes is anybody else offering you a contract to be on tv i'm like no he goes sign that shit so i did and i sent it back and then i filmed the sizzle for deadliest warrior That's where I met David Baker from Forged and Fire for the first time in March of 2007. He is the recreation, the weapons recreation special.

Yeah, he's the old fat guy that looks like Colonel Sanders. Okay. I know who you're talking about. Yeah, yeah. You know exactly what I'm talking about. It's the best way I could describe them. And then there's a... And that's where first time I met him and learned about what he did for a living.

At the time, it was just props and stunts. You know what I mean? He made props or provided props. and stunts and that's what he was doing there. He's providing the sword that we're using for our deadliest warrior, whatever. And it wasn't a sword that he made. It was something you commercially bought.

And, you know, so whatever. I met Dave. And then fast forward, we filmed the sizzle, and then that turned into a sizzle for SpeckOps mission. And then Deadliest Warrior became a thing, but with different hosts, because I ended up doing SpeckOps mission for the military channel.

And I never caught a single episode of that. So what was that all about? You know, it was all, it was really, they wanted to, they wanted call a duty in real life, I think, is what they wanted. Did they realize that call of duty doesn't exist in real life? No, and no matter how many times I tried to explain it to them, it was really like, you know, you're going to be a big, you're going to be a big star. You're going to get 10% of everything that we make off of this, you know.

Well, what was the premise? The premise was, is that it was a demonstration of military special operations capabilities he's in a force-on-force, a conflicting objective environment, I guess. It was a war game. It was a simulated war game where... But you only had you? Just me.

Just me. And I had a pilot one time who I picked up and was able to help me like flank a guy. You know what I mean? But it was just me, you know, against these other guys. And there was very limited intel, you know. And so when I came into this,

I tried to do like a five-paragraph operations order for these, these guys like this is how this is going to go down. Dude, within two minutes, they were like, what the fuck are you telling us right now? Like, we got cameras and shit to deal with. Like, you just do what you do and you film it and you just produce everything and you won't get any credit for it.

So that's how it went, you know? And there was a Navy SEAL whose dad had been one of the founding members of Dev. You know what I mean? He was there and he was the military advisor. and everything was a little bit behind as far as weapons and tactics. You know, I'm bringing what kit that I had available to me. You know,

we're trying to make deals with Black Hawk or anybody that would supply this kit. And a lot of times it's about sponsorship and advertising. And then that's when you start to learn about demographics and ratings. And you're just trying to not look like an asshole. Yeah. Like I just don't want to look like, don't make me look like an asshole. Like nobody does this stuff. What you're asking me to do is outrageous.

You know what I mean? And I did the best that I could with what I had. And believe me, the hate. The hate that came out. From the military community? No. No. Because my homies were super supportive.

Like all of my guys, all my dudes that love me in spite of were like, dude, it's cool, man. It's cool. You know? Yeah, it's fine. you know and you're like look man I'm just trying to make a living you know I was driving a cab in between episodes I was driving a taxi cab in between episodes or I'd get the the odd contracting gig here and there but it was like okay I can't contract all the time and do this and drive the cab and be in the reserves and like it turned into a huge juggling match which ultimately I think just the dream itself killed my marriage you know what I mean the idea of like I'm doing this whole totally different thing that that well and my end infidelity you know i'm going to be honest with a impulse control problems uh those are the things that killed my marriage you know what i mean and and and me i've always just been say yes to more things

say yes to that and uh you know i tried it and i didn't like it and it didn't go well and i got angry and i fought with producers and directors and christopher barns god bless his heart man he was he he he was the the the most patient producer or director i've ever worked with. Like this guy was like, okay, okay, well, okay. Like anything, anytime I was losing my shit, he was like, okay, man. And he provided a lot of mentorship that I didn't realize was like, that was great until later. You know what I mean? A lot of times when you're in it, you don't see it. And I mean, I threatened to throw him into San Pedro Harbor. I was like, right on this fucking zodiac. I'm freezing my ass off. I'm hopped up on fucking Vicodontans because I had fucked my backup.

We're doing like, I forget what we were doing. Like, it's like San Pedro. We couldn't dive in San Pedro Harbor. There's no way. It's like you have to call people and freaking get authorized. You want me to dive San Pedro Harbor by myself with this like Drager system and you know all this stuff. So what could possibly go wrong? Yeah, what could possibly go wrong? So they had to and this is what another thing that I hated about Hollywood. They're like, well, we want to simulate you using this stuff because the guys provided it. You know, we want to simulate it. I was like, I was totally against it. I'm like, I don't go simulate going and fucking yourself. Yeah. Yeah. And I didn't want to do it. But do you know a Navy?

seal named Damien Werner? By name. I don't know him personally. I know him personally. I fucking love this guy. I love that everybody calls him turkey dinner. You know what I mean? I love him and he's a guy that got out and maybe not everybody loves him but I really

do enjoy the conversation I had with him and he was one of those guys I was sitting at dinner with him and he was asking me how filming was going and I'm telling about it. We're of course teaching a live tissue course so like I've got a foot in two different worlds. It's a real world and the fucking fake world. Two very diametrically opposed words.

Diametric. There's no violence of action at all in anybody's vocabulary in the producer world or director world. So I'm talking to him about this and he's like, look, bro, you already sold out. You already sold out. He's like, sell out all the way to any of these fucking guys that are throwing stones at you pay your bills. I said no nobody stepped forward and said hey man I'm gonna help you out with your child support this month

or hey man I'm gonna help you out with your car payment this month nobody ever said hey man I'll give you a job so that you don't have to do this thing that I hate that you're fucking doing nobody ever said that they just said you're a fucking piece of shit this is garbage you're a horse shit fucking fuck you you I hope you die like shit like some of the worst things that somebody who doesn't know you can say

and it hurts man like you don't think that it does you know But you learn to like blow past it, I guess, you know. But I'm not good at it because I do have a personality disorder that makes me fucking engage. So, you know, I did it and I didn't like it. But sometimes was fun. Sometimes wasn't. But I was learning about filmmaking at the same time.

And which is what I really had an interest in was storytelling. Everybody knew that I was the guy when it came to like movies. If you had a question about a movie, if I could come and ask me. I hook you up. The line, the person, the actor, the freaking, sometimes the director, producer, like I was into it. I had like 400 DVDs when people had three.

And that was my hobby, storytelling, writing, freaking, you know, bullshitting, you know. And that's what I was good at, and what I really realized that I could get into in the entertainment business. So really, at the same time when I was doing my thing, I'm watching all these guys. Just like you watch your leadership, you know. Who's good at what? What does that guy do?

What does that guy do? How do I get that guy's job? Because he's above the line. He's getting paid residuals on this shit. And I didn't realize that I was producing my own content. I didn't realize that I was my own cameraman. I didn't realize that I should have been also on the ticket. They all realized that, though.

For clarity. They all realize that. The first TV show I ever did, I got paid $9,500. You know what I mean? In total. And then when I kind of raised a stink about the residuals, the 10% back end, if you read the contract, it's after recoup of the cost to make the show. Guess what? They never recoup the cost, and it's 10% of net, not gross.

You know, so I think I got one residual check for $13. And then I signed up to do another TV show with the same production company called Triggers Weapons That Changed the World. And I got paid a little bit more. Same 10% thing that I knew I wasn't going to get paid on. But at that time, it was a part-time gig because I was now the director of office. operations for this company and they were filming on the weekends and when I had available time. It's according to my availability. And it was just, it was more of a standard hosting gig, but now I'm hosting a show about guns. Oh my God. What a community. You know. I do.

I don't know everything about every fucking gun. Nor does anybody. Nor does anybody, but if you got your favorite and you know everything about every gun. Yeah. God help you. And I somebody else touches on your favorite. And I maybe covered it very kind of loosely. Oh my God. I had a guy called Washington Manhunter on the, I'm going to fucking dime a mound, Washington Manhunter. I don't know what that means, but that was his screen name on the Field and Stream website. I did a, I did an article for Field and Stream where they sent me a bunch of questions. I typed up my responses and I sent it back. Well, they edited my responses. And you know in the military timelines and all of that shit counts. What do you think they edited out? All those little details. I went to this during

this period of time, this during this period of time, this during this period of time. And then this guy, Washington Manhunter, comes out of the woodwork. I'm in D.C. going to the NRA Museum to do the second season of triggers. They were doing a whole fucking premiere at the NRA Museum, which was awesome, by the way. My brothers and sisters are flown out to D.C. My roommate at the time had come up, you know, my, my, my girlfriend's mother had come down. It's a big fucking deal. And this article comes out. And my brother's like, dude, have you read the blogs?

Have you read the comments? I'm like, no, I haven't read the comments, man. And he's like, don't, don't read them. Well, now you have to. Why the fuck did you tell me not to read them? Because now I'm going to go read it. Yeah, now you have to. So I go and I start reading these comments, man.

And this one guy kicks off this whole thing. And he's like, this guy's a fucking fraud. so no fucking way was he an Army Ranger and an Air Force pararescue man and did all this shit during these periods of time he's a fucking horse shit

Hollywood fag stolen valor and look man that's all I got at this point I didn't deploy I don't have fucking rack of ribbons and medals and fucking purple hearts

and fucking blown off limbs or horror stories like that I just got my DD214 and what I legitimately did in the military and this guy's fucking trying to strip it all away and say that it was garbage. And that's the first time that I ever responded to somebody on

the fucking internet. And I lit them up. I was like, fuck you, dude. I was like, here's what happened. And I posted the entire interview as I wrote it. Yeah. And then I was like, you want to come at me, come at me, man. And he did. He tried to snap back a couple of times. Really? Yeah. And then finally, somebody was like, Will's right. During his era, guys went to fucking Ranger Battalion before they ever went to Ranger School. You know, that was his big hangup. Yeah. Even I know that. I've worked enough with Rangers to know that that happens all the time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But this guy in his day, he didn't go to fucking Ranger Battalion or

whatever. And I think he's probably a Vietnam era guy where there was no Ranger Battalion, you know. Third Ranger Battalion didn't even come on line until October 3rd in 84, 84, October 3rd. Which is ironic because Mogadishu was October 3rd of of 93. It's those guys, the, we'll call them legacy soldiers. Yeah, yeah.

Don't realize that there's an evolution past when their ETS was. Yeah. And so that's when I really became like one of those guys. It's like, look, man, I've got the legitimate shit. You know what I mean? You want to look me up. You want to look up my background, just my military background. Go for it all day long.

I got the DD-214s. I kept all my shit tight. I'll show you my freaking my little book that I got taught. to maintain with all my certificates, all my orders, my three ring binder, all my orders, everything. I got the orders that sent me and five other guys to Fort Benning, you know, from Oakland. I have records of that stuff. Where's yours? Yeah. Where's yours? Don't come at me, because I'm not showing up coming at anybody else. I don't come at anybody else unless it's just bullshit right away. You know what I mean? If it's bullshit to my face right away. But I don't go out and say,

Oh, fucking Andy Stump is full of shit, you know what I mean? Because I don't know anything about you, but I know that you were a seal. And then I listen to one podcast you did and I make all these judgments about who you are as a fucking person. The only time I'll go after people is when they'll say shit like, yeah, I served in Vietnam at Seal Team 3. I'm like, oh, you mean the Seal Team we got commissioned in the fucking 80s? Yeah. And I've called people out on stuff. You know what I mean?

Like when I was doing my, we talked about the veteran transition. I did a documentary in 2016 called The Transition. project. I rode a motorcycle across the country, a cafe racer with a sissy bar. Sweet. On it. And I interviewed Marty Scovlin Jr. Yeah. Lindsay Harden. I just saw her at Sorenx. I interviewed Antonio Ruiz, who's the founder of a regroup foundation. One of the guys from Team Red, White and Blue in Colorado. I talked to him.

And I just started meeting all these veterans. And it was just like anybody that wants to talk, I'll talk to you. Because I needed to talk to somebody. and then I met this guy who in Vegas, he's like, yeah, I was in the battalion, you know, whatever. Here's what I'm going through with the, with the VA and stuff and all of these claims. And then when I met him and I went to a coffee shop with him and his daughter and his weird friend and some of the things that he sang didn't really jive. Unwind a bit. Yeah. And I'm at the end of this ride.

You know what I mean? And I'm in Vegas. And I'm meeting up with Tyler Gray, you know, who you know is a legit ranger. and I had met while I was teaching emergency trauma care stuff. He and I got injured on the same target. Did you really? Yes. I did not know that, man.

People don't realize that he and I know each other. What a fucking wonderful human being that guy is. I love that guy. I got shot in the courtyard. He got injured on the other side of the door that I was going to be holding security for the breach on. I did not know that. Yeah. So I was in town and I'm visiting, you know, this guy and I'm also supposed to meet up with Tyler,

who's legitimate ranger. Indeed. I was going up in Afghanistan. And then I got this schmuck who's telling me a line of bullshit. And I just walked out and I asked him to leave the coffee shop. I said, I need to talk to you outside. And when we got outside, I was like, I didn't want to embarrass you in front of your daughter. I said, but what you're telling me is a lie.

You're fucking lying to me. And there's no reason to lie to me about any of your fucking military service. There's no reason. If you were in the military and you're having a hard time, you're a veteran, there's no reason to inflate anything you did. I'll be the first person to say. I'm the most highly trained unopened G.I. Joe in the fucking world. You know what I mean?

I've had more fucking combat training than anybody who's never gone to combat. I like that unopened G.I. Joe. Yeah, man. I'm on the shelf. I'm just some collector's item. You know what I mean? Like, look how good that fucking G.I. Joe looks, man. Let's put him on camera.

You know what I mean? But the real G.I. Joe is like over here. He's had his fucking legs switched out with another G.I. Joe's fucking legs. And that's the real guy. The guy that's fucking been played with heart. You know what I mean? So I always recognize that. And this guy to be claiming that he was anything other than what it was, I just called him out on it.

And I was like, you know, we're not going to talk. We're not going to, I'm not going to do an interview with you. And I said, and you should be ashamed to yourself. You know what I mean? Because if you're ashamed of your service, the service that you did, then you should be ashamed to yourself. Nobody should be ashamed of their military service unless they did something that was illegal or compromised their integrity, you know, overall while they were there.

So, you know, and then I had a guy in Cocoa Beach, Florida, when I was driving a cab, a PJ student, this is hilarious. A PJ student, tell me a story about me to me, as if the thing that he was telling me happened to him and me together. And my homie, Jim Sluder is the guy, he's the one that brought the kid over. He's like, you got to hear this story. You got to hear this fucking story. I'm assuming this man knew. And Jim, Jim knows who I am. But, you know, long hair fucking, I'm driving a cab.

And basically, I'm like smoking a cigarette. Not PJ like at all. I'm in the dregs now. And this guy launches on this story about how I gave him a heart palpitation while he, you know, by PT in him while he's at the PJ school or something like that. I'm listening to him tell this story. It's a true story. It's a true story.

A student started throwing multifocal PVCs, you know, when I had him doing lunges for leaving his ID card adrift in like the copy machine. You know what I'm saying? Like I had him doing lunges and he started throwing PBCs. And when we went to the hospital, I took him to the hospital. He ended up having a cardiac heart condition. Well, this guy is telling me this story as if he was the guy. And Jim is laughing because he's really, he's got a lot of comedy going.

But I'm just straight face listening to this because I can't believe it's happening. And Jim is dying. He's dying. can't hold it in man and the more the gym laughs the more this guy ramps up the story right because as storytellers will yep and uh and um and then he gets to the end of the story and i said you're a fucking liar he goes what are you talking about the fuck you you i'm will wellis motherfucker you're a fucking liar you just he just told a whole fabricated story it's a true story but you weren't there it wasn't you it was another fucking guy how can you sit there and tell me that

story to my face. And Jim fucking fell on. He fell on the floor of the bar. He was laughing so fucking hard. What do they kid do? He walked away. He was ashamed. He fucking walked away. And I was like, get the fuck out of here. Like, there was nothing else to be said after that. It's not, I don't even remember the guy's name. There's no debate to be had. There's no debate

to be had. There's nothing. It's just like, go away now. Like, it's stupid. Like, what, and I'm not saying I've never walked into a crowd and like said some stupid shit where everybody's like, okay, you need to shut the F up. Like, you're a retard. Like, you are a social hand grenade.

Get the hell out of here. I have been that guy. But I'm also the guy to be like, oh, yeah, it's dumb. I shouldn't have done that. Yeah. So, yeah, there's a lot of stuff like that. How did Forged and Fire come about?

I was going to college. It's really a long. Here's how I think it came about. And then there's how it did come about. I was going to college for film. And I had left everything. contracting everything to just focus on college and and I was living off the VA. I mean, it was rough. It was rough. You know, I had no money. I was starving. I took a job at a gym.

I'm fucking personal trainer and, you know, I fired clients. I was like, I'm not working with you anymore. And people were paying. That's the move though. Yeah. That is the move. Yeah. Get rid of the shit bags. Yeah. And, and, but my, my, my management didn't see it that way. That, I can understand that. You were probably a subcontractor. Yeah, exactly. Because they're charging 150 bucks a month to work out with me, but I'm only getting 29 of them. You know what I'm saying? And that, yeah. So, so, uh, you know, when I fired a client for like, just being lazy, like I'm not going to freaking waste my time to, to come here and just chit chat with you. You know, it's a female client. And I'm like, it's not my bag. I don't care. You're not good

looking enough for me to freaking come here every day and just watch you schlep around. Like, you're here to, you hired me for a purpose. And that's the kind of attitude I brought to the train. game like I'm ready to work and um and uh so anyway I was doing that shit I got fired from my personal training job for not being a team player in other words not making them more money and uh and I was cool with that because I had just picked up some contracting work you know again teaching T-T triple C and but it was a conflict because I would have to drive and then come back to college and then my college was pretty strict about not missing classes and stuff like that and and to tell you the truth I'd rather be you know focusing on my education

When you say film, are you talking about the mechanics of how it is made? I mean, what do you? I went to film school specifically to become a screenwriter. Okay. You know what I mean? But the film school that I went to, the New York Film Academy, it was the first bachelor's program that they had for screenwriters. So it was me and two other veterans, two Navy brothers, and then five other guys, you know,

from all over the place. And let me tell you, they were introduced to a whole different way of, like, behavior in the classroom, expectations in the classroom. You know, if you shut up without pages, you're supposed to have 10 pages, you shit up without pages, I'd be like, dude, what the fuck you, where are your pages? Like, I wrote 10, where are your pages? Oh, I just couldn't come up with anything.

I'm like, right garbage, I don't care. You know what I mean? So me and the Navy guys, we, I think we made it fun because we were a little bit appropriately irreverent. But at the same time, you know, we were also very professional. Like I would have the guys over to my house, you know, doing writers groups and stuff like that. I took it seriously.

You know, I really wanted to be a screenwriter in the business. And then, you know, I think when I was going to college in the middle of that somewhere, I had an agent from the other two shows that I did. And he saw me at the gym one day, like schlepping around, picking up fucking lazy motherfuckers' weights, like re-racking weights for people. And he saw me, and he was like almost ashamed,

you know what I mean? And I had turned down jobs, like, are you tougher than a Boy Scout? I'm like, this is just a show. that's supposed to make adults look like assholes. I'm not involved in that. I turned down some stuff outright and stuff that was like guaranteed money.

And so he didn't understand my attitude towards the business because when I got into it, I was like, I want to be successful, I want to make money, I want to be able to sustain myself in this business. That's what I'm all about. And he probably heard that means

you'll take everything that comes across. I'll take anything and everything that comes across the table. And he's a good guy, really good guy. I got along with him well, but I think we had differences of opinion

and in what directions I should take my career in. You know, and he's the experienced guy. Your reps some big, big names. And so finally he hit me up with this thing, and he's like, yeah, I'm forged in fire. Once the, you know, there's this thing forged in fire, fly out to, fly out to New Jersey, do a screen test and see if they like you. So I did it. And I had, I looked exactly like I do right now. I put my hair up in a ponytail.

I showed up with a beer. And, you know, I like jewelry. I don't know why. I like jewelry. Like, and I think I had, like, my dog tags on, and there's another thing hanging around my neck. And then, of course, I got, like, rings on every finger. And, and David Baker was there.

And Jay Nielsen was there. And I knew David from 2007. And then, you know, I kind of learned about the concept of the show. We did a screen test. And I got along with David. I got along with, just like I had before. I got along with Jay as a knife maker and I was really honest.

I was like, I know a little bit because of Dungeons and Dragons. I played that shit, man. Somebody told me it was about devil worship. I was like, I got to explore this. You know what I mean? Like, let's get into it. I said yes to everything, man.

So I went and, you know, I went there with a small working knowledge of what's going on. Like I said Hammond line the first time instead of homone line. You know, I didn't know how things were pronounced. And they corrected me and it was funny.

And we had a good time. time and they and they hired me but you know nobody knew what it was going to be you know it was just chopped with swords you know chopped with knives and and it was uh you know that's how he got hired here's how i think it really went down are you ready for this yes in 2015 i wrote a a treatment and uh and did a sizzle for a show that i wanted to call what it takes and it was all about a military competition style show that kind of pulled guns back from the forefront of things and kind of push forward all of these other capabilities that guys have to have to be successful in special operations.

And the whole idea is you break these competitors down into teams who have a proctor or somebody that shepherds them through and teaches them everything that they need to know as if it's a, you know, an indoctrination course or a buds or something like that. But like pulling guns back from the forefront. And it was so well done between me and my manager at the time that we got some meetings. You know, we got some meetings and I was able to pitch it to a company. And I remember Damon Zwicker was in the room. And then there was an executive named Corey Henson.

And me and Russ, we went into the room and, man, I was ready. I was ready. I'd even rehearse the pitch, you know what I mean? And when I get into a room and I'm excited about something, I can really throw down, you know. And so I get in and we got the video prepped. I have like all of this, you know, I've got the pitch deck put together and I pitched this whole show. This is 19, maybe, yeah, right around 19 December of 2015. And we get into a conversation. And then Corey's got a handbag that Damon kind of moved out of a chair and put on the floor. She's

Like, I don't put that handbag on the floor. I put it up here on my desk. And then my partner or manager, Russ, saw that it was an expensive handbag. He goes, oh, typical. And he's in the middle of a divorce, this guy. He goes, oh, typical. And I give a double tape. And she was like, what?

And he goes, oh, yeah, my soon-to-be ex-wife, same shit, expensive stuff on the floor. And put it on the fucking floor, damn it. They're like, put it up, make sure you take care of that. He's being really sarcastic, kind of a dick. thing to say. At an odd time. And Damon looked at me because they hadn't met Russ yet. And I'd met Damon before. And I think I'd run into Corey maybe one time through some audition stuff. And Damon looked at me and he looks at Russ and he kind of gives this weird look. And Corey didn't know what to do. And we just kind of barreled through. You know what I mean? Just kind of pushed through and

the pitch ended up. She had a lot of questions. We went for a whole hour. You know what I mean? if you got a meeting that goes for a whole hour where somebody listens to your garbage for an hour. It's a good sign. It's going pretty good. And then when we're leaving, like, you know, we're leaving, Russ pulls out his phone and he starts

showing, trying to show Corey all of his wife's expensive shoes and he's kind of, it's like kind of having this shit talk conversation and me and Damon had already stepped out of the room. And I'm kind of watching this through the doorway and Damon's like, get him the fuck out of there.

and so I go in and I grab rest I was like Russ we're fucking leaving and I grab them and dude that was the end of our professional relationship me and Russ I couldn't believe you know how offensive he was being in that meeting so I sent Corey an email

about a week later said hey I'm following up and she sent me a nice email back yeah we're going to be looking at this into the new year we really like the concept you know you know uh it will reach out to you then well come January there's an article on deadline or whatever freaking

entertainment magazine there is that she's left this agency where we pitched this thing and gone over to Fox. Okay, she left and went to Fox. I'm like, okay, whatever. About a month later, I get the call for Forged and Fire. I fly out. I do the thing. I meet the producer there. And we develop a relationship. And I just move forward as if nothing's happening. And then we come up for Season 2 of Forged and Fire, same producer, same supervising producer comes in and he starts talking to me about this new show that he's working on with Paul Sina, John Sina, John Sina, with John Sina. He's like, I'm working on this new show. It's called American Grit. I think, that's cool. He's like, it's really kind of this like military thing where there's these military mentors and they're taking these guys and they're

teaching them all this stuff and it's a really great show. And I was like, that's fucking funny. I said, I pitched a show just like that to Corey Hinson at whatever production kind of like this i think it was in december of last year he goes that's my boss oh shit you not he said that's my boss i was like are you fucking kidding me and this guy had been kind of like pulling little bits of like i had been getting like oh yeah this that the other thing you know through our relationship we had talked tactics we talked weapons we talked about some of the difficulties of filming special ops mission you know what i mean like we had talked about a lot of this stuff and uh and i remember cori saying that they were looking at

for a vehicle for John Cena. You know, back when I pitched it, you know, and she's like, he's one of these guys that we like. And I was like, yeah, it looks, you know, whatever. And I'm not saying that that's how it went down because at any given time, there could be any number of guys who are out there pitching shows. And they could be similar. But I talked on the phone to Brent Montgomery.

I showed Corey Hansen my stuff, you know what I mean, before I got hired. So then I get hired by the same company that's filming this show. with John Sina. And I'm like in a position well like well do I make a stink? Do I say anything? Do I say that like hey guys I think you might like maybe cross the line a little bit

or is this my idea or I mean I didn't know how to address it and the thing is is that you just say okay. I mean Christopher Barnes swore up and down that he pitched friends you know before it was a thing but he wasn't sure because there's so many different ideas out there. So I just let it go.

I was like you know I don't really want to piss off the company that I'm working for. You know what I mean? And I just kind of, you know, stuck with the forged and fire thing. But I think that that's how it happened. That's how I think that it happened. I think that they had pitched this show. They were going to run with it with somebody else.

But if they hire me and I'm working for them, I can't make us think about it because, you know, they could, I don't know. And again, this is me being a conspiracy theorist. But there are so many connections in so many little things in common. conversations that I had with all of the players involved, besides who was actually on screen. I'm talking about the behind the scenes players. Yeah. That were high enough up to make me believe, like, I think this was my idea. You know what I mean?

And that's where guys get really wary about Hollywood. They get wary about sharing ideas and stuff like that. And it's maybe true. Maybe it's not. I'm not sitting here making accusations because Forged and Fires is the show that built my house. You know, I live in the house that I live in because of that show. and I appreciate that it did go for as long as it did for me. You know what I mean?

When did you start filming it? What year? 2015. April of 2015. And seven seasons you did, right? Yeah, seven seasons plus the beat the judge's competition, the first six or eight episodes of that. So it had to have accelerated pretty quickly because that's only, we're talking, what, a five-year time period, seven-plus seasons? Yeah.

what what ended up happening was you know the first season was eight episodes excuse me the first season was eight episodes because that's how they do everything yeah they're going to make sure there's an appetite you're going to dip our toe in the water there's eight episodes nobody knew how it was going to go you know i was standing at the end of that table for the entire time that the guys were forging you know what i mean so there's a lot of standing for me where the other dudes are like sitting down and i never stood in one place for so long in my entire life well that's why you had that little rubber pad that they tried to camouflage by making it the same color. Yeah, that was the answer to the standing.

Stand on this. It's what chefs use. You know what I mean? But like even still, like if I took a step to the left or right in that first season, they'd be like, Will, get back on your mark. Get back on your mark. So there was a little bit of growth with how I operate, how I host, how I move. And like, you know, even the direction of the conversations at the table.

You know what I mean? Like, just do what you do, Will. into the ship you don't know anything about knives just ask questions so I did so I did and that's what we did and and I learned a lot and and the judges learn a lot but I'm also the kind of guy that questions things you know so there was a lot of conflict the first season the show the last episode I can remember we're having a deliberation and in no way am I a judge I'm not a judge I'm not arguing with anybody about about your decision compared to his decision. When it comes down to it, I want to get down to the logic behind the individual

decisions, the why. And Doug Marquita actually threatened, he's like, I'll go to my car and I'll get my sword and you get your sword and I'll have a fucking sword fighting. Nah, he's like, this is my shit. That's a hard pass on that. And it, I was like, first of all, you don't have a fucking sword in your car because you don't have a car here. And this, I said this to him. I was like, second of all, I would fucking shoot you because I'm not an edge weapons expert. I do guns. I manage distances is a different way. I said, but if you're getting this angry, you know, about what's going on, you know, you're this passionate about it. You've got to, you got to explain yourself, you know what I mean? You got to be able to break it down. And that's what I would say, that's what I'm an expert at,

is just getting to the root of things by irritating somebody to the point where they just scream out why they're making the decision that they're making. And if I don't understand you, I'm just going to keep asking you questions like a little kid who just doesn't give up, you know. and um so you know at first it was uh it was heavily it was just me learning about the process of knife making and and then also i didn't like how reality tv a lot of times with like some of these shows turns into a catty little bitch vest you know what i mean between the contestants you know what I mean, and then, and, and I didn't want that. I was like, you know, you guys are here to highlight something that's supposed to be really fucking cool.

You mean, the idea of learning to make a knife, and it dates back to antiquity, you know what I'm saying? Like, be professional when you're out there, you know, you don't get to quit. Nobody gets to quit unless they're having a fucking heart attack, which is happening. I saw somebody quit on the show. Oh, yeah, yeah. One guy was like, absolutely not. And I don't fucking blame him. I actually don't blame them.

There was a guy that was a master smith and the weather was fucking sweltering. He's an older guy and it was a coal forged day and he was just one of the hottest, most wretched days that you can possibly imagine. We're shuttling the smiths in and out of like air-conditioned building and he's just had enough. I said, you already got a name. You already got a name. You're already successful guy. You know, you don't- No reason to die out here.

You're not proving that you're a good knife maker right now. You're proving that you're a good competitor. You know what I mean? That's really what it is. Like the stamina and all that stuff. You're proving that you're good at the forged and fire competition. Like Ben Abbott. You're good at the forged and fire competition.

You know what I mean? But you were never a professional knife maker before that. You were just some engineer. And like, hey, let's say you were making really nice knives for your friends and neighbors. You weren't in, you know, that's not what you're doing it for a living. You know what I mean? When Forged and Fire started validating Smiths as professionals, that's when I had a real fucking problem. Like if your validation as a knife maker came from competing on forged and fire,

I'll say it to this day. It's still not a great validation because you just made the best worst knife that day or the least worst knife. I was going to say it's not like you're giving them the amount of time that they need to craft. They're basically jamming 10 pounds of shit in a five pound bag as quickly as possible. Exactly. And there are guys that are really exceptional at it. It did great work. But even Bert Foster when he was there, if you picked up one of his finished pieces from the time competition, the actual NR Forge time competition. It was not... It's a fuck show.

It's not a fuck show, but like, you know, there's flaws, you know what I mean? Like, he's got the best forged and fire knife, you know, that I've ever seen. Just don't look at it too closely. Yeah, exactly. But again, if you give him three hours... Exactly. But that's part of the competition, though. So here's a question for you on this, because, again, having worked on a TV show,

which I'll never do again, I understand. understand how much shooting actually goes into a 44-minute episode. We're talking days. So, of course, when the show starts, it's like your time starts now, and the clock starts going down. Is that actually done in a day? Well, the actual forging, when the clock is running, we only stopped the clock or reset the clock a few times, and it was after a heavy deliberation between the judges and the

producers, you know what I mean? And like if we put more time on the clock or something like that is, and there were times that we had to extend the time because nobody was going to finish the challenge. Like you had to extend the time, give another 30 minutes. So there were times that things like that were done. It was talked about with the Smiths.

You talk about it with the judges, with the producers. Is this fair? Is it legal what we're doing according to the rules and stuff that we've laid out? Because there's a cash prize at the end of that? Yeah, it's a cash prize, right? So like, is it legal what we're doing? And legalities when it comes to those kinds of cash prize shows, that's federal law.

You know what I mean? Like you're getting into some federal stuff. You know what I mean? Philonia. You know, if you start violating that stuff, you're going to jail, you know? So I remember a quiz show back in the day. It was a huge hoax. They were giving the guy the fucking answers.

Yes. Yeah. So that's why all this stuff exists now. You're not defrauding the American people. so so then uh you know so every now while the clock was running that shit was real like that i mean i wouldn't necessarily be there for the whole three hours standing up like we were in the first and second seasons well i mean because there's i'm assuming there's multiple camera yeah yeah do they go three hours straight or do they get that's what i'm saying like they're swapping out

the camera guys and i'm going to say this for all of the heartache that i have with maybe some of the upper echelons of television production and the politics behind it the fucking boots on the ground guys the camera guys the freaking audio the pas the kid that's pouring freaking chips onto a paper plate for everybody to kind of just because he doesn't know any better to kind of everybody eat from the same paper plate like all those guys they're jobbing out you know they're the 12 hour a day guys you know so again like when i'm bitching about like how things are on set or how slow things are these are the people that are actually jobbing out behind the seas they're the privates the sergeants they're you know they're the guys that are making it happen and then they just throw me up there for a few

minutes and and uh you know in a lot of ways you reap all the the scrutiny and glory from that in in a lot of ways when in reality the focus should be on those dudes that are out there banging on those fucking knives you know what i mean and and all of those camera guys all of that all of that crew that goes into those 50 people i fucking love them man and it was like like a forged family. And when they had issues like with getting travel pay or stuff like that, when we moved from New York where they all lived to Connecticut

and they still commuted to come up and work with us, not getting travel pay and stuff. Like I was the guy who said something. I was like, these guys should be getting this. Because the swag, you know fucking TV show swag. You've seen it fucking hand it out, yeah. Tumblr's T-shirts. Me and Zed Marquita were buying all the swag.

We bought all this way. Anything that you see that has forged and fire on it, me and Mark Ida were buying that shit and handing it out to the crew. And yeah, I intentionally skipped over some motherfuckers one year. You know what I mean? Yeah, you don't get a hoodie, pal. You know what I mean?

Like, no, because this is actually what you should be doing. You know what I mean? Like, we're seven seasons in, and Doug's buying the hats for everybody. You know what I mean? And it's just one of those attaboys that you're not entitled to. You know what I mean?

But there just wasn't enough attaboy for the crew. Like, good job. You guys are doing amazing. Even like rap parties. They're the spokes that make the goddamn wheel turn anyway. Yeah, even like rap parties, the director. You know, Fonz Trinidad. I fucking love this guy.

And he was a guy who's like, please, man, just like keep it contained, you know? Like one of the best fucking directors have ever worked for, one of the most low-key guys. He handles everything in stride. And you want to talk about working with extreme personalities? Fonz is the dude. You know what I mean? And even Fons, you know, would like fork out of his own pocket for like a, a, rap party you know what i mean like i we're gonna go to the bar two drink limit whatever and you know whoever

wanted to go and and kind of decompressed from the season because there is a lot of stress and strain that come from being every day on that set you know making that show and it is dangerous in a lot of ways people fall people get hurt weapons break Doug marquita's in the hospital again Doug mark ida's brother cut his fingers off you know what i mean there's stuff that's happening i got hitting the dick with a spiked bat on one of the unveils it wasn't strapped down it swung around it hit me right in the crotch and then i picked the bat up and like beat something with it and then it's like he tie this shit down you know what i mean i was angry but at the same time you know i mean things happen and and you go with it and or you don't yeah and uh and i think for me it i love the crew

i love the crew i love like working with those guys and some of the producers where absolutely great too but at the end of the day you know it does get to a point where you know i told an executive producer i said don't think i'm not watching everything that you're doing everything that you're doing every move you make every decision that you make and how you're maneuvering things around on this set i'm sorry i should say supervise and producer i said don't think i'm not going to i'm not watching that i said i'm a smart guy and you're doing what i want to be doing one day i want to be writing and and producing my own stuff. I said, I'm watching.

So just keep that in mind. You know what I mean? I'm not just some dude that sits up here and is content to say something that you've scripted for me. I mean, I'll read through the script, but I'm not going to say exactly what you want me to say. I'm going to make it mine, you know, and anything that was at that table rarely scripted the conversation.

It never scripted, I'm going to say, between me and those judges. Every now and again, I'd hear something maybe through my tinnitus, you know, producers screaming out to ask one of the judges this one thing. And I would get irritated if we covered it already. We've already covered that. I'm not asking it again. But you have to understand that they just need to see me asking that again so they could put that content on that. If a camera wasn't on you, did it actually happen? Yeah. And so that's the balance that you have to maintain,

you know what I mean? And understanding that there's a relationship between not only what's going on competition wise and the integrity of the competition but also what's going on business wise and like how are we going to turn this into a show you know what I mean if three guys quit you know and one guy wins I mean that's not really and the guy wins by default it's not really a TV show you know so they always had to fight that battle and and again integrity is a big thing for me it's huge for me and I have been a man of little integrity at times in my life. I have been a guy who lied, I've betrayed, I've been stabbed, I've been lied to, I'm a human being man, and I'll tell anybody like, yeah, I fucked up a lot of things. I did some shitty things. But at the same time, I can acknowledge

that, I can go back to those individuals and be like, hey, yeah, I was fucking terrible, man. I I still got to talk to Roger Sparks about, like, the way that I felt about our interaction as a student instructor. When he had already been deployed as a Marine and stuff like that, I was fucking hard on that guy when he came to the PJ school. And he got concussed one night pretty badly on a jump that I jump mastered, but we got bad wins. And then later on, he ended up having some other things where he was paralyzed for a period of time and stuff like that. And for some reason, I always go back to that jump that night. And I called that guy a pussy and everything else in the world to try to motivate them to keep going. You know what I mean?

Negative reinforcement was my thing. So anyway, you know, I've been that guy, but integrity is a big deal to me. You know what I mean? And that American flag hanging on the wall behind me on Forged the Fire is my American flag. And, you know, it represents not just me, but my belief in my values, my country, my, my, it's just a lot represents who I am as a person. And every time that that's behind me, I remind myself, like, you know,

be the better version of yourself. You know what I mean? Don't be the guy that sells out all the way. You can't be the guy that sells out all the way. You can be, there's just consequences. Yeah. And I'm just not. And then I started to realize that maybe the most important thing

to these producers wasn't my true and valid opinion on everything from safety to weapons engagement and my knowledge of combat. It was just the titles that went along with my name and the naked face that they could put next to the bearded faces. You know what I mean? It's about demographics. It's about hitting those, you know, those numbers. We already got three guys with beards, shave yours off.

I've never felt more emasculated in my life than when I showed up on set one season. I had a beard and it was very neatly trimmed. and the supervising producer just came in. Didn't even pull me off the side in front of the whole crew. He's like, shaved that beard. And I said, not going to happen. And he said, you have to. I said, no, I don't.

I don't have to shave my beard. I was like, I'm not shaving it. And so we filmed the whole day with me hit the beard. Well, that night I get a call from my agent. I get a call from the supervising producer from before, you know, the guy who had worked with me on the first two seasons. and they were like, you have to do this. I'm like, I don't have to.

I said, you know, would you tell a woman, you know, that, okay, if a woman had grown a beard, would you come in and tell her fucking shave it off? Would you? Would you? I mean, are we crossing on? And, like, it's a bad parallel. But it's about the overstep.

It's about the overstep. It wasn't even like, hey, man, you know, let me explain the situation to you. Can you please shave the beard off? It was just like, shave that fucking beard. Yeah, absent any explanation or why. the next day I shaved the beard. So I shaved the beer that night.

Next day, how the fuck are we going to film? What happened on day one? There's no continuity. I showed up. The entire crew was flabbergasted. They're like, dude, you buckled. You shaved. I'm like, well, I talked to my wife and she said, you know, better to have a job than not have a job.

And so I did. But it was offensive to me, you know what I mean? And there were little offenses like that, little things where somebody who had never been trained for combat said well in combat yeah stay in your lane pal that's not your lane you're not a combatant at all nor have you ever been

so for you to say in combat and act like you have any kind of valid points to bring up I'd like to see the credibility behind that where's your certificate of training from the Boy Scouts of America where's your certificate of training from from any thing that you're saying

you have trained combat or trained for combat in like did you go to an advanced fencing course let me see the let me see the cert you know what I mean and then you can say in combat yeah you know I mean even and I had a lot of heartache with these guys you know what I mean and I and and there is a lot of ego involved in the knife making community there's a lot of ego and just like any other community you know these guys fucking give each other shit and they and they give each other a hard time and but I think uh I think ultimately, you know, getting somebody to stay in their lane, even me, having received more classroom instruction than anybody on the making of knives and swords in the history of the world,

I'm going to go ahead and say, nobody's just stood there and listened to a lecture more than me about knife making. It doesn't make you an expert just because you're, just because you're next to it or learning about it even. I could not agree more. Yeah. So for these guys to start giving their expert opinions on combat operations or expert opinions on trauma even. I'm a tactical emergency trauma care specialist, bro. I'll tell you how Jesus came back from the dead. Using nothing but what I learned as a combat trauma specialist, I will tell you how Jesus came back from the dead.

And I can also explain how it's a miracle because it was. It's a miracle of medicine is what it was. I mean, a sucking chest wound that got sealed. That's it. It's a sucking chest wound and an asphyxia that was relieved the second they took him down from the cross and put his arm down and that skin covered that hole. Wrapped them up, protected them from hypothermia, put them into a hole where they're sealed shut permanently. And it took him three days to dig his way out. I have not thought about that from that perspective.

A lot of people are going to be really pissed when they hear. That's how I explain the resurrection of Jesus Christ. But I wrote a whole paper on it and submitted it to George Washington, some guys I knew at George Washington University. And I was like, I think that this accurately explains the resurrection of Jesus Christ using trauma care. You know, the whole idea of like, you know, he was already dehydrated, he had already been beaten, he was already hypovolemic, he was already pre-hypothermic. And then you hang him on across.

Crucifix means to asphyxiate. You know what I mean? You hang him on across to asphyxiate. And then when he's not fucking. and dying, you put, give him a sucking chest wound, makes him look dead, rapid shallow respirations, decrease, or increasing heart rate so fast you probably can't even feel the pull, all those things, all those signs of shock. And the second that you pulled him down and that mobile skin covered that injury on his chest, you just sealed up that wound. You just sealed up that wound.

And then you wrapped them up in cloth and you put him in a nice, toasted cave. I'm going to be honest with you. This is a topic I didn't think we were going to cover today. No, no, no. But I don't know. I don't even know how we got here. But what I'm saying is... Talking about expertise.

Yeah, but you're talking about your expertise and staying in your lane. Well, I have studied trauma care for so long that I can take all of those principles that I learn and apply them to something like that and say, this is a reasonable explanation that doesn't involve, you know, some people's perception of the miracle, okay? and it was a miracle in some senses. But, you know, that's how it was explained to people back then, you know what I mean? And so you have this expertise in all these different areas and you, like, I start learning, you know, about knives from these guys. And then I talk like I'm an expert, which could have been offensive to them, you know what I mean? But it's my job as the host of that show to question everything that those guys say. Why? Why? Why does this matter more than that? Why does this matter more than that?

And then I have, again, the type of memory where I'm just going to remember everything that you say. Every justification that you have, every time that this blade wins over this blade for that reason, I'm freaking logging all that in my head because I've done military weapons testing. I've done testing and evaluation. I know about measurement, measurement of performance. You know what I mean? I was an instructor at the PJ School. I had to go to all those Air Force egghead courses where you had to learn about all that crap.

And then somebody just on it whim says, well, the handle's more comfortable. And you know in combat, it's really important to have a comfortable handle on your weapon. What is the goofiest shit you saw occur during those seven seasons? You had to have seen some hilarious shit occur in that forge. Yeah. I'll be honest with you. I view Forged in Fire almost as a comedy. I watch it like we were talking about earlier today.

I can't fucking believe the number of people who given a. a ridiculous timeline go, I've never tried this before, but I'm going to go with this new technique or shit falling apart. I just, I die laughing. Well, that's, I mean, it's not funny because it's tragic at the same time.

I see, you know what I mean? Complete humor, because I am not the one living through it. I, dude. So it got to a point. Funny for me, not funny for them. Exactly. Exactly. Like, I always tell my wife,

like, there are things in this world, that like when they're happening, worst thing ever. Worst thing fucking ever. But when you get through it and you look back on it, it's hilarious. Hellarious.

Best thing it ever fucking happened to you or whatever. While it's happening, terrible. You know what I mean? That's how, that's how, you know,

people who are good at dealing with trauma, move forward. You're able to laugh and move on. But, um, I guess the funniest shit.

I don't know. It's just little snippets here and there. I don't know that there was any one moment. It was like so hilarious that I, that I could get over it. Um, You know, again, I think that I was more concerned about somebody hurting themselves. There's a lot of shit in that room that could damage people severely.

I mean, I was so worried about these wild-ass guys, like, hurting themselves with equipment that they were either unfamiliar with or completely ignorant about. You know what I mean? Like you said in the car. I've never run a welder before. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, okay. And it got to a point.

Or a power hammer. Yeah. That was another one that surprised me. Well, and here's the thing. It's a $10,000 power hammer in the back of the fours. Not everybody can afford to have one of those. That does explain quite a bit of that, actually. And then so I think the funniest thing.

Some of the guys were fucking hilarious because I love it when they crack back. You know, when you're talking shit and they can hear you and they crack back to you. Yeah, it's perfect. I love that stuff. But it doesn't always make the show, you know what I mean? Because, you know, they're trying to, you know, tell a certain story. Yeah. You know, and it's the same story over and over here I am.

Here's what I've gone through. Here's what I'm trying to do today. And I hope to be a great competitor in all this. And then the judge's judge. You know, I never understood how a guy could show up after five or six seasons this thing being out there, not knowing how to forge weld. You know that that could be one of the bigger complications that's... Could be. How about it is likely going to be built into the competition?

So you've already set yourself up for failure. That was the funny stuff to me. Like how a guy could just come in and like totally set himself. You know what? We had one guy come in during one of the partner competitions. And he was a high energy guy. He got in there. He was forging and carrying on and like having a good ass time.

And then the next day he fucking bolted. I got to leave. I got to leave now. I'm like, did you kill somebody last night? What happened? Like the next day he showed up for competition. They made it through round one. and he just had to leave.

And he fucking got on a plane and left and left his partner stranded like working by himself. That shit to me is funny. That stuff is like. And his buddy went on to do the finale. No way. By himself.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't think he won. But like, man, like, you know, it was those kinds of things, like wild things that would happen. And I always talked to the Smiths before they went in. I'm like, this is not that bitch and moan show.

Understand that, you know, what you're trying to sell is yourself, this is your business, this is your work. You're not going to make the greatest knife you ever made in your life. You're just trying to do the best you can with the time that you have. Focus on your work. Don't worry about anybody else in the competition. Just you do your thing, you know what I mean?

Yeah. And, of course, I told, you know, you'd prep them. Because these guys are staying in a room that is half this size for the entire time they're there. It's like being in Sears School, man. There's like riding on the walls, like other dudes that escaped. You know what I mean? They got their freaking episode number.

number up how many days they were there you know freaking escape routes drawn out it was just it was insane and um and and that's where they spent all their time you know and and i felt bad for them in that sense that they were corralled like that i felt like it was really an injustice to the stars of the show you know and and then so when i talked to me it was all about like patience dude like it takes 250 hours of footage to make this show what it is and there's a lot of sets and resets and lighting and camera stuff that has to be taken care of. And while I'm explaining it to them and getting them to understand it, I'm also a hypocrite and that I don't understand why the fuck it's taking so long to get

those cameras moved around. Mechanically, how long would it take you to record an episode? Four to five. For me personally, it was three to four days for an episode because you would have the first round. And then you would have the second round. and then the guys went home for their whatever, and they'd come back for testing.

Well, you know, I think when we first started up, it was like four to five days, you know. The three hours to forge was a whole day. There was a whole day of filming. You got in, you shot clean reads, you know, to make sure. And when clean reads, that's just me on camera doing the intros, the outros, you know, some of the weapon stuff.

Like when the weapons up there, sometimes the Smiths wouldn't be standing in front of me. And you do like a clean read-through. You know what I mean? So if I miss anything or make a mistake, you know, they got it. And then they bring the Smiths out. And that was usually my best stuff to tell you the truth. I loved it when like interacting with the Smiths because I'm tired of talking to you, guys. Tired to talk. Like I'm so tired of it. After so many years. And so like the Smiths, I really enjoyed interacting with the Smiths more than anything else. And I was all about learning from the crew at the end. Like next thing you know, I'm like hanging out with the camera guys. And I'm like, hey, how does this work? What is this? What's that? You know, what lens do you have on there?

You know, what are you doing when you're not working on Forged and Fire? Would you be interested in coming, doing a thing with me independently? And then there's also the contract stuff. Like, what can I do independently? And for a long time, I couldn't do shit. I couldn't even be in my own documentary

that I filmed in 2016. Really? Yeah, not without their consent. Not without the sign-off of the production company because they own you. You know, so there was a lot of like, every time I renegotiated, it seemed like I'm not good at negotiating contracts because it's not what I do. You know what I mean? It's not what I do. I know what I think I should be getting. I know what I think, you know,

other, you know, what I think my performance is worth, but does that line up with their budgets and stuff like that? So there were a lot of battles. My agent, I think, was really at the end of his rope with me at the end because I'm a little bit of a prima donna. You know what I mean? For four years, my, my, my trade. trailer, this two by fucking six trailer that Grady Powell now sits in, is on top of the fucking trailer that is also the shitbox. Which is everybody on set, all 50 plus people, the Smiths, everybody shits in this shit box all day long, which is fine because I got my own little private toilet right there too. But like in the middle of the summertime, it's leaking freaking, you know, human fluids and stuff like that and it's, I'm not staying in there. I'm not staying in there. I'm going to wander around

your set. I'm going to wander around your set and I'm going to get in the shit and I'm going to take knives off the wall to go freaking take pictures of them someplace else. And I used to tell him I'm disruptive. I'm not, I'm not, I'm more of a disruptive force in that sense. You know, I couldn't be in that one little space and it really started to get to me, even even like the one bedroom apartment or the two bedroom apartment that you're provided, you know, I mean, uh, living in New York is one of the most lonely places in the world you could live. I lived in a hotel for the first two seasons, and then we had some apartments after that, and I was able to bring my wife, you know, but she's, it was different. It was a different kind of thing, and you're doing it all the time,

all day, every day somebody picks you up at home, drops you off at home, you don't have a car there, you're taking subway everywhere you want to go. Stanford, Connecticut was a commuter city, and then my wife got pregnant, and I couldn't get my own projects off the ground, and I was really frustrated with a lot of things and and I wanted time I wanted some time to like work on I thought that I was for a long time I got really separated from my background you know I mean from my brothers you know I mean I wasn't doing the emergency trauma care classes anymore so I wasn't getting that connection to the to the dudes to the fellas Doug Marquita was like my connection to veterans but he's very busy posting on Instagram he's doing it right now I guarantee you

you know there's only so much i could talk about knives and swords you know what i mean that's somebody else's area of expertise like you know i i know i know i know i can make a fucking great knife i guarantee you i can't ask jason i he freaking he him between him and jay nielsen and even ben abbott and dave they freaking got me spun up i can make a good knife you know what i mean but is that what i was going to do for a living is that what i'm an expert at Absolutely not. Absolutely not. So I was very restless. And I had gone and talked to one of the executive producers at A&E about like some of the things that I wanted to do, some of the projects that I wanted to do. And he didn't seem like he was very receptive to those ideas. And if he was receptive, he's like, ah, maybe we could like turn it into some commercials for Veterans Day or something like that. And I'm like, no, you know, I think this is a subject that deserves a lot. little bit more attention this veterans transition project and and uh you know i had uh my wife and i had filmed the documentary about her family's business and i think it's interesting and definitely

relevant in today's culture about the marijuana industry and uh and there just wasn't a whole it's just be the host of forged fire just just just shut up and you know we'll get you a commercial we'll have you do a commercial for dodge or ram or something like that and you're like okay that's cool i fucking love that it's great i get to do a dodge commercial i get to do a ford commercial i get to go to the ford factory hell yeah man this stuff was awesome awesome but let's talk more about the job let's talk more about like what's going on let's talk a little bit more about expanding about moving into different areas like because it's forged and fire for me was getting very very stale yeah and it took up so much of my time and it took my my wife and i away from our family and our home

and and uh and with the baby coming i think it and she started to started having seizures and stuff like that in the third trimester of pregnancy. And then, you know, when we were doing the beat the judges, there were some huge personality conflicts that came up. And I'm going to go ahead and say that I was the person that pushed those conflicts because I felt like we were shifting from some things that had made us successful. And I was very adamant and very open about how I felt about things. I'd never threatened to kill anybody.

I'll say that. Like Doug's the only person, never threatened to kill anybody. I know. And it was me. But it turned into a thing where, you know, I was really budding heads with the producers on set. And then I started quoting some contract stuff. I was like, according to paragraph, yada, yada, yada. They probably didn't like that.

No, no. You know, and then it turned, I started to feel a little bit like I was trying to, you know, really talk to my chain of command and they weren't listening. And that's how I felt. That's why I only did one year in the reserves. You know what I mean? They never gained me as a reservist. I was a civilian for a year jumping out of their planes and doing operations and doing pre-deployment prep.

I did 100 mandates in the reserves. Technically, a civilian. Technically a civilian. You know what I was? One signature on one piece of paper. And when, and I was supposed to have a bone. There was a lot of stuff that came down. And I went to my chain of command.

And it was, they were just like, you know, you got to sort it out. You sort it out. Just sign it. I'm like, well, what about the year that I did? What about all this stuff? What about all this time that I put in? What about my bonus that I was supposed to get at the end of the year? You'll get it next year.

Famous last words. If it was your money and your issues and stuff like that, it had to be a whole different story. So I started to feel a lot like that. You know what I mean? With the show, I started to feel a little. bit like um like they were and again this is just me i felt i felt like there was some manipulation going on and i was very vocal about it very vocal about it i felt like guys weren't staying in their lane and i was very vocal about it and i brought up to david baker the fact that he was doing

an entirely different thing in 2007 than what he was doing now you know what i mean i met you i know you i know what you've been doing up to this point you know what i mean i went to his shop when he he was filming Deadliest Warrior, when he was doing all the weapons for Deadliest Warrior, and the way that he was making weapons then was a lot different than the way that he started making weapons with Forged and Fire. Yeah. And I can say that as a prop maker,

he probably learned a lot from the real knife makers that were out there. And then I had a huge problem with a two-time champion, Forged and Fire being one of the judges. I'm like, his only validation comes from our show. but somehow that has turned into some sort of qualifying thing you know what I mean I got my forged and fire badge I'm ready to be a fucking ranger now you know what I mean I got my ranger tab I'm a ranger and then and the forged and fire champion thing again it is a great accomplishment you know what I mean in a time competition but that doesn't make you an expert at what you do

and Ben Abbott is a fucking amazing smith an amazing blade smith he does highly technical work. I think he's great and I think he does a great job of explaining himself. I don't know if he's necessarily the best guy for that job. You know what I mean? In a lot of ways and I didn't think that he was, but we rolled with it. You know what I mean? I don't know how he ended up taking over half of what Jay Nielsen was supposed to come back and do after his injury, but it happened. You know what I mean? And then when we got into the beat the judge's competition, you had the judges judging one another. And right from the get go, I was against it.

I was like, the judges should not be judging one another. Baker and Abbott are next door neighbors. The familiarity is going to naturally lend favoritism to one guy or the other. And then there's the egos that are involved, you know what I mean? Like all the judges are competing that make blades, you know what I mean? And there's been a lot of, and I'm the, and I'm the, biggest for stirring a pot. I compare all of them to each other. You think that's what Jay would do? Do you think that that's what Ben would do? Well, Ben, Jay said this. Jay, Ben said that.

Dave, freaking, you know, I would pit them against one another because that's my job. You know, to get them to freaking look at things from different perspectives and to also ignite that conversation, you know what I mean, to question the decisions that they're making. You want to know why at home, right? Yeah. Why are you making that decision? So do I. And when I don't understand it or it doesn't jive with the standard that's been set,

I had a huge problem with that. You know what I mean? Just because it was never a thing, if you were making that decision based on skills that you don't have, I had a huge problem with that. You know, I even, Doug Marquita at the end, he tried to talk to me at the gym one day and I was like, look, here's the problem that I have. I was like, everybody here is talking about the efficacy of these weapons in combat and how they work in combat and in combat keeps coming up and i was like and quite frankly i was like

not a single one of us not even fucking me knows about what it's like to be in fucking combat i said even you i said you're an edged weapons expert Doug that's great yeah with a fucking corin when did you become an expert with a fucking claymore you know what i mean like you've got your opinion it's based off a certain amount of fucking knowledge but your word isn't isn't like set in stone it's not it's not like you're Moses or something you know what I'm saying yeah like there is room for questioning a lot of this stuff especially when it when it goes against your own decisions in the past ben Abbott wore a shirt with something that I said with a quote from me on it that says performance is secondary or looks are secondary to performance he has a shirt had a shirt

made that he would wear around looks are secondary to performance will willis I'd say in that beat the judge's competition, that shit did not apply. It did not fucking apply. And I had a huge problem with it. I had a huge problem with it. And I said the judges shouldn't be judging one another. We should have brought in past champions or other knife makers to come in and judge. You know what I mean?

A lot of times it was, I mean, I got into big arguments. I got into big, big arguments. And when I started quoting contracts and talking about game manipulation and talking about and talking about paragraph 7A you know what I mean like I don't want to be involved in any of this stuff well now that you have what seems like some open runway in front of you and choices to do what are your plans what do you want to do well

you know I started this thing in 2016 called the veteran transition project you know it was originally the American walkabout where I was driving across the country and I was trying to get my head on straight I think more than anything and I was talking to veterans about their successes you know transitioning out of the military. And I never really have finished that project. You know what I mean? Even some of the files are sold now.

They're like corrupted. So I'm going back through and I'm trying to try to fix this documentary and follow up on my promise to people. I did a crowdfunding campaign. I still got all the money from that crowdfunding campaign just sitting in a bank account. You know what I mean? To get this thing done. And I hired an editor and I got an editor to work on it.

And it just didn't turn into what I wanted it to be, you know. And it's hard to watch yourself go. through this stuff. But what I want to do is kind of the same thing, but with my wife and son, take them to meet these veterans who are doing great things and have these interesting jobs or who are doing these great programs. And not just veterans, anybody that's part of that same community and looking to inspire and lead the people around them and just kind of do, you know, like what you do here, but on the road. You know what I mean? Like, you know I like talking to people I like learning new things I like asking questions and and I like

traveling around and and when I think about what I'm really good at it's a story that's it I'm good at that's it I'm good at a story and I like to hear them just as much as I like to tell them and I think everybody out there has an interesting story to tell it's about getting to the root of what that story would mean to somebody else or the rest of the rest of the world you know I do not believe that everybody has an interesting story. No? I feel like there are some fucking dumms out there. Yeah, but even that's interestingly.

How the fuck did you end up walking down the street at 6 a.m. in a nightgown with feet so fucking black. They look like the asphalt that I'm driving on. And, you know, how does that happen? That's an interesting story. I want to be a fly on the wall. And this is a true story. I saw this woman just walking down the road in San Diego, 6 a.m.

nightgown, young woman, feet the color of the freaking road. You know what I mean? And she looked rough. And all I wanted to know was like, when you walked out of the door this morning, what made you think that was okay to just be wearing a nightgown? Like I just wanted to be there for that decision. Meth is a hell of a drug. Yeah, but the actual decision, like the point where they're like, no, this is okay.

Again, meth is a hell of a drug. You never know who's making the decisions. Yeah, but even that in and of itself is an interesting story. There are a lot of guys that have turned to drugs. You know, I told you how I started smoking weed again. Even that is an interesting story to me, and somebody else might find it applicable. You know, how did this help you out, you know? And, you know, so that's what I'm all about.

I'm all about like a good story, telling stories. I'm doing some advising stuff or, you know, for some films. I had a guy reach out to me who I really respect in the industry. I've never met him. I just respect him for his legacy, I guess. I reached out to me and has been asking me to work with him on some projects, bringing what little military experience I have to his projects just to add a little bit of what he would call no bullshit.

You know, like just the no bullshit. Desperly needed in that industry. Yeah. I've done a little bit of TA type stuff. And man, you want to talk about a battle between authenticity and entertainment. Yeah. Entertainment winning out 90% of the time. Because that's what you're doing it for.

You're doing it for entertainment. And anybody that's watching any movie that has military shit in it, it's not always authentic. Even that Navy SEAL movie, they came out, it was all 100% real. Documentary. Are we talking about Charlie Sheen? No, no, no, no. We're talking about that other one. Act of Valor?

Active Valor. The fuck show, Octavala. Yeah, even that one. My big brother forced me to go watch that with him. You're never going to get that time back. That was arguably one of the worst movies ever created. And that's, you know, that's the thing. That's the thing.

We're really good at what we do when it comes to like actions on the objective, understanding against weapons and tactics. That part of the movie was great. The acting portion? That's what I was going to say. Spoiler alert people. They weren't actors. Not necessarily the best at acting.

like we know what we're doing. Correct. You know what I mean? And and and and there was some during the military free fall thing when they're supposed to be hay hoeing and they like got their masks off and shit. Like when I saw that right away, I was like, well, that's horseshit because you have to pre-breathe for 30 minutes on the fucking ground before you ever go up. Yeah. I was like so you're not having that conversation with the fucking rent down at 30 grand.

It's not fucking happening. Six minutes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so again, even when they're, you know, flurts. buying that flag that says authentic military tactics. You're like, not so much. We try.

We try. Dialogue is tough with that horsebag on your face. Yeah, yeah. And then look at John Wick. Everybody thinks that's what tactical shooting is supposed to be. And you're like, this is a fucking comic book. You do realize that this is a comic book. And if you can view that movie through the lens of a comic book, it's amazing.

It's fucking amazing. But if you try to view it through the lens of authenticity, it's a little bit rougher. These things are kicking your ass. I know. I don't know what's going on with them. It's like my hair is rejecting them. I've enjoyed it, though, for the last few hours watching you battle with that.

Is there a left and a right on these sons of bitches? You get to choose. I'm not somebody... It's like my hair... Like, even a hat nowadays, my hair just pushes it away. Like, no, don't cover the flow. How many jumps do you have? Over 200.

Over 200. I jumped mastered more than I ever jumped. You know what I mean? Because you would just do multiple passes with students, but over 200 jumps. It was one of my favorite aspects of the job. First time I did a free fall jump, I was like, yep, this is definitely a path that I want to pursue. I had 40 jumps, I think 42 jumps coming out of the Ranger Battalion.

So when I got stationed in Iceland right out of PJ school, within six months of getting there, they had a jumpmaster slot open up at the combat control school. But you still had to have the Army reg was at 40 jumps. Well, most of these guys had like a shit ton of free fall jumps, but no static line jumps. They weren't quite there. But I had them. I was like, I got the jumps. They're like, you're going to Jumpmaster School after six months at the unit.

So there's a little bit of resentment there, I think. Animosity. Yeah, a little bit of resentment. But I was like, hey, guys, I was a ranger before too. Don't forget. I'm not just some guy that's right out of the schoolhouse. And so I went to the Combat Control Jump Master School with guys like Chris Telsworth and Mike Atkins, God rest them.

Didn't Tellsworth serve at the 24th? Yeah, he was. So it was Mike. They were at the two-four when I went with him. So Chris was, he augmented our squadron. I went with him quite a bit. He, I believe he was the Jessica Lynch, BJ, if I'm not mistaken. That's correct. I was just outside the door. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we were there together on that. Yeah, so there you go. The degrees of separation gets smaller and smaller. Crazy small. I was actually blown away when you threw out Joe Barnhart's name. I was like, what? Yeah, yeah, Joe. I like Joe a lot. And again, Chris Tellsworth. I liked him a lot. And, you know, these are all guys with different personalities, you know what I mean?

And I never imitated anybody else's personality, but there were times that I wish that I could be more like a Mike Atkins. You know what I mean? More times I wish I could be like more reserved and less of a, I guess what you would call a Mary Andrew. You know what I mean? I'm one of those guys that like, I love to laugh and have a good time and shoot the shit. But then when it's time to work, it's time to work. You know, I'm the last guy run into the helo

because I was shooting the shit with somebody inside, you know, that, but... I get it. Yeah. I'm the guy that everybody hates. What the fuck, man? This fucking guy. Yeah.

Where can people find you? We've been at this for over three hours. Have we? Yes. I told you I like to talk, man. That's actually... I'm sorry, dude. No, that's a good podcast guest.

Yeah. Well, a bad podcast guest would be somebody you ask a complicated question to or an open-ended question And the answer is no. Like, fuck. Yeah. No, to my own, to my own, probably detriment, I talk too much, you know.

But people can find, right now I'm just doing like an Instagram thing. You know, I turned off my comments a while back after somebody was like, I hope your wife and baby die in a car accident. That's a rough one. And I didn't like that. So I turned off comments for a long time. And I really started thinking about like, is this necessary? you know for me to to to be involved with people that I don't even know you know is it right for them to be able to

come at me and say things without and like look man my homies like if if I ever did anything to offend you or I fuck something up and you're like dude you're fuck piece of shit and you did this I'm like okay yeah I deserve that but if you don't know me you've never been around me never worked with me you know I mean because there are a lot of guys that know me from like what other guys have said yeah You know what I mean? And you've got a lot to say about it. You better freaking do your homework. You better pack your bags. And you better be ready for some snapback. Because what I decided when I turn my comments back on was that I wasn't going to just let somebody say whatever they want to me. I would call them out on inappropriate stuff. If you come out and you say, oh, you're a fucking idiot. I hate you. Well, that's great. You know, I'm glad. Like last night's a perfect example. Somebody was like, you write her fuck fucking. die on my Instagram, something like that. Like, you're just saying something ridiculous. Like, you're a big rooster.

That's what he said. You're just a fucking rooster. I don't know what that means. And that's what I said. I said, I don't know what that means. But if it's supposed to mean that I'm a big cock, you're right. And you noticed. And then heart, heart, kiss, kiss, kiss, whatever. Which probably twisted that person into orbit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's those kinds of people that I have a problem with.

It's those kinds of reactions. I'm all about having a debate. And I curse a lot. And just because you curse doesn't mean that you're being disrespectful. It's part of our vernacular now. Everybody does it. You know what I mean? I'm going to say everybody does it.

There isn't anybody that I know that doesn't let one slip every now and again. And I use it as a verbal pause. I'm a fuck chicken from way back. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. You know, I do it. And I have a way of, like, talking that is very much my own. But it doesn't mean that I'm trying to be disrespectful to anybody. You know, and I'm never out there looking to tear anybody else's freaking struggle apart, you know.

And that's what a lot of times people are looking to do. They're looking to take what they're feeling, take their emotion and project that out into the world. And I understand, I really too, I understand where you're coming from. But projecting all that emotion and all of the fear and all of the hatred and all the anxiety and stuff that you have, you projecting it out into the world to people who cannot do anything about it is is the wrong answer you know what I mean if you want to have a conversation back and forth about a difference of opinion that's fine we can do that and I can tell you where I'm coming from you can tell me where you're coming from and fuck I'm wrong a lot I put out bad numbers about AIDS a while back and

I'll come back and tell you like I was wrong about that here's a website where you can find all the information I'm not a I'm not Google you know You know what I mean? So a lot of times, you know, I'm just pulling information or where I'm paralleling something, you know, off the top of my head. And people want to say, oh, guy, you're Tom Brokaw. You should have done your research. I'm not fucking Tom Brokaw. I'm some douchebag who freaking Forrest Gumped his way into television, you know? And for you to sit in your home and say, like, you should be this or you should be that. You know how many people I've had tell me that they're disappointed in something I did, but based on my military background, you smoke weed. You should be. ashamed of yourself. You're an Army Ranger Air Force pair of rescuemen. I'm like, and those dudes probably need weed too.

You know what I mean? Yeah. You know, better than antidepressants, I'll tell you that. Better than alcohol. I never freaking tried to fight a whole bar full people when I was high.

You know what I mean? What I did was is I turned all of that stuff inward and I became very self-reflective and I learned to I learned to live with myself because all of that other crap is running. That's just you running from yourself. The drinking, the whatever, that's you

running from everything. What we did for me was help me to slow down and really think about, you know, what's going on inside of me and how I could be a better person in the world. And that's what I'm kind of trying, you know, I want to inspire people. I don't want to tear anybody down. I don't want to denigrate anybody's character or their background. You know, you got guys out there that are claiming to be, you know, stuff that they're not, you know. And if you need to do that for you, you know, in your heart of heart, you need to tell yourself that. Tell yourself that.

Don't tell other people that you're something that you're not. You know what I mean? There's a certain amount of freedom and relief that comes with being honest with yourself. You know what I mean? I can be honest with myself. I was an okay ranger and I was an okay PJ. I was stellar at some things, and then other things I was fucking absolutely terrible about at.

In interpersonal relationships were never my strength. But to be able to say, this is what hand I played in those things, and be honest with myself about it, has given me so much peace in my soul about things that now I just want other people to realize that like you can be a complete fuck up man you really can you can you can drop the ball on every decision that you ever had to make but if you freaking just stop and you draw a line and you say I'm not going to do that anymore or I'm not going to participate in that kind of behavior that kind of thought pattern anymore and you legitimately take steps in a different direction. You can become the person that you imagined that you would be when you were fucking

12. Nobody imagined that they were going to be abusing drugs as a meth addict or a crackhead or anything like that when they were a little kid. I had a vision of the type of person that I wanted to be when I grew up. And that's another reason I joined the Army. I wanted to be a fucking tough guy. I wanted to be a badass. I wanted to be somebody who other people would follow and respect and and like stuff like that and I always wanted to lead and I was always not ready you know what I mean I was always like too to maybe a little bit too uh uh what ambitious and then and then as you get older and you experience the setbacks and and you realize that you know you're not always right all the time you're not always you know you're not always you know going to be perfect you know and even like

the things you know what the scariest thing is and the things that only you know about yourself. That's the scariest shit. And when you really start to confront that stuff and you start being honest with yourself about the things that only you know about yourself that nobody else knows about you, you know, that's when you can say,

all right, I'm moving in the right direction. You know, and that's what I had to do. I'd start really being honest with like a, you know, the things that, impulse control. You got problems, man. You get drinking problems. You get this, you got that. And like when I was really honest with myself.

And I was like, I do. I do have these issues. And you had to find a different way to engage it. That's when I found out that like I want to, I just want to help other people to, to, I'm not a mental health expert. You know what I mean? I just want to help other people realize that there is help out there. There is a community of people who are just like you who have, who have stumbled, fallen, fucking ate shit, like been pissing on their own chest in the middle of a fucking party. and still managed to somehow continue to move forward in a direction that was positive.

And I'll say that after my motorcycle ride in 2016, after I met with Marty and Lindsay and Antonio, and I learned and Andrew Bennett, who was on the extortion 17 recovery, and I met with these guys, and I listened to their stories and the difficulties and successes that they were having. That's when I was like, okay, this is a message that I want to take to the world. This is the message that I want to bring to the community is that no matter what organization you're aligning yourself with, whether it's wounded warriors or any of these other organizations that are there to help veterans, they're out there and they're out there to help you. And that's where I give the military an F plus or F minus. Like how come you're not following up with veterans? You sure worked your ass off to freaking get them in.

you know what I mean months years even I mean think about guys taking the late in or taking to asbab in an 11th grade yep that recruiter will follow you around for a fucking year making sure that you're staying on top of things maybe all that stuff they freaking really shepherd you in and then they indoctrinate you and they teach you all of these things you need to be able to do to facilitate the military mission but the day that you retire ETS freaking get booted whatever all of that support that you thought you had diminishes by I'm going to say nine just to throw out a big percentage that sounds extreme. I'd say it's higher.

And then you got nobody. Your homies, they're still running around doing the do. If you stay in, like if you stay in Virginia Beach and you're retired, you know what you're getting, you're getting a big fucking slap in the face. Every time these guys come back from some kick-ass fucking deployment,

and they're telling you about it. And you're like, oh, man, fuck, dude, I wish I was on that. But I was, you know, I was at Home Depot all day. You know, or, or, you know, or that sort of thing, you know. and it's kind of sad that the military also gets rid of guys that aren't ready to go.

You know, those dudes that are fucking, like, badass, hardcore warriors that have been in for like 20 years, but their rank isn't commiserate with, like, how long they've been on. You gotta make room for the young guys, you know? Like, this guy's a badass warrior. That's not, that's, I don't think that that's,

a general can serve for life, you know, but a guy who's like a master sergeant, who's an amazing, leader and has inspired other people to be great leaders and who's still running and gun in like a Brian Mosier or somebody like that and I say Brian Mosier because he's the chief of the team up one of the PJ teams up in Long Island you know this is a guy who I highly respect he was a Marine before he's still a PJ and I know he can still do the do but at 30 years guess what pro see you see you know what I mean and and my dad retired after 26 I saw his transition he was like

picking corn not sure what he's going to do he had one foot in the old world, never really used a computer. You know what I mean? So all of his personnel management skills were obsolete. And that's what happens to guys. You know what I mean? You get out and you don't have this, you don't have this like set of standards and regulations and books that are going to tell you what you need to do and when to do it and how to dress and how to lead. And then you just try to take the things that you know about what's effective and you apply it to whatever situation that you're in right now. And the first time you call somebody a fucking idiot on camera

like because they're being a fucking idiot you know, it doesn't go over well, you know, and it's something that you just say offhand, I like, dude, you're a fucking idiot. Everything that you just said fucking idiot. Every year, you're a fucking idiot.

And you move on. Because it's a common greeting. That doesn't mean that I don't think tomorrow that something that you're going to say is brilliant. You know what I mean? It's just way of expressing yourself or you know that's the kind of culture that we build where where you can be like that with one another even the females man i don't care what anybody says i've worked a lot of females in the military not as many as some because it was special operations you know PJ's all male you know ranger battalion is definitely all male they're in a female around for

miles he had to leave base for for that kind of entertainment uh victory drive yeah so anyway No, I'm saying that, you know, the thing, coming back to the female thing is, shit, what was I going with that? I started thinking about a victory drive. I'm assuming that's where the strip clubs were. Yeah. The more you tip, the more erotic your experience becomes. That was the motto. That was the motto.

The more you tip, the more erotic your experience will get. There's probably a victory drive in most cities or towns that have a military installation. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, you know, I'm not going to, I'm not going to lie to you. I was, I was there for the full experience. You know what I want to see it all. I wouldn't see it all. I wanted to do it all. If I had been deployed to Southeast Asia, I would have went to those places that you only hear freaking fantastical outrageous story tales about. I would have gone. I've been like, I have to see this with my own eyes, you know, anything. You know, somebody tells you, if volcanoes erupting in Iceland, I'm going to go fucking look at it. I want to see that. Yeah. I can get on board with that. Yeah. Closing thoughts by Will Willis. Oh, shit, man. Doesn't have to be deep. You know what, man?

Here's the thing. Find comfort in your own skin by really being honest with yourself about who you are and who you want to be in your life. And if you don't like the person that you are that you have been or the decisions that you've made, one, come to terms with those decisions. They happen. You know what I mean? you can't change anything that's already happened. Like, I'm fucking sorry, I can't. I don't have a time machine.

If I did, I'd go forward. I don't know that I'd go back. But, you know, try to be, if you're going through something, reach out to your homies. Try to be a better person every day. And that goes for everybody. Try to be a better person every day. If you're already the Pope,

he's still trying to be a better person every fucking day. And understand that everybody in the world is going through something. Like you said, like there are some people out there that are fucking idiots. Correct. And they just are. And that's how it is. And it's nothing you can do about them. And I just try to understand where they're coming from.

I'm not saying that I disagree with you or that they're not idiots, but I've been that person. I'm, I've learned everything that I do, every, every hard lesson I had to do it twice. You know, so, you know, I'd never judge anybody. I really don't. I really, even if somebody's a. fucking serial killer. I'm like at the end of that, like, dude, you're maybe just supposed to be a predator. I don't know.

There's a psychology in there that and stuff like that. What you did is wrong. Absolutely. But is it your fault that you are the way that you are? You know what I mean? Is there something that could have been done to manage this stuff? I tell people that I was probably as a kid one bed wedding incident away from being a serial killer. I think, you know, cruelty to animals, I kicked a few cats and freaking blew up bullfrogs and did nasty shit.

I was abused as a child. What else is a serial killer freaking trait? You know, all of these traits. I have no idea. All these traits. I've done a lot of psychology. I've read up on a lot of psychology because I'm always like, what the fuck is wrong with me? And so, you know, even with that stuff, you know, like how did it go the other way?

You know what I mean? with the amount of abuse that, you know, whether or not, and look, my brothers and sisters will say, ah, that didn't happen like that sometimes. You know what I mean? I didn't happen like that. I'm like, uh, to you. Maybe it didn't happen like that to you, but that's how I perceive the situation. And, and, and, and, but I don't think any of them would disagree with me. That's for sure. Especially about my stepmom, but, uh, but, uh, I think that, uh, in the end, um, and, uh, in the end, everything comes out in the wash everything comes out in the wash in the end in the end at the end of your life when you get there you got to be able to look around and and and just understand that you did your

best you know what I mean hopefully you did your best and and to me that's heaven knowing that when I leave this world I did my best I fell in the house I was jackassing around with my wife and I and I smashed my head into a step and I was bleeding it was bad I knew I was fucked up I knew I was I was concussed. And, you know, my wife is there. We're in this mountain home all by ourselves. It's the middle of wintertime. And I tell her, you're just going to braid my hair together.

You know, we're not going to the hospital. You're just going to braid my hair together and cover it, you know, as a stitch. And we're not going to the hospital. So I go upstairs and she's got me, you know, she's braiding my hair and looking at it, this cut. And I'm feeling it, man. I'm feeling really, really woozy like I fucked myself up. And I've never been knocked out before. and I started walking out of the bathroom.

I was like, hold on, I just got to go lay down or something. She's like, don't lay down, don't lay down. And I passed out my face. The last thing I remember is my face, like hitting the door jam. And I felt it. I remember feeling, like, it definitely hit me. It wasn't painful. I just, the feeling of, like, rocking back.

And I was out. I was out. And I woke up and my wife was over the top of me, and she's freaking out. losing her shit and I'm so I'm so unconscious that my heels are tucked up underneath my ass and I'm laying on my legs you know what I mean and I'm completely limp and I just remember coming to and she's over the top of me and I grabbed her I said it's okay babe nobody had more nobody's ever had more fun than me and she's like what she's like I was like if if if I die right

now and I was I was fucking loopy man like I was out of it I was like if I go right now it's okay I want you to know that this has been the greatest adventure ever and that you know I just told her all this and like even right now like I really meant it I was like if this is it man

I'm okay with it's okay I remember telling her like it's okay if this is it like I had a good time I had a good time and I'm ready and I've always had an obsession with like what's what's after you know I mean I don't know what it is I'm not a religious guy per se I'm very spiritual but

I've always had an obsession with like I told you. I started thinking about suicide when I was when I was eight you know and and it it just kind of has followed me around this idea of death and this obsession I think about it all the time think about it all the time like how's it going to happen I hope it happens all the sudden you know what I mean I hope it's just one of those even like with with the I hope it's not a wood chipper yeah feet first but even that like okay that's how it went down but you know it's always been like that like when it when it happens it's going to happen you don't get to choose unless you commit suicide, which I'm not down for. I mean, I did. I had a pistol

in my mouth when I was in high school and I've told people about this on Instagram and I didn't do it. And I don't think that I could ever do it. And I've been close and I've called, you know, my big sister. And I was like, here's what's fucking going down right now. Like, I am losing my shit. And, you know, had to have that talk down and had to, had to reflect on all of those feelings and things that you go through. And people are like, how could you, that you have all these things. You have. You have. all of these things and all of these things in your life, how could you still? Well, that's the illness, you know, for me. You know, that's my, that's my own, that's my own problem to deal with and not for, not for anybody else to judge. And I think that, I think that we have a lot of people out there

that are scared to engage on problems like borderline personality disorder or, or, or, or, or, and I think a lot of guys, especially where we come from, have borderline. They've got, fear of abandonment issues they have impulse control problems they have substance abuse issues oh yeah and somehow you've gotten yourself into a career field that feeds your impulses and rewards them and rewards them you know what I mean like jumping out of fucking planes I mean how many times have you been on the DZ after a jumping you're all just jacked you're all just jacked you got that adrenaline yeah exactly you got that adrenaline you're all just jacked and it's the same every time almost every time you get that same

feeling every time but these just want it more more more more like it's a drug you know what I mean? And I used to tell my students, like when you're looking to step off the end of that ramp, you've got to be okay with dying. You got to be okay with it because you're jumping a shoot in the Air Force at least to somebody else fucking packed. And who knows what kind of day that guy had when he packed your parachute. So when you make that decision, I hope that you're ready. You know what I mean? I hope that you've got everything squared away. And I hope that, you know, you're not leaving anything, you know, left behind. because I don't feel like there's anything in the world that I've wanted to do that I didn't chase after and accomplish in some way.

And I think that it's important for people to do that. It's okay to do that. I've been called selfish a lot. I'm sure you have to. I have. But here's the thing, man. You've got to do what's going to make you happy. And if you're denying that, in a lot of times, that's what causes depression.

You know what I mean? and also unanswered sort of internal issues. Again, it's okay that you're a dude, that you're a guy, or that you're a hard charge, or a woman who's going through stuff. You know what I mean? Everybody is. Everybody's going through something. Talk to people.

Be honest with people about how you're feeling about things. You know what I mean? Be honest with people about like your past. You know what I mean? And there are still some things I won't talk about with people. Like, I'm not going to talk to you about everything. Like, some of the things are just for me and the other people that were involved. Even the Forged and Fire thing, me talking about that.

I think this is the first time I've ever talked about publicly, you know, what I thought of the entire process and why I think things went down. Ultimately, I got a call on April 1st. And they were like, we're letting you go because of COVID cutbacks. But that is counter to what happened, prior to that, you know what I mean? There were other things that happened. And I can say, yeah, I'm a hard guy to work with.

There were personality conflicts. I can be honest about that stuff. What's alarming is when you don't get that honesty from the other side. You had Keith Barry on here, right? Yeah. I went to Somsee with Keith Barry. And, you know, there's a lot of stuff in the military, like what Keith Barry went through. Yeah.

That isn't just exclusive to the military. You know what I mean? It happens in a lot. For sure. And if anything, that, that, I mean, idea of persecuting that guy, Keith Berry, came from outside of the military and was kind of, it was just a period of time that we were in. And it's just like the violence thing. Because I draw a doodle on a script in my trailer and leave it there, it doesn't mean that I'm a fucking violent person.

It means that you came in, saw some of my private thoughts on a piece of paper, circulated around, and made people scared of something they shouldn't have been scared of. You know, and, and, And those are the kinds of things that are upsetting, you know, that upset me. You know, here I am dealing with my issues and my problems. And now somebody from the outside is like making some sort of judgment about it. And I think that that's wrong. I'd never judge anybody who came to me and said, this is what I'm going through. Here's the real deal problem.

And I want you to help me out with it or, you know, I understand that, you know, this is what's going on. So much I want to say. There's so much, like three hours is not enough time, man. Well, then that just means we do round two. Oh, well, let's do it. Let's do it. I can do round two. I mean, I'm here.

I'm here. I don't mean today. I mean, I'll have you come back up. Yeah, that's fine. I enjoy talking and I enjoy talking about all this stuff. And you said closing thoughts about half an hour ago. That's okay. I'll let you go, man.

So my closing thoughts of this, and this is where you can find me, I'm going to, I'm trying to get a road show going, basically. where my wife is a director, she directed our documentary, a hell of a producer. She also writes children's books. We're just kind of doing our own thing. Like, how do we make money as a family? How do we go into a family business and sustain ourselves, you know, doing what we love to do creatively? And for me, it's about storytelling.

I want to be able to write movies and direct movies and produce movies. I want to be able to do my own content. reality content, my own shows. Like if I want to, like, let's say me and you, we want to go snowboarding for a day. I want to be able to do, like, go out and say, hey, me, you know, me and Andy, we're going snowboard and we're going to talk about XYZ. You know, we're going to do the same thing basically you and me are doing here just with some physical activity involved.

Or if you're a knife maker and I come to see you, well, let's fucking make a knife and talk about some of the shit. Neil Camer Murrah talks about PTSD and depression and suicide while he forges the knives, you And he talks to veterans about this stuff. He's not a veteran. What is he bringing to the table? This is the stuff that I'm really interested in. It's people helping other people, you know, elevating one another as human beings.

I'm so tired. I'm so tired of the division, the forced division, the injected division. Being a military brat, everybody's just got a different candy-coated shell. I think of everybody as an M&M. And everybody's got a different candy-coated shell, but you're all peanuts and chocolate on the inside. You know what I mean? And we're all just being consumed.

We're all being eaten up by time. And time doesn't give a shit if you're the fucking, the fucking green M&M or the brown one. You're going to get eaten up. And that's how it is. And you just want to do the best you can with the time that you have. And then legacy. What do you want to leave behind?

What kind of things do you want to leave behind for your kids? you know I think everybody in a lot of ways is worried about legacy especially as men you mean what am I leaving behind is there going to be a name am I going to survive they say you die the last time you or the second time you die is when somebody speaks your name for the last time right so like how long does that go and I would say that um not very far maybe two generations yeah yeah I mean if you're you know what kind of impact are you going to have on the world is it going to be a positive impact or a negative impact. I got a high school teacher, Joe Graven.

He doesn't even know that I know his name probably. And he was my baseball class coach. Not even my baseball coach. I couldn't make the team. I was too small. But he was my baseball class coach. And he called me moosness because everybody called me moose when I was growing up. And he was one of the most supportive individuals that I've ever met my entire life.

You know, he didn't take any shit. He was a super fit guy. He loved the baseball. and I would say that he I looked at him like a father figure without ever acknowledging I never did anything outside of school with him never saw him one time outside of school ever and that guy had a huge impact on me I'd rather be that kind of guy the kind of guy who people were like yeah man that guy he my brother is one of those he's a school teacher up in northern California man the best the best kind of guy his students reach out to me like dude your fucking brother's my teacher is the best it's awesome and he is he's fucking amazing those kinds of people inspire me you know what i mean i'm selfish motherfucker you know what i mean i'm just trying to figure out how to how to how to how to how to pay my bills without working for you know somebody that i disagree with uh uh you know you're doing a good job doing a good job me me i'm trying to figure out how to how to how to find a group of people

that i don't disagree with too much that i can that i can work with and do creative stuff um and And it's a tough business because, like, let's say, yeah, it's a tough business to get into. And we can talk about that some other time. But, yeah, man, just try to be a better person every day. And instead of denigrating, you know, the people around you for not being the same as you, try to elevate a little bit. You know what I mean? Go the other direction.

You know, kill them with kindness. Kill them with a freaking hug and a kiss, man. Why not? I used to rammin' Colin Lopez. He used to hug and kiss that guy all the time, man. He'd be fucking all pissed off. Be like, dude, you just need a hug, man. Come on.

Come in here and get a hug. It's one of those things. Somebody, somebody, a civilian guy introduced me to this idea. When another dude offers you a hug and you're like, I don't want a hug, but he hugs you anyway. You still feel kind of good afterwards. Accurate. You're still both smiling at the end of it. And you're like, get the hell off me.

But like, you feel kind of good at the end of it. And I think that's, we need more hugs. You know what I mean? We need to give more hugs to people. Be like, it's okay, man. that you're upset. It's okay that we disagree. That's just the way of the world.

We're not always going to see eye to eye on shit. And let's just try to be better people for everyone moving forward. That's my final thought. I can't add into that. That's awesome. Thank you for taking the time to come up here. I appreciate it, man. No, man.

Thank you for having me. And I didn't know what this was going to be like. Neither did I. We talked about a lot of crazy shit, man. It wasn't too crazy, right? No. Did I incriminate myself on any level? I'm not a lawyer.

Jeff, I'm sorry. That's awesome, man. Thank you. Thank you again to Babel for supporting the podcast. Babel is the number one selling language learning app. Today, or whatever day you listen to this, when you purchase a three-month Babel subscription, you'll get an additional three months for free. That is six months for the price of three.

Just go to babble.com and use the promo code cleared hot. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you. Thanks for taking the time to tune in, whether you're listening on an audio-only platform or you're watching on YouTube. I appreciate that you take the time every week to tune in. People ask me a lot, what can they do to help me spread the word? And the answer is actually embedded in the question. The biggest thing you guys can do to help me if you enjoy the word, the podcast and you think it would be helpful to others is subscribe and share it with other people.

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Again, clear-thoddhotpodcast.com, click on the shop tab. And hopefully something in there looks like it would be an item you would like to wear around town. And then you can tell people what it is when they ask you. But that is it. The biggest thing I can say is thank you. I truly appreciate it. Until next time. See you.