Danny Jones Podcast - #257 - 22 SAS Operator: DARPA Biotech & Future Super Soldiers | Jon Truett

Episode Date: August 29, 2024

Jon Truett served 20 years in the 22 SAS Regiment of United Kingdom Special Forces. SPONSORS https://whiterabbitenergy.com/?ref=DJP - Use code DJP for 20% off EPISODE LINKS https://instagram.com/jon_neuro https://linkedin.com/in/jon-truett-60841b222 https://nmesgroup.com FOLLOW DANNY JONES https://www.instagram.com/dannyjones https://twitter.com/jonesdanny OUTLINE 00:00 - Joining British Army's Parachute Regiment 09:15 - British SAS vs. U.S. Special Forces 18:07 - British SAS recruitment process 25:59 - Zarqawi and the Iraq war 38:59 - Facing death 46:49 - Deadly Mumbai attacks 53:56 - Problematic parenting 01:02:02 - Why military special forces join for life 01:09:06 - Nostalgia is an illness 01:12:38 - How you can die from a broken heart 01:22:22 - Monitoring soldiers' mental health 01:28:02 - Why soldiers scrub their identity 01:33:42 - Working w/ Darpa & NASA 01:37:46 - Musculoskeletal gateway system 01:47:58 - Early Parkinson's detection 01:52:52 - DARPA super soldiers created with brain implants 02:01:18 - Prototype musculoskeletal stimulation technology Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Well, thank you for the invite. Yes, it's a privilege. So why don't you go ahead and give people a brief introduction into who you are and your background? Okay, so I had a pretty mixed school background. There's a bit of music in there that helped us into schools. I went to all types of different schools. Really quite a mixed period. I had a great family, but I ended up as an industrial roofer.

And in that time, my brother had joined the parachute regiment. I kind of looked at him, looked at what he was doing, and that kind of fascinated me. And because industrial roofing wasn't going our way, it was in those years when didn't have any safety equipment when I started, and therefore we could do well on price and coverage of areas. They started bringing safety equipment in, but it wasn't well engineered, you know, and it was becoming fairly perilous. But, you know, also very, very hard to make viable, very, very long days, playing a lot of sport,

a lot of rugby. So, you know, in that, you know, I looked, I went up effectively unemployed for a while and then did what is a very routine story. And I walked into a recruiting office, asked to join the parachute regiment. The sergeant who recruited me tried to persuade me I needed to be an engineer. I told her, my brother's a paratrooper. I know what I'm asking for. And then, you know, applied, it took, from what I remember, about six months to start basic training. The parachute regiment is incredible.

unit for a foundation. And, well, as a career, I moved on. But, you know, for me, it was my foundation. It was a brilliant place to be. The Marines and the Parachute Regiment, you know, amongst the elite infantry units of the British Army. The Parachute Regiment itself, it's nicknamed the Blood Clock, because they stay very tight-knit.

And that's inculcated into you, that kind of loyalty and, you know, that duty to the unit. And essentially, they are the British Army's, sort of elite attacking offensive force. So when you're doing that basic, so that the secondary phase training, you know, a lot of it is about being out in the field,

doing platoon up to company level attacks on hills. And, you know, it's a tough process, but it's very, very good foundation to have. I ended up doing quite a lot of boxing for them as well. That's not necessarily why I joined the army. And playing rugby, which sounds delightful.

There was two Northern Ireland tours in there. but that was after a good Friday piece of cords so they were very quiet we spent a lot of time cordoning off things in roads that then were identified as biscuit tins or whatever you know so but it was an interesting

start to a military career and foundations as a soldier were you know exceptional you couldn't compete with them but I put in for Special Forces selection and nominally the SS went and started selection and passed first time which is a lot of people don't

but selection is a very very tough process I've done two things in the British military that have absolutely lived up to their name most things you take on end up being a bit of an anti-climax that wasn't and that was P company for the parachute regiment which is short and sharp

a series of tests including milling and your train osium is a test to see whether you can jump out of a plane or not, jumping off a scaffold into a net. And other types, there's a very famous event called the Log Run, which is physically extremely demanding,

and you have to work as a team. And then selection itself, selection itself is over six months, tested every day. They quickly lose the numbers. Roughly an average of five or under percent do end up passing. Some selections, they have zero.

Five percent end up passing. It's one of the challenges of all these special operations forces units that have such an important purpose in the overall military. And it's getting people in to them. No one wants you to fail. They need these units populated. If you love diving into culture and comedy, like on Danny Jones podcast, playoff hockey is right up your alley. NHL on T&T has the best coverage, making every game feel intense and unpredictable. Playoff hockey is a different level.

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And you're no better off Than the weakest person on the course And that's what they're looking for You know they're not even really interested in you as a person Until they've took you to the point Where they can start seeing your mental resilient You know, it's really useless to start wasting resources On so many people

When actually, so once you've proven You're mentally resilient enough And that ends on enduring March, which is, I forget the actual distance, but it's huge distance. Once you've done all the marching, you go into the jungle and get tested. That's a very, very hard environment to be in. Very challenging, you know, we train for every environment. And you need to be very, very disciplined in there.

You know, everything wants to eat you in the jungle, and most of it's not very big. So it's very uncomfortable. You go to bed after dark and you get up before first light. it's very, very humid and the jungle is by its environment it's oppressive it's, you know,

everything's making noise you can't really see ahead of you more than 20 foot so it's a great environment in order to test an individual's ability not only individually how strong

and how professional but also can he work with other team members a key important part of selection is to identify those that can work as a team you can be brilliant absolutely superb

better than everybody else but if you can't make that work with everybody else then you're not going to be much good to any military unit to be honest then you go on and learn all your skills or your various skills

that you'll then have to take on in many senses it's like it was my university I did some of my levels but didn't do anything else how old were you when you when you first went into the parachute regiment so I was quite I was a bit older

which sounds not, I was 21, so that sounds young, but it wasn't. But you can join as early as 16, right? So you can join junior power at 16. So it's not, you can't, you can't get used as a soldier. Okay, got it. But you can train and adopt all of the good culture that comes from being in the military. And some people do, you know, and some, you know, some of my colleagues had become through junior power and all they had known was 16. I'd say that, you know, I had an advantage because I worked in.

industrial roofing gangs, had a bit of life experience, came in, and it definitely made me look at the training in a different light. I was like, these people aren't trying to break you, right? It's like everyone says they are. They want you to pass. They're trying to identify the skills that you carry, have you got the characteristic attributes they need you to have. And they're not succeeding in their job if there's no one left at the end, but you have to meet certain brackets and parameters. What specifically are they looking for, like mentally, So mentally strong, the ability to take decisions but also listen to others. But when you need to, you need to make decisions.

Lead others, but also support others. And that's very, very important what we do. We're given nominally positions to lead and sometimes someone has to just step forward and do that. So they're looking for all of those characteristics in there. They are looking for soldiering skills at a certain standard. They can't teach you from you. but that doesn't mean you couldn't make it as a medic. In fact, one of my friends was a medic, was an infanteer.

Now, generally, infanteers from elite regiments used to do better. That doesn't necessarily hold now. But generally, you know, but it's open to everybody. You know, the SS since its inception has been, if you were good enough, and to a certain extent you have a background we understand, then you're welcome to come and try selection. So in the unit you've got mainly British people but you've got many others from different countries

and that gives it a real strength in its diversity and who it takes from. You know, you don't necessarily want in our special forces a whole group of Marines or a whole group of parachute regiment. You need some. You need other skills and other ways of thinking coming in as well. Right. So that's what gives its strength, its ability to recruit widely

and its ability to sort people out. And, you know, if they're starting to drop the brackets and letting people into a job, that then is, you know, the limits of what you will have to do in your job can't be negotiated. You know, they're set. And, you know, so if you start dropping the standards of what people have to demonstrate and achieve,

you're only putting people at further risk. Right. Many won't manage to keep up with it. For people who may not be super familiar with the British, military and the different tiers of military, what is like a comparison of the British SAS into like American forces? What would that be equivalent to? First of all, the British military doesn't have tiers. The only way we mentioned tiers is to provide a comparative example. But our mission sets actually cover, because the tier represents a certain mission set that

you're suitably trained to do and given. So our tiers would be the highest levels of Special Forces USOCOM units, but we've worked with every single one of them. And, you know, especially with RRAC in mind, we work side by side and in many ways learned so much from them. You know, we weren't necessarily a suitable Special Forces unit to take on some of the challenges that we were then posed in some of the latter of RARC tours.

We learned quickly off each other. We certainly learned a huge amount of them, you know, and adopted some of the TTPs and tactics that they use, which probably protected this in a way that we wouldn't have known how to. So it's acted as a catalyst, you know, being able to work so closely together. And, you know, we don't share anything, but we work alongside each other as partners. And certainly from my perspective in the British military,

that's been invaluable in our evolution as such into an appropriate military force in the present day. but we're good at various you know we're very very strong at certain other factors so I think we did learn off each other so is it similar to like like seal team six or something like that yeah similar to seal team six yeah okay so when you you join the parachute regimen

and then you applied to go join the SAS and that is you said at 5% of people get through that in general you know so I mean the figures and the statistics but in general they expect a 5% pass rate Now, if you get a 10% That's really marvelous But it's very much I mean, the more important figure is

How many people can you get onto that course In the first place that are suitable? No point in getting a whole load of people We're never going to make it to the end And to be honest with you, selection is very tough, right? You should only get two goes at doing it Because there's weight involved in your hip joints

You know, and when you're doing that sort of And it's very, very arduous You know, in order to test your mind and your brain it's your suitability. You're taken to levels that you shouldn't be doing on a normal basis.

So can you walk me through what it was like during that process? Like from the first time you went in, I'm sure there was like a bunch of guys that were in there for this trial period? Yes.

How many guys were there? And then like, can you explain what that was like? So it's well-organized chaos. You know, you go down to a Welsh area with lovely mountains that seem to have bad weather

all the time. It's either ferociously hot or you can't see fog. You stay in bunk beds, staying around each other, you don't know each other. You quickly make friends, but it's that sort of attitude that, you know, you don't know who's going to be there in a week. You make friends to the people who share bunks next to you. I had certain friends from Parachute Regiment on selection with me, so, you know, we kind of hang out together. But every day we start doing tests, physical tests, hills, long marches.

How many guys total? So I think on mine, 240. 240 is what they started off with. that quickly, quickly goes down to I think roughly 70 at the end of the first week, which is not surprising because that's when the physical tests, that's what they're doing to. It leads to a test march, nickname Fan Dance, and you see a high failure rate on that.

Everything's a timed march. You have to keep up an average speed, you're carrying weight, and that's really the test, you know, and there's no sort of real, very complex things you're asking. to do. They're all pretty simple, but they take a lot of physical exertion and mental commitment. And what year are we talking that you did this? So I did selection zero two. What's that?

2002. This is in 2002. Yeah, so I joined Parachute Regiment 98. So right after 9-11? Yes. I remember 9-11 happening when I was in Parachute Regiment doing my drills course. And I remember seeing it and thinking, do you know what, this is going to change everything. I'm remembering how I joined the Army.

Didn't join. A lot of people were aware of the Army and wanted to do it for a lifetime career. Right. I kind of joined it because Industrial Roof and it kind of ran out and I looked elsewhere and noticed, you know, the opportunities in the Army. And you just thought your brother did it. Yeah, so I had enough cues to say, hey, this looks, you know, really interesting, very good. And the Army is a great place to be, you know.

There's a lot of challenges involved in serving in there and in particular through certain periods. We had a very, very intensive operational period. And through my career, I've done 19 operational tours and varying lengths. You know, there's been a heavy weight on Iraq, eight Iraq tours. But a number of Afghanistan tours, a number of classified others, have operated in areas where, you know, people are fully aware of where we've been, but it's not publicly acknowledged. And operating against, you know, extremist groups at a national level, you know,

and in particular, you know, in northern Iraq, you know, they were threatening to destabilise the oil market. They were taking over brigades' worth of military equipment and that really compelled people to act in a way. It's still to be decided whether it was genocide against the Yazidis, but it was certainly a pretty, pretty severe level. So that drove an intervention into there to support the forces that are around it to help them stop their progress.

That's a tremendously interesting thing to have took part in. And in fact, that particular period of operations were all down the front line. People think helicopters, you know, you're moving about, you're very mobile. Actually, we were just given an area to preserve over that was one of the most kinetic areas. An area where they're just trying to break through the front line all the time and constantly analyzing what are they going to do, where they're going to try and punch free the front line, just to protect the ground that had been won back from them. So, you know, all of these military operations have different types. They're all complex.

And they definitely teach you how to be a human being. Yeah. Because when you're sitting in like dugouts and, you know, the clouds come in, you know, you're not going to get any air support. You know, and it all goes dark. You can't really, you're kind of wondering what everyone's up to, you know, where the next threat's going to come from. So, you know, it's not always that we're on tremendously supported mission.

Sometimes we're supporting others in trying to keep, just manage in what they're doing. And a lot of these forces, there's philions that are quickly trained in soldiers, you know, they're not dedicated soldiers. So 9-11 happens, and then you decide to try out for the SAS. Yep. And started out with 240 people, you said, roughly. I had already put an application in for... Oh, you had already put the application in, okay.

But I was finishing off my courses in Parachute Regiment. I do remember hearing about it, and it, you know, it struck me. just immediately, you know, this is going to be really, really impactful. And, you know, it defines certainly my operational career, which, you know, is shaped a huge amount of activity in military terms. And, you know, also, you know, I think it would be very, very complacent forget, you know, the origins of where that particular attack happened. They're not new, you know, the risk and the threat remains in so.

many places. And, you know, it's the vigilance of others and us being able to support them in doing that. Britain is a very small place. You know, it has quite a high risk of terrorism at times. I've been to small countries in the Middle East that have very, very, very complicated domestic terrorist threats that manifest themselves in extremely dangerous situations. You know, these people are not necessarily, they've got degrees, but they don't have

employment, they're then easily, you know, influenced into this mind state that everyone else is the enemy, you know, the institution is the enemy. And they're, you know, they're very capable putting together extremely dangerous and complex problems, which take highly trained people to come up against and solve. Right. So, you know, just, you know, managing and advising, mentoring, training, however it's done, accompanying, partnering, you know, it's the best way to approach these problems. And, you know, there's been a wide array over 20 years. I was operational throughout. I've had a really wide array of operations that I've done, types of operations. So let's go back to the recruiting part where you said that there was 240 people.

The first week went down to 70. I believe 70. And that was just from the physical stuff, the marches. And then what happened? And then we had jungle when it went down. down to around about 30-ish. Okay. And then you drop off after that because you go into minor skills. People are recognised as not suitable. And you end up with your final figure.

And then you get posted into... How many people did it end with? 12 as far as I'm right. 12. 12. 12. You know, and the unit is such a busy place that those 12, you know, you don't really see each other that much.

You know, your passing ships in a night a lot of the time. But as I said, the most important figure to note is the starting figure because they need to keep the numbers up of suitable applicants in order to get any at the end. And sometimes those figures have been down to 130. You know, sometimes those figures have been higher, you know, but you need to have that consistent engaging with willing volunteers. You know, it's the same as the British military. You know, it needs willing volunteers, same as U.S. military, same as any military. As a professional army, you know, needs to willing.

Well, I guess they're willing. The people in the prisons that they're letting out, those people, I guess they would rather go fight and sit in prison. Some people would do it other ways. Yeah. So once it got down to 12 people, what were they kind of like trying to figure out about your, or what sort of tests were they doing on you then?

So when it comes down to roughly about 35 or 30 or just below 30 it was, then you start going into the real techniques that you're going to need. need to be able to deliver. So you start working on, you know, CQB and you start working on team techniques and TTPs, CQB being close a quarter battle. Okay. So it's all about going into buildings, being able to operate in close confines. You don't, you can't, don't cover any of the additional skills then.

But once you pass, and that was the 12, they go to their various teams. And then they start learning skills. and then in the unit you never stop learning skills. And you simply bolt on more and more skills. It's like constant education all the time you're not outworking. You're kind of educating or you're at rest or you're preparing to, you know, prove your currency in order to do the next iteration of operations. So it's quite intensive and it's, you know, so enjoyable, you know,

because you're learning all the time and you're learning new skills all the time. So, you know, I was learning all sorts of stuff, how to control aircraft, how to control airspace. What was the hardest part of that whole process for you? For selection. Yeah. The jungle is designed to be, really. The jungle. You know, the hills phase is really intense physically.

But the jungle is the bit where you see people starting to question themselves, am I good enough? And that's what they're looking for, right? You know, there's people opt out. And that's the highest failure rate after the hills. It's people saying, I don't, you know, I can't really do this. You hear it. They start talking about something at home. And you just hear it start creeping in and it's kind of...

The cracks start getting wider. It's not an excuse, but it's kind of an explanation to others. Yeah. And then they'll choose. And, you know, what they're looking for, that's a key sort of attribute they're looking for in each individual is, you know, at certain points, do you come to question yourself too much? Do you doubt your ability?

to find a way through it. You know, and almost all those people to opt out, you know, they probably regret it, you know, probably as much. Were you questioning yourself at all during that process? I said, I mean, I had a sort of fairly simple approach to it. What was your approach? Which is just like, you know, I'll either get injured and I won't be able to do it, or you're carrying me off, but it's up to you to fail me, right?

Right. Or you can fail me because I'm not good enough. And I think if you take all the self-choice out of it, you know, and you just get on with what you've been asked to do. So it's not going to be easy, right? So it's not going to be comfortable. Right. So, yeah, you accept all of that. You just go for it every time.

You do your best. Every single time you turn up and resolve that it's their choice to decide you're not good enough. Then it certainly removes some of the mental pressure. And believe me, you know, all these courses are designed to make you question yourself because they want to see how you react to it. What was the perspective of you and guys like you after 9-11 happened? Was it like, you know, did you guys feel like a strong pull to go and fight in Iraq and do all this stuff? I think, you know, at that time, the British Army had been doing operations. We were very, very close to U.S. forces.

I mean, no one felt like this was just sort of the U.S. had been attacked, you know. And certainly over the collective military, we knew what was coming. but we had very, very good relationships built upon history and legacy with units we ended up serving alongside. And certainly, you know, it impacted us, whether it could have impacted us as high as some of the, you know, you go from New York and just the physical impact of it and then the country. I'm not sure, but, you know, it wasn't that much different in our perception of what it was and the fact that it needed to be confirmed. confronted. Was it weird? Did you guys feel like, oh, we need to go help the Americans fight?

Or did you feel like, well, like, you know, this isn't our war to fight? No, there was no element of it. It's not ours. Right. I think people were, you know, there was no resistance to it. No resistance to it at all. No resistance to it at all. You know, the realization there's a group out there that was that level of threat, you know, got to that point where it could do that sort of thing.

and it couldn't have, you know, being controlled in the ways it had been beforehand because it wasn't new. None of these things are new. They just metamorphose into something else, another life. You know, the fundamental sort of basis of it, you know, you can never really get rid of. So, you know, there was definitely not anyone that was disputing at all.

It was a shared challenge. How it would fall out in terms of responsibilities East was unclear to us, but you know, we know we were very closely wedded to US forces. We had very good working relationships. We had, you know, so I think we're generally assumed that we'd be as is involved as anyone else. And, you know, our art got shared out into operational theatres. And, you know, the UK's, you know, a small but very effective army. But everyone faced their challenges.

You know, and military operations is no such thing as getting it right. You have to have a continually evolving strategy. You know, they're complex scenarios that kind of sort of evolve in front of you. Very, very frustratingly so at times because you think, you know, hey, remember a lot of this is done on the perception, a basis of how will these people see us if we act like this, if we do this, you know. You know, when we first went into Iraq, we were extremely popular, you know, and that's, because they weren't unhappy that the regime had been removed so quickly. But there was a void behind it that then changed the atmosphere. And, you know, by tour three, we were mainly responsible for preventing the descent into civil war.

You know, there were people in Iraq like an artful person called Zukawi, who knew exactly how to play on people in people in Iraq, knew exactly how to place any off against Shia. You know, and large bombs getting drawn, driven in Shia markets. And, you know, killing many, many at a time. And they were happening on huge frequency. And in order to stop, and that was designed to get the two to descend into a civil war. Sarkawi, yeah, he was one of the worst ones, wasn't he?

Where was he from? So he was Jordanian. He was Jordanian, yes, that's right. Was he the guy he led out of the prison? the new leader? Yeah, he was formerly in prison, but he was a, you know, he's known as a pretty low-level thief. Right.

I'm not sure what his background into prison was. He was noted as being a particular type of person whilst he was there. So, but, you know, these people evolve, you know, and this is why there's real intention in all our prisons over, you know, there's a lot of recruitment going on in there. There's a lot of influence going on in there. jails are incubators unless they're really, really,

really, really well managed and conscious. But he, you know, he bent off, I'm not sure quite what he did in terms of groups in his affiliations, but he popped up in Iraq because of the type of person he was. He was clearly very influential on the others around him.

Stephen, can you pull the picture of Zarkawi? Zarkawi? You'll be able to find him. Sorry, you can keep going. So, I mean, he created havoc within kind of. absolute having. And again, it's very, very challenging to try and bring that under control.

And it underpins the security of the whole place. You know, the whole place is not going to work if the, you know, the whole populace is set into identity groups and set against one another. And essentially, you know, people like that were a large part of the work, trying to just keep their networks involved and suppressed to a point they could no longer be as effective as they had become. And that process happened very, very quickly. He was trying to, like, team up with some of the organizations in North Africa, wasn't he?

Yes, I mean, that's a trouble as well. They are very good at, you know, running association with each other, living off each other. In fact, Zakari became so, you know, so the al-Qaeda main HQ communicated that they didn't support Zakawe in the end because of what he was doing, you know. you were setting off bombs against civilian population regardless of who you saying they are.

And we do not support that. You know, we do not like, so even he got disassociated from the main period because of what he was doing. But, you know, he was very successful in doing it and it took an enormous amount of energy, focus and effort, intelligence gathering, reactive operations, in order to keep that under control. And, you know, it's not just a cari there,

It's a whole network, including who was driving the bombs, who was training them, who was equipping them, who was resourcing all of that. But one of their key methodologies was that. But of course, these are much more complex than just that one single act. You've got the financing. You've got all sorts of other stuff around it that's giving oxygen to that network. Right. What was one of your first operational tours that you did? So, well, the first two were with the parachute regiment.

But then my first with the unit was Iraq. and I had a sustained period of Iraq again and again and again. And it was, it's, correct before wrong, it's 22 S-A-S, is that right? Yeah. And what is that, what's the significance of 22-S? Is that like a... So it's just full-time SS. So 22 means what?

Was that just, how do they... Is that just like an organization? No, I don't even know where it comes from, actually. Oh, really? Yeah. I mean, the SS is born out World War II. An incredible group of people. Right.

They did make some documentaries about it. They're, you know, amazing people in a time where, you know, the best was drawn out of them. And since then the SAS was sort of pertinent and then it wasn't. And then Malaya happened. So Malaya was jungle operations. So enter the importance of jungle in selection. What they realized is operating a jungle is extremely arduous. You didn't even see people for weeks.

And it's extremely arduous. And those gentlemen there, some of who've sort of come back and talk to us. And it's a real privilege hearing a gentleman I heard, I think he's 82. And his recollections of their operations in jungle were absolutely incredible. Because there's the pressure on operations. They were pulling people in very quickly from other units. It just shows how humans can step up when they need to, right, when the requirement to do things. Yeah, I just didn't know if there was a specific.

reason for the numbering before the SAS. No, so I'm afraid I don't know the history. Okay, gotcha. The, yeah, I mean, I know where the regimen was founded and broadly how it went through. I don't know where Tutu came from. Right. So your first couple operations were in Iraq? Yeah.

And then a long operational career, you know, following the trend and path. You know, as special forces, you get involved in a lot of operations that classified. And they're rightfully classified. You work in, sometimes in a covert nature, you know. Do you work with the MI6 or did you? You work with all partner agencies, you know. So you worked with partner intelligence agencies and under covert. That's the only way this works right.

And that doesn't mean physically on the ground. You know, and we worked with partner agencies across the ball. We even work with our police on counterterrorism in the UK. You know, it's important if you, you know, this is a whole, it's an intricate problem. You know, networks are involved in finance. Finance happens in every other countries. So they regularly result in criminal investigations. You know, in order to influence networks,

it's not just that sort of local act on the ground forward that's effective. In fact, that's really just a very key driver to the information that is provided to others to be able to act. So yes, we worked with all partner agencies as we need to. We work with law enforcement agencies if we needed to. And essentially the construct in the UK is quite unusual because it's quite a small place. And each has other constitutional laws. We're able to work with our London Ambulance Service,

our London Fire Brigade, and an interagency response to certain levels and types of problems in the domestic theatre. And that's been, that's something key that we have to do. You know, and so the military is allowed to support the police. if, you know, in the event of the Farbergate going on strike as well. Right, right. So I assume, like, you guys are the highest level.

What were you guys chasing just the biggest bad guys in Iraq? It doesn't really work like that. We don't see them as high or whatever. You know, there's different dynamics you have to identify in how to make these complex operations successful. So if you're looking at a network, you look at how it's structured first, you know, what is the thing that it depends upon most? You know, finance always, are they financing this thing?

You're right? Yeah, I was throwing away at camp. Oh, okay. You know, how are they financing this thing? You know, where do you cut off those themes of finance? So it's not actually just about the level of the senior commander. It's not just shooting guns. It's very far from new pads and guns.

That's the problem, right? You know, it'd actually be much less challenging if it was just like this one person that you could sort of make ineffective. Right. And his network doesn't work. You know, it's not even his network. You know, and these things are very, very complex environments. It's particularly complex when that group is homogenous to the population that surrounds it.

You know, so broader operations become very, very dangerous. You know, some of the units I have the highest respect for those units that were holding ground, trying to provide security in areas because they were under a constant attack, you know, And they were under, the challenges they went through, a lot of them are very, very young people. Yeah. They've signed up, you know, they're going to do three, four years. And they did three or four of the hardest years, you know, and that all comes at quite a great deal of cost. And there's a big difference between a professional soldier trained through filters and filters and filters in your conditioning.

And someone who's, for instance, a reservist who's been mobilized and then is exposed to the same conditions. Yeah. You know, it's very, very challenging. I was having this conversation with the guy that was on here yesterday. And, you know, we got talking about, like, the difference between young kids who go into the military and guys who just know what they want to do, right? Like, guys who walk in and say, I know I want to be SAS, special forces. I've met a lot of guys that have been in the American military. And I recently had a guy who was in the British Army as well that were really young when they decided to go into the military.

And they just, they went into the military because maybe someone. suggested it or maybe it just seemed like a fun idea right and they didn't really they didn't really have any purpose in life yet they didn't really know what they wanted to do and um the majority of them come out of there really psychologically destroyed yeah yeah it's a great challenge um remembering militaries for periods of time really don't do anything but deter others you know and they they remain capable and they train very hard but sometimes they aren't operational for periods of time but in periods where intensive operations are happening, that's pretty critical, you know.

And a lot of these people, you know, a lot of people who join the army turn out to be the most impressive people you ever met. Right. They walked in off the street because, you know, almost there was an absence of something else to do. That's getting less and less as it's becoming more and more, it's a smaller number and it's more professional all the time.

But, you know, it's those sorts of people that, you know, either condition very fast and adapt to it. or the whole process does take its toll on them. And that toll is, you know, it goes on for generations. And I just had a really interesting, I had lunch before I came here. And it was in a restaurant at the bottom of a hotel. I noticed the guy serving. He had Sempa written on his chest.

It was just visible on the corner of his shirt. And so when I was paying, I said, oh, you know, when did you leave the military? I was in the military. And he was, as always, really humble and really engaging. I said, oh, what do you do now? He's less six years ago. And he said, I do this main role that it's my everyday job, but I work this bar work more because the other one pays for it.

And it's because he's engaging with people all the time. And somehow intuitively, he knew that, you know, as you leave the military, it's very, very tough. He'd clearly only taken the job. So he was interacting with others. Oh, wow. that period of his life, that he built in that period of his life that was clearly his tonic. So, you know, it's finally some people intuitively get the way to do it.

You know, social engagement is a very, very key part of it. But it just sort of left me because, you know, I don't know whether he had any basis or, you know, some guidance that that was the way to do it. That's interesting. But he, you know, he very, very quickly highlighted. And it's very humbling when you meet these people, right? You know, he's actually Marine Corps. Yeah, and it's just incredible. When you come, particularly when you've been in for 15 years and you come across these young people,

and their approach to it is very, very intelligent. And the thing is called allostatic load. It's the measure of pressure. So if you go into a Special Forces community, that's a given. You know, there's no change to it. You're on a rotation. It's got a tempo. It's not necessarily measurable.

to a certain extent it is. You know, you can see the risk factors. You can number up the explosives you've set off. You can number up the times you've not slept well on the night. Whereas for other forces, they're less conscious of it. And so the thing grows around them, like something that is a specter that is not understood. And it can lead if people leave the military,

having had that happen, and it's sort of been chewing away at the edges of them, but there's no awareness of it and what it is. That's when it becomes very dangerous to people. Is there a moment you can remember in your early career as an SAS guy that was like, my life's never going to be the same? A moment that really changed you? I don't think anything to do the unit I was in.

Plenty of soldiers have to come to terms of the fact that your mortality is on. a different line. Right. And I say if you picture living in a fob and having to go and do the same patrol route to 5K every day, you know, you have to condition yourself in a way no one in other professions would. But you're not uncomfortable in doing that. You know, it doesn't stop all those physical feelings. So, yeah, on a number of occasions I've been, come to terms of the fact that there's a much

higher level of risk. It wasn't necessarily, you know, I don't think you become scared. of whatever may happen to you, all of the normal feelings of anxiety around it. You know, of course you do, as you're going anywhere. You know, we go into completely non-permissive areas where everyone around you is not necessarily going to fight you, but they're definitely not going to act in your favour.

You know, they're helping other people who would intentionally harm you. You know, of course there's levels of anxiety, but that's, you know, part of the performance bit. I think the way you manage it is condition yourself. to higher levels. And, you know, it is happening around you. Some of the soldiers I spoke to in infantry brigades, you know, who've done tours of Afghanistan,

and I've got a friend who's bilateral empathy. So, you know, you get really good insights from these people. And the levels of courage they demonstrate and going out and doing their job every day. And, you know, you can't live with uncertainty to that degree all the time. So you do have an expectancy. You do have an acceptance. that you can come to terms with.

You, you know, of course, experiences stay with you for the rest of your life, not necessarily like in detail. There wasn't one, there wasn't one specific moment that really stood out to you. I know, I've had plenty of times when, many of them. They all, they all culminate. Or that's fallen down. You know, we've had houses fall on top of us and stuff like that, you know. So what was your most difficult operation?

I can't So if you think that in Any six months I did On one particular trip We did 182 operations I cannot remember On one trip you did 182 operations

Is there one that just sticks out to you No so there's various recollections of stuff That pop up You know And then they're usually when someone has been caught up In something and we have to rescue them And essentially, you know, that's what sticks out. They're the more unusual scenarios.

But, you know, nothing particularly sticks out. Some of the things were extraordinary events and extraordinary situations. And a lot of that is in classified space. It's discreet, it's sensitive. You know, I wouldn't go into detail about those areas. They're extraordinarily complex. You know, if you're in a position where you're relatively unsupported, you know, that's really challenging.

You know, you're surrounded by people you're not necessarily can trust for a very long time. And, you know, and a couple of times that's proven to be just right, you know, and people will try and take you if you leave yourself exposed too long. But, you know, essentially it's been decades of work. I can't pick out, like, just nominal things on him. And like I say, I can't remember one operation to the next. You know You know, you have picture recollections of this

And remembering in all that time You've been acting at a level You've been exposed to all of these different explosives You know, you've You've had so much that makes you Probably not be able to be like Because I think you can picture Oh well on that night

This from this point And this was the intelligence picture we had It's simply not the case right I'm thinking about that I heard the story about the I'm sure you have the SAS guys that were captured and taken hostage and then the other

part of their team went in and rescued them against the country's wishes like I guess like the government said they didn't authorize it and they went anyways and rescue the guys so I wasn't on that and part of it do you know any of the guys who were no no

that was a pretty incredible story yeah yeah I mean all of them are incredible stories, right? You know, hostage rescue is a zero-sum game. You only hear about when it goes right or wrong. You know, it's worn at the... There's no almost. It's worn at the political level. You know, and how you plan for a hostage rescue is completely different from anything else. You assume a lot, lot more risk. You know, so I'm more happy to talk about nature of any of these types of operations, none of which any in there. own uniqueness stick in my mind.

You know, I remember a house falling on top of me. I remember someone, you know, ambitionist from the side. I remember plenty of context around that. But that's... What happened when the house fell on top of you? That was an explosive device that was set off. The percussiveness of the round, it was dried out T-A-T-P. And there was, you know, a contact at the door,

so an engagement in between. So they were stuck in the doorway. the percussionist around set the charge off it's a homemade ID obviously and the building itself the building structure was damaged on the side and about two minutes after because we still hadn't got our wounded back

from that particular engagement the house fell on top of them and in some you know they they were left buried for like four or five hours and resulted in earthquake type injuries you know so again these are very complex operations when they When they get complex, they get really, really difficult.

Where were you guys? You can't say that? No. No. But those are the sorts of situations that, you know, you were faced with. You have to pick your way out of them. On that particular operation, where, you know, there's about 13 guys left to hand on their feet.

The other 28, number dead. No way. And all the rest in hospital, you know. Oh, my God. Yeah, but that's the cost of going and confronting people that you know we're about to go and do something else. Yeah. You know, and again, if you condition yourself for the mindset of that, you know, we train and prepare for it. But, you know, these...

Okay, the 28 guys weren't your guys. As we were supporting them. You were supporting them. Oh, okay, got you. So, and, but, you know, none of these, the vernacular around military operations is not helpful. Like a surgical strike is not surgical. Right, so there's a lot of talk about the preciseness of it all, and yes, it is very precise, but it's still a weapon.

You're still going to an area where you're going to get contested in some way on a number of, you know, on a significant majority of occasions, significant minority of occasions, sorry, not always. You know, there's other ways we work, you know, where, you know, on the British mainland, where we train and we're surrounded by the people we're surrounded by, there's no threat to us. But the focus is a threat for terrorism. You know, Mumbai scared everyone. Mumbai, I don't know whether you remember the Mumbai attacks

where 90% of all the people got killed. I was about 70% of all the people got killed in the first 90 minutes or something. When was this? So this was back in 2005, maybe. And it was attacking Mumbai, done by extremists, trained across in over the border in Pakistan, got in boats and came to Mumbai,

armed with explosives, grenades, weapons. And everyone across the world, I think, watched that attack and thought, you know, how will we respond to it? So we fundamentally changed the way we would respond to those sorts of marauding attacks that, you know, most countries have seen now, you know, and those weren't things that were happening in the past. It was kind of a new way they learned how to do things. Are you a part of that or no?

No, no, it's just something we learnt off. So any of these tax that happen worldwide, we look at them and we analyze them. And we say, okay, well, how we're set up, are we effective against it? You know, what are the proper responses we could do? You know, you've seen them in, you know, the knife attacks now. You know, gun control is very, very tight in the UK. It's one of the biggest defenses against, you know, marauding firearms attacks. But it doesn't stop people getting knives, blades, petrol bombs, and ever,

and else, you know, and these are the dangerous attacks that everyone fears. What are the gun laws in the UK? What is the... So it's very, very tight. We've always always had very, very tight gun laws. So... So the accessibility of weapons and ammunition means that it's, you know, reduces the likelihood people are going to be able to get weapons and carry out

rewarding firearms attacks. But that still means very dangerous people can potentially get them or potentially get other weapons as has happened in the UK. I mean, you know, it's... How tight is it compared to the US? Oh, it's completely different, as in there's no law of ownership of gun beyond, I think, a shotgun and a two-two. So you can own a shotgun and a 22?

Yeah, for various purposes. And you have to... So it's like Canada, I think. I think Canada's similar to that. Yeah. And, you know, in a way, because the UK's a very, very complex, dense population. Yes. Very, very mixed population.

It's an island, which is great, but it's very complex. And like I say, we have a very close interagency response, like fire service, ambulance service, all trained to go down and rescue people when it's actually still very threatening for them in order to rescue people from the underground. But that's a coordinated response, and it's very, very, you know, carefully measured and practice. But it's foremostly, you know, was adopted after Mumbai. Yeah, it says most handguns have been banned in Great Britain since the Dunblane school massacre in 1996. Yeah, so, okay, well, that's, yeah, that's the reason for it.

So has that had any effect on, like, mass shootings? Yeah, so, I mean, really, have we ever had mass shootings? We do have mass shootings in the UK. I can't think of anyone that's been terrorism. Mm-hmm. But we do have an adequate response now for it, you know? Yeah, because here it's like, you know, it's, There's been terrorism.

There's been like the, it was the San Bernardino. There was that one that was terrorist, but a vast majority of the shootings in the US are just like psychologically disturbed kids. Exactly. And that's a danger, right? On antidepressants. This is what, you know,

I think, you know, these countries, the people that are in them don't really realize the level of attention and the level of praise some teams should have. You know, and it is those young, easy to influence people you know get in a bad state they're reading a diet of social media

the offered narrative all of that sort of stuff and they get into a mindset you know all of a sudden and actually you know no one talks about the many many many many many of them that are saved because there's like

an attentive content moderator that says okay well these these posts are looking like they're going in a certain way and then passes it over to the authority who then go and get the due processes, get legal processes to be able to intervene. And they'll catch it early and they'll get hold of the individual. It's called prevent in our areas, you know, and stop this happening because that's the sad decline that happens.

And when you take it, and again, that's one of the domestic problems is when you've got high levels of unemployment in some of these countries. And people feel like, you know, they deserve more. I've got a degree and yet I've not got the job. They become very, very vulnerable to people who know how to influence people very well. They turn them, give them sort of an ideological route to go down. And the outcome can be extremely dangerous once that goes. And in this day and age, we live in a fascinating world where information sharing is there and it's open and it's free. It's monitored.

It's monitored by company. it's unsurprisingly monitored by anyone that can in order to identify that sort of stuff. And again, I just make the point that so many people actually get picked up by content moderators, they get reported by school teachers. They get flagged up. You know, jail is monitored.

But you never hear about that, though. That's the problem, right? At least in the US, you don't. But, you know, the diligent people who've been overlooking this got the due process to actually go and intervene and do something about it and being able to take this individual into responsible hands and look at it and say, okay, well, do you actually pose that real threat?

Now, in the UK, there's a lot of knife crime, a real lot of knife crime. And it's very, very difficult to ascertain when someone's talking about it and actually intends to. Therefore, do they present a threat to the public or whether they're actually just talking shit? Yes. And, you know, there's lots and lots of clever ways of looking at that and assessing it. How do you assess it? Well, it's not my field of expertise.

Okay. You look at this and you say, okay, well, I presume what age is this person? You know, who are they sort of trying to pass this message to? But the key point is, is the large majority of it is exactly as you've said. It's these people that, you know, left unattended, they could well go down into that dangerous bracket. but at a point they draw some notice. They're not at that dangerous point. And they can be turned around.

They can be sort of intervened on and said, look, you know, you're looking a bit. These last three posts, you've reposted this. So these are vigilant content moderators, you know, that will flag something up because that's what they should be doing. That's their professional responsibility to do it. Yeah, I think a big part of it is parenting too.

It is a lot of shitty people. parenting here in the U.S. People that just don't want to have kids and they don't want to raise kids, right? They're not fit. They're not mentally or physically or socially fit to raise human beings. Yeah. And that's how that's that's that's the root cause of a lot of the most, you know, the worst parts of America, like the homeless problem, like, you know, the drug problem like that. There's this guy who I've had in the podcast called Mark Lay.

His name's Mark Leda. He has a YouTube channel called Soft White Underbelly. He's in L.A. on Skid Row. And he does interviews with like prostitutes, pimps, drug dealers, like all of like the most down and like worse off people in America. And, you know, he was on here and he was telling me he was like the one common denominator between all these most, all these fucked up human beings is just terrible parenting. Yeah.

I mean, the easiest and best way of doing it is to, you know, provide us. stay safe and stable and happy home for a start and people wouldn't go that way. It doesn't mean they won't have teenage problems, let's face it. Right, right, of course. Get a hard time at school. You're going to have some of those issues, but it's certainly not going to be left to incubate for someone else to jump in an influence or worse. It's just perpetuating conspiracy theories, you know, it just plutes people's minds,

you know, it gives them an impression there's something to worry about that there's not. And that's the problem, right? They're exposed to this. In an equal vein, you can go on to the safe. platforms and research the most incredible topics. It's not the phone in the hand that's the problem. It's not the accessibility to the information that's the problem. But I totally agree if you were parent and you took a real view on ensuring that your children were guided, parented and supported, you know, and gave them a feeling. A lot of my friends tell me about

sort of, you know, their daughter came to see them because someone was putting a message up. And that's like the good news, your children should be confident enough to come and bring things to you. So what nerve does this mean? You know, why is this person saying this to me? Right. And that all comes down to parenting. You can't blame the children,

you know? You haven't got a fully mature brain to your 25. Right, exactly. It's not fully developed. Right. And so even at 18, even as a young person, as we would deem them, young adult, you know, you're still very, very prone to kind of decisions and

opinions that you wouldn't make as an adult, like an adult beyond 25. Right. That's an interesting point, you know, because a lot of people, I'm sure by the time you were involved in heavy combat tours and operations, you were under the age of 25, right? And I wonder how that, I mean, I'm sure the vast majority of people who get into the military are under the age of 25. And I wonder how that affects like your development when you're that young, you know, seeing those kind of things and being under that kind of stress.

It definitely leads to issues that they know fully well about. But, you know, these are great experiences. Let's not ignore the brilliant processes. Yes, exactly. Loads of education, formative experiences. And pressure is not the cause of concern here. Pressure in life is quite healthy. But it's a prolonged period of exposure to stress.

And suffering, you know, witnessing to an accident as well. Let's not ignore the key points. It's that constant exposure to stress. And yes, there's a young mind. But remember, a young body is more capable of actually dealing with it. You are actually more active. Your physiological function is it should be tuning and chiming quite well. So a lot of most young people are actually come out of it pretty well.

You know, they'll never kind of forget it as an experience. It would have shaped who they are as an adult, you know. But it's not necessarily shaped them in a bad way. There'll be challenges. Right. You know, and going back to the guy I just spoke in a. bar, you know, it's just wonderful to speak to someone and saying that he'd seen them challenges and, you know, and he's a pleasure to speak to. And, you know, he alluded to this.

He's like, I knew, you know, I do this bar work and I was like, oh, got it, right? You do that because that's your social engagement, that's your way of, like, you know, in order, you know, that's very, very key and important. And when we worry about each other, you know, on a professional level we watch behaviours and a lot of the time it will manifest in the home you know before you know how people behave

very much represents their you know mental fitness mental health how dysregulated the brain has become because of that presence of prolonged stress which results in constant

proencephidrine and cortisol flooding through the body that does some really really quite surprising things and what we don't fully understand all of this, right? You know, it creates some sort of inflammation. You know, it keeps your body on a level where it's not maintaining itself.

It's not kind of cleaning itself out properly. There's the harmonious balance of all your functions is lost. And that's when you see it. And it's not immediate, you know, but it's come. And what I recognize, I had two changes of behavior whilst I was in forces. And so... Changes of behavior. Yes.

And again, it's indicative. if you look at your behaviour as a kind of marker of where your brain is. So when someone's very, very defensive towards me, I'm not kind of like, everyone has a bad day, and I'm not talking about that. You know, it kind of indicates, why are you on the, you know, why are you kind of backfooting all the time? You know, it's like what's going on in there, you know,

you're present negative thoughts all the time. This is a firm indicator of dysregulated brain. There's something going on neurologically up there that's not there. and left unattended, it will slide into depression, social isolation, you know, suicide ideation is definitively attached to this in this decline. And I did, we actually get taught a lot of this. I did the police hostage negotiation and crisis unit course,

which is absolutely wonderful place to be, and not only does it test you to sit there and talk to people that really make it hard for you to talk to them, you do a lot of study into mental health and people with challenges and how to manage people who are in crisis and it gives you a real, real insight.

And I find that fascinating and possibly the seed to some of the stuff that I'm looking into now. But the soldier community, you know, military community as a whole, you know,

their allostatic load. Everyone has gotten an allostatic load. You know, your allostatic load is the levels of environmental factors that are adding stress to you. You know, everyone has one. With SF community,

it's really kind of at exceptional levels. Right. Subconcassive blast. The stress of continually sort of turning up and performing. You know, the stress of being on standby all the time. You're always on call. You know, you're like, there's lots and lots of different areas where that allostatic load becomes a whole factor.

Right. But that doesn't mean to say the military is full of human beings, right? Everyone is human at a baseline. Yeah. And they're affected by these stresses. And so you look in other units It's equally as relevant, right? It's just particularly definable

in the Special Forces community. And, you know, I think the learning and a progress into this is huge. But the trouble is, when you've got neurological dysfunction, it's mystifyingly hard to tie down, diagnose. There's so many different influencing factors in it.

Right. So, you know, I think it's really, the US is a long way ahead its knowledge of this and programs to really understand it. Yeah. And mitigate, you know, when that stress is really inevitable. How many guys that you've worked with in the SAS or any other parts of the military have, like, wanted to stay in the military and keep doing operations?

So I think, like, everyone would. Everyone would. Yeah, absolutely. Really? You know, but, you know, life changes around you. People have families. The conditions around it, there's a lot of injuries. There's a lot of people who just get worn out.

You know, there's no reason, you know, we keep ourselves very, very fit. It's one of the main mitigations to some of the other damage that gets done and the maintenance of it. But essentially, and I think everyone would stay as long as they possibly could do. But some, it just becomes completely incompatible with outside life. you know, people make their own decisions. A lot of, there's a lot of high rates of separation in all militaries, special forces units, because you're required to go away a lot. You mean separation, like spouse?

Separation of some spouse and everything else, you know. But a lot of those relationships may not have worked anyway. You know, again, it's those factors that you can't, it's too easy to just turn around and specifically change, like put the job as the single unit of fault every single time. that's not, but it's a key part of the pattern, the context. Right. So, you know, many other professions suffer the same thing.

That's certainly not unique. But I think, you know, when you start, everyone would love to stay on as long as they can. People want to be operational. There's lots of training jobs. There's lots of jobs of extremely high value that don't mean going away on operations or anything, especially in this world. where you've got so many domains of military effects as such as part of an overall strategy. I mean, they've just declared cyber was the fourth, space the fifth, now industry's a sixth.

So. But don't a lot of guys that come out of the military or retire from the military, don't they go back to be part of special operations in other parts of the world like at an older age? Like I know now, like in Ukraine, I know there's a lot of like veterans, like U.S. veterans and special operations guys that are like up there, like in their 50s that are going over there to fight. So there is a network. You know, to do security, security is a very, very broad words. What you're talking about, some do. The people went over and supported the Kurdish against Islamic State. You know, one of them was jailed in Turkey, you know, he made a fundamental miscalculation.

And he ended up being regarded as having supported a terrorist group himself because that particular portion of the Kurdish, the Turkish, deem are a terrorist organisation. So you have to be really careful, you know, exactly how you're going to be perceived by others when you do it. There are a lot of people that go on and serve alongside others willingly. And many for very, very good reasons. Personally, I'm not. You know, when I left, I said, you know, I want to orientate into a different career, a different sort of opportunity in business.

And also, you know, a lot of people become very high-level security. And, you know, you have to have an SIA license in the UK for this. And I've let mine lapse because, you know, I don't want, I really want to engage and be useful somewhere else. So, yes, there are a lot, you know, and how valuable they are. are in their contribution, I think differs, differs greatly. And I think there is always a danger that it's always been what you've known, so you're just going to keep on doing it.

And, you know, and essentially, in my background, I've got people I've made promise to as well. And it stood up when I had a duty to do them. You know, now I'm going to do it willingly on my own volition. What do you mean? Just because. So, you know, when I've got people to depend on me for stuff, you know, you know, you whilst you're doing a duty, that's, you know. Yes, right.

That's obvious, right? It's not negotiable. You're doing it, and you're doing it, and you're doing your job well by doing it. It's got to be harder for guys that don't have families, you know, guys who are just single and they have no one. I think it is, and it does go very differently, you know, and I think, but also there's a risk if that becomes your only way.

And I remember you're getting older, a chance to build a full life. Because the military is a full life. but it's very directed down a tunnel. That's a good way of putting it. You're not exposed to all of the other parts of life. When you leave, you have that opportunity to do it. It's remarkably a healthy thing to do.

I was talking to a legal guy in tech not longer. He simply couldn't get his head round that I'd done a career for 23 years. And I'd stopped and now I was going to learn to do another one. It's rare, right? Most of my friends have been with their same company for 21, or at least in the same industry, 21, 22 years. It's not rare amongst us, right? People choose certain paths,

and my path has been get out, engage, find, you know, go embrace opportunity a bit, go and explore whether that's going to suit or right, you know, and add some value where you can. But if you're not proving your fullest amount of value, there's a next step down the path to make. Keep on engaging, you'll go there. Other people do choose to do security-orientated jobs

for the rest of their time. They're extremely well paid, but they mean long, long periods of time on oil installations. A lot of oil installations, you have a very big pertinence in running the security that guard them, and there's lots of jobs that fall there.

You said oil installations? Oil and gas industries. Okay. Obviously, they're in very remote locations. They need some security being done, So a lot of ex-members go into those sorts of industries. And I've kind of elected, I haven't ruled out, but I've elected to try and engage in, you know, what I'm involved in now and learn and adapt to become, almost go into another whole career. So it's just your personal choices. There's no right or wrong in any of it, you know, and people are content with what they're content with.

You know, for me, I want to build that life back around me. Yeah. I'm certainly not, you know, sentimentally in my outlook on that. You know, it's not like I feel I owe anything or anything. I just think it's going to be better when I'm 55 or 60 that I've done that. And I'm sitting there with all of that bolted together. And that, you know, means placoding certainly better paid work, but it means which would mean six months a year away, living away.

What was that quote you said about, I think before we started recording, you said something about nostalgia? Yeah, you're the ancient Greeks, so. Well, yeah, what did the ancient Greeks say about nostalgia? All I say is there's a reason the ancient Greeks regarded nostalgia as an element. And what they're trying to say is don't lean back on what you knew before. You know, and I'm quite careful and disciplined to not do that. You know, and that's smoothing as I move further away from the military in time.

I think transition window is not even in your first step until your four years clean. You know, your four years gone from that career. and you're just starting to adapt and behave in a different way. You're changing your mindset to single duty purpose. That's an interesting quote, man, because when you think about people who are getting old, a lot of them just like to reflect on the past. Yeah.

You know, they don't really focus on the future as much as you think young people do, right? Young people typically generally talk about the future and really, really old people who, whether they've done a lot in their career or their life or not, they typically all reflect on the past more often. That's interesting. I've asked myself a lot, what did they mean, you know, physically lean back or whatever. And I think it is that. Don't let your brain to linger too much.

Atrophy, right. Yeah, linger too much in the past. You know, get on new experiences are very, very good for you. It's a way to stay young. Yeah, and learn more things, right? You know, try and learn a new career, a new career. You know, I think, you know, soldiers that do transition, they tend to bounce through jobs quite routinely until they settle.

And it's because they get put in a position where they get offered a job, they can provide some value, but it doesn't really suit them as a character as a person. And increasingly they're able to select as they're going along, but it doesn't happen by magic. There's no way you're going to come out of a 23-year career in the military and suddenly go and find a job. The post office. That's like, wow, I'm going to do this for 10.

10 years and this is going to be absolutely amazing and I'm so excited to tell her about it. Right. You know, and it is a process of sort of navigating your way through. I think the art to it is to engage, engage, engage and, you know, and really sort of grab opportunity and be mindful of risk, but don't let that be the your defining factor in it. Right. You know, there might be a bit of a bump. You might get a bit of a loss.

You might have found out you're not very good at something. Right. So you were telling me off air a minute ago, how many operations and tours were you a part of total? So it's, the figure, so some of them were post, some of the tours. I count operational tours in a, in a theatre where there's count terrorism operations going on or whatever. I did 19, and that amounts to roughly about 13 years in operational days.

So that's a huge exposure to experience, you know, and it's all really just a blur now. And I've quickly moved on beyond it. But it was, you know, a tremendous experience whilst it lasted. And that was whilst it was my professional duty to do it. You know, it's not like I linger for it now at all. You know, and in many ways I'm just grateful, you know, my operational marker was don't miss one, right? And that doesn't mean I put my hand up for it.

When I'm asked, I'll go. You know, there'd have to be an exceptional reason. So I'll cover this a bit more a bit later. but, you know, just before my third of Arc Tour, my mum was hit by car, killed, very, very bad injuries. She went underneath it, so fatal injuries, declared dead at about an hour and 40. And obviously, that turned my family completely inside out. My father was very dependent on my mum. He actually died 30 months later, just a few pure stress.

But I deployed six weeks, I believe, again, my memory's fuzzy, but pretty close afterwards. I went and deployed. You know, and I got stuck in, the operational tempo is very, very high. And on that particular tour, there's like 180, in excess 180 operations that we were involved in. And essentially, you know, I proved that I was valid. You know, I got commandated in certain ways, and I was doing my work well enough.

Yeah. I finished that tour and came back, but I came back with Alopecia. And had I known what I know now, I would retribed that much more closely to, you know, you know, okay, well, it's interesting. Human beings can go on a long time. But that, you know, my mum's death would be described as allostatic load.

Right. And it is stresses from your professional environment, but also your personal environment, added up, and how that compounds on an individual. And alopecia was definitely linked to that, you know. At the time I was, you know, I just put it down to diet. I may even remember it kind of getting noticed because I was sort of too tired to even notice.

I don't, to be honest, you, I haven't really ever paid too much attention to what I look like. But I was having my hair cut, and I remember the hairdresser saying to me, oh, you poor boy, which is like, one I found it really interesting, she called me a boy, but I think remembering back, I was about 25, so that's probably a fair one. Yeah, exactly. And then obviously I started developing these perfect circles in my beard,

which are still there now when they come and go. And that just dates back to that period where obviously, like long-term stress had just kicked in. And I was performing at a very, very high level, constantly turning over, turning over, out back in, out back in, making decisions all the time. You know, at my age, it was almost a privilege to be able to do that, you know. Everyone wants to work in a role in an environment in their industry where they're challenged and tested. And, you know, you can be proved that you were good, you were effective. Right. And especially at that age, you know, that was important for me.

but I'll return and my body was trying to tell me something but I continued That had to have been brutal man losing both of your parents Yeah no it's very tough right So very very tough And you said your dad passed away

From just stress Yeah well You know Medical term is a broken heart And what that is is You know I don't know what killed him But he described

How he would die Right And he used to get up very early in the morning He used to have a cup of two With my mum And that was his sort of darkest period of his time after my mum had died. So, and I remember going back and speaking to him

because I was, obviously, working on some sort of medical attachments that we do in order to protect us our medical skills. Drove home very early in the morning and found him in the kitchen. I was chatting to him. And I just remember sort of looking at him and just going, you're hardly holding it together, right? I looked in the fridge and there was just some fish lined up and some tomatoes. But he was, you know, he's really struggling to live.

even domestically. You know, he's keeping him good. I mean, my dad was a pretty talented man, right? He's a competition sailor that he built his own boats. No way, really? Yeah, so he built his own boats. He's a really incredible person. So, you know, but he just simply wasn't, you know, wasn't managing.

And he said, you know, when I get up, it's that, that's that toughest time. And it's almost like there's a pain. And, of course, what he's describing, and, you know, what I would assess is they've, there's something called taco super kind. cardiomyopathy. And when you're deep, deep levels of stress, immediate grief after bereavement, you know, and other forms. So financial stress can do this to you. Separation of loved one can do this to you. And, you know, and he had a massive heart attack, you know, and he fell over quite violently. You know, he's obviously really, really big. Now, what TACA to Subaru is, is for some

reason, and medical science doesn't know why, but it was found in a post-mortality. in the 80s in Japan, therefore taco tasuba. So tachotuba means octopus trap. And for some reason, the long stress, particularly pronounced through to grief or whatever, stuns muscles in the heart. In one chamber alone, I think it, right or left atrium, whatever it is, it makes the heart look like an octopus trap,

which is why they called it takutuah tachy. And what that does is in most people, it wouldn't be a problem at all. You know, that would be, you would return to normal. And unless you have other really quite severe heart preconditions, it usually wouldn't really sort of affect you. But clearly in his case, and if it was that, you know,

nothing was found in, nothing was found in his post-mortem, you know, and toxicology and everything else. Wow, yeah, first discovered in Japan in 1990. And just because, and the heart goes back to normal, the naturally or obviously after event of death it will do that the same because you haven't got that effect back on the heart. Right. You know, we don't know how many people are, you know, have been fallen victim to that.

So you can't diagnose it post-mortem. Yeah, but what I do know is, you know, they've identified the mechanism of it. So if you're bereaved and you've got central pains, you shouldn't be too surprised. Don't be overly concerned. You know, this thing just goes back to normal in the vast, vast majority of cases. but for some reason that we cannot put down, or at least I've never read an explanation for it, is this stunning muscle on the left side.

I'm sure it's left side, maybe right, but one side of the heart that compromises the heart's function a bit. And it interferes with myocardium, so it's rhythm. So, you know, that's a period of risk. And I do some sort of closed speaking stuff, you know, very rarely. But when I do it, I really enjoy it. It's lovely closing the doors and speaking to people and meeting people and you have to prepare for it,

which is brilliant. It's an all part of research and everything like that. It's all very important. So, sorry, the point being is the title of that is a unique perspective for the challenges we all share. What I say to people is like, you know, human stress is inevitable. pressure is natural cause

are actually very good for you but human stress is inevitable you know when you're listening to this talk about sort of special forces and military this all sounds very exceptional but there's not one person in this room that will not be bereaved at one time in your life

you know it's highly likely you'll know someone close to you that's going to suffer a pretty challenging illness to treat you know there's highly likely you'll end up separating from someone that's be a pretty brutal experience whilst it goes on, you know, and don't be surprised that this is hard, you know,

it's your approach to it that is absolutely critical in how you emerge from it. The emergence from it is not going to be quick. We're talking weeks, you know, people think they've moved on from a death in six weeks, 10 weeks, 12 weeks, three months, no, it's not anywhere near. You know, it's like that will be affecting you for the next couple of years at least. If not, you know, it will have a legacy behind it, you know, but physiologically you'll, you'll return to normal, you know, and everything. But that won't be quick. Was your dad and your mom together for, like, how long were they together?

Yeah, yeah, very, decades and decades. Decades. 30 to 40 years, I think. Wow. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, you know, they were really amazing people, but then I think most people were, like, regard their parents as that. My mum was extremely hard work She ran three jobs

And a mum To me and my brother So she was an architect And did something called Milk Recording as well So milk recording is You know When they manually milked the cows

And they had to record Oh yeah So me and my brother And when we were young You used to get put on a mattress And driven to a farm And wake up on the farms Very early in the morning

Wow It's a very cool way of growing up And I remember Taking the big silver urns of milk back and all that. So my mum was tremendously hard working. You know, he's just sort of a person that got up before in the morning, did some architecture before the day started.

And, you know, what happened to her as completely unpredictable was a shock. You know, my dad used to say, you know, I've got to shout goodbye to your mum, but never he got to do anything else. And that was tremendously hard for him, you know. Right. And, you know, and he was physically very, very fit. They didn't pick up too much in the post-mortem. They'd picked up some normal stuff that you'd expect.

So, yeah, I mean, that's the key point. Right, right. I was still going on operations. I didn't stop, you know, but looking back, my body bit back. And a slight apt deputation of behaviour then. Yeah. The second period of time was, you know, we're into our ninth, tenth operations now. They're highly condensed together, and I had a really quite pronounced change in behavior.

And that's from a cumulative. It's not just down to one thing. And how do you notice? these slight changes. For me, are you constantly going through like psychological evaluations? Well,

consciously I'm aware of how I behave, to be fair. Okay. And if you know, everyone gets a bit depressed every so often, that's very different from depressive. But depressive is a mechanical sort of process into, it's a decline.

It's a, you know, increasingly disregulated neurological function. And that's what I'm always consciously aware of, you know. Get up and have a bad day. That's like everyone else does. It's up to you to just make someone else have a good day and it will change.

But what I'm saying is I'm very conscious about negative thoughts creeping in, which indicates that kind of sort of I'm not particularly in tune. Another thing that's very, very important to realise is if you have been down into those pits of stress that leave to these challenges that you face, you know, the route out of it, if it goes to clinical level, one you'll need professional intervention. There's no way you can drag yourself back out of it using just the way. the process is available to you, which we'll talk about. But, you know, it's going to be a long process back out.

There's a process back out, and there absolutely is. But you're going to need some help. Whereas if you identify these periods of stress and mitigate them before they get there, you're probably never going to go down to that line. And that can be very, very challenging if you're doing a professional, like Special Forces soldiering, without a doubt. How much attention do they pay to your mental, well-being when you're in the special forces. A huge amount, right? So, I mean, we're consciously

watching each other. I mean, not just you guys. I mean, are there other people, other doctors around you that are evaluating you? Yes, we get extremely good medical support. We're slightly less metric than others. You know, now there's algorithms you can do. There's various stuff that measures your cognitive abilities, you know, can identify cognitive decline. You can measure a changing mindset. Now, I've been out of that unit for three years, so I have no idea what they're doing now, I don't look back in and go one of these things that you're doing so whether they are using them I'm not sure

at that time the best defence we had is looking, watching each other and know each other and if you see someone behaving slightly differently and the key one is getting all defensive you know it's like slightly you know everything that they're doing they're acting in a defensive manner that's probably the first indicators

that you know they're out of balance they're going off tilt Yeah. This is a slide. You know, now that might have been an accumulation of factors. Now, we did intense periods of training with explosives used, you know, and everything else. You're subjected to the blast in each and every time, and the blast reacts in different ways. You never really predicts how hard you're going to get it by it.

You know, we do close-court combat, so there's over-pressure from barrels. You know, this is all part of nature of special operations forces. Right. So, you know, it's almost a foregone conclusion. You know, the subconclusive blast results in brain shearing. So brain sharing is a slight agitation between the grey and white matter of your brain. So the grey matter is where all your dendrites are. So the white matters where all the accents follow through.

So they're the communication channels with its my lineation sheaf. And they appear down and communicate to the peripheral nervous system, which is where you get all your stuff. when you're constantly explodes the bass whether it's more as artillery explosives you know

all of that sort of stuff you get that very kind of minor conclusive effect that you know results in that slight shearing now this can be detected in the blood now this is very very new

and I believe it comes from the US and it's called neurofilament light so if you can detect this it's sort of had the term brain dust then it's

different from someone who's boxed or played football, whatever. The mechanisms are slightly differently. Interesting. How are they different? So I'm not quite sure because contact sport, you know, it results in... There's a difference between getting hit in the head versus dealing with some sort of explosive blast. It's like pressure more than everything. Yeah, right.

The mechanism is slightly different. That makes sense. Now, I mean, it's interesting that boxes are more prone to this than, say, MMA fighters. certainly all types of fighting and again it's an interesting one because do we want to take contact out of sport well no of course not we can't take contact

we stop being human so you know the impetus is to measure the risk measure the exposure responsibly put measures in so the exposure's in that point of competition not in the training unnecessarily you know and

but then also you know and again use every measure available to you including technology to mitigate it and promote your own physical physiological function because what's inside you is your best defence yes so and I think we've got to a point now where you know no people people are responsible

and they always have been for the people that are doing duties on behalf of them in professions in sports teams in anything personal choice in there but that's part of the contract and the deal you know by now not measuring exactly what exposes is and kind of taking on the risk and mechanisms are getting put in place you know this is all quite new um again one of the problems is neurological function um is is you know these these conditions are

extremely difficult to diagnose i want to go i want to go deep into this stuff but i got one more question about the uh the combat yeah so when you guys leave these program like the s as and and these highly high special forces divisions. Is it normal for you guys to have to completely scrub your identities when you get out of there? Because I know a lot of guys, we were talking a little bit before that a couple of guys that you know had to do that. Why would they do that? And how normal is that? It's just, I mean, it's personal choice at the point where you get out. You know, there's no guidance on things. But it's personal choice. It's what you want to be comfortable with.

again in transition people may not be fully comfortable with it happens in phases rather than anything and you can talk endlessly why people aren't comfortable about that but it's really a personal level of approach in everything that you do what you choose to do and everything else

and why so like what kind of blowback do you get when you leave the military or what kind of blowback have people like yourself gotten once they've decided to retire It's not really about blowback It's a but really about You know for a long period of time You've been in a very classified environment

Yes You will not have social media And you've been completely contained To a unique purpose that you're designed for You don't share anything You know why would you share anything And essentially when you get out It takes a little bit of time to unwind that in your head

and become comfortable with it. So, you know, for me, it was like, okay, well, I'm going to step, and I'm going to walk down this path, and I'm going to get involved in technologies, and I'm going to get involved in careers in industries, where I'm pretty much learning from the beginning. This question remains, is ever going to adapt sufficiently. But that means engaging in the world on a flat level.

I'm, like, what I'm trying to say here is, is the majority like people like you who retire from these forces how worried do you have to be about your safety like when you're traveling the world or like people that you've like enemies that you've dealt with in the past trying to come back and find you or stuff like that places you'll travel to uh if you take those sorts of roles present a lot of risks yes you know so i think people are very mindful of that you know until you're sure where you want to go with your life and whether it's going to include those traveling to certain areas that may be risky that's probably why they control it to a certain extent and they you know everyone you want

to do it on a measured basis how you want to engage with industry society uh everything else i guess name changes are pretty common there's no standard to it right no people make personal decisions on it there's there's no standard to it you know And, you know, essentially a lot of it is defined by what you want to do when you go out, you know. For me, I'm on a flat panel. I'm on an absolutely flat plane, you know. I'm pretty sure I know where I want to go, whether it works out that way. But, you know, it doesn't make any difference to me.

Do you feel like now that you've been out for three years in your civilian life, do you feel like your heads on a swivel, like hypervigilance, always have to be looking over your shoulder? Did you have that in the beginning? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, one of the key behavioral things that I manifested and the second time I had a bit of a time sort of spiraling back up. And again, I was working all the way through,

so let's not like, you know, I was conscious of it. Was, you know, hyper-security awareness, you know, which other team members noticed. And it was kind, constantly looking and saying, okay, well, you know, doing assessments on risk and security. And a kind of neuroticism about who I was sort of engaging with, who gave me their number. And that's a completely dysregulated brain, right? You know, when you're kind of assessing too much and trusting too little, then your brain has become dysregulated.

Now, in that work, of course, you fairly assess everything you do. In that particular time, I noticed it within myself. And I wasn't comfortable. And I was like, and this is not like me. This is not by character. I'm not like this. So that's the bit I defined in myself. I didn't intuitively go, this is what I've got to do to solve it.

But I pulled my way out of it. Like I said, it wasn't affecting my work. I didn't disclose it to anyone. And it wasn't affecting my work to the extent where I was, you know, not, not effective. And even not pleasant enough to work with. And it became a dominating factory and everything I did, you know. And that's, again, that's just not me. So, you know, that's just a sign of a dysregulated brain.

All the neural function is going at that point. If you leave that unattended to, whether it's down to lack of sleep, lacking nutrition for periods of time, just piled on stress, or whether it was a cumulative over the years, whatever it was that led to it at that particular point. And it was over a few months. And I'd say it probably to reverse the whole thing. to, you know, who knows, because it's, where's the, where's the line?

Right. Over a year. So how did you end up getting into this world of neurophysiology and working with NASA and DARPA and all these companies? Yeah, so I work at the moment employed for a satellite company. I'm probably moving industries quite soon. But it's been a pleasure to be in the space industry. It's an incredible place to be.

Whether I can prove to be of really high value every day in there, I'm not sure. You know, that's one of the problems of that adaptation. It takes quite a lot of time to learn. But I've had a, you know, I'm really grateful for the people and the experiences I've had since I've left. And when people, when I've needed people's help, I haven't asked for help, but they've given a lot of support, which is fantastic, you know, it's like,

and I've noted how much people are prepared to support you in what you do. But it's up to you to keep on moving on. So I'm not saying I'm staying in staying where I am at the moment, But, you know, I was trying to get on a course at Imperial College because I then thought I needed to educate to make myself more relevant in certain fields. And through a gentleman who is the head of the Institute of Security

and Science Technology, Professor Deif Channer, he, on a walk-round of a place called the I-Hub, introduced me to Richard Statham, who's a CEO of M-MES Group A-B. So he invited me in for a demonstration. I had a demonstration on the technology that they've developed. When I haven't developed technology, they've innovated with a trusted technology, which I'll come on to. Having tried that and experienced it, I was put through a few gaming scenarios where, you know, people jumping out and sticking swords through me.

And then I had to sort of battle my way through towards a radioactive nuclear core. And essentially, the technology put stimulus through your musculosculital system and a neuromusculous skeletal system. you know, but immediately I picked up on the benefit and I'm not interested in stronger fit faster. You know, I naturally actually was perfectly physically capable of doing my job all the time. A little bit extra would certainly would have been welcome and I could potentially have done my job better.

But essentially where I saw the potential was that real kind of promotion of all that physical function which is so important to keeping yourself stable and balanced. Through my career there's definitely a neurological deficit. You know, there's something I'm, attending to. It's not going to quickly go out into disarray. But, you know, I also, I can't take my, take my half it. So what was this technology? What was the purpose of this technology? What was the end goal of it? So the purpose of the technology is to be used. So it's

an old technology that's used in medical therapeutics. Like TENS machine, it's the same sort of family of technology as EMS. But they've developed over eight years, a unique membrane, incredible membranes about paper fin has unrivaled abilities to take information from the human body it's got super super-conductive and deliver stimulus in the stimulus in artful waveforms

that have been created by someone called Vincent Tellenbach who's a Parkinson's expert who's got 30 years experience just under 30 years I think 20 years, 27 years experience writing these waveforms and working on this in this area of expertise

and he's an incredible person you know he's got a legacy of working with Kennedy Krieger Institute and John Hopkins. And, you know, that's probably, you know, if you wanted to pick the most crucial and valuable elements of the whole piece, because it's a number of technologies all put together. It's trouble that knowledge to write the waveforms, the waveforms themselves, and the unique membrane. But also in that team's a lady called Dr. Victoria Sparks, who's a neurologist physiotherapist, and then a number of others. There's a program manager, of Eddie. So it's a very small team, but what I've achieved over seven years is really, really

incredible. And what they've done is took an old and trusted technology and gave it applications in almost every area you can think of, because it's a fundamentally, it's a human application. And your muscular skeletal system is your gateway to a happy, healthy, and probably longer life. Now, so tensioning and torsioning your muscular skeletal system is the most effective way of regulating your brain. without doubt. You know, you have to still state to the... You're talking about the muscle that is like the closest to your bones, the skeletal muscle. Well, in every end point of a muscle, you have a connection with the neuron, an innovative muscle, and they appear at the top of your bones. But the whole muscle is, you know,

when you voluntarily recruit muscles, so when you pick up a dumbbell, your recruitment is however much it needs to in order to do that. Right. When you put stimulus in, you can design a waveform to stimulate it in various ways. Got it. So in a program I've got on my phone, because I use this suit,

you know, not every day. And again, it's wrong to talk about a technology like this is a habitual thing you need to do. You can do it in phases. You can do it in programs. But it's good for an approach to using over a period of time

that you want to train. You can train without it if you want. And it's a technology that will adapt to what you want to do. or you can follow a program. But essentially, it's putting that physiological stimulus in. It's optimizing the promotion of other physiological functions through that innovation and stimulus onto the musculosocletal system.

Now, inside you is your most promotable elements. You know, you've got your blood-brain barrier that is very fussy and quite individual, actually, in every human being. What can't be argued with unless there's, there's a genetic issue with you, which can be identified. So if you can promote those functions, all the more better, recruiting the muscle and getting stronger, but also promoting those hormones,

the secretions of hormone and extracellular vesicles, sort of cross cells that move between, cross molecules that move between cells, and promote them up into your brain in a more effective way they can do by voluntary, alone, then that is going to have a very good effect on other core elements of your physical, physiological function. So these are where I've become extremely interested in the technology, it's not just the fact that by using it you can achieve the stronger fit faster, the fat loss,

you know, the cardiovascular health, whatever, every element of fitness that you want, the technology can be used to promote. But essentially, by stimulating your musculoskeletal system. So when I describe the musculoscalatal system as a gateway, and you probably need to include neuronal in here, because of the latest research from University of Illinois, is definitely indicating that innovative muscle is more effective at promoting these hormones and secretions of extracellular vesicles, is that's your gateway as such.

And what people tend to sort of go down the line of is, Well, it's one padlock with a key, no. It's not. It's a combination lot. And some of those combination numbers are good nutrition, good sleep, healthy balance in your social existence, including good relationships or whatever. All of those are absolutely key factors.

You need to remain on those pillars. But one of the most effective ones you can actually directly influence, and that puts their numbers in bold, is that stimulus onto your musculoskeletal system. and we recently did a paper for people involved in space flight, you know, space community, relevant to institutions like NASA and ESA and gain their attention very, very quickly because what it is is a technology that can be put into almost any garment.

You know, the membrane is unique. It can be rendered into any garment. And we haven't stopped innovating, you know. We're looking at various communities that definitely have challenges. So this stuff could essentially be implemented into like astronauts, spacesuits? Only they could ever say whether that is feasible or not. Is that why they were interested in it? No reason why not.

Well, there's no reason why not. So I think with any technology, even a non-invasive one, an wearable and a trusted one, you have to look at it, you have to ensure that it's doing what you need it to do for your particular challenges. And the spaceflight community here are really interesting lot because they're the very epitome of humans, going beyond their biological limits in what they aspire or need to do for their professions. And, you know, it's absolutely stark. And once you go into a microgravity atmosphere,

which you're not well adapted to, the decline is extremely quick, and it's very, very hard to mitigate that damage. You mean that? You're talking about, like, bone density? Mainly muscle mass and bone density. Once you lose muscle mass and bone density, you start having a compromised endocrine function. Yes.

and physiological functions in concert. All this needs to be harmonious, right? It's all as important as each other. So one of these suits that you could wear with these devices that stimulate the muscle could essentially mitigate the bone density loss and the muscle mass loss. There's a number of ways you can promote bone density.

So nutrition is always there as the first one, but not necessarily the most effective. And then you've got the go-out running and that's called Piazoelectric effect so as your heel is hit in the floor your body turns the mechanical force of that impact onto the floor

into electrical charge within your iron gateways and promotes it into your bones so that promotes bone density the problem with impact of course is you know over time it will impact your joints but you know that's not a good reason to stop doing running

and certainly you know running is one of the most effective ways. And the third one, I mean there's other minor ones, is tensioning and talking your muscular skeletal system. So the stronger your muscles are and the stronger their contractions against the bones, that's developing that bone density growth effect as well. Right. And what's important in this is, it's not just that bone density is really, really important, but you've got, there's a lesser-known hormone called osteocalcin. I think only really identified in 2004 that lies within the bones. osteo- what?

Osteo-calin. Osteo-calin. Kalsin. Okay. And so even the bones are really important in your other physiological functions of your body, including your neurological function. So, you know, so all of it needs to happen in harmonious concert. You know, none of it is going to be, if you're training but not eating and sleeping,

it will mitigate it for a bit, but you'll end up in a bad place. If you're eating, not sleeping but training, you know, the whole thing has to be looked as a number of disciplines all put together. Socialization, music, you know, all of these key aspects of ensuring your neurological balance. Another way of looking at is emotional stability, right? So how you behave, your emotions that you display in reaction to the things that are happening to you. That's core to indicating on, you know, how healthy your brain. is working, how fit it is, how mentally fit you are. And, you know, if you're out of emotional balance on everything,

or you're acting like basically a stone to everything you come across, that is an indication. And then going back to my changes in behaviour in number two face, you know, that's what I've become really, and I was not in in inationally sympathetic to anything. You know, it's like that can be quite hard. And it's not, you know, sometimes people say, oh, well, that's what you've got to be in order to continue to do your job. Right. And that can almost be a bit of a misnomer.

Yes, it is. Of course you're controlling yourself emotionally. And you're not going to become, it's not going to be a good thing to go down into a sentimental pool of whatever else. But not being emotionally intelligent around how you behave around other people is also not indicating a good level of mental health, mental fitness, rather. And I'll deliberately call it mental fitness, because you're not. you have the ability to change it, right? And through all of those stimuluses in your other functionings, promoting physiological function, promoting brain-derived neurotrophin factors.

So neurotrophic factors, no growth factors, that will move through your bloodstream. They'll end up in your brain. They play an very, very important role in regulating everything that happens up there. And, you know, you've got a family of glial cells called astrocytes, oligodendrocytes, and microglia cells. Astrocytes are responsible for expression and they inhibit certain sort of cellular interactions in the brain

and key expression and signaling, particularly in your dendritic areas, so the ends of the neurons themselves, the end of the synapsis. And then you've got oligodendostrite, dendrocytes that rebuild the mildly unended sheaf that I alluded to earlier, which is if you take the axon, That's where the signal comes down. The myelienn is chief, rebuilt by the oligodendrocytes,

that is key to the conductor of the signals that move along it. And then you've got finally microgliocels, which are like the brain's janitor. So it goes around and it cleans out all of the detritus and cleans out bad proteins that have existed. So if you look at, they've got a key function in Alzheimer's, for instance. And if they aren't performing their role or in, in any way inhibited in their role

because of inflammation or because of whatever else is going on there and they're really, really not sure about the causal effects of this but the process is absolutely essential you know and one of the ways we are thinking certainly in my mind and one of the most tragic elements of Parkinson's disease and other neurodegenerative conditions is they present when physical symptoms are there you know that's the last third of the disease

you know when you sorry the the condition so when you roll back the clock to maybe 20 years earlier when that started to the conditions around it where it would manifest and believe me i'm not talking about genetics here there may be a higher more likelihood of it through genetics or whatever but the environmental factors that you've experienced for your life absolutely fundamental in what how your brain is shaped and if you know that you've been exposed to subconcognition gustive blast. If you know that you've bereaved in traumatic circumstances, if you know you've been in a particular managed position at work, there's just absolutely, you know, knocked you all over the place for years. You know, you all have preconditions. So we can identify the risk factors

at the very least. There's a number of ways in growing biomarkers where you can actually identify it present within the body. And then, you know, what can you do to mitigate at that point? At the moment, they're sticking neural interfaces deep within brains, deep brain stimulators in order to control the motor symptoms of Parkinson's. And at that point, really, it's... There's things people can do with people with Parkinson's where they can implant something in your brain? Yeah, so for Parkinson's, you know, where the motor control. Yeah. So invasively go into the brain and stick a deep brain stimulator.

So a neural interface deep within there that sends out a signal that interferes with the lack of motor control or the motor control. Is it been shown to be effective at all? I mean, how effective is it? This is one of the problems, right? So, I mean, that's very, very clever. There's no doubt about that. Right. It's an incredible intervention on an absolutely tragic disease, tragic condition.

But the key point is if you look at it, it also demonstrates how little we do know. Because actually, through that neural pathway that's affecting the motor in any way, you know, I've heard, in the books I've read, I've seen two neurophysiologists refer to it in the same way as it's like playing a piano with a mallet, right? So you can actually only see a tiny amount of the neural activity that's going on. And you're sending a signal in. but through that same area of pathway there's all sorts of emotional behaviours going on

there's so much else it's like a whole orchestra going on in there and actually what you what you need to do is be playing a melody along it and the trouble is with into introducing an invasive device into the brain your body doesn't know how much you trick it

will identify its foreign object in the end and wrap it in a sheaf so that signal will become degraded you know and and that's a problem you know so we're you know whilst it's really incredible that are able to do it at all you know and it does mark the progress in medical science and and the practice of medicine you know it also does highlight how much how much further we've got to go you know and progress in this area is is is really interesting it got deeply interrupted through the times of COVID.

A lot of people lost their funding. Right. But if we can find other ways in which to promote these sort of the physiological function well before, you know, the overall question in my mind is like, could you have prevented it in the first place? If you really promoted those functions at times of stress, times of whatever else is leading to those neurodegenerative conditions

becoming onset so you can't mitigate them anymore. Right. Another tragic element of this is by the time they're visible, physically, you know, and they're generally at an age where your muscular, scletal system has degraded slightly, and the neuronal corrections with it have degraded to a certain degree. So those people, particular individuals are less able to effectively get that beneficial stimulus. Yeah, how do you detect it earlier? Exactly. How do you detect it earlier? And even if you can't detect it, but you can identify the risk factors that likely would lead to it, is there more we can

be doing with non-evasive wearables. Now in all of these topics, you can argue until the cows come home, like, okay, to what point are you optimizing them? Is there a changing cognitive ability? You know, that's for people to go out and work with research clinics to establish as quick as possible.

Right. But a key point with these technologies, sorry. No, no, no, I was just going to say, I was, I've become aware of, you mentioned DARPA earlier. I know DARPA, I read this lady, Annie Jacobson's book about, she's a whole book dedicated to DARPA

and some of the stuff that they do and some of the research that they've been doing for a long time. And one of the things that they've been focusing on is creating super soldiers. And they've been doing these invasive brain implants

since the 90s to try to do things like mitigate pain, like to try to like reduce the amount of pain that soldiers can bear in combat and things like hunger, try to like get past hunger to survive longer without food.

And also, kinds of things. So it makes a lot of sense that they would be interested in something like this. Yeah. I mean, I've just read a book called We're Electric by Sally Adi, which is absolutely just illuminating in so many aspects. And in it, DARPA has mentioned so many times as being so critical in this advance of this research and technology. And of course, a lot of it is done for military purposes. Right. Military communities. You know, I kind of got a need for it. You know, the need for human augmentation in the military is a given. You know, the military have a lot of people that are, you know, breaking through stress.

So there's a piece of documentation called the Dawn of New Paradigm, joint piece of work by the Bundesweir and Dasa. And essentially it's, you know, identifies that we should be able to promote to our human biological limits. You know, people aren't doing that. You know, we're not effectively going to our forefinding. biological potential. If you go beyond that, you talk about enhancement, so you can take people's eyes and laser room

and get them to see in the dark. That's relatively easy, actually. You get them to see in the dark? Yeah, so you can just open up the rods so you can see better in the dark. Oh, see the rods. Yeah, yeah. That means you can see in the dark, right? As good as many animals would. I thought you meant, like, give them like night vision

or something. Yeah, night vision's a, you know, great process. How cool would that be? I bet you DARP is trying to figure that out, try to make people get night vision in their eyeballs? Well, the key bit is could you do it biologically? Right, exactly, exactly. You can actually take a laser and open it all up quite a lot, perfectly safely, add more rods in that allow you to see in the dark

and you get better clarity at night. Night vision's come on a huge distance from when we first started. But it's hard work seeing in those pictures that you see on, especially if you're doing it over such a prolonged period. a time and then you've got all your different levels of information coming in. The overall load on your brain to interpret what's going on outside it is begetting pretty a lot and it's acknowledged as a significant challenge that they face is we're opening up all of these abilities to sense and surveil and learn and all this and be told something by something else. And a human brain

is amazingly adaptable and it can survive. But you know you, whether it's, um, neural. Yes, Lasix. Yeah, so neural, you know, neural overload or whatever, you know, everyone talks about now needing to take a neurological, creating a neurological reserve, even just to cope, let alone to condition. And, you know, NATO's just released their statement on human enhancing technologies,

you know, the importance of being ethical about it, but, you know, importance of, you know, looking after the soldier, looking after, looking after the militaries, ensuring that their welfare is good, but also their conditioning suits what is going to be required of them, and getting them in a good physical state, good physical conditioning, but also augmenting their biological ability. And there is no reason why you can't do that, right?

If you're using, we can voluntarily do what we can do. And individually and biologically, on a biological level, we're all quite different. You know, we're all very, very similar. but the small differences between us manifest quite big in how we appear and how we behave, right? But using a technology, a non-invasive technology, to improve that conditioning. And it's no good in the hands of a small set of people. It's effective when you make it available to the whole and improve them by 10%, 20%.

Right. A quick room rehabilitation, more conditioned to do their role. if you're having, you know, a lot of back pain or people falling from a particular condition, like a particular use in conditional to your role, so special orthosis community, you know, lots of climbing and jumping. Right. Does that result in, in bad knees? You know, okay, well, we can see that.

So we can condition that to become less of a, become a preventable injury as such. And there was an interesting one we were brought with, um, shelf people who worked in superstores who were putting things on shelves of a certain weight, they're getting this particular type of problem. And, you know, it's costing the company a lot of money. And that could easily be treated by, you know, the right physiotherapy advice and a very easy and accessible technology. And, you know, the point I made with when I come across this technology,

what really blew me away, and I must add that I'm not paid by this company, the moment, you know, I don't, I represent them, I've become an ambassador forum as I was invited to do. And, you know, I was just taken by, you know, the potential that it offers in so many applications. And, yeah, and in the use of this technology, you know, the fact that you can render the membrane into anything you choose. So if you take female motorsport, for instance, you know, they don't want to change the suit they spent so much money on development. So you have to make the set of technologies that offers this stimulus to be able to be rendered into the garment they use.

And that makes it quite special. It makes it very accessible. And what struck me at the beginning of being introduced this technology is, one, it's an old and trusted technology. It's got no ethical contentions to it whatsoever. The risks are definable because they're well known. And it's affordable, accessible in the business units.

you know, it's the applications that will go into. And it can be delivered at effective scale. And that's a key question with technology. It's like, okay, well, is it great? Well, yes. Can people use it who need to? Yes, can it be made affordable and accessible to them? Yes.

And that's a key point in is this technology effective. So, I mean, that's sort of Emma's Group A, B. You know, it's effective in the four lines is, gaming, so gaming is very easy. You know, much like haptic, this is a beneficial stimulus going into a body. The waveform is extremely simple. It's a very simple product. Essentially, you know, FIFA 24?

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you get tackled and you just get a stimulus into your quad that's promoting good factors inside you as well. So it's not only an immersive gaming experience. It's just made gaming healthy. You know, so then you've got sports and recreational fitness world where you've got sort of very focused programs on the pursuit of sports and recreational fitness, which is usually fat loss, muscle conditioning, you know, all of the different pillars of health,

but done at a certain level and done in a routine that makes sense to the user. So you can push it out in any model you want, but the safe brackets are written within the programs, you know. So within this older technology, you get something called rhabdomyalysis, which is bleeding within muscles. that's only if you take it to extreme levels or you're biologically particularly vulnerable to that and I would say that voluntarily you can give us rhabdomalysis by overtraining in particular ways so it's not just the technology

and the technology arguably doesn't make you any more susceptible to that but it's easily definable and it can easily be captured in these programs so it definitely has applications in sports and recreational fitness you know you brought a sample with you what is this one right here

how does this work this is this is I will mention there's some very artful prototypes coming out so just bring it over

to where you are mainly it's I mean this is the membrane so the membrane is the special bit the membrane can be rendered into anything

so if it's medical and therapeutic application is it a knee sleeve is it you know what do you need right

this is a suit that I wear for my training I've got numerous programs on my phone. So when I want to train and, you know, the stimulus, the particular waveform that allows me to deliver resistance in my muscles, that's what I use. I've used capillarization this morning because it's quite sort of nice.

What's that? So it just encourages blood flow from all of the area. So, yeah, I mean, I use it most of the times when I train. It's great because it kind of... What kind of training are you talking about? training. So how did I train what this week? Yeah like when you say when you use it for training, what kind of training are you talking about? Any training I want to do. So all I do is put the suit on and enhance my training. And that's the art to it, right? It's basically a stimulus that is

when the stimulus goes into the muscle, when I voluntarily recruit the muscle, I can never do it to its fullest extent. It's impossible. Muscle's got three types of twitch. You can never really access the slow level of muscle to the fullest extent for a start. The waveforms are very, very cleverly designed that your body won't get used to them for a start. I don't understand the full technical aspects of it because it's like an art form. But essentially it's end-to-end recruitment of the muscle. So it's 100% recruitment of the muscle. Now if you want to get muscle mass, you adapt your training and the technology will make you more. effective in achieving that.

You can wear that and you get super jacked? You can do. I mean, I've never tried, and I don't think I want to be superjured, because it's actually a bit of a disadvantage. But for my part, I want to be as quick and as, kind of light work, but I want to be as quick and as strong as light it can be. You know, certainly that requires a certain mass of muscle. Yes.

You know, but this, you know, the different programs, different waveforms, there's a hypertrophy program on that. That waveform allows you to build muscle, mass quickly. Wow. The key point, and I make a really, really important point in this, is like, at no point any of these technologies, the panacea, right? You've still got to be motivated enough to get up and train if you're using it for that.

You know, you can't just stick it on and it will go. And what we've found through the research is the most powerful way of using any of these technologies. What this is is an involuntary stimulus into muscular skeletal system. It's cutting your brain out the loop, basically. So when you voluntarily train, your brain is moving, using all those conscious neuronal pathways and the moats going in, it's picking up and recruiting as much muscle. You've got an involuntary stimulus going into a muscular skeletal system that's emphasizing certain elements of it that you wouldn't achieve. And it's optimising the promotion of physiological function.

So like, is there a full body suit version of this? This is a, there is some trousers. So this is a full body suit. Oh, there's pants and a shirt. Okay. So, but equally, and that's the key part, is really you're, it's an innovation of trusted technology. Okay. The membrane is utterly unique, the waveforms, you know, it is.

So, like, what are some of the things that you could, if you could put that on and, like, go for a run? There's something on the phone where you could type in, like, running? Yeah, so, my phone's over there, but, you know, I've got banks of programs. And we've got, you know, a lot more on the bank data. and there's new prototypes out, you know. So we're working very hard on seeing development forward. But essentially, yeah, I mean, I stick it on and I stick it on my abs and my back to strengthen my core and my hinge.

That's a resistance program that works particularly well for running. And so you do that when you're going on a run? Yeah, and then I go in and do some strength training. You know, and I don't, it's not like I'm turning to that and going, you're responsible. Right. And I'm putting it on and working, intuitively. works the way you train equally I can just put it on a program so the new programs are dedicated to

you know they're built for people who know less about how to train for instance so it can even go down to telling you how to train if you want it to right most people don't want that right most people want something that is going to help them get to their goal quicker like a catalyst to do it and do it better right now and using a non-invasive technology to do that with your own voluntary and motivated process to achieve that, you know, you're going to get better results each and every time, you know, and the conditioning ability of this is tried and proven. Right. It's also been used in a medical and therapeutic world for a very long time with bedbound patients, people who've had muscles that have, you know, atrophied. Yeah, atrophied, inactive. There's actually

a program on that for that, on my phone. Oh, that's amazing. You know, so, but this is only the basis of where the potential can start, you know, as well, further understanding comes on how that harmonious balance in endocrine function, physical function is attached to that tensioning and talking of the musculoskeletal system. And the most recent research, as I said, is innovative muscle is more effective at secreting the hormones and the extracellular vesicles that, you know, go up into your brain and boost brain function. And, um, So it's a very exciting area. But just on the simple basis of what the suit does, you know, sports and recreation fitness,

it's a great technology to use. And actually, you know, it's the same technology you've used. You've seen it, but it's a totally, totally different application of it. You've seen the lumps. You've seen the wires coming out. This has got no wires on it. The membrane is incredible. You know, so that means its applications can be very exciting.

You know, when you talk about sports and record of fitness, you know, specialist applications are defined by any profession that challenges your human biology, biological limits to do it. So consider spaceflight. You know, you're going into a microgravity atmosphere. They're probably the epitome of the example of people who have got challenges in achieving what they're aspiring to achieve. But also militaries are, you know, defined very quickly, have massive human performance challenges. both in the health and welfare and readiness of all their soldiers, you know, they're keeping up. But the point is it's not just good enough to keep up.

And it's very important to have every human being as ready as they can and as condition they can for every trial they may face. And then you've got medical and therapeutic. And medical and therapeutic is an incredible world where the technology has already been used. And we've been, we're going to, going on a trip to Ukraine and that's kind of sort of a very good

exemplar of where the immediate applications of this technology can help incredibly and you know Ukraine has got a huge amount of amputees and traumatically wounded people yeah you know so I you know

please don't take these figures verbatim but you're looking at 110,000 or something you know it's like and the levels of processing of the amputees and trying to get these humans back into a stable and social existence and a happy one, but also being able to get them back to doing some sort of work

and, you know, and again, being members of that economy, that national economy, is critical. And the challenges are huge. And this is an interdisciplinary area. You can't just give them a physio and it will all work. So the technology can perform an extremely important role in not only being a catalyst. to them going back and, you know, getting rehabilitated,

they can play a very important role in preparing them for their conditioning for surgery and post. And it can help them condition further afterwards. So if you think about someone who's an amputee, they have got a mechanical disadvantage in tensioning, torturing, in their musculoscletal system, right? So this means that, you know, forever more they will have a kind of, neurological deficit they will have to attend to, the imbalances in physical function and redressing them are big as well. So this is a preserve for experts, you know, and again, this technology

can be made available to anyone when they're following a program with conditions built in, but when you're actually treating people with very, very complex injuries, when you're addressing communities with, you know, professional challenges, that's when you have to have the experts involved to inform the process. You know, analyze, you know, okay, how is this immediately useful to them? Where can we prove it can be useful in the future? So, you know, at the end of the day,

that trip to Ukraine is all about delivering them a technology that will help them rehabilitate these people. There have been conflict affected. And potentially will become, you know, people that, you know, will take a massive amount of resource to support forevermore. These are generational problems. When conflict takes place, it's a massive impact to a whole population. You know, generational levels of problems.

You've got, you know, all sorts. And that's the cost of conflict. Right, yeah. Is this available commercially or publicly right now? So yes and no. It's moving out to sports and recreational fitness market. I think they've got the new types of suit ready. I haven't spoken too much about the business plan recently.

You know, medical and therapeutics, it's being used already, but we're working with Imperial College, leads of department in musculoskeletal biodynamics, some other, you know, talking to the NHS about its wide use. I think these non-invasive technologies, it takes a long time to prove their data. Right. And that's where, you know, from my point of view,

you need to differentiate between a non-invasive technology and invasive technology because the non-invasive technology as long as you can define the risks pretty clearly and this is an old and trust technology that's been used for a long time you should be able to hypothesize

quicker before and you know you shouldn't need that mountain of data because you can get on with using the non-invasive technology because it's keying into your own biological systems you know it takes out that critical point of error

Now you can't be complacent with it You need the expertise To advise on all of this And we'll get on with clinical research And everything else that proves To what extent it improves cognitive ability Right But the fact of the matter is

It has immediate applications In multiple Use cases You know there's big communities That can benefit from it You know People who have become quite obese You know

These sorts of technologies Can be used to help help them, you know, when you get to the critical point where you've got to be really, really careful about, you know, how much you do and stress on your other internal organs. You know, these technologies can be used in quite sort of artful ways in the hands of the right people. And again, it's an interdisciplinary area, you know, no physio should be on their own without a neurologist. You know, and you need all of those expertise as come together. And there's certain strength in having a commonality of knowledge in the middle. So when you talk about some of the amputee

treatment and rehabilitation, you know, physios are there on their own and they have no idea what's going on in neuronal overload, the changes in neuronal function that's having to go on. And that's why it's important, you know, and especially when you're applying, you know, a technology like this, the benefits really are derived from the knowledge. You know, again, it's the waveform that does the art. You know, there's decades of knowledge that took to get to that point. Right. And again, you know, I love podcasts because they're platforms where you can actually hypothesize.

Yes. And you can say, you know, why, you know, there is no reason why technologies like this cannot be partnered together. You know, and innovating with their applications and applying them. You know, you can chase further down the path quicker. You know, you can make it more accessible quicker to a large amount of people to benefit from it. That's really cool, man. That's exciting to see what you're doing and how this can be implemented in various ways to help people maintain or to help people that have been afflicted by physical injuries or diseases and stuff like that. So where can people that are watching this learn more about this technology or this program that you guys have going on?

Yeah, I mean, so they're more than welcome to look up the product. at the moment it's quite a closed off but where I describe them to be is with the right partners move quite quickly I've just been to Soft Week which is absolutely brilliant loved it

so I really enjoy coming here as well and happy I'm not leaving just yet but essentially these companies that we can partner with quite quickly and working together in a collaborative manner can get quicker to the solution if you can measure brainwaves accurately

and you can promote physiological function and measure what you do with it. But again, I emphasise, you know, the nascent nature of measuring what's going on in the brain, you know, making very, very quick progress. So, yeah, at the moment, go on links, have a look at companies if you're interested in this. And it will start appearing in research.

We're working very heavily with Manchester Metropolitan University, Northampton University and Imperial College. Imperial College is absolutely key because it's got the innovation hub so this is a ecosystem of innovation like not just small startups representation of big sort of primes there as well

and it's quite a special building because of what goes on in there but you've got this amazing ecosystem PhD students startups to SMEs with these amazing visions that they put into practice like MES and essentially being used

sort of assessed for their dual use nature. So dual use being applications in civilian environments and both in security environments, you know, and essentially working on all of the really, really sort of key challenges that are facing collective militaries. Right. Which, you know, is all a part of essentially harnessing industry, partnering with academia and answering some of the challenges that government faces. and government, including the medical institutions,

we have the NHS in the UK, you know, which is one of the most precious things we have. But, you know, I'm going to argue endlessly, whether it's kind of sort of continuing to hold its head up under the pressure. But it's, you know, it's incredible. You know, when I think about people that they've treated that are very, very close to me, you know,

I'm just really thankful we've got something like that we can turn on. But they need a lot of help, you know. And drawing technologies and non-invasive technologies that are accessible now. And again, I'll go back to that. You know, no technology is worth talking about if it can't be delivered at effective scale. You know, when people need it. And old and trusted technologies have not got the levels of risk associated to them essentially as new ones. You know, maybe there's not the data on the way you're applying them,

but a different culture and different approach. And, you know, a lot of the discussions I've been. privity, you can see how people are naturally sitting in their silos. Now, some of the most brilliant people you come across, experts in archaeology and experts in these seals, but essentially sitting in their silos. And there's some fascinating research going on, much of it interrupted by COVID, unfortunately. But, you know, these companies should, you know, be identified. You know, have you got a usable, non-invasive technology that can be accelerated through sort of

collaboration. You need to get those interdisciplinary eyes on it. And I not look from one point from their sile you from their one perspective, but broadly open it up to, you know, the whole point about harmonious function and how you promote those factors.

And I think we'll reach the conclusions much sooner and certainly be able to progress on. Fascinating stuff, man. I can't wait to see where this goes. It's super interesting to see innovation. like this take off.

I'll link anything below where people can learn more. Is there any specific websites you can think of off the top of your head that people can go to to learn more about those? Yeah, so look up M-MES Group A-B and Dipulse as well, we'll give you an introduction to it.

I'll provide my links to you as well. Awesome. And, you know, it falls under that same subject. Let's get going against challenges using non-invasive technology. where they can be identified, that they can be, you know, acting as a catalyst. Perfect, man. Well, thank you so much for your time, man. I learned a lot. This has been a fascinating conversation. Thank you. All right. Good night, everybody.