Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Ten Years in the SAS - What They Don't Teach You | Jay Morton | Ep. 455

Episode Date: June 24, 2026

Fourteen years in uniform. Four with the Parachute Regiment, a decade in the SAS. Patrol medic and qualified mountain guide. Afghanistan, Iraq, and covert deployments. Jay Morton left in 2018 and went straight up the world's biggest mountains — two Everest summits, one of them solo. Everest comes up, and it isn't pretty. He stood on the summit alone in 2017. Now it's a queue of paying clients short-roped to the top, garbage stacked at Camp 4, two hundred grand for the VIP package. Nobody walks out anymore. They fly — on some of the sketchiest helicopter rides you'll ever hear described. We get into what nobody warns you about: leaving. In the unit, everything is built around you. Someone books the flight. You wake up knowing exactly where to be. Then it's gone, and you're staring in the mirror looking for the guy who used to handle all of it. We talk about chasing a bigger number in a bank account, then realizing a month later you didn't care about the thing you bought. Status versus utility. What his sister, a hospice nurse, heard people say at the end — and what they never said. Also in here: the reality TV machine, the hypocrisy of the silent-professional crowd, twelve coffees in a day, and where AI stops being useful.  Concept Expeditions: ⁠https://www.conceptexpeditions.com/⁠ Today's Sponsors:  Peluva:  10% off and use the following link: ⁠https://checkout.peluva.com/CLEAREDHOT⁠ Bubs Naturals:  For a limited time only, listeners  are getting 20% OFF at ⁠https://www.bubsnaturals.com⁠ by using code "clearedhot"  

Talk about you being like having a sense of humor. I was like, I can never get it on the podcast. And now I'm meeting you. Yeah, it's just sarcasm. I'm like, sorry people, I'm not being serious. I don't actually want them to die. But I kind of, you know, it's like. It's good, it's like British humor.

I deeply love the mastery of the word cunt by British people. It's one of my favorite things about that side of the pond. Yeah, the Aussies live it too. I know, but they're backing. Everybody feels like they can't say it as much. They're backing away from it. I'm trying to really get it. I'm trying to get a research.

They say it in a different context, don't they? They say it if we say mate a lot. Yeah. They say mate a lot. Yeah. They'll say, say cunt if it's, he's a good cunt. Or a proper cunt, yes. Yeah, whereas we say it like that fuck is a cunt.

Yeah. We say it's degraded. Yes, it's how you say it. Hard tea, not hard tea. Yeah. It's also that. Mm-hmm. Like a woman's.

Indeed. Genitals, which is pretty gross. Which Michael's never seen, but. No clue you're just talking about. We know, trust me. Penis. Are you ready? Yeah, we're good. Are we?

I don't trust him. Where would you like to begin, sir? We're off and running. I'm good, I think just random stuff, UFOs. We'll go to the Rogans. Okay, we'll go. We'll give me the intro to what it's like to be on Joe's show. Hey, Jay, nice to meet you.

What do you think about the Illuminati? I watched that film. I can't know what it was called. What was a film called? With Tom Hanks, the Angels and Demons one? Nah, what was that film called? I don't know Someone

Pull that mic close to you Keep that fucker about it Of course yeah Yep Um No idea It's something about the Illuminati Triangles

Snakes Triangles are real And so are snakes I don't know if that means The Illuminati is real Why does it all Why does it all Come from the US

You were saying this On the way over here When it comes to UFOs You're saying all the UFOs Crash here I bet you If we dig in heart Michael

Immediately Google UK UFO community. Saying that I think crop circles came from the UK. I mean, look at this. That's just a siding map.

Yeah. See, you were talking mad shit. Now, I will be honest, I will be honest, there is a slight difference in intensity and color. Yours looks like the sun. But let's not ignore

that there is a little bit of a light source. Mate, but I'd hedge my bet to say that all the UFO believes in the UK are probably U.S. citizens. Or they're influenced by podcasts or U.S. media. Or are all the, or most of the U.S. UFO believers from the U.K.

who have moved here and they brought their shit with them because the U.K. I don't think we've got that many people in the U.K. Obviously, it's over time. Why is it the U.S.? Why is it the U.S. that love UFOs? I don't know. We got a little bit in Australia, some of southeastern coast of Australia's lighten off. I see Russia's not allowed to light UFOs.

I see a few dots. And all right, so the website's called MapPorn. Yeah? And it was updated three years ago. So this is legit. I feel like it's up to date. I feel like we're cutting out of that. Can we go on Map porn's website?

See what else they've got maps for. There's a reason why I have him log in to Google under his username instead of mine because I'm sure I'm on enough list anyway. I don't need to have him. What's this, Reddit? So it's going to be legit. 465. Is that likes?

108 comments. What are the comments? I don't know. What are your thoughts on UFOs? I think it's one of those. I don't really care. Would you want them to be, would you want to know that we're not alone in the universe?

The UFOs? Well, just in general. I mean, the UFOs are, of course, tied to, I would assume, some intelligent species beyond humans, right? That's the thing, right? The discovery, are we? alone in the universe. I think it would be a good thing for humanity.

I think it would calm people down a little bit. I don't know. I think it would make us go into some sort of uproar. Isn't that just, I think we just call that Tuesday? I mean, aren't we in the middle of that right now? It's Monday morning at 6 a.m. I mean, I don't know. It's like one of those things.

I think the same as ghosts. I think up until you've seen a UFO or a ghost with my own eyes, there's millions of people that believe in ghosts, but I've never seen one. So why would I believe in a ghost? Like, what difference does it make in my life if I believe in ghosts? Like, what does it change? None, really?

Or the afterlife? Like, how do you prove the afterlife? I don't know if you know this, but I have no answers to anything, really. So we had this. This podcast, my hosting ability is not based off of intellectual capacity. You ever send a ghost then? No. I have met people who I can say,

I believe that they would bet everything they have and everything they ever would have on their belief that they did. Does that mean it was a ghost? No. I'm just saying, I believe them that they believe. That's all I can say. And they're legitimate people,

as in like they're credible. Because that's the thing that gets me. Yeah. I mean, they have jobs. They have friends. They exist in places other than the internet. Do they like crystals?

Star signs. Okay. Interesting. I don't know the Venn diagram overlap. Have you seen a crystal in the house? I have a buddy, Greg, who's rowing across the Pacific. Do you know Greg Anderson? No.

He's rolling across the... British or American guy? Well, he's American. And he's rolling across the Pacific right now in a rowboat with four people. The robot was designed, I think, in the UK, though. It's one of these, the team stuff. They go back and forth.

I think it's Scotland, isn't it? Yes. They've never had one sink. It's designed. So I have... I think they're eight or nine days away from Hawaii. They started in Washington. Yeah.

I bet you he had a crystal on that boat. I bet. He sends them to me. I bet. I've got a confession. Tell me. I'm wearing a crystal right now. What's it supposed to do?

What is the power you have with the crystal? It's called a tiger's eye. Yeah, but is it a tiger's eye? I had a friend that believes she's a witch. this is actually all I want to talk about for the next few hours. So you believe in UFOs, I believe. I don't create in UFOs. What I'm saying is I've never, I've never been in a place.

I've seen plenty of things in my life that I can't explain, but I don't leap to like it must be an alien species. I think it would be cool for humanity if we just acknowledge, we don't even know how big known universe is. I think statistically it's unlikely we're alone. I think it would be cool to know. I'm not saying I want to sit down and have a beer with one, even though I would for sure.

I think it would help, though. So I don't believe in UFOs, but I do want to believe that aliens are real. I'm not saying that I believe that because I have no evidence. But you have a friend that's a witch. Let's focus on the important thing. Yeah, she gave it, gifted it at me. It's called the Tigers Eye.

What does it protect you from? I don't know. I travel a lot. So she just went, she gave it to me and said, stick that round your neck and it'll protect you in your travels. I don't know. Pull up what a tiger's eye does. Yes, Michael.

Powers. Does it? It's a rock that was formed that. Tiger's eye. Mental clarity and focus. Yeah. Powerful Chato-Yant, gemstone revered in crystal healing and holistic that it is.

It's celebrated for its ability to enhance mental clarity, promote courage and self-confidence, and provide strong, grounding, and protective energies. Dude, why doesn't yours look like a skull on the bottom right? I know, I know. It is weird, though, isn't it? Isn't it? This witch friend of mine believes that crystals will, she can feel the energy that comes off the crystals.

So then the question becomes, if it's real or not and it has a positive impact on their life, does it matter? No, I agree. You know? Yeah. I totally agree with them. My auntie's a shaman. No. We're not even remotely talking.

talking about what you used to do for living. We're just going down your family tree. And I, she's a new shaman, so she's new to it. How does one just, hold on, lived a completely normal life and woke up on a Tuesday and said, FYI, I am a shaman now? I don't think it was a normal life. Okay. I mean, it was.

It was a non-shaman life though, wasn't it? Yeah, it was a non-shamanistic life. But she, oh, she's lovely. to be fair. And I say this because I'm quite open-minded. As are you with the UF? I can tell already. Yeah. And I agree with you. It's like, so she lost her husband, my uncle, but she's, she's blood relative. They live out in Chamonie in the Alps. You've been there jumping. Fucking beautiful place. Beautiful. God, hard to describe it. It's amazing, isn't it? Yeah. They've got a shalley that my uncle converted. He was out one day cycling, got knocked off his bike.

was probably around 50, 60 years old, died. She's into the outdoors. She's not as crazy as him in terms of climbing, all that kind of stuff, but she likes it. And yeah, I don't know, just obviously going through grief and stuff, just...

Maybe, I mean, if it's a tool that helps somebody, I am not here to tell people how to live their life, man. Big believer of it. Do you know what? She travels all around the world. She takes, like, feathers and crystals and rocks and stuff that she's found from.

Fuck, yes, she does. Yeah, do you know what else you're going to take? Does she tickle like people's buttholes with the feathers and stuff? Or what are we talking about? Should we ask it? We get her on the phone. That'd be better, wouldn't it? What type of shaman is she?

What would happen to the butthole though if you tickled it with a feather? It depends on the powers that the feather has. Is it a crow? Is it weird that we're talking about my auntie tickling butt holes or is that all good? I mean, not for you. It could be for me. I don't think it's weird at all. Yeah, crows.

My mind is so far down this rabbit hole. Why are crows so? They're smart. Crows are smart as how. Perhaps an eagle then. Though different powers, I think, for different birds. I think crows are smarter than an eagle. I think they...

If you're not in that thing where they can hold a grudge for 14 years? They'll trade you. Why is it 14? Why not 15? Or 13. Or 14.5? I don't know. But there's videos of crows that will trade people.

They collect things and they'll trade for food and stuff like that. Ravens are very smart too. Yeah. Crows and ravens. I think they're very similar, though. Yeah, we've got crows on the beach where I live and you see them pick their shells up and they'll drop it on the floor to try and break it. I wouldn't say that's smart though.

We just think it's smart for a bird. Smart than some of the human beings I see walking around every day. We've got can opener. It's true. We designed the can opener. Listen, that doesn't mean all humans understand how to use one. There's some absolute retards in the world, didn't that? Yeah, one of my favorite words.

Probably listening to us right now, thinking we're... We're talking about breaking stuff. We're helping people explore... I mean, we're deep into spirituality at this point. Big time. We're open-minded ex-special forces. All right. So you have a shaman in your family.

You have a witch friend. Who else are you spending time with? Like at a dinner party at your house, what's going on? What else is there? Does the witch curse people? What does she do? I don't know. Like, because why are they all good witches?

I thought witches weren't actually inherently bad, right? Well, you think so, right? Well, then TV shows, I guess they generally are bad. Michael, what's the word for a good witch? Look that up. I'll tell you what I do love. The fact that I don't know when it was, like the Salem Witch Trials, that era, we basically got sick and tired of women in relationships, marriages.

So he decided to call more witches, stick him in water. And if they floated and survived, they were a witch. And then got burned. Yeah. And if they drowned and died. They were a good human being and maybe just a woman. I would like to believe that as a species we've evolved since then, I doubt it at some times.

I have my concerns I said she had sometimes. I mean, some country is still stone women. A white witch is a good witch. White witch is a good witch. We're learning so much together today. In modern wicker and contemporary witchcraft, practitioners who focus on healing protective magic and benevolent purposes. So what does she do with her powers?

I have no idea, to be fair. She's got a massive crystal. Huge crystal. She's actually bougie. She's loaded. Got loads of cash in the bank. This is actually making a little bit more sense right now because she has the time to explore ridiculous shit.

100%. She like travels around the world. There's ayahuasca. MDMA therapy. What does she need therapy from? All of her fucking free time? Too many Chanel handbags, I think. It's hard.

Have you ever had a Chanel handbag on it? I honestly, if you put one in front of me, If it didn't say Chanel on it, I wouldn't be able to identify it. Yeah, fair. Also, though, I'm a dude. Yeah. And I think, did they make him for dudes? I bet they do make him for dudes.

Well, where you're from. Dudes, dudes have got the thing now. You're not seeing the dudes that where they carry like a bag under their arm. You're not seeing this? Listen, we live. You've been over into Dubai recently? No. No.

How about this? Hard pass. Avoid at all costs. Dubai's full of dudes. Louis Vuitton bags under their arms. It's like a thing now. I don't even know what they put in it. I've tried to get everything out of my pockets.

Yes. I just like a phone, maybe some keys. I carry a fanny pack because it's an easier way to carry a gun in keys. You got a gun in it now? Yeah, fuck, of course I do. What do you got in it? I love this. We have the shittest gun laws ever in.

I mean, obviously because. Oh, sick. Non-airsoft. Definitely not airsoft. Oh, don't get me wrong. There's plenty of real guns in here. Yeah. The guest just never knows where they are.

I would tell you, you're one of the few guests where if something went down, I would just hand you something. We could go to work. 100%. I'd love that. But I wouldn't hand it to Michael. What do you think about the gun laws in the US? Or the gun situation?

It is very complicated. And the problem is people are people. It's less about the laws and more about the people. I agree. When people, you and I have a unique optic where, I would describe we had a front row seat towards things that I would consider to be evil, or at least the opposite ideology of the Western world. And again, I'm not here to tell people how to live their life,

but I don't care what law you write. I'm sure there's laws in the UK that say you shouldn't fucking blow yourself up on a double-decker bus. But for people who want to do those things, it doesn't matter what the law says. I think reasonable and responsible gun laws are a great thing. The problem in the U.S. is there's about 800 of those already on the books. Adding more laws isn't kind of really impact what's happening. I think we need to dive in deeply into mental health. I agree.

I think I wish people would treat them more like what they are, which are tools designed to take life. So if it's not in positive control, put it in a safe. A lot of these things, especially with younger individuals who get involved in the shootings, they're either not able to buy it themselves or they get access. You know what I mean? It's just something that's left about as if it's not a lethal object. I would love to see it where gun owners, not necessarily have to be required, but almost required, it's just to have a safe.

And it doesn't have to be in it at all times, but just reasonable and responsible gun ownership. You know, you and I have seen how guns can stop horrible things, especially when people who want to do horrible things also have guns. I mean, it's very trite to say, you know, how do you stop a bad person with a gun? And that's with a good person with a gun. But there's also an essence of truth to that as well, too.

Because if you bring a knife to a gun fight, that's a tough one. You know, I hope you got a lot of people and you can close the distance. What are your thoughts about the gun laws in your country? Obviously, having spent plenty of time with weapon systems, I like guns. Yeah. As in like, I enjoy getting better at things. And I think shooting is one of those really rewarding things where you get better.

You can also use something that can protect people, protect people that are vulnerable, protect your family, all that kind of stuff. I mean, look, I would like to see gun laws not be more relaxed, but be a little bit more open to maybe people that served in the military or have experience with weapons. I know we're probably never going to see a time in the UK where we have gun laws similar to the US. Right now, the kind of gun laws that we've got,

you've got to have a reason to have a weapon system. So, for example, the shotgun license is the first stepping stone on getting a gun license. What would they consider to be reasonable to acquire? So hunting. So if you had a shotgun, you'd need to prove or you'd need basically to say that I'm going to use this shotgun for, say, sport shooting, clay pigeon, or that, you know, you're going to go and shoot duck or pheasant or whatever it is. And then you've got the actual gun license.

So you've got shotgun license and then gun license. We only sell bolt action. And you have to be able to justify what size round you're allowed to have. So you can have a 338, but you've got to be able to justify what you're going to use that 3338 for. So for deer stalking, shooting, stag or whatever it is. I've never applied for a gun license. I've got friends that have got gun licenses. And you can, so I can go out to shoot and deer with a friend of mine that,

as a gun license. That's legal. But yeah, it's a difficult one because we've never had a gun culture. So all of a sudden to turn around and say that, well, actually shooting handguns are shooting rifles is pretty fun, even just, you know, shooting steals down a range. I think it's more of a selfish point of view. I'd like to shoot more. I'm not really shot since leaving the military in 2018. There's obviously a mass amount of skill fade there. Yeah.

I'd like to see probably the police go through more rigorous firearms training. I'd like to see more funding being released for that. We're obviously seeing an increase in attacks in the UK now. A lot of them are done with knives, like salotaping the knives to the hands. And not all police in the UK carry guns, right? It's a particular qualification there, right? Yeah. So it's a specialist firearms officer.

Dude, that's tough. But again, I don't know what the training's like in the US for police officers. Various. Yeah, probably state to state, right? Yeah. Precinct to precinct. I'd say in the UK, it's pretty, pretty poor. And like, look, when I, I don't know what it was like when you joined the military,

but when I went into just the normal army, we call it the Green Army, you'd see a weapon system on a range maybe six, seven times a year. And even then you wouldn't have that many rounds. And then when we first went in the special forces, we weren't seeing, I mean, we adopted a lot of stuff from you guys. Yeah. You weren't seeing this onus really being honed in on shooting the weapon system. So it was kind of this, you know, there wasn't a lot of focus on, you know,

dialed in strategic shooting. It was more just every now and then we'd just get a load of rounds and just go down to the range. Interesting. And shoot and only really kind of probably, I joined in, or I was in the SAS in 2009, probably around four years on from that, so probably early 2000s in Afghanistan. We were seeing how you guys operated. We went over to Fort Bragg, used Delta's facilities over there.

And then we just saw this kind of big influx of money, like all our kit got better, night vision got better, kit and equipment got better, a lot lighter. We were seeing like cry precision stuff come in, the cages come in. Super cheap stuff. Yeah. Super cheap for the military, right? I mean. $800 top and bottoms. Like, wild man. And the cage is what? I don't know. And the helmet system? I don't even know. It's crazy. And then the night vision or like.

Pricey, for sure. And all the people get in. Oh, yeah. Backhanders off the back of it and the procurement system. There's some nepotism involved in that for sure. Yeah. No, there were some people who, not that I don't want people to make money, but there were some people who made a lot of money off the back of the GWod for sure. 100%. Yeah. I mean, I wasn't on it. But. We had, it's quite interesting, actually. We were using, I have no idea what they're called, but the dual tube NVGs, four tubes?

Yeah. No, sorry, just the two-tubed binocular. We just call them, they were probably PVS 15s. So we were using the ones with the green. Yep. When we went to Fort Bragg to Delta, their first operation, they're an initial operation where it all got dusted out by the helo.

I can't remember exactly what happened on it. but they had a mannequin in their museum and he had a set of the night vision that we were using. You're talking about Desert One, the origin of J-Soc? You know, mate. We were all just like, are they the same ones that we're using now? Obviously, like, that's changed since I left.

That was... For sure. And that all comes down to finances, right? You guys have got a massive pocket. You know, it's changing even more, though, is now the enemy has those. Yeah. Yeah.

That is a different ballgame, man. Yeah. Can you imagine, did you ever think, even when you got out in 2018, did you ever think about drone warfare like the stuff going on in Ukraine? I never once fathomed basically a DGI drone flying at me weaponized. I never thought about it a single time. And like for us not to have some sort of defense in that. I don't know if there is now.

I've not got much of the year. You guys got your shotgun license. Get out there. I'll just tell you. Some of those people are doing that. And if that's all you had, I salute you, sir. Yeah. And I think equally it's like the scary thing is that they're producing this DGI drone

with a 40-millimeter bomb on the bottom of it that just flies into a target. We're then spending millions to try and counteract that. Whereas they're spending, that was a DGI drone. They're not even DGIs anymore. I think a lot of the production is actually coming straight from Ukraine. They have a full infrastructure just to build those things. It's crazy. 3D printing stuff, making the motherboard.

themselves. Yeah, and there, a lot of them are the command wire. So the jamming stuff doesn't work. I mean, I was in Dubai when it kicked off over there. Yeah. And why are you over in Dubai so much? What do you got going on? Espionage, obviously, but. UFOs? I'm converting. Yeah. Now, I was just going over there during the winter. Like our, our winter in the UK are pretty crap. Is that a common vacation place for the UK? It is. Yeah, but it's got a stigma around it, very flashy, all that kind of stuff. I had a friend that was going back and forth. He had a business over there.

And, yeah, I just popped on one of his trips and ended up just going over there during the winter. It's like easy to go. It's hot, warm. Yeah. I've been to the airport. I've been through the airport a few times. I've never actually left the airport in Dubai. Yeah.

It's an interesting place. Tax-free. Yeah. So there's, you know, financial reasons to go and set up a business over there. I don't know if you know what it's like in the UK right now, but we're getting to smash with taxes. It's like that here, depending on, well, depending on who you are and what you're up to,

and quite frankly, if you can afford to have a really good tax professional. Yeah, same in the UK, to be fair. Yeah, the people, what was I reading earlier today? Wealthy people pay accountants, rich people pay politicians. There was something else, and it was like, the average person pays taxes,

wealthy people pay accountants, rich people pay politicians. I feel like that might exist just about everywhere. It's crazy, isn't it? Because I don't know, we never had a normal job growing up. I thought it was super normal. In comparison to the people I was working with, it seemed normal. Yeah, I mean, it's so weird, isn't it?

I always look at, how long did you spend in the 17 years? 17 years. Yeah, I did 14 years. Yeah. But it's weird because you don't know any different, correct? You like, to me, it's like, this is what we do on Tuesday. Let's go. And then you come out and everyone's just like, oh, man, our special forces thing.

Like, what did you do? What was Afghanistan like? And you're like, I don't know, it's just like a job, regular job. You just turned up, went to work, did the best you could. And then... Yes, it's a good description of it, actually. Yeah. Yeah, you hope not to make mistakes, hope not to do anything wrong, hope to conduct yourself the best that you could.

Sometimes it was hilarious. Sometimes it sucked. Yeah. And you could apply that to almost every job. Yeah. I feel like it was, like, some of my best memories. Same. Like, love the job.

I loved the job. I also loved the clarity of focus and mission statement. And, you know, I was never involved in the strategic planning or the operational planning. We would, you know, we would lift and shift over there and you'd work for the battle space commander. And they're like, here's your target deck. Okay. Here's a guy we're after. Okay.

Here's where he might be. Okay. That's, I mean, there's a few times in my life where I guess I was. responsible for so little but so much at the same time. So little meaning such a direct focus, so much meaning if you took the wrong actions, it could be catastrophic or a global incident depending on what you might have done wrong. But yeah, in many ways, way simpler than a lot of the stuff that I've done out of the military. More dangerous for sure, consequential, but way easier, especially with all the support personnel to help out. I mean, yeah, it's

owning a coffee shop trying to figure that out. is way harder than being. Not only staffing, but I don't know how to design a building. I don't know. How many seats do you need? How many espresso? How much coffee should you buy? I don't know.

I'm figuring all this stuff out as you go. Chat GPT. It does help from time to time. Or Claude, depending on. I guess it didn't exist when you were saying black rifle up. No. It was some of my best memories for sure. And some of the most horrific times of my life and absolutely without a doubt,

some of the most fulfilled and hilarious times of my life as well. I completely agree. Completely agree. Yeah, I loved it. Like, similar to you, there's something quite, I don't know, there's something quite nice about, especially being a man, just waking up in the morning knowing where you've got to be, knowing what you've got to do,

slotting into a team, you know, knowing where you go and eat. I say to Evan, it was like the easiest job that I ever had. Yeah, you just have to perform. Yeah. Everything is built around you. Like, if you need to get to an airport, there's a coach. If you need to fly, someone books your flight. If you need a passport change and someone.

Do you know, dental, doctors, all that kind of stuff? It's like, oh, what do you want me to do? I carry this ladder across this spansive land and sticking up against a wall. What? Sure. I don't need a brain sell for that. You want me to react if something that? Yeah, cool, man.

It was, but yeah, it was the funniest time for sure. I think it's hard. Maybe not hard is the correct word. Challenging, leaving that world where you have such support and things were built in based around you, the greater you, meaning you and the team that you were with or the mission statement and intent associated with that, you leave and then you have to figure it out on your own.

Yeah, that's a difficult bit, isn't it? Yeah, there's nobody there to say, hey, this is what you should do. No one. No, or to support you either. You might know what you want to do. Like, hey, where's the guy who does this for me? Oh, yeah, just go to the bathroom and look in the mirror.

Where's the guy who does this? Same thing you'll see him in the bathroom when you look in the mirror. And I find it with like you've got so many choices. It's deciding which one you want to commit to and go all in on. Because like coming out of the special forces, especially in, I don't know, it's like over here probably similar. Coming out of the UK special forces, it's like there's only a small amount of us. Yeah.

So you kind of learn enough whilst you're in to be able to apply yourself, you know, all those kind of like little bits of discipline and all that kind of stuff that you kind of absorb while serving in a, you know, high-functioning military unit, like the special forces, kind of gives you everything that you need to then set up in civilian street. But I find then you come out and you're like, well, what do I do? It's like, you've got all these options. It's like, this one's pretty cool.

I'll do this for a bit. This one's pretty cool. I'll just do this for a bit. what was your strategy when you got out? Did you know what you wanted to do? I was probably more looking for the exit and something that would kind of facilitate that. So I was a mountain troop

and part of that I went and lived in the Alps in Germany and completed a mountain guides course. So it was two years with the German army. No one spoke English. It was all in German. I don't know if you'd check that. sense of human recently but it's uh so michael and i do jiu-zitsu with it i was rolling with him today powerfully german man fuck he cracks me up yeah i love it they're just the literalness and the precision

yeah there's like no sense of you it's interesting when i actually started learning german and picking it up a little bit you'd be like sat having breakfast or whatever and one of the guys had tell a joke and you're able to follow it because my german had got pretty good and you get to the end of the joke and all the Germans are laughing. And he'd just be sat there going, okay, what was the punchline? I feel like all you've done is just tell this story. And it just, it was a story.

It was like, oh, I got up this morning, got in a car, drove to work. Some guy came out and said this, and they're all like, bah. Like, what did I miss? Man, two years with them. Wow.

Well, I bet you left knowing a hell of a lot about guiding. It was a good life. Yeah. I mean, it was probably the hardest thing that I ever did, just because the amount of pressure that's put on onto you by the regiment, they spend a lot of money. It's like two years away from operational deployment. Do they expect you to come back with that knowledge and then be the subject matter expert to teach others? Yeah, that's the whole point of it. But yeah, I mean, it was amazing.

And I think that was a little bit of the catalyst of me leaving the military was being in the mountains. You know, I was a kid that grew up in just a normal urban town in the north of England called Preston. Nothing to do. It was like, you drank cider on the streets and got into fights. That's like you're upbringing. And all of a sudden I'm like in the mountains. It's like, you know, you know what that's like here in Montana. It's a different way of life.

It's not quite the Alps, but I guess what you're saying? It's different though here. Do you know what it is? It is different. Yeah. The Alps are, you have to see the Alps to be able to even try to describe the Alps. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, but yeah, I think that was like a trigger in my brain to go like, there's something more than soldiering out here. And then it was, you know, I came back from. that went straight out on operational deployment and uh you know and all the lads are just moaning when you get out there it was like that and i was just like the fuck are i doing here it's like literally just went from skiing in andamat in switzerland like downhill skiing and and ski tour into being out on operational theatre and just all the lads are just um but yeah i think that kind of planted a seed in my head of right there's something out here and um it was really just waiting for an

opportunity i had to give four years back to the regiment got to the end of the four years and And I don't know if you've seen a British brand called ThruDark. Yes, I bought one of the geese for my son, actually. Yeah, wicked. Yeah. So Staz and Louis, they set ThruDark up. And, yeah, they were just like, do you want to come on board with ThruDark? So is an ambassador type role?

No, I came in as, so we coined it like an expedition leader. Okay. I'm only familiar with, honestly, I found them. Tom Hardy. Tom Hardy, yeah. Was wearing one of their geese or it made a post about one. And my son saw it and he's like, dad, this is amazing. I'm like, all right, I'll get you one.

It was cool. I think he still has it. He's bigger than, he's now larger than he can wear it. How old are your son? He is going to turn 21. Wow. In August, he's probably getting close to being a purple belt. He's, you know, he's living his young man's life.

Wow, man, that's good. Yeah. But he loved it. Yeah, I got him the gear and he took a little bit of time to get across the pond as things do. But yeah, I didn't realize they had a full experiential side of Through Dark as well. They did, yeah. I ended up leaving for some reasons. but yeah, the brand's amazing.

You should check it out, like, two X special forces, lads. Yeah. So, yeah, that was kind of a catalyst. For anybody in the jiu-sitzy game, specifically just the designs. They're just, they look awesome. They look sick, though. Yeah, they look sick. Yeah, you don't see any of them.

It was the black-on-black one that I got him, and he loves it, yeah. Why did you, why did you leave? The military? Yeah. My body was at the place. It was a combination of things. So my last operational tour in 2010, I almost, I rolled my ankle so badly. So I got shot on the hip in 2005 and have nerve damage in my left leg from that.

And rolling my ankle is like the bane of my existence. And we were doing a lot of offset stuff. So walking the largest distance. And dude, I almost had to medevac myself twice for rolling my ankle so bad. And I had switched over from being enlisted to an officer. And after that deployment, I had to sit with myself and really say, are you able to do this or have you become the biggest liability? Of course.

Then, so that was one aspect. When I got back, there, there's literally at the time, there was a single woman who was a civilian who managed all of the officer billets. There was an active duty officer attached to her, but he rolls every 24 months. So the power broker is the woman who has known the admiral since they were ensigns. And I called her and I said, you know, what does this look like? And she said, oh, you'll have to do this and then this and then this and then you can come back. I'm like, I can't, like the body is not going to do that. So I think it was just more than anything.

One, that career trajectory no longer seemed appealing at all with the fact that the body for that job, I was worried I was going to become the weak link when it came to the capability. So I actually was just going to exit the military as five days away from just leaving. And I went to go get my discharge physical, which is a spoiler alert for people is not the way to do that. Go get your physical way before five days because the doctor said I'm not signing this. So they sent me for a bunch of additional testing. Why is that? Sorry, what's the process?

Because I think our process might be similar, but we call stuff different. Well, you could probably do that if you had gone to medical and documented a bunch of stuff along the way. Okay, so get a medical discharge. So my record was about ridiculously thin. And the doctor knew enough. Sorry, is that because you didn't want to? I never wanted to take my foot off the gas. Yeah, I had a similar thing.

Yeah. And so because you don't want to be the wing. Klingk. Of course. And also. And for yourself personally, right? I was just going to say fear of missing out is huge. Yeah, yeah. You know, this mission is going to be the same as the next one, but I have to go on the mall. I have to be there. And a bit of pride, right? You don't want to feel broken or. But then you get to the tail end and you have no documentation to show what your body has actually absorbed. So the guy sent me to a civilian facility, actually, is called NICO, the National Intrepid Center of Excellence, which at the time was at Walter Reed. There's still one there.

I think there's one on the West Coast. It was 30 days of the best. medical treatment I've ever received. Every test, blood work, hearing, psychologists, psychiatrist, sleep studies, all the, you know, the shit all over your head. They're like, let's put all this on you and then we need you to try to sleep. I'm like, this study sucks, by the way. I'm not going to sleep good before, but I'm definitely not going to sleep good with all this shit on my head. I know what makes you sleep well. Booze? I think that makes you pass out. Imagine that in the, uh, in the sleep study. Guys, just, uh, yeah, um, or ambient. Yeah. Um, or Ambien.

Yeah. So I went there and based off of that, the doctor who didn't want to sign the paperwork, he knew what the tail end was going to be. So it's a paperwork process. There's an actual, it's called in the military, the U.S. military, the P-E-B-M-E-B process, physical evaluation board, medical evaluation board. A bunch of paperwork, which I filled out, all of the specialist stuff, anything medically related and you take it. And you, and it was at a hospital, is it Balboa Hospital in San Diego. And you hand it to a dude, dude, he had a stack of these things from fucking Florida. Yeah.

Like, what does this take? Six years? How long? Heard back in about eight months. And they said, here's your rating. You're going to be medically retired. You have up to 90 days to go ahead and sort how you want to exit. But that was the result.

So it's, if you go down that pathway, about, it's about 12 months of administrative stuff you got to do. And that's a full medical discharge. Yeah. So you get the pension? and that kind of stuff, medical pension. I get disability, not a pension, because it's being medically retired. You can get a combination of both,

but with my rating, it's a disability check versus a retirement check. Yeah, we have a similar thing to what you said. It's like on selection, I like smashed my backup. I picked up, we go to the jungle of Brunei and like one of, obviously,

if you've probably been to the jungle, it's like one of the hardest environments to operate in. And we're in there for six weeks. final part of it is four weeks, just fully tactical. And the final attack is this, you go hard routine for like the final week, so you're sleeping on floors, eating cold rations, all that kind of stuff.

And then the final attack's a camp attack on, I think, the Gurkhas or whatever, play enemy. And, yeah, the biggest guy on selection was this officer, I won't say his name. Big dude, like ex-rubby player. and he goes down as a casualty, obviously a role play casualty. And I was stood next to him, so straight away, you know, I'm like three power. I don't know if you're like airborne unit in the UK.

It's like we pride ourselves on carrying the most kit and like being able to do everything. I'm like, that's good for a long life. Yeah. Like, I'm like throwing off on my shoulder and as soon as he goes on my shoulder, my back just popped. Like I felt it pop. And so of course say nothing to anybody. Say nothing.

Because you don't want to fail selection. Exactly. Literally that. Literally. You don't want to be rolled back or have to repeat it again, so you say nothing. Literally that. Didn't say anything. Obviously, told all the lads on selection, they knew anyway, because I couldn't walk, the rest of selection. So we came back from that. You go on what's called SR, so surveillance and reconnaissance. It's done out of Hereford. You break down into teams, and then you deploy into certain areas of Hereford. We deployed into this farm, and then you observed the building, and there's scenarios played out in the farm, and you pass back all the information. and obviously like OP kit is like heavy as as fuck

like carrying shovels and yeah excavating kit and chicken wire of course sandbags and all that kind of stuff so like the the rucksack was the Bergen was pretty heavy and then obviously it pissed down the first night

so we're trying to navigate through all this this like UK countryside my back screaming at me it's quite it's quite fun actually I spoke to my mate who's just getting out now and he was like, mate, remember that time on surveillance of reconnaissance? Because we were trying to find a bush hide. Do you know? Yeah. It's like the easiest one, right? For sure. You go into a bush. You don't have to do any camp. You can church

it up a little bit to make it so people can't see it. But yeah, you don't have to construct something out of nothing. Of course. Like, we've been trying to find a bush all night. And the bush that we thought we'd found was decent. And daylight comes up and we're like watching the target and the DS the instructor just we just literally here and behind us he's like what the fuck is this lads we're like lying we were literally lying in the open with like camera systems and weapons and that um yeah like hey man it looked better at night basically wasn't a bush height it wasn't even a bush i think it was some nettles that we'd managed to find and rest in but um he gave us our jews and just said right lads there's a place there it's got a good

eyes on he's like dig subsurface he's like you've got all day so he dug this whole subsurface there was um i think it was four of us i think um so we had like two supposed to be two guys at the front observing the target at all times one guy resting and one guy on rear century and uh it literally pissed down for like the next we're in in the hole for a week it pissed down that whole week and i was like thank god we didn't go go in a bush hide like everyone that went in the bush hide got piss wet through all the kit and equipment got wet and And yeah, we were literally in this hole, like, warm. Then we kind of scrapped the two guys on the front.

We just had, like, one guy there because we're all so tired. Yeah. Like, literally, if you're on rear century, you just kept falling asleep and then waking up. But, yeah, lived in a hole for a week. Very Bravo, two zero. Yeah. Eating shit. It's me eating shit on the walls.

Yeah, that was later in the story. Hopefully you guys didn't have that. What do you, uh... Did you read Bravo, Two-zero? I did. Yeah. I feel like the movie. A lot of controversy over it.

Where, well, so from the outsider, much like some, I'm sure some of the stories that you read of the U.S., it's, you can tell if it's... I didn't know you had stories out of the U.S. We don't have that many yet. I've never seen any. I've heard there's some on the horizon. There's not a lot right now.

I've heard they're made in Hollywood, right? It's like most of the stories. Sometimes. You would under, if it was a tactical blunder, we would both understand it. But reading Bravo 2-0, I don't understand all of the nuance or what necessarily may look right. So it's hard to say I wouldn't know necessarily where the controversy is. Yeah, I agree. I read it years ago. I read it when I was at school and it just

seems like a good story. Yeah. I think obviously it was way before my time. It was Gulf War I. Oh for same. Yeah. I was. I think Gulf War I think. I was. I think gold four one. You're talking 90s. Yeah, it was in the 90s. Yeah. I think so one of the guys, Dinger, I'll say his name because it says in the book, I think I'm pretty sure he's called Dinger in the book. It's called Dinger now. He's still hanging around. But yeah, Andy McNab or whatever his real name is. I don't know, there's some weird internal controversy where some of the story didn't line up, some of the story's not all that true or the truth was bent a little bit.

Obviously two of them came out and spoke about it. There was two or three of them or whatever there was that didn't speak about it. So I think it was, you know, early 90s or whenever the book was written. it wasn't really the done thing to come out publicly that you're in the SAS, the special forces. So I think there's a lot of like, a lot of hatred or a lot of like negative press on that. But look, I mean, I'm sure Andy McNabb's made a career out of being an author

and he's probably made quite a bit of money off that book. And, you know, if anything, I always say this. Now it's like Bravo 2-0, you know, put a lot of eyes on the special forces and it did so for the right reasons, you know. it wasn't people didn't read that book and just go what fuck are these guys do and it's like you read that inspirational inspirational exactly yeah um so yeah i mean it's always going to be a good thing that that that stuff's out there similar to the the films that that you guys are they're not all great i mean i mean i like him i mean if you look at them as entertainment they're fantastic yeah

if you look at them as a documentary it's a problem my call sign on my last deployment was bravo two zero seriously yeah on my patch right yeah How does that work? Is that B squadron or something? No, it was the platoon and then you're position. It's just this stupid numerical way. Yeah, we had something. This is like, alpha one Juliet.

Totally. Yeah. I'd say Juliet every time on the net. I would just say, hey, this is Andy. Yeah. My God, you can't see your name, mate. Not on the net. Like, hey, if the UFOs are listening.

If the Taliban has a 148 in bitter in the right crypto, we have bigger problems than them knowing my name. So it's interesting. I didn't realize that the UK government will not confirm or deny as to whether or not you guys were part of the SAS. How is it, it's almost as if they'll say nothing about it. And why is that? Well, I don't know. I think you sign the official secrets act.

What is that all about? First off, just tell me the secrets associated with the act. and then. Which is a real. Aliens have landed in the UK. We've already, yes. We've established this. This is true.

I get that. I just probably don't disclose any national security items, means or ways, tactics, techniques, and procedures. I mean, you must sign something similar, right, to go secret, top secret. What's it called strat? No. So there are secret clearances, top secret. The highest one I ever had was the top secret SCI, which is small, read-ins into covered programs that were completely underwhelming. I'm not saying I was read into

all of them, but the two that I was read into, you could find on Google. People just don't know what to look for. I don't think though, so there was a lot of paperwork associated with the top secret clearance. And I had an interim clearance for about 18 months. It took a long time for them to do the background check. But I don't remember signing an NDA associated with receiving the clearance. I just had to, my badge changed at the command because I believe it was a dashed line while you were interim. Right. And then a solid line once you got the official clearance. Yeah, I mean, we don't sign an NDA.

We sign the official secrets act once you get into the special forces. I think probably historically a lot of the operations were deniable. Like the whole, you know, the history behind the special forces back in the day when Sterling founded it, it was all denial, deniable operations cross enemy lines. Which is dope, by the way. Yeah. You read up about the early missions. It's so fucking awesome.

Yeah, amazing. Who knows how to jump out of a plane? Nobody. Let's do it. Everyone broke the legs. Amazing. Yeah. Let's do it again.

Yeah. We're figuring this out. Yeah. I mean, there's this book that we've got in the squadron lines called, I'm pretty sure it's like the SAS war diary. And it's like this thick. And it's like every operation that the SAS has ever conducted since the start of the SAS. But yeah, back to. so yeah sign the official secrets act and then

I don't know I guess and what do you sign when you get out? Are you still under it? Oh, okay so that's the lifelong NDA that they're talking about. Okay. I think it runs out. I believe it runs out

when you're like 55 or something I'm not I'm not sure. What it? Well, that could be interesting because if you came in later in life the secrets might still be a little fresh. I don't think it's age. I think it runs out.

Maybe time after you exit. Certain time, yeah. But look, I guess. I get it. I don't know about you guys. I don't know if I'm giving too much away now. We've got a section of the military that kind of overseas guys that are now civilians and what they say and where they go and what they do. We definitely don't have that. Yeah. Almost. What do you mean by overseas? They kind of just keep tabs on them? Yeah, look. We're all relatively, you kind of know what you can say and you can't say.

Like, for example, I can't come on a podcast and talk about a date. in a certain country that we conducted a... Sure you can. We whisper it. I understand now. But do you know what I mean? It's like I think going to that level of details. Or, for example, the big one for us was TTPs and discussing how we do operations overseas.

That should be a no-brainer for anybody even remotely peripheral to that. Just keep that stuff to yourself. Of course. But, you know, you know and I know there's some people in the military that would leave and write a book on that kind of stuff. allowed. I see people on Instagram showing relatively accurate, pretty high speed, room clearance stuff that I don't know needs to be on there. Yeah, agree. But people do it for likes, right? People do it for whatever it is that. The thing is, I get that. It can be done for likes, but that information can also be reverse engineered. Agreed. And that's the issue that I have with it.

I'm not saying you can't teach people that stuff, but maybe have some level of vetting and make them come to you and make sure that like for law enforcement sure I would open up probably 98% and be like this is how we did this and this is why we did this and the other 2% would probably be based on ROEs anyway like hey in this situation instead of a nine banger we might throw a frag you shouldn't do that because you're a cop so we'll leave that TTP out of this but in person for people who are doing the job I get that putting it up on the internet for likes. Again, I'm not here to tell people how to live their life. I personally would never feel comfortable doing that. Yeah, me neither. Yeah, I think you have to protect those things and the people

still doing the job to the best of your ability. Agree. But I mean, look, we live in this world now where social media is like a massive part of the world that we live in. And it's, I've already got, I've just figured out the solution to this. You and I are going to start a company and all we're going to do is fucked up CQB on the internet. We will show, we'll start by just pointing guns of each other's heads. What are we wearing, though? What are we wearing? Cry.

No, I think there's got to be sort of... Overalls? Big penis costumes. No, we have to look incredibly serious. Yeah. And then just... Massive be, long hair.

Everything will be... Dye eyebrows. Everything will be picture perfect uniform-wise, and we will be so fucked up. We'll be... We'll go the other way we think. Can we do it? What would we call it?

Like, white, white pistol... Tier one or something? White pistol tea. White pistol tea. I don't know. We'd have to call it. It'd be like seal team SAS or some shit.

I love that. Like I've just sat drinking tea and you're just, I don't know what you're drinking bourbon or something. Like what do Americans do? Shout. That depends. Talk. Yeah.

Sometimes. I love America though. It's amazing. How often do you come over? We train quite a lot of here. So San Diego, Fort Hunter Liggett. I'm very familiar. Yeah.

Do all our parachuting out of there. Okay. Military stuff, I'm assuming. Yeah. Yeah. So we come over probably once or twice a year. Awesome. I've done some trips up like the California coast.

My best friend got married in Greensboro over that side. I was his best man. Amazing wedding. Brilliant. Loved it. Yeah, crazy. Just like we all, like I was best man, all the other SPS guys are like groomsmen,

obviously in a town like Greensburg with a British accent. Yeah. It goes a long way. It does. It does. Such a good party. I have another good friend I do jiu-jitsu with. I just call him cunto.

Yeah. Because of his mastery of the word. Maybe we'd call ourselves the cunts. He, we could. He actually answers to it now. He'll come out. He's like, cuntow. And he's like, what's up?

I'm over here. So, okay, you said SBA. What's the difference between S-S and S-B-S? And I'm sure you get asked that a bunch, but on the U.S. side, I don't think a lot of the audience would understand the difference between the two. Well, I guess you guys have got seals and Delta, right? Correct. We've got a development group and...

One is in the Army, one is in the Navy. Yeah, similar to SPS and SES. I think, I don't quote me on this, I believe, so the SBS is mainly funneled in from the Marines, so Royal Marines, which are a sector of the Navy. Yep, same here. Yeah, I'm not 100% sure if the SPS are still under the Navy bracket or the SBS and the SAS are just covered under UK Special Forces.

I think that's the case. SAS obviously was the OG. so special air service we would predominantly it was more air based operations so helicopters parachuting SBS were brought in

cockleshell heroes to conduct special forces operations in maritime situations It actually sounds really similar to Wade It's exactly same very much Yeah it's by doctrine you know maritime lineage army lineage that makes sense

Okay And I think now it's like We both do the same selection I don't know if that's the same for you guys. No. The CAD guys do their own and the development group guys do their own as well. Yeah, so we do the same selection process.

Do you know going into that whether you're going to go to SAS or SPS? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's only SAS and SPS candidates that go on that selection process. Okay. We've also got probably similar to you guys, the tier two, tier three units,

SRR specialist reconnaissance regiment. And then we've got like some support crew and stuff like that. So yeah, you can't. to go on the same selection process and then at the end you go your separate ways. Obviously, if you look at operational theaters in the time that we were in, you pretty much do the same job role anyway. Yeah. So there's kind of no differentiation.

Wasn't a whole lot of maritime action going on. Nothing. There's a little bit now there. Yeah, there really is. The old Moscow mules. I'm going to sniff. The Straits of Hormuz. It's a crazy world right now, isn't it?

I sometimes... Would you want to be in still? I don't, you know, I served when I came in. It was a Democratic president and then a Republican and then a Democrat. It never really changed the job that much. To me, I believed in why I was serving. It was less to do with the global, I don't understand global foreign policy and the peacocking and, you know. Is that really, isn't it?

I think so. I think so. I can't say that. Got an ego, power, or that kind of stuff. Yeah. I mean, I've never touched those circles, so I can't say for sure. I just tried to focus on my job and I love the job. If I was physically able to, I mean, I'm timed out at this point, but I would still go back and do it again.

I would, if given the choice and it was, you know, 15 years later and I'd be serving during this time period, I would still do so. I mean, it's different for sure. I mean, I'm watching videos now of guys, you know, we used to flip down our nods. They're flipping down FPV goggle stuff on their mounts, man. Wow. Air drones inside internal structures, ground-based drones. I think my worst nightmare would be one of those fucking robot dogs with just a machine gun on the back walking down a hallway. Do you see a robot climbed a mountain the other day?

Do you see that? But I do know sometimes if that's true because like half the shit on Instagram. It's going to be true at some point and then we're going to work for them for our water ration. We're so fucked at some point. Like AI is going to take over the world, isn't it? It's like Claude. I don't even know what Claude. Claude's crazy.

That new Claude, fable. They shut it down. or whatever? They shut it down. Why? Michael, pull this up. The U.S. government shut Fable 5 down.

Yeah, because it didn't work the other day. I was trying to... I know, I was too. Because they doubled my usage coins. I was trying to build snake. I just wanted to build snake. It... Because it was too powerful.

The U.S. government shut it down. Because it was too much. Let me take that back. I don't want to get over my skis. I think that they positioned it in a way. that what is, Michael, is Claude Anthropic? Just to make sure. Yes.

I believe. That Anthropic made the decision to pull it down, but they had sent some parameters where basically that was the only choice. Right. All right, Michael, click on this. Yeah. To abruptly suspend access to its newly launched Claude 5 Fable and Mythos 5A.L models.

The Commerce Department issued an emergency directive citing national security risks and export control. So that's what it was. Export control laws. I'm not even going to, I can read those words. I don't know what the fuck that means. Yeah, a total block on foreign national access to models. So the U.S. can use it or?

No, and so that was the issue. You have to restrict this from being used anywhere other than the U.S. How do you do that? Because anyone just uses a VPN? You pull it down. And you know what I mean? So they put them in a place where you're going to be, we're going to come after you unless you shut down this access to anybody else in the world. There's no mechanism to do that so they pull it off.

Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, I used it for about a day. It was pretty dope. I never used it. I used the, the Opus or whatever? Opus 4. point in of course. It's so weird like um yeah it's actually making me speak right now um it's such a weird thing though isn't i was um i was bored at an airport the other day and um i don't know i mean this

group of like a load of mates and we talk about we basically think we're traders but um we're not yeah it's a good way to lose money yeah literally it's just gambling but it's fun and uh my mate put this video and it's a youtube guy and he's basically saying that you can build like a trading platform that looks at what US Congress, people in US Congress are buying. Yeah. So I sat there at an airport. My flight was delayed and I built this. I built a platform that basically tracked.

So say, for example, if Nancy Pelosi bought Apple stock, it pinged up on my platform. She's a good trader. Yeah, maybe she's one to watch, didn't she? Now I do what Trump buys. She's only got a year left. So she's got a... But she still got access to it, right? that she doesn't have to report anymore her trades.

So there's like, I think a 30-day lag in when she can make a trade to report. No, there's a, I have no association with this app. I'm just familiar with it. And it's called autopilot. And you can put money in and they have a fund literally called the Pelosi fund. Michael, can you pull up the returns for the U.S. thing? Do you like a bit of stock market? No, it scares the shit out of me.

Really? Yeah. It doesn't when you win. I like to, well, that never happens to me. I love it. What I like to really do is buy high and sell low. Yeah. The WhatsApp group that we've got is called,

sell the dip. Oh, God. My problem is I buy the dip, and then it dips more. See if you can find it, Michael. I've had to do that thing that all traders, that process that all traders go through is when they stop emotionally buy in stock and sell in stock. Yep.

I can pull it up because I have autopilot. I'm not in that fun, but I like autopilot. It's interesting to me here. The Pelosi tracker. is up 233.9%. Wow. And I'd imagine this is a US stock because we can't buy off the US stocks,

which is a bit annoying. How come? I don't know. Like, I'm on a UK platform. And for some reason, I put, I put, like, random US companies on that I see Trump's just tweeted about. Look at that shit.

It's at your live stock on the right 33? I don't think so. Or 523 million. I wish. Pelosi tracker. No, I'm not in the Pelosi tracker. But it's interesting. Okay, so this Kramer one,

Hold on. Let me pull this one up too. This is. Reverse Kramer. Do you know who Kramer is? No. How would you describe him, Michael? A terrible trader. He's not a terrible trader. He gets super animated and gives financial advice. Right.

So they have one that does the opposite of what he suggests. Click on it, Michael. See if you can click on it. I take it. Inverse Kramer. It's up 252%. Jesus. So by taking, and I'm not giving anybody any financial advice.

If you're taking financial advice for me, you are fucked. Yeah. But he's lying. He's got all the insider information. He knows aliens exist. He's auto pilot like a legitimate trade in platform. It does it for you. So autopilot essentially, it is, you put, from my understanding,

you put your money into the fund and it has a manager that will do the trades for you. So you're clicking permissions to be able to do that stuff. Inverse Kramer, 252%. It's funny, isn't it? It's funny. I've made quite a bit of cash, actually. I've done all right. All my stocks are down at the minute, but...

Yeah. That's why I'm always... I bought this one. A mate of mine was like, oh, you've got to buy this UFO mining company. It wasn't a big bet, but it's big enough for me. What do you think... I'm down, like, you can't be down 600%?

What am I down? I've basically got... I'll tell you what I put in. I think I put seven grand in, 7,000 U.S., 7,000 UK. And it's down to like 4%. 100. Nice.

Just sits there in the red every time I open my... Just mocking you? Yeah, just going... What the fuck? Have you heard of the Green Beret currently in trouble for polymarket betting on the Maduro raid? No. Yes.

How much did he make, Michael? Did he know it was going to go ahead? I take it and then bet before... He was involved in the intelligence planning of the operation and put in, I think it was 30 small polymarket bets on... Yeah, here he is. The thing is, how do you get found out? because he must have been...

Because he used his fucking real name. Well, I mean, do you know what I mean? A man made $400,000 off the results of the Maduro raid. But I'd imagine he probably told someone that he made $400,000. If I had made $400,000, I would tell everybody. Yeah. Especially off the Maduro raid.

I'd be like, guys, look at me, I'm dreaming. But like, as in, he must have put... As in, no one's looking at Polly Market to see if... Well, they noticed an interesting... I mean, there's some things that stand out a little bit. Go on. So right before Michael, please look this up to you. I want to get out in front of my skis.

I believe right before the Iran war, even though technically we're not in a war because it hasn't been declared by Congress, but the U.S. hasn't done that since World War II anyway, so it's completely fucked. There was a massive bet made on oil futures. Right. Like pretty goddamn close to when things kicked off. When something like that happens, it gets a little bit more scrutiny.

and I think that's what happened here. Yeah. It was kind of, you know, the normal maybe ups and downs and then, but ding. So that's going to get some more scrutiny. Yeah, $7 billion worth of suspiciously well-timed placed bets. Amazing. I mean, I'd just call that, like, ingenious.

I'd call it clever. So you're pro-poly market betting for U.S. military or any military on operations. I mean, like, if he's had the genius to, albeit he was involved, in the intelligence picture, I'd be saying to all my mates. I mean, that's what I'd use. I'd use a proxy. But he's obviously not used the proxy. Polymark is weird, right?

You can just bet on anything. I've never actually bid on it because things like that absolutely terrify me. Say, hey. Because I would be laying there at 2 in the morning, be like, is the sun going to come up at 7.05 tomorrow? Should I bet everything I have on it? What was that?

Someone bet on that, did it? What was that stupid? I don't know. Was it someone was betting on, it's something to do with the sun coming up in the moon? No, you can bet on anything. I know, but really? like what and it just

the AI generates odds on I don't know I think the more people there has to be a certain amount of involvement I don't think you could just go and create your own market having said that again I've never accessed a single one of these platforms you'd have to have there'd have to be a minimum number of people involved like I don't think they're going to create a market for one thing

because I mean I mean they say that you can just bet on anything right so you could go on there and bet that I'd lose an ear tomorrow I'll help you with that. You've got plenty of knives. Let's go big. That'd be the weirdest thing. Go viral.

Here's the problem though. There can be a spike. What would you use? Oh, you could choose. Probably the hatchet. Yeah, probably a hatchet. Just once. You just hold it out like that.

Yeah, why saw? Let's just clean. What if you missed and hit me in the head, though? You can sign a waiver. You never miss. Oh, I'd definitely. I'd do it left-handed. We'd have Michael film, but he would pass out because he's a pussy.

He's gone to the toilet. He's gone to the toilet. Yeah. Yeah. the shit, is it. Yeah, I don't know. It's, uh, it'll be interested to see what's happening. He's the green bray guys under investigation right now. I'm pretty sure the military brought charges against him. Their, their issue is you use classified information to enrich yourself. Yeah, I mean, I get, yeah, I mean, I, like, I get it. Yeah, we can't have anyone outside of

the main powerhouse making money from stuff like that. Yeah, that's stupid, right? We can't have the peasants raising their status. You can't have those people that are actually making the intelligent decisions that lead to someone like Maduro getting captured. Yeah. Betting on it, right? I mean, that's, that's crazy. 400 grand is a lot of money to make. It is.

No one else is doing that kind of. Yeah. Backhand trading deals, they? I mean, Trump's just declared that the war's over, right? I don't. I don't know, man. I saw it on TikTok. For at least eight days in a row, I saw that the deal was an accident.

hour away. So I don't know. My worry is, dude, Michael's on a date. The United States and Iran have rich an initial framework agreement to end the war with an official memorandum of understanding scheduled for formal signing in Switzerland. Okay. Why are they doing it in Switzerland? I guess because it's an independent country, isn't it? Yeah. The tentative pact aims to halt military operation, lift naval blockades and reopen the Straits of Vermeus while opening a 60-day window for further nuclear negotiations. Well, before we got into this, the Straits of Horne moves was open. There were no military operations and there wasn't a naval blockade.

My worry is that this was all been theater and then nothing is actually going to be accomplished. That's what I, that's the word on the street, isn't it? That it was almost, almost premeditated before. I mean, what did we? What I would love to see the measurable difference in the before and after. And first off, we'll see if this gets signed also. So does anybody have any realistic expectation, regardless of what is signed? If Iran signs a piece of paper that says, we're not going to enrich uranium.

You're going to take them with their word on that? I know, I know. Because they've said that before, too. We won't both enrich to a certain capacity. And that's another thing that frustrates me is last year we did the strike with Israel where our self-bombers used the bunker busters because I think they were the only aircraft capable of carrying it. We obliterated the Iranian nuclear program.

Well, one of the justifications for what kicked off two, three months ago was they're just getting ready to have a NICO weapon. Like, which one is it, guys? You know? I think equally right, it could just be a stalwart tactic. And then as soon as Trump's out of office, providing that happens, then, you know, they just start doing whatever they want to do. Or they'll just sign whatever they want to get whatever they want and do whatever they want. It isn't part of the deal that the U.S. give them a load of cash anyway? I don't know.

Is it like 300 billion or something I saw? I don't know if they've actually declared. I'm sure there was like $300 billion that was getting floated around the headlines but I'm not sure what it was for I'm sure it was that they would receive

that much in a rebuild in the country from being bombed. Does not directly give American tax money or direct cash payments to it and it'll have to be reconstruction funds from allies, hold on the peace deal outlines a proposed 300 billion private invests

what do you mean a private investment in development fund to help rebuild Iran's economy but this designed to fund, designed to be funded by Gulf nations rather than the US government. Yeah, well, we also give a tremendous amount of money to the Gulf Nations system. That's where shit starts getting really gray, man.

It's such a bizarre world, isn't it? I think that I do believe it's like the more, the less of this shit that you absorb day to day, like the happier and clearer and... I can tell you 100% that's the case in my own life. I don't want to be disinformed. I don't want to be. misinformed though either. I don't want to be oblivious to the world around me, but I also don't want

to live in a constant state of anxiety where you think that the nuclear, what's that clock, Michael, we were looking at that one time? Doomsday clock. The doomsday clock is a second away from midnight and we're all just going to be turned into vapor trails anyway. I mean, what's the doomsday clock? It is a fake clock that world experts usually in association with the environment tell you how close they are to midnight, which the night being essentially the irreversible destruction of the world. Wow. It's like two seconds away right now or something.

Seriously? Yes. Is that from our own internal doings or is that like a meteor or like the sun exploding or something? I have absolutely no idea. Or dinosaurs? It's supposed to be from human. We're 85 seconds to midnight right now.

Didn't everyone think on the millennium that the world was going to end? Yeah. Look at this. In 1991, we were 17 minutes from midnight. We are now 85 seconds to midnight. But as in what? Like, how does the world end? Does it just blow up or something?

They have no idea. No. They just say this shit. What the fuck is this on Porn.com again? Bringing it shit on porn. It's on the internet. It has to be true. I remember years ago, BBC News,

and they have the app on the phone. I remember downloading it because obviously I was in the Army and the Special Forces, so I've got to keep up with current affairs. And it's like the fashion that everyone's like looking at it going, oh, what's happening in her house?

what's happening in Africa. And I remember just reading it. You know, like that moment where you have a realization that all the news is just negative news? Yeah. And I deleted it and I was like, amazing. I feel great. Almost instantly, right?

Yeah, instantly. You have about two days of panic where you think you're missing out on stuff? And then you go. And then someone goes, oh, did you see what happened? There was a typhoon in Tijuana and an old woman got killed

and you just like, make, great. I mean, like, unfortunate for the woman. Yeah. And the people got, not that that happened. Yeah. And I recently know, or I noticed it recently on Instagram, because the amount of shit that you served, and it doesn't necessarily mean, it doesn't have to be news, right?

It doesn't have to be anything to do with foreign politics or the US politics or whatever it is. It could be like, I don't know, like, I don't even need to say it because everyone probably experiences it on a day-to-day thing. It's like we're now getting fed what, you know, the panic that you would have seen on BBC News app. We're now getting fed this on Instagram, but not even like at a level that the BBC news app would have it on. See, it's like an astronomical level at which would be in just fed crap.

Half the stuff, I'm just like, fuck, is this shit happening in the world? Michael, see if you can find a graph that shows the advent of social media and mental health issues because I believe, I've seen a chart similar to this, and it's very interesting. I'm not claiming causality, but it seems like there's a deep correlation. And yeah, they both start growing at a rapid rate around the same time. And again, I'm not saying one is exact cause of the other, but maybe we should take a look at that. You don't have to be a detective to figure out that. Which I'm not.

You could be there. I don't know what the Doomsday clock is? Do you think dinosaurs were real? Autistic ones? I don't have any evidence to show that they weren't. I can see bones and stuff from. How about you? Where do you land on dinosaurs?

So I live on the Jurassic Coast in the UK. And there's a dinosaur print in the ground. I've never been to it, but apparently it's still there. Pyramids, real or alien technology? It's one of those. He gives a fuck. Do you know what? It's like, do you know what?

If they were made by aliens, amazing. Do you know what I mean? How amazing is that? That we've got aliens that build. Pyramid structures? And why did they build them if they did? Is that you over the alien structure there? Yeah.

Yeah, I'm on the bottom right. That was the coolest jump I've ever done. Really? I thought it was going to be Antarctica. And Antarctica was in fact cool, but it just looked like jumping over snowy terrain. Did you think, as in like when you arrived in Egypt, you thought that was Antarctica? Or you thought you were going to Antarctica to jump? No, we jumped in Antarctica first.

We started in Antarctica. We were there for a full, solid week. Was that the triple seven? Yeah. No, I mean, we started there because that had the most variables, and we knew when our flag. was going to be leaving there, supposedly, which ended up coming on schedule. So we had to plan everything else around that.

So we started there. But yeah, I mean, looking down and seeing the pyramids, what's hilarious? So I get under canopy. I have 100% considered top landing, the great pyramid of Giza. How cool would that be, but first off. How would you do it, though? Because it's like, I don't know. You think that it'd be this point, right?

I know it's very flat. That points to the, what's it supposed to, they're supposed to line up as like the circumference of the, to heaven's anus or whatever it is. Yeah, the circumference of God's penis or something. Yeah, it's pretty flat. Not huge. I imagine it's quite big, right?

Probably the size of this room. Twice the size of this table, I would say. Which is doable. I can do that. Plus, also, if you miss, you're like, we, I'm still under canopy, right? And just kind of surf it down. In my head, I was trying to run the risk versus reward.

International incident? Will it bring positive or negative press to the triple seven? Will we raise more or less money? Probably now, positive. So we landed the guy, so I'm wearing the brown pan. The guy to the left. His left foot is right by an old golf course.

Okay. Which is not shown any of the pictures. Neither is the Marriott, by the way, that's right across the street from the pyramids. They're selective in the angles that they show the pyramids to make them look as if they're in the middle of nowhere. As you can see, there's Cairo right there. So we landed in that. I opened up pretty much right over the top of the pyramid and flew across. There was a corporate event taking place with, I am not shitting you, just.

so I'm flying right over the top of this. That's why he flew into, isn't it? To land at the golf course. But it was pretty cool to fly around under canopy near those pyramids. It's pretty awesome. You can jump it now, can't you? I think there's companies that...

You can. Not often. And yeah, many, many people have jumped over the pyramids. That's not something that we were the first to do. I don't think they do it incredibly often, but it's also not that unique. Yeah, it's like experiential, isn't it? Like a few companies that do it.

Yeah, oftentimes they'll put you in the back of MI7s. They'll get the Egyptian military helicopters. We were, I think it said skydive the pyramids on the side of the plane. It was a twin otter or a caravan. Do you still jump? I haven't jumped in a while, only because there's no DZs up here. No way. I thought there'd be loads up here.

I mean, if you think about it, about six months to eight months out of the year, not great for jumping weather. Yeah, snowing, yeah. So it would be tough to have an operation and make everything you need to in a year just to sustain yourself in about four months. I have enough jumps now As long as it's not something complicated I can just jump into it Yeah just go send it As long as this slick jump

So I didn't do much whilst I was serving You got exposed to it though I'm assuming Yeah so you all do When I first joined you'd all do Static line So hey-ho And then because I was mountain troop

Static line in square like steerable Steerables yeah BTA to canopy So Static line in the US means something different Right. That means fucking jumping into Normandy in a round. Oh, the big circle. Yeah, with no control whatsoever.

And it is just jump off a 10 foot roof onto the ground. And that's what landing feels like. Yeah, we do that. We do that as well. Good. You need to have that. That's horrible. It's a central.

No, it's essential to have. Why do it hurt so much? Because you are slow at like a slow car wreck speed colliding with the ground. That's why it hurts. Yeah, because the wind's blown you that one. It's just, dush. They just, the velocity coming down is unacceptable. Yeah, so we train, so you do that in the Paris anyway.

And then when you join SF, you go and do steerables. It's the same canopy that we free fall, BT80. And then I was Mountain Troop, but we were the first guys. So now everyone gets free fall trained. Hey, hey, hey, hello. We were the first guys that went through it. And I can't remember where the story was going. Oh, so I've not done that.

Yeah, so I've done quite a lot. But obviously, you know, in that, I don't know what it was, five years from being. trained up to leaving and then didn't jump when I got out. And then probably didn't jump for four years. And I got a job with Sega, the game company. I had to free fall in. Really? Yeah, dressed as a World War II paratrooper. A free fall jump as a World War II paratrooper? Yeah. We're really combining some genres here. Out of a heli. Okay. Okay. I had to hold the game in my hand, which they'd tape to my hand. How did you get this job? I don't know. They just approach and

just went looking for someone to jump in, but I didn't jump for four years. So I went out to Seville to jump. And I think I went out for five days. We had bad weather for four. Final day we managed to jump. As it goes. So first jump out, I jumped with two instructors. Yeah.

Falk me, I'd like lost all air skill, humanly possible. Perishable. It was all over the place, couldn't get stable. It came back, probably did like two or three jumps. got comfortable, started doing some turns and did like a link up where four of us jumped out and all that kind of stuff. And taped a video game to your hand.

Yeah. And then someone died on the DZ. Damn. Irish guy. He jumped out static line. Last minute. He was on a steerable? Yeah.

Yeah. But he was, apparently he was an instructor, super experienced. Oh, no. He'd been jumping all day. We were chatting to him in the hangar when we were sorting the rigs out. Last minute he'd gone up on a static line jump and jumped.

And yeah, I don't know what happened to him. but he landed off the DZ when we drove. So they shut the DZ at this point. And then as we were driving out, the police had cordoned this little section off. Yeah. So, yeah, I think I managed to get four jumps. Obviously got the signature that I was in date.

Yeah. Because I knew the instructor. And then, yeah, next minute, I jumped out of a helicopter in the UK with a game struck to my arm. As you do, when you need to. I know. Dress as a World War II.

And then the funny thing is, the funny thing is, It paid well, right? Yeah. But I turned up to the DZ in the UK. Bear in mind, I bit out the army at the stage or SF for four years. There was a, like one of the squadrons air troop had turned up to this DZ on the same day. So I was dressed as a fucking World War II paratrooper.

And literally all the lads were stood there. Listen, we don't have to be proud of everything we've done, right? I walked out or just a J? I was like, go out, mate. It was one of my mates. Yeah. What the fuck are you doing here, mate? Why he's dressed like that?

Stop asking questions. Bills have to be paid. You're going to do what you're going to do? Yeah. What would you describe that you do now? What do you consider yourself? Are you an entrepreneur? I've got a company that does outdoor expeditions.

Because I know you've done a bunch of stuff up towards Everest. Yeah. Did you know that that's what you wanted to do when you got out of? You just kind of navigated through and figured it out along the way? A bit of both, probably. I yeah when I left I ran an expedition to Everest

and Manasley whilst I was still serving in the military and then when I got out a friend had set up a company in Nepal he's Nepalese so I ran a couple of his expeditions out there and then ended up doing a TV show in the UK which is pretty popular called SAS Who Does Wins so reality TV show we get a load of civilians and minor celebrities

and we stick them through like a two week special forces training training camp. And then they tell everybody that they're fucking war heroes for the rest of their life. Yeah, literally like, mate, can I get in the special forces? And you're like, yeah, if by specially you mean short bus and you eat crayons, then yes. And yeah, so I probably had a period of time post the TV show. I did another TV show in Australia, which was the same one. Do you like that type of stuff? I don't not like it. It's hilarious. There's four instructors or five. So we're all like special forces lads.

We all know each other. So considering I'd not really done much special forces work, I'd done a bit of bodyguard work, close protection, that kind of stuff. It was like my first, it was the first time back in with the lads. And obviously like the humor, the banter, all that kind of stuff's hilarious.

Some of it doesn't wash on TV, but, you know. Context matters. Yeah, I mean, the scary thing is that you're miced up 24-7. Yeah. But it's one of those things, Andy, probably similar to stuff that you've experienced where you do it. I'd never pursue a career in TV.

I think it's like a very toxic world. I think to be successful in TV, you've got to be a certain personality that likes the sound of his own voice, likes to be on camera, likes to be the center of attention. You've got to be in it for yourself, I think, to climb that ladder.

Yeah, it takes a lot of luck. It takes a lot of persistence in doing something that ultimately you're filming yourself doing something all the time. It's almost like, I don't know, the biggest character kind of gets the airtime. I don't, I think, you know, my first experience of being on camera, like I'm not a natural person, like we spend the majority of our time in the shadows,

you know, not taking pictures of ourselves, all that kind of stuff to be thrust into the TV world and have a camera pointing in your face, you're just like, Jesus, like, I don't naturally find that easy. But for a profile razor to get me into conversations or, to get me work that I wouldn't have got if I hadn't have done that TV. I think it's amazing. That's real. I'd do it again in a heartbeat for those reasons.

I'd never chase it as a career. It's got me experiences that I'd never have done right. And for that, I'm super grateful for it. I did a reality TV show. Did you? Did you know that, Michael? Can we pull it up? I don't think so, actually.

Pull up hunted CBS. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was actually based off your guest show. The instructor or? Yeah, because we've got a hunted, I think. I was sitting behind a computer because that's what I'm really good at, you know, is doing the analyst. Yeah, because that's my deep fucking history of computers.

Let's just say it was light on reality. Heavy on TV. It's crazy, in it? I wouldn't do it again. It was interesting to do. Let me pull up a YouTube video real quick. No, no, no. Just pull up, you don't need to pull up a YouTube video.

Pull up, go to images. This is good. Have you watched the agency? I haven't yet. It's a good show. is it Michael Fastbender or no it's not Michael Fastbender I can't remember what he's called second image this one you're welcome Michael where are you second oh yeah second row right there with the hat and the boat the dicky bone oh wow man how hold on you look younger there yeah

who's the guy with the dicky bone in the background first off the fact that you just confused me he was the SF fellow look at those eyes that man that man wears other human being skin Like a leotaur. What's that film? He was an electronics expert. Of course he was. Yeah. Yeah, I looked younger because age is real and I was way younger in that picture.

I will do that. That was at least 12 years ago, I think. 10 years ago, I don't know. So yeah. Never search for that again, Michael. Hunter. You're welcome. No, I know.

What was your experience with TV like? I don't think they would invite me back. No. Were you quite honest about? They would ask me to. say things like, Andy, what you said was interesting, but can you start your sentence with as a former Navy SEAL? And I would look at them and I would say, no. And they say, why not? Because that's not an important part of the sentence that I just said. And it great. It was just, I didn't care

if I got a second air time. They pitched it as this was going to be as close to reality as possible. And I don't want to, you know, you know, people who like these type of shows, that's great. I don't care how real it looks. There's an artificial nature to it. We were tracking people down that were supposedly on the run as long as we were inside of the union hours of the cameramen. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so there was a lot of start and stop.

And, you know, I had to wear that same outfit for, I think, 40 days straight. Right. And so for continuity and all sorts of stuff, it just, it was an interesting experience. I wouldn't go back. I don't think they would invite me back. So it's mutually beneficial. It's so funny, isn't it? Doing the TV show, there's a part where you've got to do these interviews.

And before you actually do the TV show, you'll sit down in a studio in London and probably do two of these sessions that last about three hours long. Yeah. Where they've got that camera with a 45-degree angle mirror. And the interviewer sits there. Yep. And you literally just see their eyes. Yeah.

And they'll ask you a series of questions, ask you to talk about your career, all that kind of stuff. Those are weird ones when they'll do that. Intense, man, I know. But yeah, you'll do that for three hours. And you go out to location. We filmed in Jordan, in Scotland. And then at the end of that, they'll bring you into the same setup,

but where you filmed in Jordan or Scotland. And they'll have scripts for you to read. So that three hours or six hours that you spent staring at that fucking woman in the camera gets scrapped. And they just go, Jay, can you say that when you served in the Special Forces, is that, you know, you were required to run through tunnels that were wet and to do that.

You know, the resilience needed to do that was formed through years of military service. Can you just speak in a way that you would never naturally speak so we can get what we need to sell detergent on ad breaks? It was literally that. Again, though, interesting experience. Introduced me some people I would have never met, stay in contact with some of them. Yeah. Wouldn't do it again. I'm glad that I did it so I can check that box and say I had that experience.

But yeah, no thanks. Yeah, so what else have you done? What else have you gotten yourself into? Yeah, so I've got a company now, Concept Expeditions, brought you a T-shirt. Thank you. So, yeah, I run one-on-one guiding for clients around the world. Onesies? Yeah.

Wow. I did some, so I worked for a friend of mine who's got a guiding company. I don't know if you've heard of him, Nims Perger, the dude who did the 147 film on Net I like the guy who did the 15 is I think more impressive yeah they say that now there's like 27 8000 meter piece it's like why is everybody has to be an asshole somebody climbs the 14 peaks and they're like yeah but what about the 15 that it's never enough that that whole 8 000 meter mountain world is like gone super weird uh since nims brought out the film yeah I am familiar with who he is yeah I did so me and nims were on selection years ago like I've known him for years um but when I've

When I first climbed it in 2017, the only people that climbed it were generally male mountaineers. We're talking to Everest at this point? Everest, yeah. Michael, just Google this now, not to interrupt you, but just Google 2025 or 2026 Summit Day line. Because I have questions for you about this. Hillary's step, if you will. And this year. This year was worse.

What are your thoughts on that? Because what you're talking about, the people who were out there, they were grinding it. They were, and I'm sure there's always been a niche market for somebody who has access to anything and everybody via money, status, power, whatever it is, all those things that, yeah, they can buy their way up there for sure. They're heavily relying upon the Sherpas. What you're talking about, though, are the people grinding it the fuck out, which I love. And also, though, if you have enough money and you want to go to Everest and you want to spend your money on that, as long as you don't kill somebody else or put other people at risk, I'm not going to tell you how to live your life. But this is, I mean, as somebody who's been up there twice, who has a guiding, I mean, what are your thoughts on this? I don't think we can get away from it.

I think what I don't like is a lot of people go, a lot of people, this gets, so Everest, the name, Everest the mountain. This is what people think of. Yeah. And actually it's not, you know, Everest is still the highest mountain in the world. It's still this iconic, beautiful, like, amazing experience. All my experiences on Everest have been nothing like this. So it's like it's the people. Do you know what I mean?

Yeah. It's the people that are there. I think we can't get away from this. I think we now live in a world where we've gone away from, we basically have access to anything. And people want to do things because it's either hard or they can get a picture doing it and show all the mates that they've done it on social media or whatever. And you kind of see in this now on Everest where what used to be quite an underground mountain,

you know I first climbed in 2017 like I said it was full of like older guys that had saved up you know they've been into a mountaineer in the whole life yeah they'd saved up a ton of cash you know or they'd got to pay out in in their pension yeah and they paid to come out and climb Everest

it was it was like no one on it everyone was like miserable and old and like you know that kind of old you know the old school mountaineer that was just like meh it was like that wearing war jeans yeah 27 yeah literally

Like, 2017, I stood on the summit on my own. Like, no one else, no Sherpas, nothing. Really? Yeah, there was no one on it. That's got to be unbelievable. Yeah, we had, so it was myself and a guy called John Wood, and John had been injured in Toribura in the early Afghan days in 2001, had a helicopter land on a vehicle, smashed him right up,

like, ended up getting medically discharged, was really successful in business, made a load of cash, wanted to climb Everest. Oh, Michael, scroll down on the right-hand side. Yeah, there we go. Perfect. Just leave it there because this is, oh my God. Yeah, this is going through the combo. So, I mean, that's got to be an unbelievable experience.

See if you can find the Michael Google, Hillary Step line or Hillary Step traffic. Yeah, that's the, so where you scroll down before, that was the Hillary Step, the previous picture. Right there? Yeah, that's the Hillary. On the right, the small one. Yeah.

I mean, all of that is the Hillary Step. How does the climate? I mean, that's coming up from Camp 3 there. You see Alburn, Glover. expeditions. How do you, how, who's managing that? How is that? Oh my God, look at that line on the one on the left. So what does the climbing community think about this? I mean, I don't want you to speak for them, but I'm just curious what you have heard. Yeah, I mean, you know, everyone thinks of what most people think they look at that and just go a load of rich people, pay a load of cash,

have a Nepalese Sherpa drag them up to the summer. Um, most of it's true. Um, you know, the cost of Everest this year, the base cost of Everest this year was 45,000 US dollars. Um, Most companies charge anything from 55 to 60 for a base rate standard expedition. Most charge above that, for example, I'd imagine Alpenglo, which is a credible company, they probably charge anything from around 70,000 plus. I know NIMS's top-tier VIP clients were paying 200,000 per. Does that, do they get, they just get put in a backpack in NIMS person? Literally, he shouts at them the whole time because for that much money,

I would want him to carry me in a baby bajorn and I'd be faced. Yeah, licking his face. Yeah, through the O2 mask. Yeah, you take that off. Just breathe his oxygen. It works. I mean, like, you know, for 200 grand, you get better facilities at base camp. Yeah. You get first dibs on the mountain, NIMS guides you, all that kind of stuff. So who controls who gets first dibs? How do they manage that stuff? So you, you've got to fix the ropes at the summit. Yeah. So most of the biggest expedition companies will put together a rope fixing team. So they'll give like one or two sherpers to the rope fixing team. How far in advance do they do that? A couple days, weeks? It's conditions based. Does it last for the season? Once they set those, that's the ropes for the season?

Variable. Generally, yes. But I mean, with weather changing, big storms coming through, they'll bury the rope. So you'd have to send them up again. A lot of it's weather. Yeah, a lot of it's conditions based. It's good job.

Just so you know if they'll go ahead and, yeah. But, you know, those sherpers are fucking seriously strong. Good beasts. I know. Absolutely strong. Like, you know, the Sherpa that we used in some of our early expeditions, Bingma David, he's Nims' right-hand man, director of the company. I've seen him do some stuff and I'm just like, you know, the guy's like five foot two,

weighs nothing. Like his arms are, or his legs are, you know, as wide as my forearm. And, you know, after we'd summited, I saw him come down from Everest and he's, you know, they do this thing with their oxygen because they've only got one bottle. Like a normal climber would take five bottles for a summit. push. Some people pay for more. But they'll have one bottle for the for the summit push and their oxygen mass just dangles in front of their face. They don't even wear it. No proper seal, if you will. And like he was coming down to, I think it was camp three to camp two and he's probably got about

six oxygen bottles and they weigh roughly around seven KGs, I think, five to seven KGs each. Yeah, about 15 pounds for the US. Yeah, sorry. It's right. Yeah, Fahrenheit Celsius. So we will do anything possible not to use the metric system. So weird because the metric system's like the easiest system ever. Yeah, but right now we're seven hot dogs apart. We will never use, we are one one hundredth of a football field apart right now. We will never use the metric system. Like yards. What the fuck is a yard? Nobody knows. It's like a meter but not. Stones. Do you do stones? In the horse, no, yeah, in the horse world, they do stones and hands. Seriously? Yeah, hands for sure. Hands, yeah. Yeah, I think they do that they? I feel like

Who's on though? Fuck if I know. Male or female? Is it got nails on? Hard to say. Rings? Hard to say. What if they're missing a finger?

I think it's pinky. I think it's this way. So as long as it's not one of the, uh, the shock to. Yeah. It's the shocker. Um, but yeah, I mean, so I don't, I don't, he was coming down with that much. Yeah. Yeah.

He's, he's, uh, he's a strong beast. But I don't, I don't think this is an issue, right? because I think kind of post Nims' film, I do kind of blame Nims for this because he brought so much attention to 8,000 meter peaks and climbing in the Himalayas there. I think it was trending in that direction before, but it certainly did.

If there was a fire going... A graph. Yeah. Well, I think you can't get away from this. This is inevitable. I think what... Having seen both, having been on the mountain when it's like this and being on it

definitely wasn't as busy, I mean, I don't like this. It's more dangerous. Like, I'd like to see a stronger vetting process, but I also know that that's impossible. Because, you know, for every strict Western company like Alpenglo that vets their clients responsibly, you have, you know, five or six Nepalese company that would take anyone. And not all of the Nepalese companies like that, but the majority are. Michael, Google, Mount Everest garbage piles.

Because with a group this side, these are pictures that are not often seen as many as the summit, but it is directly correlated to the number of people that are there. Yeah, agree. I mean. Yeah. Yeah, like the third one. I mean, the answer to this is bins, right? Or hike your shit down.

You need bins on, you need bins at 8,000 meter. And people may not realize. I mean, this is actually the reality. though of that many, there's oxygen bottles. There's dead bodies that are on the mountain, which I totally understand, because it's, you will lose lives in the attempt to save it. People go missing. I mean, who was the guy

they found? I mean, I know some of the... Edmund Hillary. Yeah, I mean, 50 or 60 years later, something like that? I think that was a fix. You think so? Well, I don't know, like, how many times have people been up Everest and then all of a sudden, Jimmy Chin puts a crew together

and they go up and find a shoe with his name tag in it? It could have been variable conditions. I mean, I'm, I'm... You know. Yeah. I don't know. It's just a random thing to find a shoe with a name tag in. On the whole Mount Everest range.

Sometimes you get lucky. They spell his name wrong. Or it was the wrong size shoe. It's like a women's six. Yeah. But this is real. I don't disagree. I think it's disgusting.

I don't know what the answer is because the thing is with this, and this is up at probably Camp 4, because it's the dirtiest place. You're 8,000 meters. Yeah. The South Cole to try and manage litter is difficult because you're also dealing with not laziness, but you're dealing with people that are severely fatigued.

Yeah, they're exhausted. That don't get paid any extra for bringing the litter down. So every expedition company is responsible for their litter and shit. They get fined if they don't bring it down. And it's pretty strict as in if the expedition company that I'm climbing with Spot, another expedition company that collapses and goes and they leave litter, they can be fined by the government.

But it's the human factor, right? You're at 8,000 metres, you're finishing your expedition, everyone's happy, you're the new bloke, the new Sherper or whatever, with your mucker, and you've got to carry

fucking 70 pounds worth of kit down the mountain. You've no oxygen, you're at Camp 4. Oh, and now you've got to carry an extra 15 pounds of litter. When, you know, we all know, like, Nepal's a poor country. They don't see the value of taking litter off that we do. They don't understand that.

How much litter is on the actual summit path trail, if you will? Are there bottles that are discarded? Okay, it's a little bit more pristine. Is it the camps? It's at the camp. It's camp four. So if you Google Everest litter, you'll just see pictures of camp four. Okay.

Like base camp, it all gets cleared up. Camp three, it gets cleared. I mean, there's minimal at Camp three. It's generally tense. But if you were to go to Camp 3 now, if anything like you see feces on the trail, because people need to shit so they'll pull over to the side, drop one and then crack on. But Litty you don't see. And then the same, Camp 2.

There's a little bit around Camp 2 because Camp 2 is a little bit more of a structured camp. You generally have like a kitchen tent. You take better facilities for toilets up there. The rest of the camps are kind of transit camps. So like you'll see in the glasses There'll be like tent poles and crap inside the The crevasses but Does Nepal who

So part of the mountain is what? On the China side part of the mountain is Nepalese Tibet or China or whatever you want to say How much control do they actually have I mean can they control the number of people that make the attempt I mean there's no Nepalese ticket counter at the top It's your turn through the turn style So you need to get a permit which the government grant

But I mean they make money from the permit The permit historically was, I think, 8 or 10,000. It's now 15,000. So, albeit, they've put the price of the permit up, doesn't necessarily mean that you get less people through the door. It means you get richer people through the door. Like if you can afford an expedition for 60, if you can afford a 200 grand expedition or a 60 grand expedition,

you don't care if the permits 8 grand or 15 grand. No. But the government get more money. So I think it's great because the government should get more money from. Everest or climbing 8,000 meter peaks. But again, the Nepalese government isn't, well, most governments are pretty corrupt, right? If you dig far enough into it, yes. Yeah, Nepal's, you know, that's similar. I'd imagine a big portion of that money just ends up in certain politicians' pockets. And that's why Everest will never be, you know, as strict or

restricted that we would like it to be. Because people make money from it. With the of people with that extravagant level of wealth, which, by the way, fully supportive of people being as wealthy as they want to be. I hate people. I dislike people looking at others saying, well, he has so much, I don't like him because he has that. I disagree with that philosophy. I'm not saying everybody got their money or things in the most altruistic way, but also... It's the world. It's the world. And spend more time focusing on yourself than what somebody else has and be far better off. Just as a general principle. With that level of wealth. I mean, I know it's a long walk-in and a long walk-out. Are you starting to see a little bit more

helicopter departures earlier on than a long walk-out? Can I be honest? No one walks out. No one walks out. Dude, like, I've never walked out. Good. Yeah. As in, I'd rather pay a thousand dollars, share a helicopter and fly out. Oh, they'll come zip you right. What do they pull you from? Base camp. Okay. I mean, it's not the safest of helicopter journeys, but yeah. I mean, you're a little high altitude for sure. You do. in like, it's like another five days on the hoof, trying to get out. And then you get to look, and you might be grounded there because there's a huge queue of people from, from trekking the actual base camp route that are trying to get out. But, yeah, helicopters all the way. In fact,

the two, or I've flown out three times from Everest, the two times that I flew out post-summer sketchiest flights have ever been on. Really? Yeah, flew into cloud. So you've got this, like, valley. And basically the weather system, similar to like... Ohio just sent it right into the clouds. Yeah. In a mountain range. In a valley. Fucking awesome.

So like you book onto a helicopter for seven in the morning, first light or whatever. You get on the helicopter at 5pm. So the way the weather works in Nepal, you wake up in the morning, blue sky, no cloud. And obviously moisture builds up throughout the day and you get this big waft. Temperature differences, yeah. Yeah, comes up from the bottom, comes up with altitude. And you get this, you've got this huge valley. it goes down and it turns right and goes to this place called Ferrischet where there's a big

helicopter kind of depot they kind of come in and out from there and yeah the cloud system comes up and just sits like on top of the valley so the first time I got out I was the last person like all my team had gone and I was waiting for this heli helly comes back it's like the you're like how the fuck can this pilot fly out literally the guy comes and picks you up I'm sat on a load of duffles duffel bags in the back there's a Sherper in the passenger seat and then the pilot he's a Nepalese pilot that's a good thing sometimes that there's some amazing Nepalese pilots yeah but you get a load of foreign pilots that go over there because yeah a testing ground and there he flies out and he's flying like literally

you know 10 meters above the ground because of where the cloud is literally just pop straight into this cloud just sends it straight in yeah I'm just like when you know a bit about flying yeah flown a few helicopters I'm just like shit especially in constricted terrain like that yeah you just got mounting. How long was he in the clouds for? What felt like 50 minutes was probably more like 10 seconds, but he's flying down this valley. And this Sherp, you can see the panic. Do you know what I mean? And the Sherper just next minute, he just goes, he's just pointing that way and just screaming at him. This heli like Banks right, like flies down into the cloud and just pops out the cloud and he's in the next valley. There's a couple of other ways that could have ended too. Yeah.

I mean, there's quite a lot helicopter crashes over there. Happens quite a lot. You're at a super high altitude. Like you said, the mountain flying is not a joke. You not only do you need to be familiar with the terrain, the helicopter you're flying, the weather conditions, even all of those, it's still super dangerous. You're at the upper limits of what those things are able to do. And, you know, you're living in a country that, you know, if it's the U.S.,

Switzerland or whatever, it's like there's checks and procedures in grace. I'm sure they have a crack maintenance team making sure. all the bolts are on there. I'm sure the maintenance windows, the 1,500 hour checks are definitely getting done on time. 100%. My flight instructor was telling me. It's the wild, like flying out of there

is the wildest thing ever. Flying anywhere outside of the first world gets a little wild. So a lot of people learn how to fly in Robbins and helicopters, the little bubble ones. The single blade thing, yeah. Can you fly heli's? I can, yeah.

I have my fixed wing in my helicopter license. And my instructor was talking to me He had done a bunch of flying in jungles and third world places where like carrying batteries out of the jungle because he couldn't get the thing started. So we had to, you know, or had heard stories that people needed to walk for a few days. The blades I'm going to say on the Robinson. I don't know for sure. Whatever it was, he encountered a guy who was flying a Robinson that had the factory blades that were an order, orders of magnitude beyond what they were certified for. And he's just out there fully sending it.

bucket of fucks completely empty. Yeah. Like, okay, dude. How these things are rated for five? I got 20,000 hours on these things. We're good to go, boys. Man, that thing looks scary. It's Robinson.

It just looks like a tin box. It's tiny. And it is very, it's, it's, it's, I would describe it as twitchy. I don't think that's a word found in the manual or how Robinson would necessarily describe it. It's very lightweight. Responsive.

Yeah. It's susceptible to a lot of the turbulence or buffeting left and right. As long as you, it's like any piece of equipment. If you keep it inside of the tolerances, you're going to be okay. The Robinsons are oftentimes associated with what's called mast bump, which is where the main rotor blade cuts off the tail rotor. Boom.

Seriously. Happens a lot? It doesn't happen a lot. But that particular airframe, the type of rotor system that it has on top, if you do a negative G push forward, the two. But if you don't do that, that's not going to happen. Some people don't mean to. They'll get into turbulence and they'll dive it.

You know what I mean? keep your tools inside of the operating parameters and you're going to be okay. Why did you learn supply? Lost you're in or when you got out? I learned fixed wing while I was in. So after I had gotten hurt, they sent me to Buds to be an instructor at the seal course. And they were looking at that time period to try to increase the number of people making its way through. There was a doctrinal push inside of all special operations in the U.S. military.

We need more. And you know as well as I do. That's a great theory. But that's five years minimum to really get an ink. You can't mass produce them. It's one of the core tenets of special operations. So in seal training, the winter hell weeks, that week where they essentially keep you up, there's a vast amount of attrition.

So they were playing around with for one class. Let's not have a winter hellweek cycle to see if it makes an impact on attrition or numbers through at the end. I checked in right at that point where that class was starting the first phase, which was 10 weeks long. So I didn't have anything to do for a couple of months. And I was driving home where I was living in eastern San Diego. And this little Cessna looked like it was about to just completely auger in to the freeway that's right next to the airport. And I looked up and I said, well, that looks interesting.

So I banged the left and went to the flight school. And then I got my private pilots license and kind of put it to bed. Worked into, worked for a CrossFit, a Strength and conditioning company afterwards. and the founder wanted to get an aircraft to travel back and forth between his houses. And he had remembered that I used to fly. So I started doing flying there, which led to some jet type ratings. Didn't fly for probably eight, maybe even nine years. Was at a friend's house and he had an A-Star helicopter sitting in his patio, for lack of a better term.

I'm like, hey, you don't want to go up? I'm like, okay. And then the guy who took me up was like, hey, do you want to fly? I was like, okay. Not the takeoff part or landing. probably not advisable for anybody near us or in this helicopter, flew it around for a little bit, and it just kind of reignited the passion for it.

It was fun. And it was something that I enjoyed before. I had never really thought of rotary wing stuff. I didn't know much about it, and I talked an immense amount of shit about rotary wing flying, knowing almost nothing about it, which is the best. Is there like a little bit of banter between fixed wing and rotary?

No, it's just, I think it's just best when you don't know much about stuff, just to really deeply discuss issues. You know? Be the expert. Yeah. That's the way the world works, right? And on the fixed wing side, you know, oh, if our engine goes out, we can glide for a bit.

You guys are dead if the engine goes out in the helicopter, which is not necessarily true. You have less time, but there's things that you can manage. Like what? Just the auto rotation. You know, it depends. If you, again. Start it up again. No.

Depends. I mean, in the Robinson, I don't think you can. In the helicopter, I fly it. If an engine fails, you do not attempt to restart in flight. I fly a multi-engine helicopter, though. So I'll just fly it back to it. airport. Yeah. But did that flight, came home a couple days later. It's like, that was pretty cool.

And then saw one of the Robinsons landing at the local airport and research there was a flight school. Ended up getting my rotary wing private pilots license and then worked my way into having a helicopter and now I go fly whenever I want to. You've got a be your own heli? Yep. That's wicked. Have you jump out of it? Well, I could, whilst you're flying, someone else flying or? I could do it once. Yeah. It'd be expensive jump.

Just ghost ride it into the lake. What is that dude? Do you remember that guy jumped out of his plane, isn't there? Yeah. He got totally... He had an aircraft emergency and just happened to be flying his Cessna with his skydiving rig on in about nine Gopros.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. He stuffed it. It was like north of L.A. He stuffed it in. The FAA was not really pleased with his... I mean, that's an expensive jump, though, right? I guess. And I don't know what he thought that was going to happen.

I know. I know. Who flies a Cessna? with this skydiving rig on. Instagram likes. Yeah. Here we are. Yeah, Michael find it.

He's the best. Would you bet, have you completely sucked the base jumping off, I have had just because I don't have the access or time to even stay current in the skydiving world. So why layer that extra on top of it? Go down, Michael. Yeah, base jump is wild. Did you get into it for a bit?

No. I've got a good friend that's a big base jump. I don't know if you've heard of him. Tim Howell. I have not. He's a British guy, ex-Rural Marine, but he's done like a load of world first. So he did Akon Kagawa, highest mountain in South America, all of America's, like Kilimanjaro. He's been trying over the last two years to jump off Lottsey, which is the mountain next to Everest.

So it would be the highest wingsuit jump ever done. Last couple of years he's failed. He got to the exit point last year and the weather's. turned it was horrendous big winds etc that's a tough decision to make but I'm glad he did yeah 100% I mean I saw the videos it was gnarly I mean you wouldn't want to be on that exit point yeah if you weren't jumping let alone jump in but I went out to climb with him in Switzerland and we were louder Brunner yeah how beautiful is that valley amazing amazing it is the criss standing at the entrance to the valley looking into it and you just

hear canopies opening on those sides yeah but we so going out Tim was like mate you to try base jumping. Yeah, let's just give it a try. We'll just give it a try. It's a canopy, right? We'll just get the canopy open and you'll sort it. I was like, yeah, why not? I was like, is it like, I'll be all right when I?

He's like, yeah, you'll be fine. I think it was just after I'd come back from Seville and done three jumps. Yeah. So I flew out and we'd done a bit of climbing. We tried to climb this peak called the Shrek, Shrek, got weathered off. And we'd got gone back into Lauer. Latterbrunin. Loutter Brunen, yeah.

And we'd hike to an exit point, one of the ones that they've made, so it's like a wooden structure. It's like a deck. I remember looking over the edge and I was just like, I was like, fuck that. It's a different experience. So different. Yeah.

The zero airspeed starts are for the first two or three seconds, you got to really nail body position. You got to initiate the start of that jump aggressively. Yeah, I've seen it go bad enough. I was there with a buddy of mine who eventually ended up dying, base jumping. I don't want to over-romanticize how dangerous it was, but I think we were there for two weeks, and there were a minimum of six fatalities.

I think there were eight. Yeah, wow. And we would happen to be on the other side of the valley, and it would be an exit point on the other side. And the next day, not because we were trying to, you know, alternate or anything, but we were kind of naturally alternating and then something would happen. It's gnarly. It's very unforgiving.

I mean, if you roll the dice long enough, right, something's you increase you increase the odds of something happening yeah there's a a relatively famous uh in the base jumping circles community guy named sketchy andy yeah i see just recently passed away i think two days ago yeah that was a the place where he jumps moab yeah and there was another person involved it might have been a tandem operation that nothing was without risk um michael you can look this up but a skydiving aircraft crashed two days ago and killed 11 jumpers in the pilot. Wow. And somewhere in the U.S., I believe it was more on the East Coast. I tell people, skydiving and base jumping is awesome until it's not. And it gets real gnarly,

real, real, real fast. Base jumping even faster because you're so close, you know, the proximity. I think from what I heard of this, the plane was barely able to get off. I mean, base jumping at least is a pretty quick one. Like if you have a skydiving incident. Missouri, yeah. Most were from Missouri or Kansas. So yeah, I was in the more towards the center of the US. I mean, to be fair, I've been to those skydiving planes and some of those DZs. When you get in him, you're like, it's like a beat up old thing from the 70s. It's best not to look. Yeah, it's like, you're going up and I'm just like, okay, we're at the altitude.

If I jumped out, I'd be safe. What kind of jump in do you and do? Free fall. Okay. I didn't do much. It's obviously, Halo, hey-ho, when you're in the military. And then we just jumped civi out at the back of the C-130s. I never pursued it when I got out.

I think probably because it costs a lot of money. I do other sports, so like climbing, surfing, a bit of mountain biking. So to then pursue skydiving, I think it's a sport that if you're in, you're in, it's not one of those sports that you can kind of tickle and do a little bit every now and then. I wouldn't recommend it for sure. Yeah. Yeah, currency and competency is real. And especially if you like other outdoor activities, currency and competency and all those is real too.

And you can't diversify your portfolio too much because you start taking your, you're the ball off the game and other things. I don't know, look, if I lived next to a DZ and it was convenient, then it'd be something that I'd pursue, but like I loved it, I enjoyed it, it's fun, but I equally think it's one of those that there's so much that goes into it for just that 40-second free fall.

Do you know what I mean? It's like everything else, you know, the packing, the waiting around, the weather checks, the going up in the plane and then you just jump and do the descent. I think there's quite a lot that goes into it for that, you know, for the bang for the buck kind of thing.

I agree. Wing suits were pretty awesome for that respect, too, because it changed the dive from being so vertical to being a lot more horizontal. And you could essentially triple the time you were in free fall, too. They're pretty cool to scream around in. Yeah, but again, you need the experience, right? You need to be jumping quite a lot to even consider free fall.

I mean, you don't have to, but I would advise it. Yeah, of course. But equally, like, I don't know. Again, like you look at, you know, albeit the sketchy-handy thing, he was a very experienced person but you know i've been out to shamany plenty of times and my aunt and uncle now you know the shaman they live out there and you know you'd get you'd speak to the guides out there and they'd be like oh we had a fatality you know yesterday there was one last week and a lot of it comes from the wingsuit community and it's yeah i don't know whether it's people with similar to

everest right it's this thing that looks so exciting for people to try and there's probably a lot of outfit is out there that are just like, I'll teach you out to base jump a wingsuit and you need relative, you know, skydive or airtime. With skydiving and base jumping, the barriers to entry is essentially a credit card. You know, Everest, you're going to have to go with somebody who knows what they're doing who can get you the permissions. And it's still a credit card there. Credit card, but it's, I could have, not that I would ever recommend somebody could do this.

You could take, you could buy on the internet everything to base jump and go do it by yourself. That's wild, by the way. And you're not doing that with Everest. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, I get you. So it's, and I don't, I felt it in myself when I was doing that stuff too. You know, if 10 feet off the ground is cool in a wingsuit is nine better, is four better that, you know, twice as good as nine. And you can get away some stuff at times.

And, you know, the theory. There's your luck bucket and experience bucket. You need to be heavy in the luck bucket to support someone to the experience. It's just so unforgiving. One mistake. And, you know, they're. putting you into a pear bag. What was it for you?

What did you get from it? I enjoyed the activity, like the actual sensation of doing it itself, but I really liked the mental focus and clarity that came from it. I liked the sensation of standing on those edges zipping up. Having said that, utterly terrified, you could look around and be like, hey, man, can you hear my heart? or is that just me being deafened by the sound of, which I think is a natural reaction. If you don't have that, you may want to reconsider what the fuck you're thinking about.

because you're about to rock forward in a nylon suit and send it and you're going to have the rest of your life potentially to sort out anything that may happen. But for me, it was a mental reset, man. It was because you're so in the moment that all the other BS of life would just fade away. And it would last for a really long time, so it was impactful.

But at what cost, as with everything we do, right? Risk versus reward. When we moved up here to Montana, my currency laps to the point where I realized, okay, you know, maybe I could go to the Parian Bridge in Idaho where it's legal, probably the only place. It is the only place in the U.S. where it's legal 24-7, 365. And good facilities there.

And there's a lot of first jump courses, like you're saying, outfits that will teach you how to jump there. But even then, the currency lapse a little bit more. Found Jiu-Jitsu fell in love with that and got a lot of that in the moment, mental clarity afterwards as well, way lower risk. Was it as powerful as base jumping?

No. I would never say that. Do I need it to be that powerful anymore? No. Yeah. It's just not worth it. It's interesting. I know exactly what you mean about the clearness and the clarity thing. When you're thinking about only the next three seconds of your life,

it's funny how the bills matter. Not that they don't matter, but to free up that space in your mind and not have them weighing on you like an 80-pound rucksack at all times. I think that about like all the other sports that I do. It's like climbing, mountain biking, you know, being on a motorbike, all that kind of stuff. It's very similar.

I try and do a bit of track stuff on that. on the motorbikes. You have a deal with Ducati, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Fuck you. Do you like bikes? My first bike was a Ducati Monster 1,100 EVO. Yeah, nice.

It was amazing. Yeah, I love bikes. Ducati's, it's pretty tough to find a dealership in Montana, let alone maintenance. Yeah, I mean, Italian, Italian brand. Yeah. But yeah, they're wicked. The team are amazing. And Ducati is an actual company.

They've got World Ducati Week, which is in July. They run it every two years. And it's basically Ducati spend millions on this huge weekend festival, basically to say, if you're a Ducati owner, thank you for being a Ducati owner. And I don't know any other bike brand that does that, or any other brand, to be fair. I don't think I know either.

They literally have like all, so anyone that races in races in Ducati, which now is like all the top teams in like World Super Bikes, MoMAG, they're all putting Ducati bikes on the grid because it's the best bike. It's the one that's winning all the races. You have like Mark Market. You know, last time I went, it was Pecco Banyaya

and Jack Miller. They're there. They race around Mazzano circuit. You get to watch them. Like all the world's super bike guys are there. They have them like on this stage and everyone applauds them. It's like, it's amazing.

How did you become an ambassador for them? It's probably a really shit story to be fair. I just reached out to them. I love Ducati's, love bikes. Yeah. And if there was one- They are pieces of art. Dukati's are pieces of art.

Amazing. I think they, like you say, they belong in a museum. Yeah. I think, I just reached out to them. I was like,

if there's one brand that I'd want to work with, it'd be Dukati. And that was probably five years ago. That's awesome. Good for you, man. Yeah. But yeah, going back to what I was saying,

that, you know, being on a track. And I've, I've chatted to, I know quite a lot of guys that race at quite a high level, like I, Ila Man TT and,

the crazy. wild. I was literally just there last week. Have you rid the course? No, I'd love to. I mean, I could never ride it at 136. I mean, don't give me wrong. I would ride it in third gear. Yeah. Just me, I don't know. You can go some serious speed in third gear. Like Vespa. You can go, I mean, Ducati Panagali V4S will do 100 mile an hour in first. Yes. I'm on a Vespa though with a bubble helmet. I'd love to see that. I think, I think, Machiaato. Imagine like when you Google Andy stump, it's like. Let's do you and I. Lever helmet.

We'll do an Isle of Man T.T. Race on Spaspes. Yeah. We'll see you, we'll see your wins. Who cares? It'll be a 22 mile an hour race. Just leaning him over on the corner. I think it'd be more dangerous than doing it on a Superbike. Of course it would be. It's wild. Like I was there last week. There's this place called the secret garden.

And it's the most random thing ever. Have you ever been to the race? No, I've only watched it in absolute terror from afar. So it's even more, you get, even more of that feel of terror and like, of course, what the fuck is going on when you're there. Yeah.

Which is usually the other way. Watching it on T. No, it's not to be fair. Watching it in real life is usually more data or looks more severe than on a screen. But there's this bit, so the Isleman itself is like the most random place ever. It's a tax evasion place for,

for people in the UK. So there's a load of empty properties. It's generally a rundown place because there's no industry there other than the T.T. The only industry there is people that are trying to evade tax in the UK have bought a property and registered it as an office. It kind of looks like this place called Blackpool, which is close to where I grew up, which is a seaside town, which is a pretty rundown. We used to go there and watch like the Blackburn, anyway, going off topic. So you kind of get the feel of the island man. There's kind of nothing there.

It's not like a holiday destination. And every year this race happens. And we went to this place called The Secret Garden, which is literally a someone's garden. and you get dropped off in this bus, you walk down a street, you go into this like, you go down the side of someone's garage, which is quite a well-trodden path

because there must be so many people go through it. Into a front garden, then you hedge-hop over to someone else's garden, and then go around the back, and there's a garage and a dude with a barbecue, like selling burgers and beers. And then he's just got a wall on the front of his garden and loads of mattresses that he's laid down.

And you are literally on a street. and you guys in the US have these huge streets. The Isleman in the UK, we've got these tight, like, super narrow. Yeah, double-tracted with a pavement either side or, you know, what do you call the pavement? A sidewalk. And on the other side of this, there's houses and front gardens and front drives. People have just set deck chairs up and like, and you're literally on the track and you hang over the side of this secret garden. And the bike comes down and it's weird, every little bit of, like, little bit of,

elevation change on the road it hits it's like wheelie it so these bikes are coming past probably doing about 120 130 mile an hour in full wheelie probably about a meter and a half in front of your face that's got a sound but the secret garden yes the secret garden i mean you need the sound yeah enhance michael enhance it's not going to do it justice for in person but yeah it's it's white like it's the craziest thing I've seen. She so that wall there is there's paint on the wall

from the leathers there's paint so that you imagine if you hit that a quarter of an inch or a half an inch too much they're touching it that's the craziest thing my god and look how close

you said full wheelie speed wobbles just sending it yeah that's the secret garden yeah god the sound of that is just unbelievable It's wild It's wild How often do people die? So one guy died this year

Yeah Wasn't he one of kind of the legends From there too? Yeah, he died on the Qualifying so that you didn't die on a race There was a lady Maria, she's a sidecar

I think she's the ballast As you'd call it Yeah, I know you're talking about, yeah So yeah they cancelled the sidecars this year I think she'd I don't know the details exactly but I think she'd hit like where you know the the changing direction on the road and you remember like how the old Formula One cars used to just float up in the sky like the

sidecar's done that and obviously hit the deck and a bit essentially you got enough elevation under the front to become a wing literally that yeah I mean it's the first I think it's the first time it's ever happened to a side car but they cancelled the whole race yeah and she she's in a pretty bad way I think the driver is as well risk versus reward it's wild though like you hear that that gets me excited. Again, the sound of the bikes. I would crush that in a Vespa.

With just a nice iced macchiato and a little cup holder. Big, massive, like, cannonball with visor. 100%. I think we should wear. I think we should wear scarves. And those glasses.

Of course. Well, we've got two aviators. I think we should do genuine sidecar. Who's driving? Like a bike and a sidecar. We have to flip a coin. I'm not getting in the cycle.

You need a scoff. That's the cuck seat. The sidecar is the cuck seat. That's Michael's seat. He's in the cuck seat. Yeah, Michael could do it. Why do you think I'm over here? Yeah, exactly.

Have you ever watched any of the Isleman stuff, Michael? No, just this is like the first time I've seen it. In your own time, they have obviously some POV footage from what, it's probably not even, it's a good representation, I think, of at least the ang. that the driver is seeing, it looks like the space jump in Star Wars, the Millennium Falcon, just I can't even, can't even fathom how they're processing, let alone doing, they're not thinking about it, obviously, but manipulating the bike at the speed, I mean, they're just pegged out. Like microseconds of kind of body awareness.

And you ever met any of the drivers, the races? They're like a different breed of human being. In what sense, like they seem fearless, or are they overly calculating, or are they heavy on the tism side? Very wired. Interesting. Yeah, a lot of them are. Even some of the kind of super bike races that race on track, I find a lot of them are very just like, like, they're good to go at all the time, very like, speak very fast, just like, yeah, this, that, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, just very like. What's that look like when you're 50?

Fuck. When you're 60, what does that look like? 70. Or do you, does your candle burn so bright that maybe you're lucky to make it that far? I don't know. I don't know because you get to a point where, I don't know if you found this with base jumping and skydiving and doing what perceivably is a more dangerous thing, you get to a point where what you got from it years ago,

the adrenaline, the clarity of mind, the needing to do something to prove to yourself or whoever that you can do something that's wild, that flame itself dies off a little bit the older you get. I would agree. Some people, though, are wired so tight. I just don't know how their engine, internal engine burns. Yeah, the nervous system. Yeah, I don't know.

I'm not a doctor, full disclosure. But I wonder about the long-term longevity of that. But I love that there are people, the human species is fascinating. It's wild. The fact that there are people out there like that who want to do that stuff, I couldn't be more supportive. Same. Yeah.

It's one of the things I love. like more about Europe when it comes to base jumping. It is risky. People are going to die. But in Lauderdin, they're not shutting down the valley because people are making the choices. That is their choice to make, whether they have a full understanding of the risk or not, individual and the person. But it's just viewed differently. And I can appreciate that. And I don't know where that comes from. It's interesting, isn't it? Because equally, you know, it doesn't bring any money through tourism. I bought a lot of cappuccinos.

I did. I would do a nice pack job, a nice cappuccino and go send another one. How many coffees can you drink a day? Because you own a coffee company. A lot. What's the maximum? 12?

Seriously, in a day. Doubles? I mean, why do we have to, not everything has to be counted. There's a lot of judgment. 12 double coffees in a day. Why does that have to be a double?

What's a double coffee? All right, so what would a coffee consist of? Coffee means just coffee. That means just drip coffee. But you can't. You're talking about espresso? It's got to be caffeinated coffee. Like how many caffeinated?

12? 12. Was that, would you like, I'm not judging, by the way. I think it's impressive. The look of in your face is a little bit of judgment.

Didn't that way? I'm not saying I do that anymore. Was it the coffee competition that the woman died? I'm not aware of that. But I mean, I know there's a lethal dose to caffeine. No, when we first were open.

Hell of man. Would you like, say you hit the 12th one? Yeah. Is it still having the same? effectors. Oh no, no, no, you're through the effect. You stop at the 12th one because you think you're going to die. Just heart, boom, boom, boom, boom. Sweating. I find like the more coffee I drink, the less the effects. I feel like it's... That's because our adrenal glands are burned out.

Yeah. Our end of the end of the systems don't work anymore. Amen. Amen. Yeah. Yeah. No, this was earlier in my coffee journey. No, I'll have two cups of coffee day at this point. Yeah, I also don't want to drink too much because I do enjoy the taste of coffee. I like the morning kind of routine aspect to it as well. But if I have more, I want it to be able to have that effect. Same. You know what I mean? If I need a little bit of a, hey, I need to be a little bit more awake or I didn't sleep well enough. I don't want to be so immune to the effects of caffeine through overconsumption that it doesn't work. I quit it in January for a month. Yeah. The first time I'd done it in like Horrible life, I'm assuming.

I weirdly found it easy. It's bizarre. Yeah. I was finding, weirdly last year, I was having like one coffee in the morning, finding like I had this weird thing with my speech where I was thinking of what to say, but the words couldn't come out. Yeah. I don't know whether it was stress related or, but I blamed coffee.

Okay. And quit it for a month just to see how I got on. It was fine, but like I wouldn't say it was, I wouldn't go. I like drinking coffee, like, like you say, right? I like that morning routine of getting up, making a coffee sitting out in the garden if there's no rain. But I wouldn't say that being off coffee was any better for my energy levels or clarity of mine than being on it.

Like when I first started drinking it again, I was just like, all right, yeah, I just feel the same. Okay, to each their own. You know, we might have a slightly different sliding scale than some other people based off our experiences. I think we're pretty normal, mate. I think we're normal. Out of all the stuff you do now, what do you enjoy the most?

So you have your guiding company. I know you do ambassador stuff for a couple of different brands, which is an interesting journey in and of itself. But out of all the stuff you do now, what do you enjoy the most? I like surfing. I enjoy surfing. I think the older I get, the more I do stuff because of the experience and less trying to push myself in a direction.

I've never been a naturally talented. climber. But I've always done it because I just enjoy being on a mountain, doing something that's different from the day-to-day monotent, monotent, monotent, monotony. Monotony. Monotony. Now you're fucking me up. Monotony.

Monotent. Listen, you guys created the language. You need to probably dial this in. Monotony. Michael, are either of us saying this? In American, it's easy. Yeah. Say it English, though.

It is English, just so you know. No, but you say it in an American accent. But we're speaking English. Monotomy. Monotomy. Monotomy. I can't do your accent. You just did it.

It's like nonchalant. That's like a, you guys say it because we pick it up from the films. But it's actually nonchalant, isn't it? No, it's nonchalant. I say it nonchalant. Again, as the country that, my understanding, founded the English language. I don't know why you're asking me. Nantchalant.

There's no such thing as American. There's American accent, but we're still speaking English. You should find out on Netflix, American. Okay. But it is English, you're right. The Queens. Yeah. Kings now.

Which also... God bless. It's a little bit weird. How is that living under the rule of someone else? Well, you don't really live under that rule, do you? To be fair, it'd probably be good if it went back to the monarchy. How is the UK doing these days? So the US...

Depends if you... Yeah, the US news optic, depending on where you gather your information. from or whatever narrative they are going down. Compainted to be pretty gnarly. In the U.S. optic, I think, or not the total U.S. optic, but in some media sources, essentially the narrative is, and I'm paraphrasing, you guys are losing control of your country through unchecked immigration. Some people have said the same thing about the U.S. as well, so it's not a unique, you know,

immigration is immigration throughout the world. But as somebody who lives there, how's the U.K. doing? I think there's quite a few issues with the UK that are going on at the minute. I think what you have is you have something like immigration, right? There's obviously a large influx of migrants or whatever the correct phrase is coming in from countries all over the world to seek asylum in the UK, which is a genuine issue. And I think that could be an issue that could be dealt with better than the way that it's

being dealt with now, but what you've got is a government or a country that's essentially skinned. Like, we don't have any money. And if you look at our GDP, it's like we don't generate enough money through taxes to be able to pay off the interest for the debt that we owe, let alone the debt. So, albeit you have migration, you have unemployment, you have schooling, you have policing, you have all these issues that at the minute aren't the greatest. you know, benefits. I don't know what you guys call it, where someone that doesn't work,

they get paid by the government. Social services, yeah, we call it benefits. So ultimately you have a list of issues that have been, you know, created over the last however many years, but you've got a government or an establishment that doesn't have the money to be able to do anything about these issues.

You know, if we were a wealthy country that had a shit and a cash, you'd be able to look at migration and go, well, let's throw a billion quid at migration and let's bring in the right people to be able to do something about that situation, whether it's give them jobs, whether it's take some of them back that we don't want there, whether it's whatever it is, you don't have the ability to be able to do something with that. Same as policing, right? You could look at policing.

So, for example, the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan changed. We had a stop and search rule where anyone could be stopped and searched. it was brought into look at knife crime we've obviously not got a huge gun crime situation but it's mainly knife crime interracial gangs not interracial but you know

a lot of gang crime in the UK where they use knives and stab each other that got eradicated and Sadiq Khan put all the money and funding into the whole social media thing you know you say the wrong thing on social media now you can be arrested

again And some people believe in that. Some people don't. I generally think violence on the street is probably a bigger issue than sticks and stones may break my bones kind of things. But who am I to say? Policing speech, and I am not an expert in humanity, but I can't think of an example of where that led to anything good. No, I mean, it saddens me, if I'm being honest, Andy, because, you know, I might get the story wrong, but I'm pretty sure that we had a, an attack on a kid's school.

You know, you're talking four to six year old girls at a dance class in a town called Southport who's actually close to where I grew up. And this dude went in and stabbed them all, like, you know, stabbed one of the girls like 36 times or whatever the numbers were. Obviously Southport erupted, as it should do, the people, you know, want something done about that

because that shouldn't happen, right? and some of the people in that group had posted stuff on Facebook and they were arrested for an opinion. Yeah, I'm not a fan man. I'm not a fan either. So again, it's like

you've got all these issues, you've got policing. I think it's, you know, I'm from, you know, I've worked in a military. I grew up fear in the police as a kid. Like you, they drove onto the park that we were drinking on, you'd all run.

Because if they got hold of you, you'd get a slap around the face. Yeah, you're going to get knocked around a bit. Yeah, you'd probably gob off to them and get a spray a CS gas in your face. It was like, that's just what happened. Like, I wouldn't turn around and say that they were in the wrong. Yeah.

I'd say it's all part of the fun. But now it's like, you know, the iPhone's got a camera on it. They're all getting filmed. They're under scrutiny. It's like, You know, I saw a video of a police officer punch a guy on the floor the other day.

It's not the best thing to do to punch a person on the floor. But like, I think at the minute the police are sat in this space where they don't want to do anything because anything that they do do comes into so much scrutiny that, you know, that they would be pulled off their work and harassed. I've seen a friend recently be harassed on social media and Facebook because she wasn't even involved in, that happened in the UK, I don't know if you saw the thing that happened in Southampton

where two sea clads had stabbed an English, a white English guy, they'd use the Sikh knife, I don't know what it's called, and they'd then called the police and said that this guy, they'd been involved in a racial attack. So the police officers turned up and arrested the guy that had been stabbed four times and he bled out on the floor. and she'd been you know anyway she I'm probably not but I don't really want to go into details

because it's her life as well but yeah look I'd like to see police have the power back um I'd like to see police not have the finger pointed at them as much because equally we're spending

you know an armed police officer shoot someone in London with two knives stuck to them that police officer then gets pulled out because an inquiry is happening and they can't carry on working, that inquiry itself costs millions of quid. Wow. And we don't have any money.

As a country, we have no money. So we're pulling our own police out of their job and putting them in an inquest or whatever with money that we struggle to be able to do anything with us as a government. You know, the stats came out for how much tax was brought into the country last year or or whatever it was the last tax year. And we actually generate less money. What was the detail? I can't.

Yeah. So we give out, I might have to fact check this. I might get it wrong, but I'm sure. Michael's good at this. I'm sure it was like we brought in less money through taxes last year than we gave out in social services. Are you hopeful for the future of the UK? Or do you see it getting worse before it gets better?

Worse, if I'm being honest. What does that end up looking like? We're talking people banging it out in the streets and to demand change. Well, like, all these, all these. Yes, the statement is correct. Yeah. I mean, I raised, I don't know. 331 billion in income tax, well, a total, you put out 3333.

It's only $2 billion. It's not that much. Yeah, of course. So the thing is of this, right, is, their answer then is, well, increased taxes, find different ways that we can tax people in the UK. Then the people of the UK don't like that. So I think equally all these separate problems that the UK has,

they cause massive diversity within people of the UK, right? It's like the stop and search thing. There's a huge disagreement with that, but that will then cause violence on the streets of the UK. It's like the immigration thing. It's like that causes, you know, a stabbing, or a sexual assault happens by a migrant. And it's like that whole town then erupts

and the police come in and then the police are under scrutiny. So each one of these individual issues just causes the whole of the UK to separate when, you know, the answer to it is that we all come together in some way. But I seem to think that everything that happens these days just pulls us apart. And I equally don't see the answer to that.

Because you want to live in a friend. free state where people are able to do anything that they want. But equally the downside to living in a free state and a non-governed state is that this happens, right? Absolute chaos. Freedom isn't free. There's a cost to everything. You look at a country like Dubai. Yeah. Made in person is unacceptable. It's true. But like it's a strict, it's a regime. Well, it's a, you'd argue and say it's a democratic regime, right? Because I think they would want you to say that. I'm not sure it's true. Well, they're paying me.

Perfect. Of course. No, but as in, it's strict, right? I'm trying to think it's one of the rules. But it's governed by a royal family that make decisions for the greater good of that country. And it's if you step out of line, it's not that the police then come under scrutiny.

If a police officer wax you around the head. So, for example, if you get... You come under scrutiny for what you did, not the consequences that you suffered because of your actions. Of course. Which that should be a given. In a world that makes sense to me, yes. What's fascinating is that people will argue for the opposite of that and I don't understand it.

I try to understand. I want to understand why they feel that way. I'm not going to say that I agree with them, but I don't understand how that belief has long-term sustainability. I agree. So hell if I know. I get the sentiment, right? Like it's fluffy, it's nice, like police officers shouldn't be going around and like hitting people.

But like you say, we're humans and we're all dumb. Yeah. It's like we need pointing in a direction. And if we don't have that direction, then, you know, we're just left to our own devices. And it works in a country like Dubai. It's like you as a white English person in Dubai, if you get into a fight with an Arab man, it's like you don't have a leg to stand on. Yeah. Like you go to prison, you're getting deported.

But the knock on effect of that means that I don't go out looking for fights. General good. No one does. Yeah. So everyone behaves. Yeah. And albeit in a country where you can go out and buy a 50 million pound house in cash, right? Great for the economy.

Also great for people that are sat on a load of cash that don't want to tie it up in tax, taxable countries. But they're all on the best behavior because they step out of line. and that 50 million pound house becomes a seized asset. Yeah, it's state property now. But no one's walking around with the head down feeling oppressed. It's like the freest place I've ever been.

I've been to the airport. What did you think of the airport? I sat in the lounge. Good coffee. Of course. Do you become a coffee snob now? A judge, a judger. No, I drink for effect, not taste.

That should be the banner. Yeah, much like alcohol when I drink. Like it's, it's, you know, people, do you taste the, you know, this, this, it seems like this barrel was soaked in cherry wine. I'm like, shut the fuck up. Dude, it tastes like 87 octane gasoline. You just shot it. Yeah.

Like, it tastes like gasoline and you know it, you pretentious fuck. Do you still drink? Every once in a while. I have, the older I get, the less I have a desire to do so. I've never, for me, my relationship with alcohol has always been healthy. I can put it down when I want to and pick it up when I want to. I just enjoy, I enjoy being productive more than I enjoy. I mean, don't get me wrong.

I'm like, I think the last time I drank out a couple glasses of wine with my wife. Last night. No, but I would have. I mean, if my wife had wanted to, but she works late on Mondays. So, yeah, we didn't have the chance. She got home later. But yeah, had a couple glasses of wine with my wife. It's fantastic, you know.

But, like, my days of going out and partying largely over. Were you apart, yeah? When the occasion demanded it, of course. It's a rise to said occasion. It's crazy, in it? Because alcohol is so fun at the same time. I was having this conversation. I just was on Andrew Huberman's show.

He was a fantastic person as well. And he even said, he goes, I can't believe I'm about to ask you this. But is there something missing for the younger generation having not drink? And I would say there is some positive, even if it's just a social lubricant. And if you can manage your catastrophes that you have and keep them not life changing.

I think people need to make mistakes. But some of the most memorable experiences in my life with my friends involved alcohol. And again, correlation versus causation. I don't think the alcohol caused it, but it was correlated with it there. And I wouldn't, I don't want to take those back. Yeah, it's interesting. Now raising my daughter's 18. My middle son's getting ready to turn 21.

And my oldest is 23, watching their generations. relationship with alcohol and seeing them kind of go through that journey as well, too. It's weird to see it on the other side of the coin now, watching the next generation come up through it. Do they drink, or on occasion? They talk a big game and then, you know. So did I when I was 18. Totally. But at 18, a hangover should last about four seconds and get back on the horse there, cowboy.

The Michael pull up, the current alcohol. sales. Right now in the U.S., the alcoholic market is in trouble. Same in the UK. Yeah, the younger generations are drinking less. And not all of them, but just obviously a massive difference. I'll be curious to see how they sorted. Well, it's interested, isn't it? I think I randomly was chatting to a student recently, Bournemouth where I live is a big student town. But they're still, they're still partying, but not drinking. Yeah, 60% down. Yeah. Yeah, it's, Can you get a graph, Michael, of consumption? Yeah.

Do you always use Google AI? I don't know what he does over there. Yeah, I do, but just because it's... Easier. We're not like Joe. Let's go log into our sponsor perplexity. Paxity, that's it. You use perplexity?

I never have. No. Use AI? You said you use... I use Claude. You use Grock or anything? I only use Grok. You know what you're doing pictures of your mates.

I don't really know what Grock is for. Or Twitter or X or whatever it's supposed to be called. Instagram is the easiest. It's pictures. I get that one. Yeah, I agree. I don't go on X either. It just looks like a minefield of reading.

And I'm not a big reader. Yeah, it's not like it's low. Oh, shit. It actually is the lowest it's ever been. But, you know, we've had some other low points too. 1985. 95. I wonder why that was.

Why was alcohol so bad in 1957, probably? I don't know. The 70s were bangers. Look at that shit. Yeah. That's when all the babies were. Cocaine and martinis. So cocaine was cheap.

Yeah. I don't know. I mean, Michael's in that generation. He drinks. It's weird. I wonder. So equally that conversation you had with Huberman, I wonder what the benefit is to eat as well.

Because ultimately you've got this downside that kids that aren't drinking as much on, having, you know, making the mistakes. Yeah, social interactions and stuff. But what's the benefits to that other than say health? Probably health. Yeah. Are we equally with the rise of social media, are we creating these like socially inadequate kids?

Do you see that? I see it in adults too. This health maxing trend, don't get me wrong. I want to live the most meaningful and longest life possible. But I see people acting like, like they're sick so that they can live longer. What do you mean? Meaning, and I don't mean to jump on the bandwagon here of the guy who was the host

of the Dyer of the CEO, but he's talking about how he got basically annihilated by a couple glasses of wine. He's getting hobbered for that. First off, fucking put your stirrups on, Cowboy. Yeah. It's okay to not feel your best all the time. But I get the. maximizing sleep.

I get abstaining from everything that could have a negative consequence. But if you go to the point where you're going to stay home because you don't want to go out because you're going to be exposed to too much blue light or other people or whatever it may be and you have to sleep during this time window and you're missing out on life experiences. So you're basically shutting yourself in to optimize your health. You're acting like a fucking sick person to try to up, you know what I mean, to optimize your health. It's a little bit of a rough analogy, but it's like, dude, it's okay to podcast when you

don't feel your absolute best. It's okay. You're not going to fucking die if you read your iPad right before you go to bed. You get people acting like they're going to get bodied by an iPad screen. You know, I also understand the benefit of it, but we're all, none of us are getting out of this alive. Read the iPad. It's crazy. Drink a fucking nice bottle of red wine from France. And if you don't feel great, still go do the shit that you need to do. Yeah, Banga Hooker. Okay.

Again, that was Jay that said that not in. Drink 12 coffees. Yeah. I mean. Cheat on your partner, you know? Base jump when you just bought the kit off eBay. Yeah. Live a little, guys.

What I don't want to do is be on my deathbed. regretting the things I didn't do. I agree. You know? Or to buy myself five more years, but I miss out on five years of life experiences. No, thank you. And that works for me. I'm not saying other people need to live like that.

But man. So optimize your sleep. Great. What are you doing with it? Do you have to get up in journal for two hours, to meditate for two hours, to coal plunge, to sauna, to do your mobility work, to get in your red light therapy, to go to your massage. You're like working a full-time job before your full-time job,

which live your life however you want to. But what are you doing with all that? And how much, so say for example, if I think it's probably just a, I think what you end up seeing, which is pretty much the internet in general, is you see like the extreme fringe of stuff. Do you know what I mean? It's like normal people like us. We're trying to get seven to eight hours sleep.

Yeah. We're trying to drink three liters of water every day. We're trying to eat healthy. Yeah. You know, I don't want to booze all the time because I feel like shit. Yeah. But you end up, the internet seems to show you, like someone like Brian Johnson, right, or Stephen Bartlett or. Brian Johnson, if you live your life, and I'm not judging, what I'm about to say is slightly judgmental, though.

If you have to walk around outside with a fucking umbrella, live your life how you want to, but God damn it, what are we doing here? We should do the T, the umbrellas. On our vespas, we could. We could have umbrellas. We'd suit them, like white ones, the ones that look like the cocktail stick umbrellas. I know, but it's like, what are we doing, man? Yeah, I agree. What are we doing?

I agree. And what stress is that giving you? Do you know what I mean? Because equally, all that shit's great. But if you're stressing over getting six hours of sleep. Yeah. Or you're stressing over the fact that fucking you looked at your phone before you went to bed. Do you know what I mean?

It's like, if you're stressing over that stuff. If that unwinds your day, I'm sorry. You're not, you're not as resilient. as you could be. And I'm not saying live your life like that, but it's okay. The machine should be able to run on diesel fuel sometimes as opposed to high octane. No, he rotated in his seat. He rotated in his seat. That's a shame. Yeah. No, dude, the diary, Stephen Barlett is, he's taking it on the chin right now. Yeah. He got hammered. No, he didn't. It was only three glasses of wine. He's acting like he just went out and just blitzed it.

Man. And then Chris Williamson is a friend of mine too, a good friend. He's sitting there wearing his orange, like red light glasses. I'm just like... I do think it's like a bit of OCD though. I do. It can become your whole identity. And again, live your life how you want.

I want to be as healthy as possible so I can do as many fucking awesome things as possible. That's really the end state. I want to be able to have, if I travel and they have a chateau nif de pop of a certain vineyard, I'm going to drink the goddamn bottle of wine with my wife because it's amazing for clarity. I don't even know if that's a real thing, but I feel like that's an expensive. Shatineuve to pop. Yeah. Yeah.

I feel like it's real. French. Obviously. The nif. Yeah. I've seen it on menus, I think. It's really expensive. It's wild, isn't it?

It's like all those at, like Huberman's podcast. It's like, and it's an amazing podcast. Like, you get so much from it. I mean, I struggle to get to the end of it, but there's so much. I feel like you remember to tell you the same thing, though. You still have to live life. Of course. I believe he would say that.

I've never asked him that question, but I believe he would say, even for himself, the purpose of optimizing is to optimize your experiences as well, too, not to limit them. And it's a balance. And people can live that balance however they want to. but don't walk around with a fucking umbrella, you know? But it's that thing, it's, um, you might know someone like this,

that 90-year-old, for some reason it seems to be women. Chain smoking. Yeah, and they're like 106. Yeah, but that doesn't scale. You know what I mean? There's always going to be a white elephant that is anomalous. What about cigars? I don't know.

They say you're not supposed to inhale. Pipe. I don't fucking knows. The thing is, just because one lady in Tennessee can live to 106 on cigars and but bladleiser doesn't mean that scales for everybody else but i think there's something that we can take from it because i reckon that woman doesn't care that she smokes 20 a day or whatever it is she doesn't get stressed that she's not do you know what i mean she's not trying to help max i know i think at that point she's trying to end it she's just how do i get this to

stop how mad smoking by the way is it's never been my thing i never got into it how do you get into it It fucking stinks. It does. I think it's the, what's in cigarettes? Nicotine? If you can get through the shitty taste, I think initially, I think you get a buzz off of it from the nicotine.

Yeah. I never got into it. It's a generation thing because years ago people got told it was cool. They used to come in MREs. The World War II. Yeah, the luckies. Yeah, they used to come.

Cigarettes would come two cigarettes per MRE. I know they, we used to get rum rations. I mean, not me personally, but World War II. It's pretty dope. At least your guys, fobs usually used to have booze. They would tell us that we had to have dry areas. Like, I know where to go.

No, it was the other way around. I'm not saying that we were dry. They told us we had to be. To be fair, when you get in the special forces, we'd just, we'd actually fly with, because the operational theater itself was dry. But, um, in theory. I remember going into the stores and we'd just pack up so much booze and take it out with us. Yeah. They were some of the wildest piss-ups. Indeed. Wild. Yeah. Indeed. What did you write your book about? And wouldn't that come out, by the way? I know it's not like a super... Yeah, 2020.

Okay. It was... So, story of life pretty much from start to finish, but just pulling out all kind of valuable lessons that I've learned, serving in the military, climbing mountains. How does the SAS or SPS community view people who write books or who are open about their service? I think if you grew up in my peer group in my era, no really cares. I think there's a...

As long as you stay inside of the boundaries, obviously. Yeah, and work have to sign it off. Yeah. So you can't just write a book and then release it. You can, but you could be, you know, whatever legal action could be taken against you. So you write the script and then you send it off to work and they proofread it and make sure that you're not giving anything away.

I think it's a very... I don't know what it's like over here, but... It shifts and it depends on the community. Yeah, it's more than... the older generation. The silent professionals. Yeah, more the old and bold that have hung around in the unit for however many years that don't like that.

And I get it. Do you know what I mean? I understand that they don't want that to happen and they don't want a load of young lads going out and making a success or trying to make a success of themselves based on the stories of what they did in their career. But I bet they want more people volunteering for it. And that's what that does, right? It generates, same with a TV show.

There's a difference between silent professional and quiet professional. The people who demand that nothing be said, they want everybody to be quiet. I read books. I was looking at the military. There was pre-internet. I went to the library. I found historical books about the community. They were incredibly inspirational and aspirational.

I probably still would have gone down that path. But if you're completely quiet, as opposed to, you know, silent and saying and And working inside of those boundaries, I think one is okay. It's like, come on. And the older, it's the same thing. There's a lot of the older generation. Nothing should ever be said. And I want to pull them aside.

Be like, listen, have you ever been in a bar and tried to get laid by telling somebody what you did? You fucking hypocrite. I get it. It's not, it's not, you didn't write a book, but what you're saying is what you did is okay because it worked for you and you don't like seeing people. people do what they are doing. You yourself haven't been the quiet professional. So let's just take our hypocrisy and take a step back. Having said that, I think there's a right way and a wrong way

to do it. I agree. I think there's a right way in a wrong way. I think, but I think, look, the majority of us don't want to do it the wrong way anyway. Correct. Like, I don't want to write a book. Like, I respect the opinion of the people that I served with. And I, albeit when you leave, you're not part of that unit anymore. You're part of that. the history of it, I still value their opinion. And I would hate to think that the lads that I fought with side by side, think of my pricks. I wrote something in a book.

Yeah. Like, I've just failed at being a special forces, you know, operator like in the past. But yeah, it's the same. It's the older generation that,

it's the same with the TV show. It was, when it first came out, I was still serving. And I remember sat in a sauna for the dudes. And this is an interesting story beginning. And we're all talking about it. And we're all similar peer group.

And I sometimes, I mean, I think with a lot of like people's opinions in serving in the military in a big group, it's a lot of just picking up on what someone else says. It's like pack mentality. And because they've spoken to three people in the canteen that think everyone that did the TV shows a prick. now they think that they're a prick. Having never watched it. I've never, yeah. Literally that, literally that. It was literally out in the sauna.

They were all just going out of that fucking TV show and I was just like, what? I was like, have you watched it? Yeah. And they were like, no, I was like, it's actually pretty good. And I was like, if anything, it brings our units into good light. Like people are watching it and going, fuck, who are these guys on the TV? You want to inspire people. Of course.

Yeah. And there's a, again, there's a wrong way and a right way. Yeah. And I think the longer that TV show went on, it's, into a reality TV show, which is it's come away from giving people access to the special forces. And now it's just a TV show that's got a few special forces dudes on it. It's tough. I mean, in that world, we had a success.

What do we have to do more to make the next one more successful and more successful? I get it. There's always a pull between authenticity and entertainment and entertainment will win at the end of the day. Because it's in an entertainment industry. So I get that. And it's built by people making entertainment. For sure. What else you got left on your bucket list?

You got any big goals or aspirations that you're aiming for? How old are you now too, by the way? Forty-two. Okay. How old are you? 48. Yeah. How was your 40s?

I don't know. Just drank the whole way through it. I don't feel 48. I wake up every day and I try to figure out what I'm going to do that day. I don't look very much at the number on a driver's license. I don't feel like I'm 40. You know, age is real. It's coming for us all. But they're okay. I think maybe I have figured myself out a little bit more. That's probably what I found in my 40s. And I have found that.

And then also the realization, looking back, I was a total idiot for the 30s and 20s. Yeah. That's what the... You just don't know what you know. It's tough, man. But I think in your younger years, you do things for different reasons, right? And I think you hit a a stage in life where you just stop caring about other people's opinions and all that kind of stuff and it's like you kind of honing on right what makes me feel good moving forward or what or what I don't like I've been able to identify that one more this is what I don't want to waste my time doing this is what has I've tried and didn't serve me well and I wasted my time so we're

not going to do that anymore what was that kind of stuff uh money honestly for the sake of looking at a number in an account or an and a desire to to acquire things over, it's the argument between the status or the utility of something. And I've never been one that really sought status. But, and I think this is probably just a younger person's game. You see something flashing. You're like, oh, it's going to be amazing. If I could just get that, then that's a mark of success.

And you get it and you realize a month later and you give a shit about the thing. So for me at this point in my life, the last thing I think about is money at this point. Is this what I actually want to do, regardless of the size of the check that my be associated with it. That was very helpful for me. It's interesting, isn't it? Because all that stuff is quite intoxicating. Yeah. It's like even, I don't know if you experienced it with a TV show. It was like having just been a soldier my whole life coming out and doing a TV show and I hit it at a time when it was probably at its peak, it's quite intoxicating having people coming up to you and going like, oh, you Jay off the TV show. Like it feels good.

Like there's a dopamine hit that's related to it. Yeah. But equally, it's not sustainable. Like, it's not real life. And if you wanted it to be sustainable, I don't have it inside of me to do the things necessary to climb that ladder. Yeah, same. I equally wouldn't want it.

Same. Do you know, like equally like, Rogan like here and going, like he goes to a restaurant and there's people trying to get pictures of him and stuff, I'd hate that. I know Joe pretty well. I would consider him a good friend.

I, and I know some people in that level of fame, I would take the money because of what I could do in my life and what I could do with other. people experiential based, not thing-based, you can have that fame. I don't think you can live a normal life. Can you imagine having an unlimited amount of resources, but you have to govern your

behavior because you literally can't do the things that you want to do? It's tough. Yeah, I mean, he's lucky because he's got an open platform where he can pretty much say what he wants. Yeah. Like the, imagine being a Hollywood actor, right? Well, you can't even say what you want. You're a product of, you're a robot.

Yeah. I mean, you're going to be replaced for you. And you're going to be replaced by robots pretty soon. Or AI at least. That's a weird world, isn't it? I thought about that the other day. As in... Well, when we work for the robots or AI?

AI. But I think soon enough, because you see in films now, and it's at the detriment of films. Yeah. Like, all films are, like, we saw the green screen thing come in, and now it's like, kind of, CGI's like old news, right? It's all generated from whatever, AI, or whatever you want to call it.

I might not get this right, but you know what I mean. Yeah. There's going to be a point where there's AI actors. They're already worried about that. They're already talking about replacing all extras with artificially generated individuals. It's crazy, isn't it? But like we're olderish dudes. Like the kids, you know, they're going to be into it,

as in they're going to follow AI people that aren't real. It's already happening. There's already people who have massive accounts making money on like AI, only fan type stuff, AI, Instagram. Oh yeah. Seriously. You've seen that stuff. I've never once been on OnlyFans.

Again, live your life however you want to people. I happen to absolutely fucking cherish my wife. And I'm just, you know what I mean? That's not a bridge I'm going to cross. And so, yeah, I don't know, man. I tell you this, though, AI is never going to lead somebody up a mountain. Well, I don't know. There's robots just climb that mountain.

No, they'll trip and fall. Like, what's that? Can you get that up? The AI that climb the mountain? about might be able to climb a mountain itself. It's not going to be able to read the client that they're with and know where they're at and their ability right and to have to be able to connect and maybe get illicit performance or behavior out of them beyond what they think. You know what I mean? Yeah. I don't think it's yet. I don't know, man. I get, I get you. There's a level of guiding that

there's always going to be some industry that I think is going to be less touched by AI. I think experience. It might fly the helicopter up there for you. But I think the experiential sector. Tough. Because equally humans are going to want to experience things. More so and more so now that AI is taken over the jobs. I think so, actually. I think you're going to see, I think you will see a resurgence and we'll call it analog desires. Yeah. I think you're already seeing it.

Yeah. With an appreciation, I think you can have a simultaneous appreciation for analog stuff and the innovation and evolution. Like I use AI tools for aggregating information or menial, like if I have to do an Excel spreadsheet, I'm throwing that into Claude. Oh, so good though. It's amazing. So good.

That's what I'm saying. I only discovered it the other day. And I don't know how to do any of that stuff, and I could pay a professional to do that stuff, or I could pay 20 bucks a month and throw it into Claude, double check to make sure that it's working properly, maybe have to go for a few iterations, and then I'll go to something analog. Well, you know what I mean? It's not running my life, but I'm using the tools for sure.

What are you looking at? Oh, is that it? This is the robot. Yeah. What did it climb? It was it South America? I think they don't quite. Shit.

They do everything that works in a lab falls apart in the real world. They decided to fix that by sending a robot somewhere. No robot has ever survived. Pemba just submitted Chimborazo in Ecuador, 6,200 meters up, in a 16-hour push. The furthest point on Earth's surface from the planet's core. 97% of Earth is unreachable by robots. Mamba is trying to change that.

What the fuck are we watching? I don't know. Like, when have we got into this shit? There's a dude on YouTube talking about. Your industry as well, I'd be one of, in my estimate, which is worth nothing because I'm not an expert in this, one of the least touched. Yeah, I agree.

But it'll help people plan their trips. It'll book their airplane tickets for them, all of that stuff. But it's not going to pluck you off the side. No. Hey, man, maybe you should hold on here. And I think there's a level of human connection that happens on a mountain where it's less about what you say and more about the presence that you carry with that person that allows them to feel safe enough to be able to do stuff that they would never normally be able to do on their own.

I agree. Bucketlist stuff. What do you got left? What kind of goals you got for your, by the time you're 50? I think right now it's more just building on what I've got. Like I enjoy my life. I've got the guiding company concept expeditions. I'm actually looking at building a climbing center in my hometown in Bournemouth.

We're talking like an indoor climbing place? Yeah, indoor climbing wall. So we're in the process. We've just got some funding for that. Sweet. More just of that. Like I think the older I get, the more I just want to do cool stuff, less about pushing my envelope of what's possible

and more of just exploring new places. Always wanted to climb K2. I had the opportunity to climb it probably around three years ago. I was going to lead one of NIMS's expeditions. And two weeks out, I chatted to them and asked what they want me to do with my flights. And they said, oh, have you got your visa? And you've got to apply for the visa a month in advance.

So that kind of saw that opportunity go. I'm potentially going to climb it next year. Again, it'd be a nice one to do, I think, just in terms of climbing 8,000 metre peaks. But I think just more of what I do now, there's nothing outside of that that I want to do. Climb more, ski more, surf more, visit more countries, spend time with the people that I love.

Isn't that beautiful to identify, to be able to identify? I couldn't do that until very recently. Yes, I said. What I wanted to do. I knew all the stuff that I did, but I couldn't have told you why I was doing it. Yeah, yeah. And it's finally getting to a place for me of experiences with the people that I care about over anything else. The work that I do, the money in an account.

I mean, I think we all struggle with our relationship with money, right? And you want to look at it in a number in account, and there are some people who clasp on to that and they want to get the number as big as possible, but I don't think you get to take it with me. I'm going to have it in my will that they burn it in front of me in my casket in front of my children just so it has to land even heavier with them. Go bet your own. Burn their inheritance directly. They have to be physically present and they have to light the match.

But, I mean, there was a phase of my life where the goal was to have a bigger number and I didn't, I wasn't doing anything with it. And then I would occasionally make a stupid decision, but like a trinket or whatever. I mean like and now yeah I want to have enough saved up so I can say no to things when I want to to maximize the yeses of the things that I want to do but those yeses are all experiences man the 2027 is going to be pretty sweet Japan snowboarding amazing you've been before no first year yeah where are you going do you know uh Hokkaido yeah yep we're going to go for a seven day splitboard back country wicked true guide yes nice Yep, through a friend's recommendation. And we go up to Baldface Lodge. We snowboard up in Canada up there.

And then we'll do another trip in between there. And like, I don't, the baseline money level met, we're going to. I mean, my wife and I are both getting older. I'm sitting there talking with her, oh, we got to go to Japan. We've been saying that for three years. Let's go. And, you know, maybe we'll go again. Yeah, it's, yeah, I hear on what you say.

It's like, I think there's this huge thing, isn't it? It's like, I tell me what you've got going on. It's like, oh, I'm doing this, I'm doing that, doing this. But, like, actually the most important thing and what brings me the most joy is just being around my mates. Being around, like, friends and people that I love. It's like, for me, like, I could be in a coffee shop in Bournemouth. I could be banging out some work somewhere or whatever.

It's like, that for me brings me the most joy, training with my mates in a gym or something like that. That's like the greatest joy ever. It's like for me to then say, oh, I want to go and do this thing on my own. It brings me something, but it doesn't, I don't know if it brings me joy. It brings me, say for example,

I go and climb K to it. It's like something that I've always wanted to do. And it's, I feel it's more of like a ticking a box thing of going, oh yeah, I did it. I've proved to myself that I can do it. Which I think is important too. Agreed.

I agree to. Yeah, to be able to still test yourself in a physical and mental realm. My sister has a unique exposure on end of life. She was a hospice nurse for many years. And I mean, the data point with her, my exposure to that is a data point of one, so people can't take this as gospel. But in listening to her talk, she said she'd never heard anybody in those last conversations

talking about the things that they never got. But they would almost always talk about the time they wish they had spent with those that they cared the most about. Okay. When we all end up there, my goal is to have less of those regrets. than anything else. I mean, I don't know what better purpose for money than that. And I'm not saying be financially irresponsible people for the love for.

Yeah. Yeah. Obviously put it all in Bitcoin right now. Amen. It's going to go up. I don't understand Bitcoin. I don't understand crypto at all. It scares the shit.

That's why you should take all you money out of it right now. It's like, I have zero invested. I've never actually invested in any digital currency. Yeah, I did. Not much. I mean, it's quite a bit. But, I mean, a bit by my standards. I'm not so I'm not wealthy

But it's all tank now I mean it's one of those Isn't it? You take risks You try different things And I think the thing is with Bitcoin Or with crypto in general I look at it now And I just think like what fucking use has it got in the world

Or be it the blockchain's got a use right The banks are using it for ledger And that kind of stuff But I can't see a world where we get rid of Paying with a credit card And move to pay into a currency that's just been made that exists on a blockchain. But then the fact that there's not just one currency.

Oh, I know. About a thousand. Are there, the meme coin thing is daily, the pump and dump stuff. Yeah, squid coin. Yeah. After squid games. Haktua coin. Yeah.

Tunked. First off, who in their right mind thought that a Hocktua coin would be a reasonable investment to begin with? Yeah, you're right. I want to have empathy and feel bad for those people, but my empathy only goes so far. Do you know no one that invested in it? Like, did it go anywhere or was it just like?

No, it tanked. It did what they all. They pumped it up and then immediately, I'm using terms, I don't understand. They rug pulled them. It's not a big deal. What do you spend in most of your time doing now? A lot of the outdoor stuff,

A lot of stuff that I've already talked about, trying to get the climbing wall up and running. Talk to me about this, what you brought in here. Oh, yeah. This, I think, is awesome because this is an innovation in stuff that you and I both used to be pretty deeply involved in. And I wish we had this type of stuff.

Walk me through. So this is Delta 3 Oscar. Yeah, so I'm out here in America just with Delta 3 Oscar. So it's an arm of D3O. So D3O has been around for a long time. You might have said it in armor in like down on mountain biking, ski kit.

motorcycle kit, it's orange and they've patented or designed this material that's flexible, lightweight, and then as soon as you hit it, so if you hit it with a hammer or something, it goes rigid. And the beauty of that is that, for example, you know, remember when we first joined the military or the kit was bulky, it didn't move when you moved around. Yeah. So their kit and army, you require less of it. So by default, it's a lot lighter in what it is, but it's less bulk on your body. So this is the military arm for it, Delta 3 Oscar. So I just brought you a kit.

You've got the helmet, pads. You've got the knee pads that go in, and this is some of the tech kit for it. I'm so glad to see that they're evolving in this stuff. Specifically the helmet-related technology, man. The TBI exposure. I mean, I went to sniper school way back in 1999. And I remember, I don't know

why we were out at our desert facility just shooting bare at 50 cows my nose was bleeding by the end of that and a helmet wouldn't have helped with that but it you think back to the exposure to concussive blast the small ones that add up over time or breaching charges whether it's in training or for real and you're just a little bit inside of minimum space the charge can see you a little bit so you can see the charge a little bit and you clack it off and that you know your helmet's rattling around and it i'm glad to see it i wish i would have had it i am a huge huge fan of the innovation and evolution on the soldiering systems on the protective side of the house pre-injury to help prevent what comes on the other side of the post-injury.

And I think for as a soldiers or ex-soldiers, we're always trying to find that technology that's lighter, more maneuverable, but offers the same level, if not more protection, right? That's what's crazy. Some of the plates now. Yeah, they're super, I know. Like multi-strike 762 at a fraction of the weight of the plates that we used to wear. First of, anybody wearing those, I hate you. because I've never had any of them. And that hatred comes from extreme jealousy. Yeah, I remember like, I don't know if you guys had it, or maybe you did.

I first joined and went out to Afghanistan. We had like a small plate. Chicken plate, yeah. The low-vis plate. Literally just like that, one on the front, one on the back. Yeah, we would wear those for low-vis operations. And I remember thinking myself, I really hope we're fighting a battalion of snipers. Because otherwise, I don't think this is going to do much.

We went over there thinking. It felt like a three-by-five index card. I don't know what that is in metric. It'd be 186. seven centimeters by whatever. Yeah, 60 kilograms. Yeah. It's wild though.

Like we went over there thinking nothing had happened and then like six weeks into it all hell broke loose. Yeah, man. What do you want to close that with? We've been at it for over three hours. Thank you for making a great chat. I appreciate it. Thank you for having a lot.

How long are you in the US? It's not been that much recently, but actually coming back. I'm going to be in Montana for this week. Yep. And then head into San Diego to Coronado for the NASCAR event. And then I'm just going to hang there for. a week but um i forgot how much i liked it out of you you should move to florida really but everyone like digs digs at florida for being showy and handbags under the arm i just want you to experience

florida man i've been the first time i came to the states was in florida yeah you should move there was wild 90% of the tax crazy no it's just 90% of the crazy shit you see on the internet it occurs from florida so you should get in there i remember going out for beers and there was a big black dude, big bodybuilder with a snake around his neck. Florida, man. It's a feature, not a bug. That's awesome. Where can people find you?

Usual places, Instagram. What if people are interested in doing some guiding stuff? Yeah, I mean, you can drop me a note on Instagram. Come over to the website, conceptexpeditions.com or social media, conceptexpeditions.com or on social media, Jay Morton. Sweet. Thanks, dude. Appreciate it, Andy.

Yeah, that was awesome. Hell yeah. I'm busting for a pass. Go for it. Thank you, man. Is there a toilet in here? No, I can point you.