Danny Jones Podcast - #150 - African Terror Groups Are Hunting This US Marine | Ryan Tate

Episode Date: August 23, 2022

Ryan Tate is a U.S. Marine Corps veteran and co-founder of Veterans Empowered to Protect African Wildlife (VETPAW). https://vetpaw.org JOIN OUR KULT: https://bit.ly/koncretepatreon  Danny  https://www.instagram.com/jonesdanny  https://twitter.com/jonesdanny Koncrete  http://twitter.com/koncrete  http://instagram.com/koncrete Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

first time and this time. Yeah, me too. Me too as well. My brain is truly like human soft serve today. But I do have this stuff. I just realized. I have this. Have you tried this stuff?

No, what is it? It's called the world's strongest smelling salts. You know when like football players hit their heads really hard or hockey players get fucked up? They had these little things they break under their nose and they smell it and brings them back to life. That's what this is. And then like body build. This is made by like some power lifter, like the world's biggest power lifter. He uses this.

And then he fucking deadlifts like a thousand pounds. Wait, so you just smelled that and that's what that did. Woo! Yeah. It just like wakens up your whole nervous system. You jolt you. If you want to try it. I'll go to what you've been with you, make sure you keep it.

Close your eyes when you put it on your nose because you don't want it in your eyes. I already smell it. Yeah. And keep it kind of like waft it. Don't sniff it. Like loft like waft it. You know what I mean? It'll wake you the fuck up though.

I'm not going to throw up or no, no, no. Just keep your eyes closed. Wow. How do you feel? Weird, man. That was, that was wild. Yeah. Wakes you up. I didn't think it was that bad. And all of a sudden, it nailed me. Good morning. Good morning. Hey, how's it going? Good. Oh, man. Thanks for doing this again, bro. I really appreciate it.

Yeah, my pleasure. For people out there who don't know who you are, give us a little bit of a background on what you do, what vet paw is, and what your background is. Wow. I'm still feeling that. Yeah, me too. So my name is Ryan Tate. I'm the president and founder of VetPaul, which stands for veterans empowered to protect African wildlife. We are a registered 501c3 nonprofit that deploys U.S. and international combat veterans to Africa to train advise and assist in counterpoaching operations and assistant conservation efforts to save elephants, rhinos, and other endangered species from extinction. And you guys have been established in Africa and fighting the problem with poachers for how many years now?

So we were officially founded as a nonprofit in 2014 as an organization in 2013, and we've had a full-time team on the ground, permanent footprint in Africa since 2016 to presently. Wow, man, that's incredible. Yeah. Yeah, it's pretty cool. what we've been able to do. So what is your military background? Let's dive into your military background

and how this all started from the beginning like when you first decided doing list. I wrote a little song to remind you, Choice Hotels gets you more of the experiences. You value. The Cambria hotels got it all. A rooftop bar, have a ball. Cocktails up here feel just right.

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But yeah, so I joined the Marine Corps in 2003. I had wanted to go into the military, I think my whole life. I just kind of needed to get some structure as a young, young boy, young man. And I wasn't sure which branch that I was going to go into. I was always interested in planes, boats, Navy Air Force. And I joined the Marine Corps after 9-11. I just said, hey, I want to get to the front lines. It really, you know, watching that and the trauma of 9-11 that we all experienced, you know, for those of us that were alive and, you know, old enough to understand what was going.

on. That was my first real experience with trauma. And so watching that on TV in English class at Plant High School, I talked my parents into signing the paperwork so I could do the delayed entry program and get me into the Marines. So I signed my paperwork at 20, or excuse me, at 16. And then as soon as I graduated high school in 2003, I went straight to boot camp and in Paris Island, South Carolina. So you were 16 when that happened in 9-11? Yep. Wow.

I remember that day. I remember that morning, too. I was in fifth grade and they put on the TV in my class. That was like a weird fucking day. But like, so that day you literally made the decision. You're like, I'm going to, I'm going to sign up. I'm going to make sure that when I'm ready, when I get hit the right age, that I'm going to enlist.

Yep. I remember there was, I was in Miss Rodriguez's English class. And another teacher came. in to the portable and like you could see it on his face it was after the first plane hit you could see see i i remember it vividly as i'm sure everybody kind of remembers where they were and what was going on that day but um i remember him coming into the class and you could and he was i don't remember the teacher's name and um he busts in mid miss rodriguez is portable and he always had this happy you know he was a happy teacher happy guy and you could just see

see it on his face like, hey, an airliner just hit the World Trade Center. You need to turn on the TV. And nobody really understood like they, I think he just thought that it was, well, everybody just thought that a plane hit it randomly. But you could see it on his face like that, you know, there was something more to it. And we flipped on the TV and what do you know the other plane flies into the second tower? Yeah. And it was, it was brutal. Like I had no, I couldn't understand what, what the hell was going on. Right. I didn't really, I didn't understand what terrorism was, you know, other than watching, you know, what is it, die hard and stuff like that. But that, that was it. It was like a myth. It was this, I don't know, but seeing that and seeing people, you know, jumping out of the buildings and it was terrible.

And I just saw a bully picking on defenseless people. And I've been bullied, you know, growing up. I think everybody gets a taste of being bullied at one point. or another in life. Yeah, you should. It's good for you. I don't condone it. I hate bullies, but, you know, it builds character. It definitely does. And what, so what made you pick the Marines over, like, the Navy, over Army, all the other different aspects? What, what made you choose Marine Corps? Well, I had met some Marines, and I didn't know much about Marines. I was in this, like, it wasn't ROTC, nothing against ROTC in high school. Those kids are great, but I was in this, like,

one week and a month thing with with a navy program and um they sent us this little boot camp for two weeks and through all these retired navy guys that were being such jerks to us just hazing the hell out of us but it like in the marine corps when you get hazed in a weird way it's like it was just different when it so anyways long story short these these active duty marines that were stationed at mcdill came in man that stuff really you're still feeling it oh yeah dude I'm sorry. You want another one?

No. Okay. I'm good. Maybe in a bit, though. Yeah, me too. So these Marines show up, and I'll never forget it. This guy's name was Sergeant Holloway. And I think he's a Sergeant Major now because I looked him up not that long ago.

So he's way up there now. But he pulls up in his blazer, windows down, and he's got Marine Corps running cadence blaring through the speakers. You know, the stuff that we run to and left. right. Yeah. And he's jamming out to it, gets out of the car. His chest is sticking out a little further.

His sleeves are rolled so tight that, you know, his veins are, you know, pumping. And then here comes these two corporals around the corner. And they're in there. Camys are crisp. Chests out. Shoulders are back. And I wanted to, I wanted to be that. The way that they talked, the way that they presented themselves.

And again, nothing against the Navy. Those guys are great. But the way those Marines hazed us versus the Navy. It was a lot harder, but it was genuine in a weird way. It was like, we're going to destroy you in the best way that's going to make you better. Whereas the Navy guys just acted like they wanted us to die. I mean, they thought we were scum of the earth. But I don't know.

It was just, it's hard to explain. Like they didn't want to see any good come out of it. They just wanted to fucking destroy you and smash you into the ground. Yeah, like destroy all these 16, 15 and 16 year old kids. And these Marines came around. They're like, we're going to destroy you. to the point that it's going to make you more confident in a way. I don't know.

It's weird how that works, isn't it? It's weird like reading David Goggins book was fucking mind bending for me. Like it really opened my eyes to like how brutal that stuff is, how it breaks your body, your mind, your ego, everything about you just breaks you down and only like a small amount of people come out of that. Yeah. I mean, some people, rarely people die, but only a very, very small percentage of people actually make it out of. that and like become a navy seal yeah yeah because it's so fucking grueling i mean that's that's literally one of the i mean if not the it's one of the the toughest tests in the world be becoming a navy seal these dudes are or studs what is the what is the difference between boot camp in the

marines okay so boot camp in the marines is just to become a marine not just to become a marine that's the proudest title other than husband that i have um i see what i what I did that. I like that. Shout out to your wife. That's right. She's a, she's an angel for letting you stay another day and do the podcast. Oh, Lauren's a bomb. You probably get more views if she was on here. She's so much cooler. It's the only reason why I have friends. I tell everybody that's because of my wife. She ever leaves me. So all my friends. But so that's to get into the Marine Corps. Navy SEALs, you got to go through their, you know, you have to go through Navy's boot camp. And then you've got to be the best of the best just to go to, you know, their selection course, and then only the best of the best

make that. So it's a unit within the Navy, whereas the Marine Corps boot camp is in order to get into the Marine Corps. I mean, we have, we have specialty units, you know, recon units, Morsok units, things like that. But, so that's our level of Navy SEALs. And once you finish boot camp, how long did it take you to get shipped over to? Where was it Afghanistan at first or was it Iraq? Afghanistan. Okay. So I went, I first went to Okinawa, Japan.

I was like, why not? Let me get out of this country and let me go see something cool. I didn't want to go to Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. It's not a fun place. It's very depressing. Why is that? Because it's in the middle of nowhere. Yeah.

And it's only Marine Corps. Oh, okay. Which I love the Marine Corps, but sometimes you want to get away from what you see every day. Yeah. Closest airport is Raleigh. It's like two hours away. Yeah, it's kind of like if you're going to do something that fucking gnarly, like it's a bonus to be able to travel the world. Yeah.

Yeah. And so I did that. And so I was living in a beautiful place. And I remember standing in my unit. And they always do this. They're like, hey, we need three volunteers. You don't know what it's going to be. They're lining up in the platoon.

And they say, we need however many volunteers. and not everybody raises their hand. And if you raise your hand, who knows, you could be, I don't know, going and picking up a truck somewhere, or you could be going to Europe on a ship, or you could be going to Afghanistan. And so I had literally been at this unit for a week. Actually, I think three days.

And I was one of the youngest guys there. They said, hey, we need four volunteers. Boom, raise my hand. And I'm like, where am I? going to get what am i going to get and because the last kids i think i say kids the last marines because the first day i got there that did the same thing and i didn't get picked they went on a ship to uh to europe well i'm like sweet i need to raise my hand and uh so i did and they're like you're going to afghanistan but i was excited well i was excited because i wanted to go you know i that's what

i signed up for to fight for my country and you think that you want to do it and then all the all of a sudden when you're told you're doing it, it's like, oh, shit. All right. Life comes at you quick, real quick. And then I remember having to call my mom and tell my mom. And she's like, so your whole unit's going on. I'm like, no, I raised my hand. And she's like, what the hell is wrong with you?

Yeah. What was your like, what did you have in your mind? Like, how did you picture Afghanistan in your mind before you went? Did you spend time like, like, like researching the country and the culture and the land? the landscape, or did you just say, it's fucking Afghanistan, there's terrorists there, and I'm going? Like, how was the reality compared to what your perception was? I would say it's the latter more than anything. You know, we didn't have, I don't even know if I had a computer at the time. You know, this was back in 2004. Yeah. And, um, well, it was before the iPhone one. Yeah. Yeah, we had

flip phone. Flip phones. Yeah. It was, uh, yeah, now there was no, there was no, real research. You can go to the library. Yeah. Watch, you know, Fox News, CNN. That's crazy. Yeah, all you get is the fucking TV in the newspaper. Actually, I didn't even have a TV at the time. Because I was living in a barracks. So, I mean, you go down to the common area, the little living room downstairs. But, yeah. Wow.

So I trained up for that. Ended up deploying on ship and get to Afghanistan. And Congress says we have two. many Marines in the country and they pulled our whole ship back out, you know, a few, it was less than 60 days later. Wow. So you took a ship the whole way there and they automatically reversed to got out of there. Yep. Yep. Then what happened? Then I came back. I did the tsunami, the big 04 tsunami cleanup. Remember the huge tsunami that happened? The first one. Where was it? Indonesia. Oh, yes. Yes. That was brutal. Pulling people out of

trees, mass graves. It was terrible. Yeah. How did you guys, you guys flew to Indonesia, right? Yeah. And then when you got there, like, what was it like when you first arrived? I mean, it was, it was like a nuclear bomb went off. There were cars on top of buildings.

Whoa. Nothing. I mean, everything was leveled. It was, it was terrible. So you guys were just on a rescue mission. You guys just like set up can. and then you guys what like splintered off and into groups and just tried to rescue people and save them yep yep it was terrible um those poor people what they had to experience

i didn't even know what a tsunami was i mean did anybody really yeah it's different right it's different what you what you imagine a tsunami like i always imagined a tsunami just being like this giant like hundred foot wave that crashed on land but it really doesn't look like that No, it's like, you know, it's like this little, like low level, like surge that just comes in. Yeah. It's not necessarily like a big ass wave. No, it's not just a quick wave that falls and collapses. It's just a wall of water that's, you know, a few feet high or six feet high.

How long after the tsunami did you guys get there? Probably a week. I think it was a week. Okay. Yeah, it was bad. And how long did you stay there? Two weeks. Two weeks.

Two weeks. Two weeks. It was bad. And then after that, I came back to, they switched my duty station to Camp Lejean, North Carolina. And, excuse me, within, within two months of being there, I got pulled into a specialty unit mixed up of a bunch of PT studs, physical fitness studs and guys that had specialty training, whether it's shooting, scout swimmers, all kinds of stuff. They just kind of made this little all-star unit. I don't know how the hell I got picked for it, but I did. And we meshed really well, and within three months we were off to Ramadi, Iraq.

And at the time, it was the most dangerous city in the world for just period for anybody. It was brutal. How long before you arrived in Ramadi were there already troops there? Oh, they had been there for a while. So Ramadi was the last big city that we had to take. So in order to get to Ramadi, you had to take. Fallujah and then you can get to Ramadi. Okay.

There's some really good books out there on it too. I'm trying to get the name of the one. This was, sorry my ignorance for this whole, the whole history of it, but like this was after they got Saddam? Yes. Okay. This was 05. 05.

When did they get Saddam, do you know? That was, was it, was it, 04? Was it? Okay, so it was close. I wasn't way off. It was close. Actually, it might have been. I remember.

where I was. I was in the, I was in an airport. Yeah, I remember because I told, I was mentioning before. Kristen Beck, when she was on here, she, uh, she had pictures sitting, like, her and like her whole group. They took pictures of each other sitting in Saddam's throne. She must have been there a couple years earlier. Yeah. I lived in one of his palaces while I was there too. One of his, his, uh, his, his palace in Ramadi. We dropped a huge jadium bomb through it. So the whole front of the thing was just blown up. But the rooms that we were saying and had like gold ceiling. things. Really? Yeah, it was pretty well. And you guys just took it took over the palace and lived in there. That's really fucking cool. Yeah. A bunch of Marines living in a palace. You guys, what was your guys,

like mission when you were there? Like, what was your group's objectives, like your day-to-day objectives while you guys were in Iraq? So we were doing patrols, presence patrols, but there was a really nasty area that the army, because the army was so stretched thin. And there was a nasty area in Ramadi they asked us to take over and so we were going in and hitting bath party members Saddam's bath party members that were still hidden and undercover and then the FBI's most wanted list as well yeah okay it was pretty cool though because hitting them yeah we're going out and getting them like just literally going out and capturing yeah boogie man yep yep that's great that's the stuff you see in the movies basically yeah yeah like the gnarly of shit yeah the first uh the first big hit I did

it's my first time in a combat zone too I was the point man for a 60 man mission and we were going to one of the top bath party members' homes we found out where his home was and I was the point man so I was the first man into the compound into the home and into every room

it's like Russian roulette I mean you can open that door and there could be a bullet hitting you in the face suicide bomber yeah and the guy behind you holds your your flack jacket by the handle. So in case you get hit, he can hold you as a human target.

Like a human shield. Yeah. And so he's looped in and I go in and I'm so amped up. That's, I found the guy and I tackled him to the ground. The guy behind me or the next fire team behind us is holding him down until we take the rest of the house. And I come back around and I'm like, I've got zip ties.

I pull them out and I flexi cuff them. But I did it so tight because I was so amped up that they had to carefully cut it off because the veins here. It was like literally his hands were turning purple. I didn't do it intentionally, but I was just amped up. You know, 20-year-old kid from Florida is now going after a total scumb bag in the Middle East. But it was pretty wild. It was a cool. It kind of set the tone for the rest of my deployment.

Did. Were you guys mainly taking people alive? Like was that the objective, like, to get people captured alive so you could like interrogate them or talk to them and figure out, get Intel? So when it comes to Bath Party members, yes, but then there are other targets that want a dead or alive. Okay. I mean, that said, you don't really, I mean, I know there's a lot of guys from my area that would disagree, but you don't really want to go into a place and escalate force. I mean, you want to dominate that, that situation. You definitely want to bring it up 20 times higher than anything else that can be thrown at you.

But when you start shooting, it takes it to a whole other level. And my objective, and I think I speak for most, all veterans, my objective is to bring my guys home alive. And shooting, being the first to fire is not the way to do that. Now, if you're fired upon, then you let hell rain down. absolutely but no I mean I I only fired when you know fire fights were kicking off you know it wasn't going in and just taking somebody down

yeah that's unarmed or anything like that what was like the level of threat with the IEDs being out there living out there and going on on missions and whatever it may be like how much of a threat were the IEDs it was the whole area was infested with IEDs so and for people who I mean people know the term IED. They have a general sense of what an IED is, but can you give us like a technical breakdown of what an IED literally is? So it's an improvised explosive device and it can be planted. It's,

it can be planted anywhere. It can be planted under a road next to a road. They can detonate it with pressure plates. They can call it with a cell phone, trip wires even. Most of the ones that we were dealing with were either cell phones or pressure plates. We did have some landmines that We had some brilliant, brilliant brass officers that decided they were going to send us on foot to go look for landmines. And I'm like, that's when I almost lost my shit. Like, I had a staff sergeant pull me aside and he's like, hey, you need to cut it out and do what you're told. So I did. But, yeah, that's when I'm sitting here like, this is just stupid.

I'm on foot. It's nighttime. And my mission is to go find landmines. What in the hell is going on? Like, how the hell am I supposed to see a landmines? man mine at night period and you know what i mean there's there's units for that um anyways long story short yeah it was infested and and the problem was there was no presence at night in the area so we had to implement curfews and then if you're out after curfew there could be problems for you

like i'm gonna take you down i'm gonna if there could be a firefight but i'm gonna app i'm gonna detain you and take you in like anybody anybody that's out after dark you're going in because they're planning bombs everywhere. So we had to dominate the night, own the night. So the people that could possibly plant the IEDs of the landmines, they're only doing that at night. Yeah. Yep.

Okay. So what did you, did you ask anybody? Like, what, how far did you take it when they told you guys to go out on foot and look for the landmines? Like, what did you ask questions? Did you? Yeah. So we had a staff sergeant out there with us who outranked me,

but he was just there to authorize, um, air support if we needed it. So he wasn't in charge that mission. I said, say what you want, but we're almost done with this deployment, and I'm taking all my guys back. So we are not going to go and do that. We are going to go and do a presence patrol in the neighborhood,

make sure that nobody's getting, you know, bullied by insurgents by Al Qaeda, and we'll mess around over there, but I'm not doing that. And none of my guys are. And what happens if you don't do, if you refuse to do something like that? I mean, nothing happened to me, thank goodness, because it was Staff Sergeant Milo, I think it was his name. He covered my ass. It was terrifying, though, when he grabbed me and was like, hey, because I was Mowloff on the radio.

I'm like, are you fucking kidding? This is unbelievable. Listen to what you're telling us to do, and he grabbed me. And this guy was on the Marine Corps wrestling team. This jack black guy pulls me aside. Cut it out. Stop. What are you doing?

And I'm skinny. I mean, I was 165 pounds soaking wet. And he scared me straight right there. And I said, well, I'm not doing it. Like, just like a child. I'm like, I'm not doing it. And he goes, do what you want. This is your patrol.

Do what you want. Just cut it out on the radio. Oh. So you could tell it. He was like, yeah, I don't want to do this either. Yeah. Holy fuck. threw them under the bus.

Holy shit. Okay, so when you guys are going out at night, how do you guys avoid IEDs? I mean, I'd rather be on foot than in a vehicle all day. We were on foot there. You just stay off of roads. Just stay off roads. Yeah, stay off of roads.

If you've got to cross a road, you just really need to look for burlap sacks or, you know, anything they could hide it. I mean, they were hiding IEDs and dead animals. on the side of the road. Whoa. Dead dogs and stuff. Yeah.

Pretty. So they can be pretty fucking small then. They can. So what they do is they'll take like a, like an artillery around the big shells. Yeah. And they'll put accelerator. So like some type of high burning fuel around it was styrofoam. And the styrofoam once that gas or whatever it is ignites, once the bomb ignites,

you get shrapnel that goes everywhere. But then you have things. gas that burns hot and catches the styrofoam on fire and then it sticks to your skin. So you're literally burning alive if you get hit by it. It's so morbid. And there's dudes that literally hide out in like buildings and watch you and then watch where people are going and they use their phones to call it. Yep. So anytime, anytime you leave a gate on base to go on a patrol, no matter what time of day, there's always people watching. There's always somebody watching. You are bad guys.

Yep, bad guys. You are either in their binoculars, in their rifle scope. There is somebody watching to alert everyone else that you're coming. So what we would have to do is we would embed with a larger foot patrol. And we would get dropped off to do hits or something like that, a hit. It's not a real hit. That we would hit the home. And then four or five of us would stay in the home.

And most of the time, it was an abandoned home or something. And then the rest of the unit would leave, take off in trucks, and we would sit there for a couple hours. And then when the coast was clear, we would sneak out of the house. So they wouldn't know that anybody was still out there. It was really quick. So you can't count the amount of people that went in and came out. And then the four or five of us would sneak out and then really go do the real hit or, you know, just observe the area. Which is pretty wild, too, because you're in such a.

nasty area and there's only four or five of you have a little small fire team yeah just sitting there hanging out but it's cool do you guys get when you guys go out there and like there's a small group of you on the ground like hitting houses and stuff how real is it because this is how it goes in the movies there's like usually there'll be a one of your guys like in a building on a snipe with a sniper like watching out is that does that happen often is that real yeah yeah yeah we have we have an overlook that's that's watching we have an angel up there that sits and watches it's so it's so weird how like that is so fascinating to people, the whole sniper aspect of it. Like sniper stories are just so fascinating to people.

Like, why do you think that is? Well, I mean, Marine Scout snipers are badass. What makes some difference? I mean, Marines are just a rare breed. Yeah. We eat crayons. You eat crayons? That's the big joke. We eat crayons and we're proud of it.

I don't know. But like snipers, it's a weird, it's a different kind of like, it's a different mindset than being on the ground like surrounded by a bunch of guys it's like you're alone and you have what you guess you have a radio and you wait for an order

to take a shot and you have to be different to be a sniper well you so it depends I mean there are situations where snipers will sit there and wait for the call but there's other situations where it's like no if you see a guy with a rifle like you take them down they have full authorization to to shoot.

It's yeah, that's a lot of a lot of responsibility and a lot of And it's a different I guess it's different too because when you're a snout

Tell me what you think about this. Like if you're on the ground and you're raiding a house and there's a guy charging you with a knife or a fucking gun or whatever it may be you're fucking defending yourself.

That's different. than being removed from it a couple blocks away and being scoped in and literally blowing somebody apart. Yeah. Because you're not really there. You're not necessarily, you might be defending somebody else, but you're not really like in that zone of like your whole body is just fucking charged. Yeah. I mean, maybe it is. I don't know.

No, I think I have so much respect for anybody in a marksmanship role like that because you have to, yeah, I mean, that guy has no idea. you think about that. And it's funny because I went to, I went to, I had a, I have a friend in New York and he invited me to the first red carpet premiere of, um, uh, the movie on Chris Kyle, American sniper. Yeah. And it, it actually wasn't red carpet. They said red carpet, but it was just, it was behind the scenes, not the black tie stuff.

And Bradley Cooper was there. Oh, really? And he's sitting on stage and we watched a movie. Amazing. And, uh, they had a Q&A after. And I'm like. you know, I'm going to ask him a question. Screw it.

Like, because my buddy's sitting here. Dude, ask him something. Ask him something. You're the only military guy here. So I was like, all right, it's great. I was like, you know, and I said, you know, Bradley, first of all, amazing movie. It's incredible. I actually had the privilege of meeting Chris once in a Ford operating zone.

You know, just I didn't know who he was at the time or any of that. But anyways, I said to him, I was like, you know, I know what a sniper goes through when they zero in in their scope. and they have to squeeze that trigger, I was like, you being a brilliant actor, did you have to put yourself in a mindset of actually convincing yourself that you're in that role and you're about to kill somebody when you squeeze that trigger and when you're sighting through that rifle? And he said, I 100% did.

I said, well, how was that for you coming down? Because I know that after I've fired at a human being and coming back to the United States after, like I know what the PTSD that I get from that and the stress I was like is it did you experience any level of of anxiety after and in getting yourself out of that role and he said absolutely he was like it's it's mind-blowing so I don't I don't know what you guys experienced over there but so imagine that if an actor has to put themselves in that kind of role so deep into the role to convince himself that when he's looking through that that site he's going to take a life. Now imagine actually doing it in real life and then taking that life. I mean, the famous sniper line is reach out and touch somebody. You know, I can reach out and touch you at any time. And, you know, it's when you think about reaching out and touching somebody like that and what that means, it's pretty wild.

Yeah, man. I mean, I wonder how much it really fucks him up having to put himself mentally in the that position, like removed from actually pulling the trigger and murdering somebody or killing ending somebody's life, like another human life. Like, obviously there's a line there. Like you're, you're doing everything you can to be in that person's mindset. But I wonder how much it actually, how similar it actually is to the real thing. I'm sure it's not, I mean, it's definitely not the same.

Yeah. But even just that, screwing with somebody. Well, that's why so many actors are fucked up, man. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like having to literally like do that to your brain every however many years they'd do movies. Like especially like crazy roles like The Joker or something. Like who was a guy Heath Ledger who played Joker and Batman?

Like OD'd right before the movie even got released because dude that's that is. That's trippy to be able to put your mind in this psych, you know, whatever the actor may be. But in the Joker's case, this just like pure psychopath. Yeah. Like, can you imagine what it would be like to just murder tons of innocent people and have no feelings about it? Like to have no PTSD, to have no regret or remorse or anything, just like do it and completely be numb to it? No. There's so many people like that.

Yeah. I think, and one of the most, one of the things I remember most about deploying in, in war was watching, watching. watching a young Marine take a life and watching how just that moment their entire presence just changes. It almost makes you emotional to think about. Like I remember quite a few times where you see this happy go lucky Marine badass. Some of the happiest guys in my unit and they take their first life and everything changes. And, to this day they're just different people it's you don't have that same happy aura you have this you can just see the guilt i remember i mean i remember first time i shot somebody i got i was

throwing up in the middle of the night waking up freaking out about it um but then you get over that and then you just become numb to it and you just go yeah um but i remember uh what was his name was a little guy in my unit too he was like the uh he was the youngest one in the unit i think i want to say he was 19 20 the smallest guy too and one of my buddies had just gotten shot in the face oh fuck went through here donica and out here and he was still still going at the guy what so he went to tackle the guy because he didn't see a gun and um these guys had just we just my other one of the other squads had just gotten a shootout with these guys. And they took off running and they murked like a bunch of them in one of the cars.

They just pulled up on them. My boys are in the road. Literally like Mighty Ducks Line V just, bah, ba, ba, nailing these dudes. And then there's three cars behind them.

Those cars peel off into ditches and then they, they run. They get out of the car and they run. And so we're hunting down the rest of them. And sure enough, they pull up and they, in the Humvees and they see a couple of them. of them. One goes running and Z goes and tries to tackle them like this. Because if you don't see a gun,

you know, you don't know if it's the same guy. You know, you don't just shoot. A lot of people think it's just Marines and soldiers are people running away. No, it's no, we don't want to do that stuff. Right. Even if we talk shit before the deployment, it's, that's, that's just shit talk and we don't actually want to go out there and do this stuff. And so he goes to tackle him and the dude had a Saddam Hussein a pistol with the seal, the ivory handles and seal and went like this, shot him through here, and it went out here. And he kept running after the guy. But he fell to the ground.

And this young Marine comes around the Humvee posts up. Boom, boom, boom. Two to the back and one to the side of the head. Just perfect picture, perfect shots. Wow. But then watching this kid after, and I call him a kid, but that's a grown-ass man right there. Watching his whole demeanor change. Like, everybody was excited for him.

Like, dude, you got your first kill. This is awesome. Like, bro, you freaking nailed that guy. Man, that's textbook. Holy shit. I mean, and, but you could see it in his eyes like he wasn't into. I mean, he was smiling, but it was so fake. He just, just everything changed.

And the same. thing that happened to me, waking up in the middle of the night after my first time having to shoot somebody, throwing up, I got up in the middle of the night. And I went out of the NCO barracks and went over here to the junior marine barracks. And I saw him on the side. It's like 3 a.m. And he's throwing up, like just squatting down by the wall. And he looked at me. I didn't, I didn't go over. I didn't talk to him or anything because I just could tell he didn't want that. You just needed some time. But I mean, there's some other guys too. Yeah, after they, they took a life. It just

your whole life changes. Dude, that's so fucking heavy. You know, it's, it's, you have to like, I would imagine the one of the ways you have to cope with that is I know it sounds so, it sounds so horrible. especially like given the hindsight of history and all the wars that humanity has been through to like if you're that kid and you're in his shoes like if you want to be able if I'm trying to imagine how I will never even get close but if I was trying to imagine how I could cognitively cope with that for the rest of my life like I would have to I would imagine I would

want to think of that person as subhuman or not human. The person that I took out, you know what I mean? Because if I think about that too much or think about that person being the same as me, that's, that hurts. But if I think of that person as like, who knows what the truth is about them? Like, we know we're on a mission, you're on a mission, you took, you have your orders, you have to do this. There's no questioning anything. Like you're doing what you're doing to save your life and your brother's lives. but to cope with that you you no matter what the fucking context is who cares like that person is

not a real person that's how i could cope with it if i if i'm to think about it yeah i mean that's the battle i mean it's it's i agree with you 100% this mentality that you you have to take to it but then as you grow older in life like i think war teaches you especially those moments empathy at another level and um I think you just have to have more empathy for yourself than anything else. And whether they're right or we're right, who's wrong, I don't know. And I'll never know until, you know, I die and I meet my maker. But while I'm on this planet, I choose to say, hey, you know, politics aside, it was my

life for that person's. And this is how you have to live with it. And you say like another thing, I think about all the time. But I think about it like in another aspect of, you see like young kids become really successful and make a lot of money at an early age, like in their teens or early 20s. It does something to people that are going through the normal stages of human development from when you're born to when your brain stops developing.

I think they, scientists or researchers have found out that your brain doesn't stop. actually developing until you're like in your early to mid 30s. Yeah. And you're going through. There's certain things that you have to go through in life, through stages of development growing up, like being bullied or whatever it may be to become a well-rounded human being in our society, in the context of our world that we're in today. Like there's certain things you have to go through. But there's things that can happen that could fucking alter that trajectory so hardcore like the greatest example that i come up with is NBA players or NFL players

these kids that are straight at a high school get handed millions of fucking dollars like what is that do to your mind to your ego to your fucking relationships at that young of an age compared to think of somebody who's already been through it suffered struggled been broke and fucking cheated on whatever it may be and then you finally like you're in your 30s you've been through all this then you achieve something like I've been broke, I've been nobody and now, you know, I can enjoy the fruits of all of this. I've made whatever it is. Like in this example, it's people making millions of dollars. Like, you have the context of the rest of your life to compare it against this success. So when you take, I guess, like trying to compare that with kids who are,

you call them their men, but they're fucking in their teens, in early 20s and they're doing this kind of thing that has to severely fuck with your development through the rest of your life especially like sometimes these people are only deployed for a couple of years and then they're just back to normal life in the united states yeah eric church has a song he came out like two years ago stick that in your country song and one of the verses he says it is so powerful is why i love eric church hope he watches this because he's a legend but he says in the um he says in the song tell that to the kid coming home from war, 23 going on 54. Stick that in your country song, something like that.

And it's true because your brain just sees things. It's fast forward mode. It's such severe trauma and you're not prepared to see it. That now it's like, hey, you just skipped decades of your life where your brain was supposed to mature or equip itself to handle something like that. I don't think anything will ever truly equip you to handle that. And now all of a sudden you're supposed to backtrack and fill that gap. Right.

And that's where the struggle comes in big time. Yes. I, like I told you yesterday, I was a liability when I got out. And I got out because my mother and my family period went through a lot of stress. We say in the military that the toughest job in the Marine Corps in my case is either being the spouse or the mother of a Marine. because you have to sit there, you're helpless, you're powerless, and watch your spouse go deploy to some of the most dangerous places in the world. And there's nothing that you can't just quit.

You can't just say, hey, honey, why don't you get a new job? That's not going to happen, you know. It's also why I was single my entire time through the Marine Corps because I didn't, yeah, Marine Corps was my girlfriend. Yeah. But yeah, it's brutal. And coming out was harder than anything that I've ever done. Getting out of the Marine Corps, I was a Marine operating, you know, literally walking the streets like I was still in war, essentially.

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I love the Marine Corps. Well, I mean, there's just a statistic about how many ex-marines and seals like take their own lives every single day. There's like a certain amount. Yeah, 22. There's 22 a day that take their own lives. That's unfathomable, man. Hey, man, I used to hide this stuff because it was embarrassing. But if it can help somebody, that's kind of my mentality now.

But I was there. I was ready to take my own life. and there was a whole chain of events that that prevented me from doing so. But I think there's, it could be a lot higher if, thank God it's not. But like we need to put attention on that stuff. Yeah, man.

It fucks with your brain. It's just, it's not right. I mean, a lot of people talk about, you know, PTSD and I think a lot of people have kind of like a false sense of what PTSD and just sort of gloss over it.

Like think, okay, came back from war and now you have, you know, this post-traumatic stress disorder, but like, what is it to you, like, in a personal sense? Like, how would you describe how it affected you personally? Like, I remember you said hyper-vigilance was a big thing and you walked around with your head on a swivel and you were always, like, ready for conflict. Yeah. I wanted conflict badly. It's the only thing that I really knew as an adult. When I was deployed, I was in a position where if I saw, something that would then it in injustice I could fix it legally in any which way that I wanted if I saw

somebody look at me strangely and my intuition is telling me hey that's a bad person he walks into his home I'm going into your home and I'm going to figure out what your deal is because if I don't you could be putting a bullet in my brain you know the next day or if you know I'm in a convoy you know vehicles armored hum vs or mwraps deployed in you know we're telling you know a car to move out of the way and he refuses to do so and i'm not on a schedule i'm going to stop right there and i'm going to i'm going to take you out of that vehicle i'm going to search your vehicle and then i'm going to get to know you i'm going to write your info down i'm going to figure out where you live who you're related to who you interact with and i'm going to check on you now you've got me as a big brother and you can't do

that in the civilian world right and i just think americans in general we sit here it drives me nuts you know we have all these people that just shit all over our country especially our youth right now and it's like okay do we have problems in our country absolutely we're not perfect absolutely we have problems but if you think that this country sucks and this is the worst place to live and you know um america is just this terrible terrible place and you haven't traveled and I don't care if you travel to Bali or Mexico for spring break. That's not traveling. Remove yourself from this society and go put yourself in the real world.

I had somebody had a relative once when I was getting out of the Marine Corps. I've actually never really spoken about this, but their phone butt dialed me. And I answered him like, hello, hello, and this is right when I got out of the Marine Corps. And the person is telling someone else, yeah, Ryan just got out of the Marine Corps. He thinks life's going to be easy now. He's in the real world now. Well, guess what I did? I hung up that phone.

I called the person back, this relative. And I'm like, the real world, huh? The real world, says the person that's never left the country. You want to know about the real world? Let's go home of the AK-47, where kids are running around the streets with AKs and grenades and RPGs, rocket-propelled grenades. Let's go to the real world where, you know, somebody's parent is not coming home tonight because they got in the middle of a political, you know, a fire. fight due to a political war.

Let's talk about that. That's the real world. Not sitting here with your cable TV, your air conditioner, drinking your good water, and, oh, you know, I got to get the new Mercedes-Benz that's coming out, and this and that. Now, these guys are talking about land of the car bombs. Like, America is not the real world.

It is not. No. If you think you've got it tough in this country, I guarantee you, you don't. There is somebody that would kill to be in your shoes. and go through the problems that you have. Yeah. Now, I validate stress.

Stress is there, but if we think we got problems, yeah, you need to take a world tour, a real world tour. Yeah, you can see the difference in attitude from people who haven't been to fucked up places for sure. You know, like not only attitude, but kind of just like perspective and, you know, how they view, you know, other groups of people or other, you know, even, I mean, even when it comes to, like, there's so many people that just get. stuck in the news cycle and they wanted us like label certain countries or certain parts of the world as this or that or whatever it may be and you don't understand the nuance of what it's actually like being there and living with those people and trying to survive around people like that. Yeah. And honestly like yeah, the Marine Corps is tough and I saw a lot of things and I've dealt a lot

of trauma and depression, but I wouldn't take it back for anything in the world because having the perspective that I have now makes me who I am. It makes me, I just think that. I'm a, at least in my mind, I'm able to contribute positively to society and not stress over the, you know, dumb stuff that the keyboard warriors and, you know, people that obsess over the news. It's a different time now, man. The technology advances, it's like, you know, I couldn't imagine how much different it would be compared to like when you first enlisted and you had to go to a library to read about Afghanistan versus now. Like imagine if that was now. Like imagine if technology was like it is now back then. And you would have had the ability to see everything.

Videos, fucking people on Twitter and videos of, you know, beheadings and shit. Like how would that change somebody's outlook on wanting to go out there? And how much of it is propaganda too? Like how much of it is because propaganda is real. You know, countries try to, you know, I know, in Russia. here everywhere in China, you know, countries try to paint a fake narrative of what's really going on and paint the other guy as the bad guy.

And, you know, that had to have been so much easier before the internet. I mean, yeah, probably. Yeah, the technology has its upsides, but it also definitely has its downfalls, his pitfalls. I don't know how, like, I wonder how hard it would be to, like, have to send in.

You think we'll ever have another war war, like a World War II, like troops going out, fully armed with weapons, like shooting each other? I mean, I think we're already in it. Or we're in the beginning stages of what could become a world war. I mean, and this- Talking about like Russia? Russia and Ukraine.

Yeah, I mean, you look at Bosnia right now. It's getting close to tipping off. What's going on with Bosnia? It's Bosnia and, shoot. I'm out of the fucking loop. Oh, yeah. I'll send it to you later. But yeah, they're getting ready to, it's interesting.

thing. But here's the thing, there's all these Instagram accounts, too, that are showing, like, you know, commercial drones, the Ukrainians have dropping, you know, mortars into, or bombs into tanks, Russian tanks below. And people are like, fuck yeah. This and that. It's like, that is sick as shit. Like, they're, those young kids, they don't want to be there. Yeah. And even if they do, they have no idea. That's, that's propaganda. Like, quit cheering this on. I, if I, I don't really, you know, some of these guys, like, have you ever been to war? Because that's sick. And it's offensive to You're sitting here looking at it like it's a football game Like hell yeah

Yeah blow that freaking T-72 up with like But there's people that are also like Super I don't know how to put it But they're just fucking horny for that kind of stuff Yeah People that have never really been in combat That are just fucking sitting in front of Fox News And they're horny for war

And you know I'm sure a lot of the there's a lot of fucking guys Who have on their own fucking will Just gone to Ukraine I don't know if they're veterans or not But I know there's a lot of civilians American civilians who just gone to Ukraine with their guns and tried to help the Ukrainians. Yeah, everybody wants to be a gangster until it's time to do gangster shit.

And then, like I saw this one veteran and he came back, made this video and posted online, veterans don't come to here. We're in Ukraine. And it took us two weeks to get a gun. Meanwhile, all these, they're giving out these Ukrainians guns. And then they only gave us 10 rounds each or something like that. Don't do it. I had to sneak out of the country.

It's like, well, first of all, you're not a citizen there. So get the hell out. of there and of course they're going to give weapons to their people before you stay the hell out of it it's none of your business and that's in my opinion that's an act of war and and i mean you better be careful yeah that the laws of war uh applied to every u.s citizen i know because i still you know i've had to learn them doing what i do now and um yeah there's a difference to like the tier one guys, that's a different story. If you're going out there to do that, you know what you're doing, but these young veterans that think, like, I've got to get my combat stripe now. And, you know,

this, no, no, you don't. You do that for your country. You got that? Like, stay the hell out of, out of it. It's my opinion, but yeah. Off my soapbox. It's, yeah. I mean, it's also, like, it's kind of weird when, to have that kind of perspective when it's what our, I mean, our government is, intervening in this thing and giving billions of dollars of fucking rockets and drones and whatever tanks and all this shit to the Ukraine for a thing that for a purpose that we don't fully, I don't think anyone really fully grasps what it's about, but it seems to be all about money and power and control, you know, like giving, you know, tens of billions of dollars and stuff in weaponry to a country just so because there's the,

debt policy where it's going to become debt they owe to the United States so they're going to owe us so we'll have control of them and they're like a mediary between us and Russia so it's like a tug of war between this country and like when you start like digging into it it fucking hurts your brain trying to think about like what are the motives here like yeah like what the fuck is going on yeah it's all these these elected officials and the people that that society polarizes now it's like senators and congress Nancy Pelosi and all these people like they're celebrities to people. It's like, are you kidding me? Like, that's, why do you

worship the ground that these people walk on? I think most of them probably get involved in politics because they have good intentions. But then, I'd say almost all of them, eventually, once they start getting out of tension, thanks to social media. Tensions, money. Tribalism of people getting behind them.

Yeah. It just takes on its own. They become a monster, man. It's weird. And I think Nancy Pelosi, she just went to, like, Taiwan, and now like China's firing rockets trying to scare them. And the whole Taiwan thing is weird too. That's crazy because I don't know much about it.

I really don't know much about it. I'm going to sound like an idiot trying to talk about it. But let it rip, man. It seems like, like from what I've heard is that Taiwan has always been a part of China. And then now it's trying to seem like the way the narrative is being constructed. Austin, maybe you can pull up some legitimate facts on this because I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about. I'm just trying to sound like I do. But it seems like now we're trying to like.

stick our foot in their business to try to escalate things so we can do the same thing with Taiwan that we did with Ukraine. Yeah, I'm not a foreign affairs officer. So I don't know the ins and out. Not foreign service, but, yeah, the last thing we need is another conflict going on. Yeah. And it just seems like when the U.S. sticks,

or when the U.S. sticks their fucking foot in the door, it just creates more of a conflict and more of a fucking problem. It does, but I will say this. if the United States didn't exist, I tell you right now, Taiwan would be officially China. Oh, yeah. Ukraine would be Russia or... Has...

When did... Can you find out the history on Taiwan? Like, when was it actually... Like, is it a country or is it a state? I don't know what the fuck it is. And when does it... Because I know that it used to be like just a part of China, period. So I think we're the only ones that recognize Taiwan is not part of.

of China. We're the only... You know what? I should shut up. And yeah, wait until something. No, who cares? January 1st, 1912 is what, what happened? Okay, that Taiwan was founded in 1912. Okay, in October of 1912, resolution 2758 was passed by the UN

General Assembly and the representatives of Chang Kaishik were expelled from the UN and replaced by China by the PRC. In 1979, the United States switched recognition from Taipei to Beijing. Okay.

So click that one below. It says, when did Taiwan become a country? Sorry. Yeah, it's right. Go back one. And click on when did Taiwan become a country? Up right there. Okay, so it's, yeah, 1912.

Who knows, man? Well, let's see, Taiwan officially, the Republic of China is a country. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so now China's pissed off when people recognize Taiwan as its own country. And, you know, China's weird too. It's so weird. It's all so convoluted and hard to understand. Yeah, it's I, I, um, people just pretend like they know what they're talking about and talk on YouTube.

And I'm like, oh, okay, I'll take that guy's point of view on it. Yeah, they say, they see a little square meme online that says something that sounds smart. and they're like shove it in people's faces. But yeah, I mean, the future of war is fast. You know, it's going to be weird to see what happens. You know, it's different in third world countries, places like Ukraine, where they're literally tanks on the ground. But like in the future, it's not going to be,

there's no way it's going to be that. It's just going to be power grids and controlling, like we are controlling right now. We're like with the sanctions not letting Russia pay back their debt and starving their people, taking away. Netflix and McDonald's and like it's a weird type

of fucking war. Like it's just taking away money and taking away resources. Yeah, and who ends up suffering? It's not the people that started it. It's the everyday citizens, the ones that are brainwashed.

It's terrible. What was I going to ask? I wanted to ask you, what happened to Chris Kyle? I know, I don't know how he passed away. He was murdered. He was murdered.

Yeah, by a Marine actually. It was, there was some internet argument or something where he called out this guy for Stolen Valor. An internet argument. And this guy signed up. Chris Kyle had this program where he would go and take veterans to the shooting range for PTSD.

Like, let's just go shoot, man. Let's shoot around. Let's fire some rounds off, shoot the shit, and let's just talk about life. And the kid that he called out, I guess, signed up for the person. program, he didn't realize that that was it. And a kid ended up killing him.

Just shot him. Wow. It's terrible. Terrible stuff. Jesus Christ, man. People are fucking crazy. And especially when you add the internet onto create, you know, you mix crazy people with the internet.

It doesn't have, it's never fucking good. No. No. No. I want to talk about how you kind of parlayed. So how, how, eventually did you parlay this whole experience and you know the suffering the immense amount of suffering that you had to deal with after um leaving the marine corps how did you

parlay that into what you guys are doing in africa i have no idea no honestly when i look back i'm like how the hell like how the hell am i sitting here right now talking to you how did i get here Hey, Austin, can you crank the air down a little bit? Thanks, man. No, I'm just fucking, I'm warm. Take a hit of your salts. Oh, yeah, I've got a call. This won't fucking cool me down.

This is going to make me sweat harder. That wasn't enough. Pulse alarm. You might have an addiction here, man. You're enjoying that way too much. Here, take one. I'm going to think about it for, you know what? Do it.

The air just turned off. okay will it turn back on soon oh oh my eyes are watering that one was a little easier to do the first one is straight to the brain yeah that was a lot easier to take i can still smell it it's just strong row you get used to it you built up you build up a tolerance to it after a while yeah so you do have a problem here then yeah we've just established that i'm from we're from Florida. So what's really in that thing? It smells like pneumonia

or ammonia. Jesus. Oh, that shit is brutal. So, how did I part lay immense struggling to what I do now? So when I got out of the Marine Corps,

this was back in 2009, I got a job with the U.S. Department of State assisting in diplomatic security, making sure diplomats got to where they needed to be, safely, securely, all of that.

And it was kind of a cool job. I mean, I'm walking around New York City. That's where I was based out of in a nice suit, earpiece, you know, armored vehicles, you know,

in Hillary Clinton's detail. Oh, no shit. Like, yeah, I'm driving in her motorcade and then, you know, the attorney general,

and then all of a sudden I'm in Obama's motorcade, President Obama, I should say. And like, it was pretty cool at first. And then, like, I started realizing, like, you know, this sucks. Let me pause you real quick. I just had a thought. You ever seen those photos of motorcades?

I forget who it was. I saw a photo of it just the other day. Of a president walking down a street. And there was a man and a woman there. And they had fake hands. They have, like, they're wearing big suits and they have, like, fake hands. You could tell her not real hands. they're like rubber.

And you can see that their arms are really in their jackets. You got to pull this up, Austin. Google, president, security guards, fake hands. That's got, that's got us.

I don't know. So is it Secret Service that works, that is mainly surrounding like diplomats and presidents and shit like this? So Secret Service protects heads of state. Okay. Presidents. The State Department,

diplomatic security protects foreign and domestic diplomats. Okay, okay. So maybe this isn't something that you guys would have done. I mean, this is a long time ago. Do you see what I'm talking about? Go to images. This would be something that you could probably figure out better than I could. There it is.

Click on the one with the circles. Down? Down? Nope. It had red circles. Down to the right. Right there. Look at that.

So see those guys walking? They must be Secret Service. But like, that's a bad photo. But there's photos of him and another woman. And you could tell that those are fucking rubber hands. It makes them look like they're real. But they're like, it looks like they're fucking rubber.

Maybe there's another, I don't know if there's another photo. Go to the one on the very left. Yeah, right there. You see that? Does that not look fake to you? Yeah. Like they maybe have their hands,

like on their guns or something in their jackets. I mean, it's quite possible that they do. I didn't know if you ever had, if you ever saw anything like that in real world. No. No. No.

I've seen guys like that with massive guns and stuff. and guns and briefcases, but... Nothing, that's nothing you've seen before. I've never seen that. All right, anyways. Bionic hands. Sorry for the tangent. No.

If that is real, that's a real hand, that guy's... That guy should be in a circus. Yeah, for real. My God. Yeah, I mean, just look how big his jacket is. I mean, his jacket looks... Look at how long his finger. It's an alien, dude.

Yeah, for sure. What in the hell? There's so many photos of it. People obviously have noticed that it's not... That creeps me out. It doesn't look normal. Well, if he's a real human man, I feel bad for him. Well, it must just be, I mean, it has to be just guns in their jackets.

Just have to be ready to shoot, ready to protect Trump. Yeah. Anyways, the Department of State, you're in motorcades, Hillary Clinton's motorcade, Obama's motorcade. Yeah. What is your job when you're working in the motorcades? Just making sure they get to where they need to be safely. Okay.

And on time. So I was actually in Susan Rice's detail for a long time. She was the U.S. ambassador of the U.N. and the former national security advisor after she was at the state department. You know, I know there's a lot of people that are, you know, because of the morning talk shows and stuff where she had said that Benghazi was not an orchestrated attack. So people are hating on her. She took a bullet for somebody else.

But anyways, not going there. I don't think I know anything about her. Yeah, yeah. Google it. I'll see it too. But anyways, she really helped me on a lot. She was very inspiring to be around. She really, you know, at least in my face, it seemed like she cared.

And so I had, this is relevant, and I'll explain in a minute. I had, it was, I was in the State Department for four years at the time. And this was actually, yeah, 2012. And it was one Sunday night I had just watched Anthony Bourdain's first ever. parts unknown on CNN. I loved Anthony Bourdain. Read all his books. The dude was a legend and rest in peace.

He's one of those guys where I knew, I can remember exactly where I was when I found out that he died. So I'm watching his first show is on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which I've always been intrigued by. The show ends. And up next was a show about the royal family in what they're working. Africa with the Tusk Trust Foundation, which is an amazing conservation organization. They do so much for the preservation of African wildlife. So it was about their collaboration with the Tusk Trust and what

they were doing. And I was like, oh, I'm interested. I'll watch it. But I wasn't one of those people, and I've never been one of those people to where I need to see animal abuse, because that is one of the things that will absolutely flip the insanity switch. And once that sucker's on, good luck getting it off. And as far as my animal welfare and animal activism was concerned, the only capacity that I did it and was photography has always been a big passion mine, hobby of mine. Probably the greatest photographer in the world that you don't know about. I never will. I'm not a sellout, so I choose to keep it to myself. But all jokes aside, I would use my photography skills. I go to local shelters in New York City, and I'd take a dog out on a walk and take pictures of it happy

and enjoying life, and they would post the high quality pictures on their website. It improved the adoption rate of the animals. I was living in a 500 square foot apartment. I had 125-pound rescued Rottweiler and two 25-pound rescued orange cats. So I could not fit any more animals into my apartment or I would get kicked out. How many cats was it again? Two, and they're 25-pounders. too beautiful studs anyways um i just got into cats funny story i've never i've never been like a fan of cats for some reason and my wife fucking loves cats and we get we got one and they're the coolest things ever they're fucking amazing we have an outdoor cat so he goes outside and roams the neighborhood at night nice and like he only he shows up at the door at like 7 a.m every morning to eat

sleeps all day and then he's at the at the door 7 p.m. ready to go out and i'm out yeah and terrorize the the town. Yeah, you're his servants now. Yeah, exactly. You're there for him. They're cool. I love cats. Yeah, my wife and I are on the board of a cat rescue, Whiskers, Utah. They focus on senior cats and cats with disabilities and taking them out of kill shelters. And we've got two, we've got an orange munchkin cat. She's this big. No way. Those things are so cool looking. She was 12 years old, duct taped in a cardboard box with two of her siblings. And she didn't get adopted out. And so we're like, we got to take her. We got to foster her. So we fostered it and she wasn't leaving.

And if I ever find out who the hell did that, I'm going to duct tape them in a box, throw them in a dumpster. Yeah. And I'm going to make sure they don't get out until the garbage truck comes. Yeah, man, that's the worst kind of fucking person. Scumbags. I can do that.

Dude, so I don't watch it. I wouldn't look on Instagram accounts. If I saw it, it would just piss me off. And so after, after, you know,

after Anthony Bourdain's first show, this was the most, that I would say the second most pivotal point of my life happened. And that was watching. this documentary on the Tusk Trust Foundation and the Royal Family. And it started off great. I actually had no interest in ever going to Africa. I had somebody invite me on a safari and I'm like,

nah, dude, I'm good. Africa's cool, but I'll just watch documentaries and stuff. I want to stay in my country for a while. I'm over-traveling. And I'm, I work there now. Yeah. And so what I saw was three just punches to the mouth. metaphorically and the first was an elephant laying on a tar road, an asphalt road.

We say tar in Africa. So an asphalt road in a park, massive elephant, no face. The trunk, which was probably twice the size of this table, was laying separated from the body on the road. And I remember it. There's brain matter and flesh. and there's a land cruiser sitting there, part. And, I mean, it's an elephant for God's sakes. I had no idea that poaching was going on.

And I'm like, whoa. And I'm so pissed off and I'm locked and I'm just shocked. The very next scene was Park Rangers laying dead face down in a field. And now it's like, oh, shit, there's a human side of this. Why are these people dead? and then the third scene, this is back to back to back. The third scene was a female rhino, and it was a video, not a picture this time.

And she's missing her entire nasal cavity. Like her horn is gone, and you can see the two lines, you know, like if you were to take our, never see the Michael Jackson thing cartoon. Yeah. And there's the two. Same thing.

And what had happened was, is that poachers took tranquilizers off the black market. Why did they do that? Because tranquilizers, when you shoot it out of a tranquilizer gun, that doesn't go bang, so nobody hears it. They don't hear the bang. They're not alerted to poachers in the area. The rhino goes down, and now they can take their time.

They don't have to worry about anybody tracking them down or intervening, and they, you know, it can really take a horn off. I've seen it done on videotape in 45 seconds. You can chop, you know, that face off through the flesh. And they chop it, And they do it because they could do it without really fucking killing the animal, but they do it because it's quicker, right?

Yeah. They can chop around the thing into their face. And it's just like, now you can remove, like you said, you can remove a rhino's horn in which some places are doing as a preventative method to prevent poaching. Would it grow back?

It does grow back. Oh, really? It's just keratin. That's all it is. It's what your fingernails are made of. Oh, wow. It's hairs. But what we're noticing, so we have a head.

quarters reserve. We have a team full time in Africa. And then we deploy training teams to other reserves. But this is our foothold. Our reserve has full horn rhinos. We've worked with reserves that do remove the horns. I don't have any issues with it. But what we noticed was it's, it's, in a live rhino is better than a dead rhino, whether it has a horn or no horn. However, what we're noticing is that it's affecting the mating behaviors of the animal. The male doesn't have that horn. It can't bully the rino, the female around and get her into mating. And so we're, we have less rhinos born. And it's, it's, it's, it's starting to change the genetics, the behaviors of species. So that said, so what ended up happening is these people were filming her, um, while they waited for veterinarians to come,

um, and put her down, you know, um, humanely. Um, and at first I was pissed off. I'm like, why the are they filming this? Like, how can you film this? And in hindsight, when I look back, I'm like, thank God that you film this and you're a hero for doing it. Because I can't imagine sitting there and having to pull out a camera and film and watch this happen, this animal dying, miserable death. But thank God that they had the courage to do that. Because I know that I'm not the only one that was inspired by that. I'm just a little slice of conservation. I'm just trying to affect my slice of what I can control. But there are other people that that had to inspire to get involved.

We needed that shock moment to wake up to this. This is a world problem. It's not an Africa problem. This is a world problem. But what happened was I watched this animal die and she had a newborn calf that was not on the film, gone in the bush, lost, scared. That baby ended up dying because it needs its mother's milk. and it shook me to the core.

I was feeling, you know, all that emotion that you bring back from war, the PTSD, which it's every strong emotion you can think of wrapped up. And just like Will Ferrell says, a glass jar of emotion. And you throw it all in there, you super glue it shut, and your plan is to cope with it by never having to deal with it. And what happened was, I mean, that rhino essentially. saved my life because that jar was shattered. I was pissed off. I was depressed. I was sad. I had anxiety. I was embarrassed, humiliated everything I that animal was crying. Tears just dumping out of her eyes.

Oh my God. And I felt everything that she felt in my like emotionally I I, I, I, she saved me as a human. I can confidently say there there's a, there's a, I. I will say there's a very good chance that I wouldn't be on this planet if that animal, if I hadn't seen that animal die. It was that powerful, like to the point where I want to cry right now thinking about her. And I called out of work for five days, literally back to back to back. And the special agent in charge with the U.S. Department of State called me and he's like, hey, dude, when you come back to work? I was like, I don't know.

I might be out another week. I'm just not feeling good. He goes, dude, what the hell's going on? Because, like, you haven't missed a day of work in years. And so I was like, all right, dude. Well, this is what happened. Dude, I wasn't sleeping at night. I was crying.

I was waking up pace in the house. I was punching walls real smart. Concrete brick walls in my New York City apartment. I was so angry. And so he said, you need to come back to work or you're not going to have a job. Like, they're seriously going to probably fire you or put you on. some other duty or whatever. And I'm like, all right, well, I'll come back to work.

And I was talking to a buddy, my buddy, my buddy, Brent Dixon. And he said, he was like, hey, dude, I think I'm going to go to Africa. Like, I got to go. I got to go see what's going on. Like, this is what they're doing. And I remember everybody else thought I was nuts. My mom was like, you can't go to Africa or this and that. And she'll tell you now, I knew you're going to go to Africa.

But Brent's like, hey, dude, I remember him being the first person to support me. He was just like, I believe in you in this, dude. And I can tell it you're passionate about it. It's the same day I went to NYU to see this open lecture that the CGI director of Life of Pye was speaking. I forget his name. And he had said there was a young student in the Q&A. Last question. I'm sitting in the back.

And she says, what advice do you have for young students going into the professional world? Like just life advice. and she goes or he says the best advice I can ever give you in my opinion is that if you feel so passionately and strongly about something that it hurts right here in your gut not not your gut not your chest but right here

just between your ribcage that it like you feel a knot there then you better act on that or you're going to regret it one day and my biggest fear in life is not dying it's dying with a regret and when he said that I'm like Like that's it. I'm doing it. That is God telling me you got to go do something. I mean, dude, look at this. I get chills right now. I got goosebumps.

Tell me that that is not, you don't have to believe in God, but you better believe there's something there. Right. Because you, I mean, why the hell was I at NYU and at open lecture? What made me go there and why did he say that? Why did I stay till the end? Because I almost left a few times. It was boring. And when he said that, like, holy shit, I'm like, I just don't believe in coincidences. Right. And so I'm like, that's it. I'm doing it. But what I did do with the advice of some family, they were like, before you go to Africa,

I just start exploring with the U.S. Department of State. And so I asked around with Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the UN at the time, Ambassador Joseph Torcello, who I believe is the Treasury Secretary of Pennsylvania now, I was really close with him. He was a great mentor for me. I just asked him, hey, sir, have you heard about this? and whatever. And he said, no, I haven't. But let me look into it. And he actually went and looked into it. He goes, so what is it about that that you're asking about? And I was like, why are we not

sending all these veterans that we have that we paid billions and trillions of dollars to train to go to war? They have the skills to go over here and counter this terrorism, because it is terrorism, up to 40% of ISIS's operations, their affiliates in Africa, up to 40% of their operations are funded by poaching animals. And there are some people that want to say that that's debunked. Bullshit. Bullshit. That is very real.

That is real. People say it's been debunked. How? Well, that's just a fake statistic. And we did this study and that study and that's not how they're funny. No, you idiot. Criminals are criminals. Yeah.

Terrorists are criminals. Criminals are terrorists. The way that they fund their operations, they're opportunists, it's opportunity. So if they see an opportunity to go and kill an animal so they can go and terrorize people and make more money and push their extreme agenda, they're going to do it. And that is what is happening.

And so I have my security level, security clearance at the time, which was top secret SCI, and they upped it another one so I could go into a skiff, which is a secured room to review very high-level documents. and they actually up my clearance so I could research this some more. They pulled three strings for me. Wow. Yeah.

And so I got the, you know, the real information that I needed to see. And I'm like, hey, this is real deal. Like, what about that real information that you can divulge was that? Like, what, what about it? What, you know, I realized? It was honestly, it was nothing that wasn't already out there. Oh, okay. It was just that it was officially documented in U.S.

government cables and you know foreign foreign nations are are giving this information saying hey yeah there is a tie between terrorism and poaching here but because of who you know had the information that's why it was top secret but i mean you can find the same stuff you know online it's just not going to be have a you know a government yeah cable attached to it so you started doing all the research you could you knew that this is what you had to do. When you went to the NYU, who was it that was doing the talk? So what did he do for Life of Pie? I think he was the director of the CGI.

Dude, that's so funny. What a small fucking world. I'm really good friends with the cinematographer of Life of Pie. I met him filming a movie right around here called Dolphin Tail in Clearwater, about a dolphin they rescued with no tail, got caught in a net, and they kept it in an aquarium. and he also helped film a world famous documentary called Blood Dolphin

about the dolphins in Japan, the Japanese fishermen who they basically they go out and they they chase all the dolphin into this cove and then they just fucking spear them to death. Wasn't the documentary called the Cove? Yeah, the Cove. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's one called Blood Dauphin and there's one called the Cove. That's my next mission in life.

And they find like the prettiest bottle-nosed dolphin and they sell them to the fucking, they sell them to SeaWorld for like 400 grand of pop and the rest of them, they just fucking stab them to death. And you'll see them like having seizures in the water. And it's just the whole entire cove turns blood red. It's so fucked up. And the people in Japan are fucking suffering

because they're feeding them these dolphin. And the dolphin are like these open water pelagic fish. You're not supposed to eat that shit because it has so much high, so high levels of mercury. It fucks with the human body. And it's not good for the human body. but they're feeding their people this dolphin like even in schools like school lunches they're giving a fucking dolphin dude it's so fucked up and that the kind of stuff that our government should

be working on instead of and dolphin are like i think they're like the second smartest creatures next to humans yeah yeah they're up there elephants are up there too yeah elephants too um it's sick it is i just that's the thing about humans we are monsters you and i sitting here we're good people but we have a monster deep blueness like it's scary Like, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, a lot of people have a very nihilistic view of humans. Um, and some aspects of it are true. It's, it's, I don't know how, I mean, it's not a healthy way to look at it, but it's, there's some elements of truth to it. You know, people say that we're just maggots eating a corpse.

You know what I mean? Like the world, we're just maggots just devouring this fucking world. Yep. Yep. It's a fucking very fatalistic, nihilistic way of looking at it, but it's, it's a truth though. There's something to it. It's the truth. So when did you decide to go finally travel to Africa?

What was your mission when you first? Did you just go? Like I'm going to go on a safari. Or what did you do? No, so what I did was thanks to Ambassador Torcellah, Joseph Torcellah, which I need to get a hold of him one day. He connected me with several embassies of African nations and their ambassadors to the the UN to discuss what their needs were. At the same time, he also connected me, like, had his staff find out what the U.S. was doing.

And I put together this proposal. There was, you know, a one-pageer, a three-pager, an 80-pageer. I worked endlessly. I loved it. I was researching writing. It was in that dream mode. And so I started, you know, handing this to people. decision makers to say, hey, does this have any, does this hold any water? Do you, does this have

legs? Could you see this happening? Hiring veterans to go out and help and assist? Because I saw this as an opportunity. You know, the U.S. government, they're not going to go and save animals because they're government and government officials don't give a shit. And governments don't have emotions, nor should they. But I wanted to pitch this. We have all these things. We have all these these guys that we paid all this money to train them and they don't have a purpose. And I had just found my purpose and I didn't realize it yet that that's what it was. And we could save veterans with this and use this as an opportunity for development assistance that supports the improvement of international, you know, diplomatic relations.

Hey, we're going to come over here and help you with, you know, if the government had to look at this, I'm doing this because I give a shit about, you know, the animals. But I'm trying to interpret this to government. officials in a way that that would benefit, you know, the government. It's like, hey, East Africa, China's got a stronghold on East Africa, all of Africa, really. Why don't we go ahead and help with animals? And maybe that'll improve our relationships elsewhere as well. And boom, done. Perfect, right? Uh-uh. No. What ended up happening was, oh yes, oceans, environmental and scientific affairs. I think it's what it's called. One of the many agencies within the U.S. Department of

state, they were tasked with what the United States was going to do to help in poaching and wildlife trafficking. Because wildlife trafficking is a top five international crime. People don't realize that. What the hell OES was going to do about this? I have no idea. And so I started exploring it. And then I also did a call with international narcotics and law enforcement. in law enforcement affairs, something like that. I should know the name of that. It's been a long few days. And they both kind of tried to get it.

The only reason why they were entertaining the call, though, is because a political appointee was making it happen. And a political appointee says, do this, and you're a bureaucrat, you're doing it. And so you could tell. So what ends up happening is, one, they start getting in a fight. OES is like, why are you talking to them? This is our thing.

And I'm like, well, because I was told to. And number one, and also their law enforcement, like this is more of theirs. And this woman, oh, Christine, Christine, Christine, you cannot wait to meet her again. So what ends up happening is I was told you can no longer speak to the law enforcement agency within the State Department about it. You speak to us. This is, we're doing this. And so the guys that, the guy David, that's all say from the law. law enforcement agency was telling me, oh, no, this isn't going to work. He had no idea about

the poaching issue either. Go figure when he retires from the State Department, he is now an advisor in counterpoaching. So the asshole literally tried to steal the idea, but make a profit from it, because it's not a nonprofit. But, you know, whatever, do your thing, dude. If you want to exploit it, that's your battle. You got to deal with that when you meet your maker, not me. And then, So then what happens is OES is throwing an open forum with the President, President Obama's Advisory Council on Wildlife Trafficking. The White House designated $12 million, not a lot of money, but hey, at least it's something. At least there's a president that's, and a presidential administration is caring because 12 million, it's, yeah, like I said, it's better than nothing. They were going to decide, they were deciding what to do with the money and where to designate it.

and there was an open forum where they were going to discuss it and then a Q&A. I went as a private citizen from New York to D.C. took the train down and I'm sitting there. I put my name Ryan Tate. I don't even think I put the State Department on the roster, but I signed up to ask a question. And I'm sitting there. Now out of nowhere, Christine,

and Assistant Secretary of State walk up to me right before the Q&A. And Assistant Secretary of State, she says to me, you, Ryan Tate? I said, yes, ma'am, I am. She goes, I see that you're going to ask a question. What are you going to ask? I was like, I was simply just going to ask, is any of this $12 million, is it going to go towards training the guys on the ground? The guys that are dying.

The guys that are dying and their family members are being killed to protect these innocent animals. Like the Rangers? Yeah, the Rangers. Right. The men and women. It's not just guys. There's a lot of female Rangers. There's a lot of freaking badass women on the front lines.

And I said, that's a lot of men. that's all I was going to ask. She goes, you are not allowed to ask that question. I said, ma'am, I'm here as an everyday citizen. I'm not here in a state department capacity and I have permission to be here. She goes, well, I'm telling you right now that if I don't have it in writing by Monday, and this is on a Friday, that you were going to end this little crusade, this little, you know, pipe dream that you have, that you're not going to have a job. And I, she said, do you got that? And I said, yes, ma'am, I do. I hear you. And then she turns back around and with the Christine woman and she goes, by the way, we've done our research and veteran skills do not translate to counterpoaching. Now you got me about ready to start throwing chairs because I'm still like, like I found my purpose now. I'm doing this and this isn't about the animals now. This is just about you guys and your freaking egos. You are exactly what is wrong with governments. Because you see this as an opportunity to to bolster your career. You're not actually doing it because you give a shit about the animals or the people.

that depend on this wildlife. That's why I'm here. I'm not here to make money. I'm not here to get some award. I could get two shits about awards. I could care less about politics and this. I'm here because I want to save these animals. I need to save these animals.

I have to save these animals. And so what did I do? Instead of, instead of agreeing to what she did, and instead of causing a big uproar, I had my buddy traveling from overseas that works in conservation, and I told him, I said, hey, man, when they call my name, I said, I'm going to get out of here before I start a ruckus. But when they call my name, because I know they didn't take my name off the thing, go up there and ask

the question on my behalf. So he gets up there and he goes, hi, my name's so-and-so. I'm here on behalf of Ryan Tate, who works to the U.S. Department of State. And here's his question. He asked it. And then I went to the White House and told on what, to Susan Rice what they did to me. And then on Monday, I turned in my resignation papers and said, fuck you. Holy fuck, man.

That's badass. Yeah, that's incredible. Looking back on it, I was definitely ignorant to the fact of what I was doing. Like, but I'm so glad that I did it. Yeah. God, I'm so glad. Yeah, man, you became like a fucking dissident, man. You fucking went against what the bureaucrats wanted you to do.

Like, dude, that's scary. I mean, whether you were ignorant or not, the consequences, it's fucking scary. Well, just, like, literally, I just quit my job. And I'm still living in New York City. How the hell am I supposed to live? and like like i just it bothers me it's still to this day it bothers me like you are evil what you it's not intentional i'm sure but you are evil in my mind if you try to stop something so pure like that why why would you do that all because you were tasked to do okay well then

you take the initiative and go champion it i don't care who champions saving rhinos or elephants were solving this this problem because it is a problem and i hate the word problem i usually call problems challenges but this is a problem go champion it then i don't give a shit just save the species for god's sakes and uh but it was liberating it felt i was like hell yeah i got to do this now that's cool i'm doing it so i started going to africa on my own and i wasn't going out on safaris i was going with the government officials that ambassador torsella had introduced me to God, what a champ. Without him, I'm telling you, without Ambassador Joseph Torcellah, I wouldn't be sitting at the stable right now. There's no way. He introduced me to the people,

the president of Tanzania tells us, hey, I want my Rangers to operate like you, U.S. Marines. And I'm like, let's do this, man. Let's do it. Like, I'm getting chills right now. How that feel? Oh, I was like, you know what Marines are? U.S. Marines? I was like, hell yeah, that's what I'm thinking let's do that because we need to save these animals this isn't it was terrible and i didn't really understand how complex it was like you think yeah let's just go over there and kick some ass we'll go jason born in the bush which do some boogeyman stuff but it's way bigger than that you can't just go over there and you know first of all i had no no no um no uh interest or um i was not going out there to kill anybody or cause harm make mother's day eat

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I just wanted to protect the animals. The last thing that you want to do is especially in conservation is kill anybody or hurt anybody. Right. No, you had a purpose. You had like a burning purpose, a mission. Yeah. I mean, I was having. Which you had lost after you left the Marines.

Now you had it back again. Yeah. I mean, I was having dreams at night every night about animals that I hadn't even seen in real life yet, other than the zoo. I kid you not. What was it like the first time you saw one? Oh, dude.

I almost passed out. Yeah, man. I was just, and, oh, man, it was cool. The first time I saw elephants in real life, came around this corner in Tanzania, and there was two standing there, and I was blown away, and we sat there for like an hour, and I'm just, and the driver's like, all right, well,

we got to, you know, we got to keep moving, and I'm like, no, no, no, just a little longer. Anyways, we go around the corner, and there's over a hundred elephants. just around the corner and it's like no now we're not leaving we're staying here um but what i was doing over there was you know that's the fun side but i wanted to get out with rangers and just you know live with them see what it's like what do they go through i wanted to learn from them i want to do observe just because i still don't know maybe my skills don't translate

maybe maybe that evil woman was right maybe that bureaucrat scumbag was right you know i don't know but the coolest thing was when I showed up and I introduced myself to Rangers and they're like, yo, you're a Marine, you served in Iraq? That's amazing. They were so well versed on the wars and Marines. And now they have like this pride. Like you're here to support us in our mission. It's that important?

You know about this all the way in the United States? Yeah, I do. And now all of a sudden these guys are charged up, ready to roll. wow, what man, I can't even imagine like Africa other than maybe, I don't know, Australia, but I don't even know if Australia comes close. But like being in Africa, especially in the parts of Africa that you're in, it's one of maybe two places in the world that you literally have to be worried about being eaten by a fucking animal. Like, eaten alive by a fucking animal.

Like there's so many man-eating animals there. and you're surrounded by them. Like, what the fuck, man? So they, everything either wants to eat you. In the water and on land. Oh, yeah. Yeah, don't stay the hell out of the water.

Everything either wants to eat you, uh, screw you, eat you. Or both. Yep, that's what they say. I could have said that in a different way. Oh, my God.

What the fuck, man. What kind of animals are going to fuck you? and eat you. I mean, I don't know. I mean, I've never been in the situation. Jesus, Christ, because you imagine being fucking molested by a rhino or a lion? You surf out there? I don't surf anymore because I've had surgery in my hands.

I grew up surfing. Yeah, we talked about that yesterday. We've got a guy on our team, Connor. Connor rips it, and he's a Florida boy. He's from the other coast. And he's got some badass surfboard. He's got a buddy in Thailand. Yeah, he's an army veteran from Thailand that did a cut.

custom rhino boards for them like drew them on there and stuff their lost boards i think they're almericks and so he's got them out there but yeah our headquarters reserve is like two hour and a half from j bay that's so sick yeah that's so sick you're not catching me in that water we'll be in the helicopters going to the reserve and and you'll see a massive great white shark just sitting there and the tail is just right off the shore how often are there uh great white attack great they're not often, right? I mean, I think it was last October when I was there when one happened. I wasn't at Jay Bay. That was at our reserve. But yeah, some guy got chomped. And then they closed the beach. And it's like, it's not really going to do anything because they're always there.

Yeah, they're always there. The fucked up thing about the white sharks is that when they bite you, you're going to bleed out. Oh, you're done. The bites are so devastating. There's actually more shark bites, I think, in New Somerner Beach, Florida than anywhere on Earth. Yeah, my wife was just surfing there. because her mother lives there and I'm like, please stay out of water, sweetie. She always tells me, don't do anything stupid in Africa. I'm like,

you were literally in the water or in the water the same day that somebody got bit. Why do you need to serve there of all places? No, yeah. Please go to Daytona. They're in Daytona too. They're on both sides. They are, but the more bites happen up there.

By the inlet, yeah. Yeah. And I grew up surfing there. Yeah, they're everywhere, man. We'll be fucking surfing and there'll be just little black tips, hydro planning right across right in front of us. everywhere, man. They're just eating bait. And the only time they'll grab you

by accident sometimes and people will go to the hospital, but they're just getting a few stitches. Luckily, they're not like life-altering wounds. Like you get in South Africa. I had a guy here a couple of months ago who is from South Africa. I think Durbin.

And he does these crazy fucking ice swim. Like he swims from land to one of the islands out there off of the southern tip off of the Cape. Oh, yeah, yeah. The Cape Hope over there. Yeah, yeah. So he'll swim, but he'll have two boats, one boat on each side of him. And he'll swim like in a speedo all the way to the island and back.

Dude's a psycho. Why? Because he thinks it's like, you know, he's pushing, pushing himself, you know, farther than he can go, like, pushing the human body and seeing how far he can push himself and where that takes him. You know, I'm sure you getting into some interesting stuff, you're friends with that guy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, man. He did it.

He talked about it. He also did a crazy thing where they went to Russia. They went to, like, Siberia. It did a crazy fucking ice swim in the middle of Siberia in a frozen lake. It's like everyday life for people from Siberia. Yeah. Yeah, they're just fucking wasted. They just drink vodka and swim in ice water.

Yeah, it would be fun. But yeah, dude, fucking, fucking Africa. There's, I don't think, I can't think of any other place where there's more man-eating creatures. No, there's not. It's the only place. What a fucking life. Africa is. the last real continent on well between the amazon and

Africa oh yeah the Amazon too yeah that's the lungs of the world when that's dissipating as well what um so when you first went to Africa the first couple times you went whatever you started working with the government right away I did yeah and how did they sort of help you set up camp there well it was the nice thing was that I had government protection but then what I realized was I got bit by corruption quite a few times. But not quite a few times, but one big time. I mean, I was living in government housing, driving government vehicles.

I had a brand new government land crews that got bashed. It literally had like 800 kilometers on it, and a freaking bull elephant in Musk. He was high testosterone period is what Musk is for those that don't know. But yeah, the driver got too close. He reared back and right in the side. And I had to explain that one. apparently it's my fault even though the driver was i told him not to get that close and he ended up rolling a car behind us like a little hatchback like 20 times like it was a ball unbelievable

people lived i don't know how but um so yeah i had um government rifles i checked them out of the armory just for my own protection um but i was going out embedded i would go in as essentially a spy and I would act as a, the assistant for some rich American billionaire or international billionaire. And I would do it with the, the oversight of the government, I would do small,

illegal wildlife buys. So I would buy like snake skins or leopard skin, things like that. And that would build the trust up. And then once we got to a certain level, all right, hey, now I need some ivory. You got any ivory? And then the next thing you know you're buying ivory.

And as soon as you buy it, boom, park rangers. and police hit the building and they do a takedown. They arrest you and everybody else. That way it doesn't look like. Okay. I can't do it anymore because my cover's been blown on that. Yeah.

How long did that last? I was doing that like a year and a half, I want to say. Almost two years. I was doing undercover stuff here and there. But, you know, we were taking down some really nasty people. We took down in 36 hours. We assisted and empowered the, Rangers to do it. We were on the patrols. We would only jump in and help in these takedowns when we saw a

potential, you know, safety threat, which these things happened. And we took down, Park Rangers took down the criminal network responsible for 18,000 elephant deaths in one year. At the time, we thought it was 10,000. We talked to the parliament members, and they were like, actually, it's more like 18,000. It could be even more than that. And we took them down in 36 hours. Nobody hurt. Nobody killed nothing.

Wow. We were taking them out of their beds at night through the windows. Yeah, I remember taking a couple guys out of their bedroom window while their wives were asleep next to them at like three in the morning. And they'd take them out and they would, the range just cover their mouth real quick. And the wife wouldn't even wake up. Yeah. It's sad that you have to do it.

But like, it is sad. These are scumbags. You know, there are some poachers that are poor guys that are exploited by, you know, these, these bigger networks. But do I, do I have empathy for them?

Yes, but I have more empathy for the animals. There's only 300,000, 350,000 elephants left. They're on the, you know, they're coming back thanks to a lot of, you know, amazing conservation groups, not just vet, Paul, but, but there's only 20,000 white rhinos, there's only 5,000 black rhinos left.

I have more empathy for the animals. And when my mom said, hey, why do you have to do this? Why are you doing this and risking your life to do this? I said, hey, listen, I'm only one of eight billion people on this planet. How many of those animals are left? I'm expendable. Right. You know?

Do you look at it that way? Do you have, do you, I mean, is that kind of, I mean, we talked earlier about kind of, uh, that nihilistic view of, of humans on Earth. They're being like, we're, there's so many fucking people on earth. And human nature is, Especially when there's something that happens to humans when you put them in a situation of desperation. When it comes to resources and money and feeding their kids, well, they'll do the worst things when they're desperate. Yeah.

Humans will. Yeah. So have you kind of accepted the fact or have you come to terms with the fact that you value? the lives of these animals over the lives of some of the humans that are there. I know it sounds very, very dark, but when you look at it from a certain perspective, you can see the argument for it, and you can see how it actually does. In that context, when you have a population of 8 billion people and there's a certain amount of them that are just committing these atrocities, like murdering,

these innocent beings that have no control, they don't know what the fuck's going on. You're not only, like, you're murdering whether it be a rhino or an elephant and then their kid, their offspring are going to be lost and probably die. I can see it from the perspective, like, fuck these human beings. I value the elephant's lives over those human beings' lives.

I can see that perspective. Yeah. I guess, so in a sense, yes. I mean, personally speaking, not as the president of Vapol 100%. That said, who am I is this white American to come in there and tell them how to live their lives? It's none of my business. The biggest issue in the world, I mean, we're in the middle of the next mass extinction right now. People don't realize it. We are.

We're losing species, not just in Africa, but all over the world. And it's not because of poaching. It's because we're taking their. land, it's habitat loss. So yes, I do. And here's the thing. Humans are just, we're just another animal species on this planet. And so ultimately, if we really want to save ourselves, then we need to have empathy for our race in the sense to where we're not taking that land. We are valuing it and being stewards of this planet. Because if we don't become stewards and we start to lose too many of these keystone species, the effect that that will have on this massive ecosystem that we call Earth,

it'll be the detriment of humans. Yes. So we have to save, by saving these species, we are saving ourselves. If we can't save these species, we can't save ourselves. Right. Right. Every species is important. Here's a good example.

We reintroduce black rhinos into a region that they had gone extinct in over 80 years ago. That region's flora and fauna was so imbalanced. The plants, so many plant species went extinct. black rhinos are grazers or browsers so they have this lip and they pick out of thorny bushes and they eat that white rhinos are grazers well that population of white rhinos was on the decline there's no grass there why is there no grass because the bushes are overgrown we introduce black rhinos they start mowing that down sun gets to the soil grass is growing and now the white rhino population is coming up and now you have new plant species well not new but plant species that went extinct you years ago that are coming back. Right. Think about that. Isn't that wild?

Yeah, that is crazy. That is crazy how we can manipulate the environment in a good way. We have, we have, um, Cheetah, we reintroduced into areas that they had gone extinct in years ago. We had a serious wardhog problem in that area. We still do in a sense, but it's not as bad anymore that we've reintroduced them because they're mowing down cheetah or cheetah or cheetah or moan down wardhog. How do you feel about hunters that go over there and pay like hundreds of

of thousands of dollars for tags to kill elephants. Okay. Or I don't know if there's any other animals besides elephants that they kill. Yeah, I mean, they do antelope, uh, buffalo. I mean, shoot, they have tags for rhinos in some places. Listen, I'm not a hunter. Um, this is going to sound corny as hell, at least to me, but once you've hunted man, at least in my mind, it's just, I have no interest in shooting something that,

that doesn't shoot back. Interesting. Um, I just think it's, it's just not me. It's never been my thing. However, now if you shoot, if you're going to hunt an elephant or a rhino or an endangered species, like you're a piece of shit, and I don't care. The amount of money that you're throwing up on the table, I'll tell you what, tell you what, that amount of money, you hunt me, I'll take one bullet, you can have as many as you want. Hunt me. If you win, you keep your money and you can go shoot the rhino or the elephant.

If I win and I get you, that money goes to conservation, those animals live. That's what I would say to any douchebag that wants to go and shoot an elephant or rhino. What is it about those people? I don't get it. Now, listen, this is a controversial topic, but hunters with antelope species, it's the same thing. Like every reserve in South Africa, every healthy ecosystem has hunting to a certain level. Even if they say they don't have hunting, they're part of a greater ecosystem. So they get away with saying, no hunting in this reserve.

You're part of Greater Kruger. Kruger manages the hunting. So you just don't do that. It's a lie. And I know several reserves like that. And I'll probably get people, keyboard warriors, hitting me up here shortly. When this year is, that's not true. Okay, all right.

Well, you're telling me, my team is there full time. You went on a safari to this place and paid a shit ton of money and listen to what people tell you. I think it's true. Anyways, it's the same thing as hunting, D.E. in our national parks. Our government regulates it. So does theirs. If you do not balance that population of Impala,

they will mow down what they eat, the plants that they eat at a level that it will affect the other plants and the other food that the bigger species eat. With different gestation periods, it takes 18 months for a black or a black or white rhino to give birth, 22 to 24 months for an elephant. Wow.

talking like nine, nine weeks and 16 weeks for some, you know, antelope species. You got, I'm sorry, humans, we like to have this idea. We want to have our cake and eat it too. We're so overly emotional. It's like, no, you can't, this isn't Burger King. You can't have it your way every time. Tough decisions have to be made. And scientists come in and dictate it.

We were in a position of a reserve. We worked out. Biologists came in and said, hey, you have, you have 5,000 too many Impala. if you don't hunt or call and calling for those that don't know is you round up the animals you just shoot them in the head. It's one of the most traumatizing things I've ever seen.

They do that with sharks in some places. Yeah, that's disgusting. Because the surfers. Yeah. I want to surf, catch waves. Yeah. Not get bit. Unbelievable.

But like, okay, well, so you don't want us, you don't want hunters to come in and do this. So then if they don't, if they don't come in and take, you know, harvest these animals, then guess who's got to do it? I got to do it. I don't want to do it. So, all right, then you come over here and you do it. You know everything. Yeah.

You can, listen, I don't like it either. I don't like it. But the real problem is humans. Yeah. If we stop, you know, destroying this planet, then we don't have to do this stuff. Yeah. So what is it, though, about those fucking trophy? What is it about people who want to go out? it's always these people with like insane amounts of money like rich people they want to go like I'm going to take my son out to Africa and we're going to get an elephant tag and we're going to pose in front of a picture of this big dead elephant like what I don't understand like what is it about those people that want to do that and they'll pay so much money and they'll justify it yeah they'll justify it like we pay you know hundreds of thousands of dollars for this and we fed the village and that means that you care no well if you really cared then you just pay that money to the reserve and have a veterinarianering go and put that animal because in many cases if it's an elephant it's one that's not many i don't know if it's many cases that's that's old right where the teeth are rotting and they they're dying a slow death which still i why not just pay a vet to put it down humanely instead of shooting it i don't know

but if you actually give a shit why don't just donate the money i don't know yeah but if there are these if there are these guys with these sick fantasies some sick fucking billionaire and his kid want to come hunt an elephant and have a trophy just to pound. What do they do with those elephants? Do they just kill them? Do you know? I don't know. I don't know.

I've never looked into it. But did they use it? Do they like mount their heads as trophies? Or like what do they? If just take that idea in a, you know, in its own little thought bubble and say like there's this elephant that's dying, but this guy's going to pay us a million dollars. And he's going to, you know, are we're going to be able to pay this money to our. our rangers. Our rangers are going to make $50,000 a year now to kill this elephant that's not

going to live another year. Yeah, most of that money is just going into some, you know, rich guy's pocket, rich African guy's pocket. It's not going to the rangers. Really? In some case, like hunting in general now, hunting does, you know, whether people want to believe it or not, and if you can't come to the table and look at facts, then, you know, I don't want to talk to you, but the facts are is that that, and I'm not, I'm talking about elephant and rhino hunting or endangered species hunting, like the dentist that shot Cecil the lion. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I'm not talking about that stuff. But antelope hunting in general, I mean, that's arguably, it contributes more funding to African wildlife conservation than any of it. It definitely does with ecotourism, because eco-tourism also, and I'm a big fan of ecotourism. We have our own lodge where people can pay and come and stay. It's not like high-end five-star, but it's really, cool and unique, but ecotourism has this huge carbon footprint with it.

So for one guy that comes over with his son and wants to, you know, take an antelope, like a kudu or something, because the scientist deem that that's appropriate here for a tag. The population supports it. He pays a boatload of money there, whereas in order to get the same amount of money that he paid, you've got to have like 50 guests come and stay and take flights from America, drive cars and all this food and all of that just to stay at a lodge. You know what I mean? Yeah.

I mean, some of these reserves have, you know, staffs of 400 to 1,000 people. They got to pay those bills. And if they don't, that land will be used for pineapples or something else, which is not good. No. You know?

It's a complex issue, man. Yeah. And there's people that just want to, like, reconnect with, like, they want to reconnect with, like, their primal in their primal selves their primal mode you want to be out in the sticks and hunt and there and you know there is people that can make arguments about not towards elephants or lions but towards other types of like deer or or elk or antelopes or whatever saying like eating a wild animal is way better for you than eating fucking factory farmed cow but the worst thing in the world is

buying meat off a shelf yeah yeah you know so i mean i respect it like i respect that that that argument. I mean, it's real. Yeah. But yeah, man, it's, um, it's no, it's not an easy fix. It's a lot more complex than just going on social media and how do the Rangers get paid? It depends on the reserve. And what, what are the issues with the Rangers getting paid? Because is it, is it real that some of the Rangers and poachers will kind of like switch like trade shoes, trade positions? Like a Ranger will maybe not get paid and have to poach someone, poach an animal on the weekend to feed his family and then go back to being a ranger? Like, how big is that problem in reality? Yeah, I don't buy the, the feeding the family thing in many cases. There are some cases, but you're talking about

places like South Africa has like an unemployment rate of like 40 percent. And that's, it's in the 30s. And but, you know, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, those places, they have at like 50, 60 percent unemployment rate. So it's like, you know, if you have a job, that's one thing. It's the greed. And it's the ego that drives it. So, I mean, the top general or top dog ranger at Kruger National Park was busted with, with rhino horn in his trunk. Guy won so many awards. But the people that pay rangers, like government rangers, they get paid by the government.

And then private parks, which a lot of people don't realize this, private parks in South Africa, I believe the number is 35% of rhinos are private reserves. they have actually private farmers because they call they call reserves and private reserves in south Africa they call them farms so farmers but these private reserves have saved 90% of of antelope species because of of trading gain in the sale and trade of game so they pay their park rangers, these private citizens. And when you start a park as a private citizen, especially in South Africa, you put a target on your back. You don't do it because it's some glorious job and you're making all this money. Many of those people have other businesses that support those reserves.

They're doing it because they're passionate about it and that's their heritage and they want to save these species. But you put your life in danger the moment you put a rhino or an elephant or an endangered species on your property. And how, how? specifically. Well, I mean, there have been farm attacks, what they call them, and where poaching rings will raid somebody's home, the owner of the reserve's home, tie them up, take all their stuff and shoot them in the head when they leave, something like that. They'll open the safe, like in those cases where most rhino horn, if it's harvested the proper way, which we discussed is not, you know, it's not good for the species in general, but it is preventative. Some people

keep it in a safe in their home until they can get it to a bank to put it in a vaulted safe. And those are all registered by the government, by the way. So if they hear that there's a de-horning happen, they'll go and hit that house and rate it and take everything. Wow. Yeah. It's brutal. What is the prevalence of the terrorists? We were talking about earlier, but the, um,

Boko Haram Yeah In I think it's Northern Africa How widespread are they And how What is their relationship to poaching I know you said that poaching funds them Yeah so Boko Haram especially al-Shabaab

Well I won't say especially because What is Al-Shabaab another terrorist Yeah they both have Are ISIS affiliates Okay They were around before ISIS officially started But they pledge allegiance to ISIS Right

Right, right, right. They like teamed up with them. Yeah, exactly. They are huge bullies. They will go in and mow down villages overnight. You want to see, I mean, they rape, pillage, murder. I mean, lighthole villages on fire just for the fuck of it. It is so screwed up. It is, it is pure evil. Yeah, we're talking about yesterday. They'll kill anybody. It doesn't matter your religion. They will wreck your world.

Al Shabab when I was in I'd just come back from Kenya I was in Tanzania when this happened they did the mall shooting in Nairobi where they they terrorized them all until some badass British SaaS dude went in

his own kit and rifle and just started mowing them down they were castrating men in the middle of the mall you can see it on security footage castrating men just terrorizing people So look at that. These terrorists are poaching these incredible species,

elephants, rhinos, the animals that we had on baby blankets growing up, poaching them to extinction so they can make money to then go and terrorize humans and push an extreme evil agenda. It's wild. Yeah, that is the worst kind of person. That's the worst kind of thing that could happen in any... Yeah. race or culture.

I have personally tracked them for weeks. Follow them. Followed them or tried to catch them. You're putting the puzzle together. Yeah. We're getting evidence that they either went this way or this way to this city or that city. And you're trying to get their next move to cut them off. I've personally done that with some of my veterans.

We have had targets on our head and been alerted to it by government. bounties because we're affecting their bottom line. If you affect the criminal's bottom line, I mean, they got nothing to lose except money, and that's all matters to them, whatever agenda they have. So do you guys plan,

like, are you guys literally like back at headquarters, like tracking these people and tracking each cell and trying to like figure out the next move? I mean, are you like strategizing this, like a war against these guys and trying to stay one step,

ahead of where they are. Do you guys have people on the inside work that are that are close to them that are reporting back to you? We do have informants, yes. You do. We do. When we do these operations, whether or not we have one going on right now, I can't tell you, but I have to kill you. Which you could very easily do. No, I don't know about that. But no, we don't do that necessarily at our headquarters facility. We do that on the fly. I mean, we're very small team. We as a nonprofit, in my opinion, do the most with the least, just like the Marine Corps. We don't have all this fancy technology. We'd love to have it, yeah.

But no, we do a lot on a bootstrap budget. And I think that's a testament to our characters and organization. But no, we put these investigations together on the fly while we're moving and going after these guys. I mean, we're on the road nonstop. You don't sleep. you uh we do have informants that and they're locals and they work tirelessly these are africans that that give a damn but um i'll say this though our biggest success in counterpoaching though is not the the flashy stuff i mean we've had people label us as mercenaries that's not what we

are at all my god like it's that's it's not how you fix this what we do that has the most effect is by taking subject matter experts from around the world different trades whether it's crocheting a blanket to making stuffed animals to, you know, cups and, you know, household goods and items. And we bring them in. It's a hand-up approach, not a handout. And we teach the locals gardening, for instance. They're gardening so much now that they can sell their produce to other locals instead of spending all their money to take a taxi two hours to the grocery store and wasting it all there. They're growing their own food, feeding their own family, and selling their goods, and making money. It's a one health approach.

So it's like, and it takes time, you know, but now these people, they could care less about poaching because they know that, hey, number one, there's some badass rangers on that reserve that were trained by U.S. war veterans or international war veterans because we do have international. We've got an Italian guy over there now. He's awesome. But anyways, they, they know like, hey, it's not worse going in there. Well, I'm going to work with these guys. This is cool. Like, we've got a relationship. They're helping us. Like you're watching people from two opposite ends of the planet. Way different backgrounds come together for one common purpose. And that's to save the ecosystem that we consider ourselves a part of. That's super cool, man.

Yeah. That's super fucking cool. What, um, what, wasn't there a story when you guys were doing something and you saw some farmers, like on the side of the road or some guys like chopping, like cutting grass? What were they doing? And you're like inadvertently bust. a whole group of poachers. So we didn't actually bust them. It was the Rangers that we were

instructing. So Lynn Westover Jr. is one of my best friends. He's, I'm going to say he's five, six on a good day, but he is a badass. With a good pair of shoes. Marine force recon, scout sniper. He's probably 140 pounds soaking wet. Well, and I's buck fifty-nine. He likes Coors Light. Tatted up everywhere. And the nice this guy, but he's brilliant. You should have him on your show because he's like what he teaches is incredible. So it's human terrain mapping and behavior pattern recognition. Okay. But the only ones in Africa that teach it and it's he was our director of operations, but his company is doing well now that that COVID is over in his lockdown. So he's back to his company, SLC Square, which is six layer

concepts and consulting. And they teach you how to think like a criminal and pick up different behavior patterns. So they're teaching it to police departments all over this country. And it's a good thing. Every, it teaches you how to work smarter, not harder and how to mitigate risk and mitigate a potential for escalation of force without, you know, before it happens. Right. So it's like, hey, you're coming to me. Let's say you're a police officer or you're, let's say you're a park ranger and I'm a local. Well, I know that you just got trained by these vet paul guys, these veterans, these war veterans. Now I'm, I'm really worried about you. Like, I'm nervous. You're talking to me. If I get pulled over out here, I,

I don't care what anybody says. I'm nervous too. It's not just, you know, everybody gets nervous and you get pulled over by a car. It's an authoritative figure. So Danny Park Ranger comes up to me and you're talking to me. I don't have anything to hide, but I'm nervous. Like, I'm just like, oh, shit, man. Oh, last time a Ranger talked to me beat my ass or something for no reason.

Which we also, that's a whole other topic. We've seen that happen. And we have extinguished that type of behavior. and shit out of all. Oh, Park Rangers. Yeah, because, you know, poachers kill their families and things like that. Long story short, I decide, you know what? I'm in a fight or flight mode. I'm flying. I'm going. And I take off running. I take off running because this guy's being aggressive towards me. Does that mean that Danny, the Park Rangers, should turn and shoot me in the back? No, God no. But I'm able to talk to him beforehand and figure out, hey, let me see if this guy does have something to hide. based on his behavior patterns. Is he rubbing the back of his neck? That means his histamines are up. You know, different things that he's doing.

If these histamines are up, he's definitely hiding something. Is he nervous because he's hiding something or because I'm an authoritative figure? And then let's calm that down. Let's bring it down. Let's find common interest. And let's establish who you are and what you're really doing. So the first time that Lynn was the lead instructor here was teaching this on the very first day of a five-day course. and we sent the park rangers to the local lodge to grab lunch after the first portion,

the morning portion. On the way there, based on what they learned in the course, they saw these guys cutting grass on the side of the road, which is not abnormal. They got to feed their cattle. There were three guys. I think it was three. And what ended up happening is they were picking up cues. The park rangers was picking up their behavior cues.

They turned the vehicle around, came back, started interviewing guys. Kept them there. All of a sudden, there's five more. guys on the other side of the fence. They had just stashed their machetes and firearms here getting ready to go, Poitrino's. Oh, shit. And the Park Rangers came back so excited.

We did what you said. We did what you taught us and it worked. It worked. They didn't have to chase them in the bush or anything. These guys just straight up admitted it. Didn't have to shoot them, didn't have to beat them up. Nope. They didn't get, the Park Rangers didn't get beat up or shot.

Yeah. It was a win-win. Yeah, it's interesting how much more you can accomplish when you can understand. the way the other person is thinking, the way they anticipate what the opponent or the aggress or whoever it is, the adversary, anticipate what they're going to do next, anticipate their way of thinking,

everything else. I mean, even with, you know, I know it's a big part of war is being able to integrate with the community and the locals and being able to have open communication with people, understand how they think, understand their culture, their way of life,

instead of just like being in your own bubble and, you know, us versus them, no communication because then you don't really understand anything and communication is that got to be the most important part of resolving any conflict, especially conflicts that are fucking as broad as that. These people are the ones that suffer at the end of the day. Yeah. It's not the soldier, no matter which side that you're on.

It's the people that suffer the most. Does everybody there speak English or there, What's the main language in those countries? It depends. I mean, South Africa has 11 national languages, recognized languages. That's just the ones that are official. Most people do, or there's a member of the tribe that speaks English. A lot of my guys speak a language.

I do not retain language very well. What is the second most prevalent language? What is the most prevalent language there? I would say English Afrikaans. English Afrikaans. Okay. Yeah. Zulu.

Zulu. Yeah, you've got all kinds of languages. Yeah, it depends on the tribe and the area. Yeah. Yeah, I always wonder how much language barriers have to do with shit like that. You know what I mean? Yeah. I mean, it's one thing when you're when you're with a person face to face,

even if they don't speak the same language, you understand them. You understand their intent. But when it comes to like, you know, people on another continent, you know, making calls about things on, on a complete, you know, making calls to people. that are commander, commander troops on another continent that they're in control of. There's not only the barrier of space and time and everything else, there's the language barrier too. And then you're adding a whole other element. You don't really fucking know what these people are thinking or what their intent is.

Maybe you know by, you know, by and large what their objectives are, what like the military objectives are. But the people, you don't even, you don't understand the people until you're like really, really there. with your feet on the ground, you know. Yep. And I wonder how much of that language barrier has to do with conflict, not just in Africa, but everywhere. It's an interesting, interesting idea. You know, even if you think, like Russia and Ukraine, you know what I mean?

Like, we don't understand Russian. We don't know how to speak Russian or Ukrainian. Like, I wonder what these people, what they're really, what they're really believe or what they're really being told. Because all, all I know is what fucking is translation to mean English on fucking the internet. Yeah. I mean. Yeah. So I always think about like the difference between that compared to being on the ground actually talking to people because no matter what you're told anywhere, if you're told something by whether you sit on TV or hear it on a podcast, in my experience,

actually being there first person talking to people who live there, it's always different. It's always different being there in person. Yeah. I mean, hey, at the end of the day, no matter the language, no matter the frustrations or the matter of the conflict that you're in, you always just got to treat people with respect. Yeah. And try to have some level of empathy, a healthy one, because there are second and third order effects that come with conflict that,

that, you know, make things bigger than they should be. You kill something, like, if I go out there and I, you know, God forbid I have to shoot somebody. And I never, ever want to be in that position again. And that man, man, he's got a wife. a brother, a son, a dad, a mom, uncles, aunts. Now you've got a whole bunch of enemies. They don't care if he's wrong or right.

Yeah. In most cases, all they know is you just killed somebody that they loved. Yes. And that they needed. Yes. And so now they're gunning for you. Yes, man. That's something that people don't, oh, I don't think a lot of people think about too,

is you have, like, everyone says you have to have empathy. And you should, like empathy is important. You have to understand the other. person where they're at. But if you, if somebody on, in your group killed their kid, they don't have any fucking empathy for you or anybody. If somebody did anything to my kid, I have no empathy. I'm going to slaughter a whole village. Exactly. You know what I mean? Like, like, like that's real. That's real in a lot of places. A lot of these poor places, a lot of, I'm sure it's real in Iraq. You were there. You would know. Yeah. People who had their fucking kids,

murder. That's the worst thing you can do to anybody. Like you're going to change somebody. You're going to turn somebody into a killing machine. Yeah. Yep. And can you blame them? No. I mean, you can't. You're a dad. Yeah. But you're on the other side of it too. You're on the other side of it. Like some of the people you were fighting, those people were in that position. But you're also in a position where you're not going to get killed. You're not going to get killed. Your guys aren't going to get killed. When you're in that conflict, it is. It is. It is. It is. is what it is. You can't sit there and say, oh, we got to have empathy. You're in a fucking never die situation. Yep. These guys in Africa are, I don't know, I don't know what their

situation is, but I know that a lot of them are desperate. Desperation breeds evil. Like you said, it, not necessarily evil in all cases, but it breeds, you know, it, it breeds, desperation breeds crime. Yeah, we talked about the yesterday too was, well, Guinea-Busau, the country in Northern Africa. We talked about, there's a country in Northern Africa called Guinea-Busau that is essentially a cartel with a flag. It's so corrupted that the head of the Navy was literally like spearheading all of the cartels trafficking cocaine into Africa into that country. It was all run by cartel. All the heads of every department there were in government was corrupted by the cartel.

And, you know, that just goes to show you the poorest countries are going to be the ones that are corrupted the most. And there's a lot of poor countries in Africa. Yep. That's why, hey, ecotourism and one health approach is the way to go. And people don't need to do this stuff. Yeah. How much of like the China influence do you see personally? Because like, yeah, I watched a documentary there a day that showed, like, how China's invested millions of dollars in every single country except for, like, one.

They're building roads. They're building bridges. They're ports. Ports. They're building. They're fucking dumping so much money in Africa. How much of that, like, do you see when you're there? I mean, it's not really in my face a lot.

I mean, East Africa was in my face a lot or whenever I'm there. I mean, they're driving, I mean, they're driving poaching hands down. And that's not racist to say that, hey, China is the reason that elephants are going extinct. And it is, they're the buyers. Well, there's about a lot of them. 90% of the world's ivory is consumed by Chinese citizens. But now you say that too much in public. You're all of a sudden a racist.

Really? Who said that? Somebody called us. That is so. Oh, yeah. And then like when the COVID thing happened, just bringing up the idea that it could have been because of a wet market and the trading. Oh, now we're finding out that there is a high product. It could be. Who knows? There are diseases that come from these places. I'm not saying that's where it came from. But you bring up that idea and conversation. And now you're a, what do you call the xenophobe? Yeah. It's like, okay. So anyways, I'm here to save animals. I could give two shits about your feelings. It's all about intent. I don't intend to. offend anybody, but it's the fact. It's ancient Chinese medicinal medicine says that rhino horn can cure cancer and erectile dysfunction on all kinds of stuff. Yeah. Like that is it. And if you can't accept that, then, you know, you need to do some soul searching because it's, it's this, you know,

tiptoeing around people's feelings that is, is destroying our planet right now, you know. But I'll say that, yeah, China is a big, big reason, probably arguably the biggest reason that these animals are going extinct because they're exploiting desperation with these desperate communities. Like I get to have empathy for the xenophobia thing and that's wrong in, you know, when people intended to be that way. But why can't you have more empathy for the people on the ground in Africa whose heritage and future are being destroyed? Yeah. By these bullshit, proven to be bullshit, philosophies. What is being done to curb the, the kingpins that are buying, that are fueling this, that are purchasing all these rhino horns and all these elephant tusks? Yeah. You know, there's an amazing organization called Wild Aid. And there's the CEO of

Wild Aid. I'm not sure if he's still a CEO. I think he is. He said this years ago, and I totally agree with it. He's like, you can't just anti-poach your way out of this problem. He's 100% right. Yeah. You can't hit the root of it. I mean, we're just trying to slow the bleeding. We're striving to stop the bleeding. Will we stop it? I don't, the only thing that's going to stop it is, is changing the culture and educating people. And Wild Aid does that. So they're amazing NGOs that are trying to influence policies in these companies, in these countries. the problem is the enforcement. So, like China will come to the table and say, yeah, you can no longer do this or that,

and they'll temporarily suspend the trade of ivory or rhino horn, whatever it may be. And everybody gets super gung-ho about it at first. But the guys that have been doing, you know, conservation work for many years longer than I have, you can tell they don't get super excited because they're like, yeah, we'll see if they enforce it, see how long this lasts. The way to do it is you've got to educate people. You've got to educate the younger cultures and generate. coming up.

You can't change a culture overnight. You definitely can't change a culture in Asia as a white American man. I can't do that. That's going to make them want to go and poach. Yeah. But no, there are some amazing NGOs like Wilde that I mentioned that are out there doing that stuff. But while they're doing that, we focus on our slice.

And that's, hey, we're going to be that muscle that comes in, works with the community. And we're going to risk our lives, put our lives on the line. I'll tell you right now, and I say, this with full confidence that not every single veteran that I've ever deployed to Africa and that we have on the ground now would give their life for not just an elephant or a rhino but any animal if they had to do that just like they sacrificed for the or were willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for their brothers and sisters in war they are now doing that for these animals at the beginning of COVID I said to each one of them hey guys um Lynn Westover our former director of

operations and I, we're prepared to come over there and hold it down. If you guys need to come home and support your families, we totally understand. I just, please give me an answer by Friday. I think it's on Wednesday. And right there on the call, every single one of them said, absolutely not. I'm not going home. Wow. These animals are my livelihood. They are my everything. They are my purpose. And I could not live. We cannot live with ourselves, knowing that we went home to be with family. And one of these animal styles. That's power, man. Yeah, definitely.

That's purpose. That's pure. You can't argue with that. Yeah, man. How cool is it that? I mean, it's very rare when people are able to find something in life that, like, it hits every parallel, every value. It lines up with all of your values.

And not only does it, like, repair trauma and, like, patch holes in you as a human, but it also helps other people too. Not only that, but you can do cool fucking shit, like save animals, go to Africa and like travel and do all that kind of stuff, but you were able to, when you're able to repair a part of your life that was suffering and be able to do something badass and help other people,

you've literally like lined up all these things that you can do simultaneously that also helps other people. Like you have one mission that's now your job that is fucking doing so much cool shit and you love it. That's so rare for people to be able to find, especially somebody who's had to deal with what you had to deal with coming back from war. Like the most is 22 people a day, you said, are killing themselves and you've been able to literally turn your fucking life around and change other people's lives. Like just for a normal person who didn't have to deal with the anxiety and the depression of dealing with. trauma and war. Most people can't figure that out anyways. It's rare that people can figure out something like that. But you were able to do it. And that's fucking cool. It's rare that people are

able to do that. Listen, man, I don't make the money that I used to. You know, my wife and I do well because we live within our means and we just appreciate it every day that we have on this planet, this beautiful gift of life that we have. We don't take anything for granted. And, you know, There are people that have a lot more than we do, but I guarantee you we are among the happiest people on the planet, and it's stressful what I do. I don't have the fun job on the ground anymore, but you know what?

It is an absolute honor, and it is such a blessing that God's given me this ability to help, not just animals, but veterans as well. If I could deploy every single good veteran, and I'm not talking about guys that just were on SEAL Team 2000, or, you know, Ricky Recon, I'm talking about guys that need this and want to do this for the right reasons, men and women, if I could deploy every single one of them, I would because they deserve it. And it's my mission now. I mean, there have been times where I sat there and I'm like, this is so hard. Yeah.

This is so hard. I mean, Abe, I don't think I can do this anymore. My wife's like, you're not quitting. I know you're not. And I'll never quit this. This is my life. And it's just, I wish more people. people followed their intuition because your intuition is not just the your gut's not just telling you something that's your brain saying hey you need to do this yeah and if they did that you'd see a lot more happiness on this planet that doesn't mean do something stupid like oh my intuition's telling me that you need to go start a new Kool-Aid brand or something you know what I mean but yeah hey do it with the right reasons and just just keep going it's rare man it's a very it's a very uh it's very inspiring. Tell people where they can find out about VETPaw and like find your videos, your

website, how they can support you. How can people donate to it or how are you guys funded? So we're a hundred percent of nonprofit. We don't receive federal government money foreign or domestic. We'd love to at some point. But I take pride in that. This is, VATPAL is only here because people have donated a penny to, you know, a thousand dollars. or more, you know, we're, it's not just Ryan Tate doing this. It's the veterans on the ground, but it's not just them and me. It's, it's the people that give a shit about this. So you can go to vetpa.org, V-E-T-P-A-W.org.

We have a donate page. You can donate stock. You can donate gear and equipment. We need uniforms for Rangers, any camo uniforms, good condition, obviously. We need new boots for Rangers. We need rifle scopes, night vision, thermal. We need vehicles, truck. so badly right now. I need to get six new vehicles. They cost like...

Yeah, what kind of trucks do you guys use again? Well, we've been using forerunners or four tuners and we just Americanized them and through good tires and suspension on them, but they're soccer mom trucks. So those chassis aren't reinforced and they break in time. We need land cruisers. In order to get the proper land cruiser we need, it's $80,000. What my guys can do with that land cruiser is incredible. Incredible. There's, we, we, can protect so many more animals and land. We need vehicles. You can follow us on vet paul at vet Paul on Twitter, Facebook is just vet paul and then Instagram is at that Paul. We got some cool videos there trying to get our YouTube up and going here soon. So you guys have a YouTube channel?

We do, but it's not it's not where it needs to be. We just, we're, we're an international organization 24-7 and we've got such a small team. So it'll take time, but we'll get there. Cool, man. You got to come to Africa. Yes, me and Julian are going to come to Africa if I can talk to my wife and let me go. And you can pay to come out and stay in our small farmhouse lodge too. It's really cheap. And 100% of the profits go towards our operations. So you spend time with the veterans, very exclusive.

You don't run into tourists or anything like that. And you're incredibly safe. Safer than we are sitting right here. Yeah, that's one of the biggest things I always think about Africa. Like A, am I going to eat in? B, do I have to have an armed security? Nothing is going to mate with you. promise. Unless your wife comes. That's that's reassuring. And you don't have to pay anything.

You've done enough for us. Thank you for this privilege and opportunity. Man, it means the world. So you're an angel to us, brother. Thank you, Ryan. I greatly appreciate you and everything you're doing. Super grateful.