Danny Jones Podcast - #40 - Seal Team SIX Member Battles The Endless War of Identity | Kristin Beck

Episode Date: April 29, 2020

Kristin Beck is a former U.S Navy Senior Chief, SEAL team operator, and decorated war hero. Kristin proudly served the United States as a Navy SEAL for over 20 years, serving on 3 different SEAL teams. She was deployed 13 times, serving in Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq including 7 combat deployments, earning more than 50 ribbons and metals including the bronze star with valor and the purple heart. Following retirement from military service in 2011, Senior Chief Beck continued high level clearance work at the Pentagon working for the Secretary of Defense.  While in active duty, Kristin respectfully remained silent regarding her gender identity - following the the U.S military's "Don't Ask Don't Tell" policy during her service but since retirement has announcer her decision to live openly and as authentically as possible, releasing her memoir "Warrior Princess" and starring in the CNN Documentary film "Lady Valor" where she recounts becoming totally detached from fear due to living through constant rocket and mortar strikes, and sometimes being more than willing to risk her own life the end the problems of having to face her gender identity issues. In this podcast Kristin shares her lessons from getting through Basic Underwater Demolition SEAL training at the top of her class, to dealing with failure on the battlefield, specifically during a raid on Saddam Husseins palace.  She also specifically describes the courage it took to publicly display her true identity at the risk of not only losing the respect of her peers, but having to face bigotry and hatred as a result. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, world. Welcome to number 59 of the Concrete Podcast. Today's guest is a former U.S. Navy, senior chief, seal team operator, and decorated war hero Kristen Beck. Kristen proudly served in the United States as a Navy SEAL for over 20 years, serving on three different seal teams, including the United States Special Counterterrorism Unit, also known as SEAL Team 6. She was deployed 13 times serving in Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Iraq, including seven combat deployments, earning more than 50 ribbons and medals, including the Bronze Star with Valor and the Purple Heart. Following retirement from military service in 2011, senior chief Beck continued high-level clearance work at the Pentagon, working for the Secretary of Defense. While in active duty, Kristen respectfully remained silent regarding her gender identity, following the U.S. military's Don't Ask, Don't Tell Policy, during her service. But since retirement has announced her decision to live openly and authentically as possible,

releasing her memoir titled Warrior Princess and starring in CNN's documentary film Lady Valor, where she recounts becoming totally detached from fear due to living through the constant rocket and mortar strikes in Afghanistan, and sometimes being more than willing to risk her own life to end the problems of having to face her gender identity issues. In this podcast, Kristen shares her lessons from getting through basic underwater demolition seal training at the top of her class to dealing with failure on the battlefield, specifically during a raid on Saddam Hussein's palace. And she specifically describes the courage it took to publicly display her true identity at the risk of not only losing the respect of her peers, but having to

face a grueling amount of bigotry and hatred as a result. I really hope you enjoy this podcast as much as I did. Please enjoy this conversation with Kristen Beck. This is Euphoria Calvin Klein, the new Elixir Collection, featuring three perfume intense scents, inspired by a unique orchid accord, paired with vanilla, each with its own distinct attitude, each with its own universe, bold elixir, sensual, woody, addictive, magnetic elixir, sweet and romantic like a lingering touch, solar elixir, a radiant expression of joy, ultra-concentrated for amplified impact and lasting power. Find your euphoria. Discover the Euphoria Elixir collection by Calvin Klein. How have you been doing? It's so nice to finally be able to

talk to you. Yeah. We've been trying to set this up now for a while. Yeah. I've been wanting to get you on here for so long. I've been following you. You've been, uh, it looks like you've finally put a, you've been building a new house. Is that what you've been doing? Well, I wasn't building a house. It was a, I bought a new house and the garage basically had just raw two by fours, no insulation. And there was no freaking electrical outlets in a whole garage. And so I wired a subpanel. I, insulated the whole garage. I added like 10 outlets at about countertop high so I can plug in hand tools and stuff. And then I drywalled it, painted it, and now it's all ready to rock and roll. So that's what instruction. So for the people out there who may not be familiar with your story, could you

give me like a brief synopsis of your background? Yeah, I mean a real quick synopsis. I grew up on a farm, you know, doing horses and cattle and pigs. I was a football player. I played rugby, played lacrosse. I did a lot of that stuff, and I was pretty good at it. I graduated from high school. I went to Virginia Military Institute. And then after I left college with a Bachelor of Science

and Political Science, Bachelor of Arts in Political Science, I'm sorry. But then I didn't know what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. And right at that time period, Desert Shield and Desert Storm kind of Burakopen. So that was 1990. And immediately when I saw that war starting, I said, as an American, as a citizen, I'm going to join the military. And that's what I did. And I joined with a specific intent to be a Navy SEAL. So immediately after boot camp, I pretty much went to Navy SEAL training, Buds.

And then I graduated Buds at the top of my class, I had my pick of SEAL team, and I picked SEAL Team 1. I was at SEAL Team 1 for nine years. and then I went on to a couple of seal teams after that. And after 20 years of seals, I retired. And I was working for the government at Pentagon. And I was retired. I had retirement. And so I was kind of letting my hair grow a little bit longer than a buzz cut that you have normally from military.

And then I started kind of looking back on life. And I found that I defended liberty. And I defended the pursuit of happiness. And I had neither. So I wasn't happy and I just was not fulfilling. What I would say would be, you know, my personal liberty. The individual liberty that we have in America, I think, is our greatest asset. The fact that you can live your life, you know, as fully as you want.

And you're not harming anybody else, you're not doing anything that affects anyone else, you know, in a negative way. You just want to live your own personal liberty. And so that's what I said I want to do. And at that point, I said, hey, I'm transgender. gender and I've been hidingness and afraid my entire life. And starting that day, I started living as Kristen. And I said, the heck with it. I'm not going to put up with my living and hiding and being afraid all the time.

And I defended liberty. So don't I have a chance to live some of myself? And that's what I finally came to a conclusion. And I think every American should have that same opportunity to live the fullest life they can without fear, you know, without ridicule, you know, without being, you know, prejudiced or bigotry and everything else that comes in the territory of being a minority or being someone who is, you know, disenfranchised from the system. And when I talk about the system, I talk about it's a system that's been set up around the world for eons and it has to do with class and a caste

structure. And that cast structure is kind of what has affected us badly in so many ways because it's so hard to break. You know, if you're born into a lower class, if you're born into a lower cast, it's so, so difficult to get a foot up in order to raise beyond, you know, your birthplace. And I was born into a lower middle class, you know, blue collar. We worked all our lives. My, my first, family came from Sweden during the potato famines and everything else that were going on in Europe. So we were running away from famine and pestilence and all that and came to America to try to to try to live a better life. And so for generations by family, we've never really gone past, you know, very much past that, you know, lower middle class blue collar existence.

We just have an opportunity to raise above that. We're just not not that we're given an opportunity. there are opportunities out there, but it's very, very difficult to get above that. And the only way you can get above that class or caste system is through education and opportunity. And America offers great opportunity. Education, it's difficult. You need money to get that education. You need money to go to Harvard. You need an open slot to go to Harvard.

I wanted to go to Harvard, but I just never had the opportunity. It wasn't available to me because of money or because of the high schools I went to. I just didn't have the grades. I didn't have the drive. I didn't have the instructors from grade school through high school. If you don't have that, you know, seize the day professor. And I love that, that movie, you know, Carpe Diem and all that. What was that movie called with Robin Williams, wasn't it?

Sees the day, you know, go. I can't remember. Dead Poets. Dead Poets Society. Oh, okay, okay, yeah. And I love that movie because it just shows the impact of one professor, of one instructor. And if you don't have that throughout your life, you know, you're missing. And mentorship, you need a mentor.

And a lot of people do not ever have a mentor or an instructor that motivates them beyond just two plus two is four. You know, two plus three is eight. No, it's five. Now, I'm just kidding. But I just, I mean, I'm not saying that I never had the opportunities. I've had great opportunities. But I do think if I would have had one of those professors, maybe in grade school, to just push me a little bit further to really understand what it's like to really buckle down and do the studies

and then go a little bit beyond and get those grade point averages and get it up and figure out where you're at. And then you would have a better opportunity to attend a better college, you know, when you're, you know, at a college age. I just think that those opportunities aren't offered to a lot of people. You know? I only do very few. Does that make any sense? Oh, totally, totally. I talked a lot about all kinds of different stuff. No, I think it's so fascinating all the things that you've been able to accomplish in your life. A, just being able to get through Bud's training, which is like one of the hardest things a human could possibly get through. The closest way I can relate to it is listening to, I listened to David Goggins book about it, which was, there was so many. His. brutal details of trying to survive Buds and failing it so many times. So yeah, so when I first listened to David Goggins book, that was the first time

I'd ever even learned anything about the details of what Buds is like. And listening to that was like being shot up with pure adrenaline, just listening to what he had to deal with. And the fact that you got through that training on your first

attempt, is that right? Yes. Can you describe to me with that process? Can you paint top of the class. Can you paint a picture for me and for the audience of what that was like and how grueling that was for you to get through it? And not only that, but what was like the deep down burning desire for you to get through

that training initially? Well, let me first cover that I made it through the first time. And I will not say that's a feed. It's a great thing. It's like whatever that. Because the thing is, getting through buds, your first time, second. second time, third time, however many times it takes you. It's a matter of luck. It's a matter of timing. It's a matter of where you are in your life. Because you figure that you're going through

something that's six months long. Every day is a workout. Every day is a mental challenge. Every day is you being just exhausted and just made it to the next day. Now, if you're on a obstacle course and some of the officer course obstacles are up 50, 60 feet high, if you do anything the slightest mistake when you're 60 feet off the ground and you fall, you're not going to make it through buds. If you're on an obstacle, even if it's 10 or 15 feet tall, 10 or 15 foot fall could potentially break a leg and arm. It could kill you if you fall badly. Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah. Yeah. So every day in buds, you're flipping a coin. How lucky am I? You're flipping a coin, you know, where's my mental preparation? Where's all that? So that's the thing.

is for people who tried to go through buds and they tried at one time and they failed for whatever reason, you know, I'm just like, dude, you just had a bad day. You got unlucky. You fell off that. You got hurt here. You got that. Something happened. So, but then a mental challenge comes into it, the mentality of just perseverance and never quitting.

So they made it, they missed it the first time. They should have gone the second time. They probably would have made it. It would have been a great seal. they didn't try again, so there's where they failed. So I would say that you just didn't persist enough. You didn't keep going. You didn't drive hard enough.

You didn't do that. So there's a lot of equations that you could say, and you could make stuff up. You could say this or that or that or that. And none of it's true. It's all made up. It's all equations that who's best prepared to make it through buds? I don't know. They would have never thought I would have made it through because I was like a mediocre athlete in high school and college.

that wasn't great. I was fast. I would run, you know, 15 miles and do well because I would just gutted out. I had that drive that just would never, ever stop. I'd run with a broken leg. Gaggins talks about that constantly that he's running with so huge, you know, blisters on his feet that he's bleeding through his sneakers. You know, what kind of mental attitude do you have to run a 50-mile course

and your feet are bleeding? that's David Gagins. That's almost every seal I've ever met. But it's not something you have normally, or is it something that everyone has? Because when you think about it, we are animals. We're part of the animal kingdom

just really high up on a totem pole, not the top, because I think sharks are pretty high when it comes to water. If you're a big bear of grizzes, it's pretty high up on a totem pole for land creatures. And the dinosaurs, they're a freaking badass. But they're gone.

Why are the dinosaurs? gone. Those things were badass. They'd crush anything on earth. T-Rex? Come on, man. How come we don't have T-Rexes anymore? Those things were tough, and that's the top of the food chain. Now, if we think we're on the top of the food chain, we're killing ourselves. We're kidding ourselves. We don't know what we're talking about. So I don't know, man, what makes it make somebody get through buds the first time, second time, and third time. But I do know that I think we all have the capability to really dig into that primitive state that we have in human beings. And it goes into that Amagabilang, the crocodile brain.

It's on Happy Gilmore to make fun of it. The crocodile, why is he so angry? Abdullah Oblagata. Yeah, that's it, man, that's it. So, you know, but the thing is, is if you can tap into the crocodile brain, to Abdulah Abilagata, if you can tap into that type of survival on the real instinct we have as human beings, then you're in a lot of. of something. That's how you make it as a seal. You're not relying on the higher learning that

I'm going to run for 20 miles and your feet are going to bleed out. If you're thinking about your higher learning, your high omenstruor capacity, you're not going to make it because then you're going to start overthinking it. You know, I'm going to probably hurt myself. I'm going to hurt myself badly and I'm going to have this injury for the rest of my life. Oh, man, make your alligator brain talk. My alligator brain is telling me you keep going. Wow. So that's, I don't, there's no equation. Who knows who makes it through Buds? I don't know. You're going to have the guy who's the freaking person they call a nerd his entire life, he's amazing on computers, and nobody ever saw him run a mile in his entire life. And that guy ends up being a top guy. And you know that women have

been able to go to Buds since 2015. The door has been open, and I think there's only been one woman who has gotten through to a certain point where she passed some of the entrance qualifications because that's the thing about Buds is. There's not going to be a change if you're black or white, if you're Asian, if you're Latino. There's not going to be a change if you're male or female. This is the test.

This is a qualification. If you pass that qual, right on, man, doors open. Come on. If you pass that qual on your female, come on, let's do it. Now, if you make it after you get through that door, that's all up to you. And it's a lot tougher than the entrance exam.

And it's about pull-ups, too. You're going to be able to do 30 pull-ups when you got, like, 50 pounds in a rucksack on your back. So put a backpack on with a 50 pounds, and then go do 30 pull-ups. That's a test. If you can't pass that test, you're never going to be a seal. And you know why? Isn't that because we're saying that you have to do pull-ups and you have to be this strong? We don't want Arnold Schwarzenegger.

We don't want the toughest guy in a world. but to do 30 pull-ups with 50 pounds, that means you can climb a caving ladder, which is a ladder about this wide, and it's got metal rungs. The metal rungs are like pencils. But you've got to be able to climb up that thing 50 feet to get on a ship in the middle of the ocean

on six-foot waves, carrying 50 pounds. So can you get up 50 feet on a ladder made of pencils that's this wide in six-foot seas with a boat slamming around and they're climbing up a ship? And once you get up there, you're going to be in top, physical condition, because once you get up there, the battle starts.

So the test is 30 pull-ups with 50-pound backpack on your back. If you can't do that, male or female, black and white, Latino, Asian, you know, European, you're like me, you're a Swede. Your middle name is Thor. Right. My middle name is Thor. So if no matter who you are, what your name is, whatever you got, how much you weigh, how tall you are, it doesn't matter.

Can you do 30 pull-ups with 50-pound backpack on? If you can't, don't even try. Don't, you're not going to be a seal. That's the test. And that's why it doesn't matter. So if you have someone out there who's a female who passes that first entrance, she's got to be to do those pull-ups. If she can't do those pull-ups, she'll never be a seal. It's because that's the mission.

It's not because we're trying to discriminate. It's not because we're trying to do male, gender-conforming testing that only a man can do because they can do pull-ups. because we have better upper body strength. So the more upper body strength, yeah, it helps. And there's a lot of women out there can do a ton of pull-ups, but how many of them want to be a seal? So the numbers are going to probably always be really low. And so the door is open since 2015,

only one female has ever even passed the first test, which is only like eight pull-ups, I think. So one, did eight pull-ups. It's the seals, man. We can't change the qualifications. You've got to climb that ladder. You got to get on top of that ship and six foot seas with 50 pounds and then do a mission. And that mission might take you six or eight hours.

So you can't climb up there and be totally done and exhausted and go, oh, my God. I just did 30 pull-ups with 50 pounds and I'm beat. I can't do anything else. I'm done. Oh, man. Now it starts. Now you got eight hours of work. That's why I take.

six months. Take six months to become a seal. That's why. Because that says one test. I can tell you another 20 tests. But here's a secret for you. You want to hear a secret? I do. Yes, please. So I have a reality show that I've written up and has day to day all the executable tasks and training and challenges to test 30 women. So we start out day one with 30 women. And we have leaderboards and the leaderboards will be clicking off and how they are because every test every swim, every run, when you're doing pull-ups, you're doing sit-ups, doing no push-ups,

you're going to be paddling boats, you can be climbing stuff. You're going to be picking locks and breaking in, no, never mind. Don't. No, I'm just kidding. But you'll be doing, you'll be doing some really funky, really tough testing, and then there'll be disqualifications, people will be quitting a long way because this is not easy, but 30

women will start, and only one will finish. And the one female that'll finish is, she'll get like $100,000 in a pocket and she'll be qualified as go to SEAL team training. You'd make it. Would you want to watch a TV show like that? Definitely would want to watch a TV show like that. Some of the tests are really, really cool too.

It's like mind-boggling. You'll be like, oh, my God. But it's not going to be. It's not like one of those ones where you have to eat a whole bunch of stuff and then you throw up. It's not one of those ones where people are getting hurt. There's nothing in here that's unsafe. I think the insurance, to cover us for insurance, it costs like $1,000. Because everything is, like, super scripted and, like, from stuff that's, like, tested.

It's not dangerous. It's just, like, you just have to think and put your mind into it. And then also get that, you know, Abdu, Abdelanglada. You have to show me how to pronounce that word. The alligator brain, the crocodile brain. But you have to really dig in. It's going to be tough. And that's going to be a reality show.

I don't watch reality shows because I don't like to be. backstabbing. I don't like how they always turn in this team and teamness and all against that because it's not real. And so this is giving me like the real like Ranger School, seal team training. This will be like if you were in Forest Recon going through Forest Recon, it's going to be teamwork and leadership and team building and helping each other out and getting through each day. It's going to be tough. It's going to be tough. And you're going to see, I think this is going to be the reality show that a lot of people that normally don't like reality, We're going to watch this and go, you know what?

It's unlike everything I've ever seen, and it actually looks real because it's going to be real. You mentioned the team building and like the camaraderie. How much of that, what did you learn from being in the SEALs? And can you go a little bit deeper into that part of it? Well, here's maybe one of the differences between being a man or women growing up in America when it starts in grade school. So in grade school, all the boys are playing baseball or they're playing football, even at a very young age. And so they're starting to understand teamwork. They're starting to understand what position there and how that position fits into the bigger team.

It fits the end of the machine. Like you're a cog right here and you're the quarterback. You're doing that and that. But hey, there's a lineman without a good lineman. The quarterback never gets to throw. And then all the women are like they're doing a lot of individual sports. They're not doing quite as many of the team sports. Now, it's changed a lot in the last 10 or 15 years.

But when I was growing up, if you were the female in grade school even and going all the way up into high school, you could be a cheerleader. And that has to do with, you know, how pretty you are or how you can kick your foot. And it's all individual against the rest of them. to be the best. If you want to be in a play and you want to be an actress, you're up on stage going for that lead part.

So it's you individually competing against everyone else. And so that's going to be the backstabbing. That's going to be all the other stuff. Who's going to win it? You're going to be that figure skater who breaks someone's leg because she wanted to be number one. And it's all aimed at for all the female sports. For the most part,

it's individual skills pitted against all of your supposed team Does that make sense? Yeah, definitely. We're in most men's sports, it's actually a team where if you're failing as an individual, you're failing the team. So you try harder to be better, to make the team better, to win the whole team. To play your role, to help the whole team work better as a machine. And so automatically men are going to learn much better leadership at an earlier age and team

building and teamwork at an earlier age, which I think is totally. fair. Does that make it a little bit of sense? Oh, absolutely. Yeah, it definitely does. I mean, that's just what I've seen from my point of view. Now, when I went into the Seals, because I was on a football team, because I was on the cross team, because I've done all these different sports and I've played a lot of different positions. Within these sports, I understand what it's like to be the team captain, the quarterback. I also know what it means to be the lineman, a guard, or on defense or offense. I know how to, I know how to work all those different things. Now, there are are a lot, there's women's soccer, there's, there's, you know, a lot of other women's sports

that, but there's not enough and it didn't, it's not as prevalent, it's not pushed as hard as the men's sports. So there's not as many opportunities for women to be in these sports where they really learn teamwork and I really learn that. I know I'm going to get a lot of women who are in soccer and are amazing at a professional soccer, like to yell at me, but if you really think about it, the breadth of sports for women to compete and to build that type of, of teamwork is about half or less than that of men. You know, if you really think about it honestly. Yeah, it really is.

And I think you're right. It is changing quite a bit. Like as far as soccer and the WMBA. It's changing, but I would love to see more women sports, more opportunities for women to gain that true teamwork and leadership at a grade school level, which I just don't think they have the opportunities.

Because at grade school is when you learn it. You know, when you're in like first, second through fifth or sixth grade. That's when you start learning the teamwork and they don't have the women out there doing that as much as the boys would. Yeah. No,

I totally see we're coming from and I see that could be like a really cool concept for some sort of programming for a show or whatever you have planned to kind of develop and portray those skills and those assets that people can build similar to the SEALs. So in season one it'll be aimed at SEALs. and Special Forces, Rangers and Marine Force Recon, season two is going to be going to a junior high level and showing at a younger level. And then season three is like,

if I told you all of it, I can't really tell you everything. But there's a lot of mix and match. There's a lot of like age difference and how it changes over the years. And then also finally, it's going to be women only for the first one. Dan, it'll be a little more co-ed going into some of the other, other areas, then you see some of the differences between conditioning, between strengths and weaknesses and everything else, because everybody has strength and weaknesses.

And so you learn how to utilize teamwork to make that person's strength add to the team. And if somebody's weaker and something, they're stronger or something else, and how do you balance that and how do you work that out? And so there'll be some other episodes that would be like much greater team building exercises. One of my most, I want to kind of, I want to take a step, a step, like a last. lateral step real quick from what we're talking about when you you are in the trenches of brutal combat running through caves in Afghanistan or jumping out of helicopters and you have yeah like all the SEAL team guys did that stuff and and you have your night vision goggles on in the middle

of the night and you're running through a blast someone who blasted a hole in a wall you said that you felt like you and your fellow SEALs were just souls not next to each other fighting against other souls and you you felt disconnected from your bodies. Yeah. Can you explain to me a little bit more what that means? When you describe that in words, when you really get into it and you're just doing that, when you're in the midst of it, when you're in the midst of like, let's say this is like a football team. Let's say it's the soccer team.

Let's say it's anything else. When you're in the middle of that crucial, that last, you have 10 seconds left. And it's a tie game. And then that last play starts. And it's only going to last for six or seven seconds or 10 or 15 seconds, whatever it might be. That 15 seconds, you make that entire episode last for about an hour where you start, time starts slipping away. You don't know where you are and whatever's going. And you don't see people anymore.

You just see movement. You see things happen. You see the world expanding in front of you kind of in slow motion. but critical. Does that make a little bit of sense? It's a blur. It's a blur. It's like everything, you just go on instinct and you're just going and going, and you don't really. So if I looked over at David Gagons, who was in one of my platoons, he was a new guy when I was chief, I think.

Oh, really? Yeah, so I put him through a lot of training. I'm in his book in a few different places. I think whenever he talks about the chief, a lot of times he's talking about me in that book. Oh, wow. I was the one in Gagin's book that we have lockers. We have these huge lockers where you put all your equipment. And I basically locked all their lockers up and I made them live out a bag.

So they had a bag of all their stuff in front of this giant locker where they could have spread out and organized. They cleaned everything up. And they were living out of like two bags. I didn't let them have a locker. I said, no, you're a new guy. You don't deserve a locker guy. You haven't earned it. And they go, what do you mean?

That's just messed up, chief. Why do you, it's just like cruel and unusual punishment. You're such an asshole. Can I say asshole? Oh, of course. You can say anything. Yeah. They did.

They caught me an asshole. It was like, I was an asshole. And I told him, I said, no, just live out of the bag. And when you guys have earned the privilege to use that cage, and the cage was like six feet by six feet, had hooks all over and racks and you hang everything up. You can wash stuff down, spread it out, you can clean. You can sleep in your cage. There are big cages.

You can sleep in them with hammocks, which people do all the time. Because we work so late sometimes. you want to catch an hour or two hours of sleep you do it in your cage you put your hammock up and sleep they're big cages you spread out they're nice and basically i made them live out of two backpacks it was like small it's like dude you cannot have anything else what you need is in those backpacks to organize it live out of them and they did that for a while i can't remember how long it was a few weeks sucked because every evolution we had to go on they had to repack them up and have them ready and I don't expect them you know let's go we have 10 minutes get everything ready let's go

And all the old guys walk in their big lockers and put everything and put it together. It was easy because you had everything spread out. You could see it all. So after three weeks, I had a living out of a bag for David Goggins. I said, all right, put everything in the lockers if you want to and organize your stuff and get us spread out. Do we each got to do? And they're like, all right on. And then like two days later, they're all spread out.

It's all good. I said, hey, we have 10 minutes pack up, get everything ready, go. And get in the truck and load out. We have to do a recon mission. We're in the water. get your fins, get your stuff. It's going to be really cold, and we've got to get an airplane and fly out and do a mission. We're like, all right, so all those new guys, David Goggins included him, they were like,

do, do, do, do, everything's a bag, and they were in a truck waiting in like three minutes. And all the old guys are going, what I need, wait, we need fins, and where are my freaking fins? I got to do that, I got to get that. And the older guys took three, four times longer. You know, why? Because I made those guys live out of the bags for three weeks. They were organized.

They had exactly what they needed to have, and all the extra stuff. They had totally organized and ready to rock and roll at a second notice. All those guys did when they walked in the lockers and grabbed a couple bags and walked out. They were sitting in the truck waiting for everybody else. Where were you guys during this? That was a SEAL Team 5. That was when I was on SEAL Team 5. But basically what happens is we get lazy, we get disorganized, we have the stuff, we have too much stuff.

I have three sets of fins. So I have to go, well, which set of fins? What's a mission? What's that? All the new guys, they had one set of fins, they had one mask, they had everything set. They had everything there, everything they needed specifically, how cold it's going to be, what's the mission, what's that going to be. They knew exactly what to get. Poop, poop, poop.

They're done. We had to get on a submarine with a hey, we only enough room for one bag. Everybody pack out one bag to live on a submarine for a week and a half to do these three missions. And then you guys are like, zip, zip, zip, David Goggins, everybody's ready. They're sitting on a truck waiting for all the old guys. Because we had too much stuff. We were too disorganized. We didn't know what to bring.

We were like, yeah. I mean, it didn't take forever. They did it in like two minutes. It took us like 10 minutes. It took us longer because we had too much stuff. It was a little spread out. It was like, eh. So just get used to having everything in a couple of bags, be organized, be ready to rock and roll.

That's life. Life is like that when you start thinking about people living in a tiny house or somebody downsizing or somebody living in a freaking three or four thousand foot mansion. You say, hey, man, you're going to be isolated out air. You're going to do this. You have to go camping for a week. pack up you have 10 minutes the person that lives in a 3,000 foot mansion has 15 pairs of boots and just stuff all over or we've got a person that lives in a freaking tiny house that's you know 200 square feet and has only what he needs it's a whole different way to live yeah i think it speaks

a lot to practicing discipline well what was your question what i can't remember i don't i don't I don't remember what my question was. Oh, I think, no, it doesn't matter. I think we were originally. Well, originally what I was trying to get at was the analogy of you guys being souls next to each other when you were out there fighting. And it's, uh, was it kind of like a like a flow state where you just disconnected from your body and you were just so tuned into that moment that everything was. That's a perfect example that I just talked about was me making all the new guys live out of the bags. I said, hey, you're new guys.

Live out of the bags. learn how to do it. Did it matter if you're black or white, if you're Asian, Latino, if you're European descent, whatever you were, did it matter? No, you're a freaking new guy. All of you live out of the bags, learn it equally. When you get to a level, okay, here's your lockers all at the same time. If somebody wasn't getting it quick enough, then the other guys would help man. We'd all get up that level. And so no matter who you are, what you are, as a seal, after two or three platoons, and after doing all these deployments, I have to run a ton of missions, all the attributes of you as a person kind of fall away because you're all operating at

such a high level for so long. You don't think about, you know, yeah, David Goggins is a black dude and, you know, Kristen Beck, I'm a, you know, white. I'm a, I am a female now. It's like, it doesn't, none of that matters because we worked so hard at such a high level. You don't think about that stuff. It doesn't count anymore. What counts is what you've been doing for the team and how long you've been doing it and what's your position in the team. You're, quarterback, I'm the lineman. We all work hard at the same level. So we all get up to that level. It doesn't matter if I was a Christian, Muslim, if I was a Buddhist, if I was whatever. None of that matters. It matters what you are in the team. You're the quarterback. You're the lineman. I don't care about any other stuff. Oh, you're a female. Who cares, man? You're part of the team, and now you're the linebacker. Go be a linebacker. And if you're not a good linebacker, you're going to get fired. If you can't do them 30 pull-up, sorry. give you another shot, but you fail it again, you're off the team because we can't have you there because you're going to get everybody else killed. So that's what it was like souls.

That's what I was trying to get at. Okay. Was that all the attributes of you as a person, you don't see any of that anymore. The stuff that you see is day to day in America, the prejudice against somebody for being black or for being female or being Latino happens a lot nowadays. For being Asia, Asian. So if you're from Asia, you're from Southeast Asia, you're from wherever you're from, you see prejudice every day. Yeah. But when you're in combat, none of that stuff counts.

Right. And especially from the time that you served, what year did you retire? I retired in 2011. 2011. From the time that, yeah, from that time when you were serving, especially until now, I mean, obviously the 60s, there was a huge movement going on. But between then and now, things have changed. culturally as far as like social justice warriors and you know the way people react to different things online and and the division of politics has changed so much let's get into social justice

for one second okay yeah let's do it so social justice you know what does that actually mean and was it even something that people worried about back in the 1950s heck yeah and that's why we had so many movements we had so much stuff going on but i want to relate to something else in a second but then think about politicians and everybody's yelling about term limits and you're saying that we need to have term limits because these politicians have been in office for so long and they're totally out of touch with the people that do that and that and so we already have term limits it's called your vote every two years a term limit for a congressperson it's already exists now because the guy's a good congressman or because everybody loves them and they all vote for him does that mean that we as a people

that don't live in his congressional district we need to say well the rest of the rest of the the country doesn't agree with your congressional district and we want to go against what they voted for and he shouldn't be able to serve past 10 years. No, we already have term limits every two years for that guy. Now, if all the people in our district are voting for the guy, then that's what they, that's what they did. And the same thing with social justice. Do you think we have social justice? I think we have social justice just like we have term limits for congresspeople. We vote. We go out when you act, we make stuff happen. But the problem is, is like, the social justice isn't uniformly distributed.

It's there. Do you know what I mean? And now is it the right thing for us to systematically or artificially flatten the entire earth to make social justice equal in Antarctica as it is equal in South America or Chile or Argentina or Russia or China or the United States or Canada? should we flatten all the justice out across the entire spectrum of the world against all those spectrums of cultural upbringing against all the spectrums of religion religious freedom um hereditary against you name it would that be fair right well if i grew up in america and i grew up in let's say um uh Taiwan because Taiwan's a great example because you know it's right there and you have China, Hong Kong, and there's a lot of difference between Hong Kong and

mainland China, which people don't consider. Now, is everything that goes on in mainland China and Hong Kong, should it be equal? Well, no, because Hong Kong has had a very, very different socialization and everything going on to Hong Kong than mainland China for about, you know, last hundreds of years. You know what I mean? So social justice flattened between mainland China and Hong Kong wouldn't be fair if it was equalized. Now, if you took the same things in mainland China, applied it to Hong Kong, tried to apply them here in America and the United States, would it be all the same social justice if we can artificially change it because we say all social justice is equal across the entire

world? Well, it's not because you have so many different factors and so many things. Yeah, it's the same thing as term limits for America when we start trying to artificially force a congressional district. to not have a certain congressperson because they've been in there for 30 or 40 years. Now, I don't like some of them. There's a congressperson that's been in there

for like freaking 40 years. I can't stand a guy because I think he forgot about his district. He's from, and he goes on all those big, huge things and forgets about his district constantly. And I really think he should start looking at the district more because whatever wants to vote him in, but he's doing a lot of great things at a national scale.

but come on, dude, clean up that river and take care of that and take care of people in your district. Now, do we need to force a term limit on that guy? No, it needs to bring attention to the fact that he's forgetting about the people in his district and maybe have them vote a little differently. But if he gets voted in again, then rock on, man, you get voted again. So you made it past that term limit called voting. Right. So there's a lot of things that you can think about in different ways.

and when it comes to social justice, I think it's social justice, making it equal across certain spectrums of society, certain spectrums of religion, certain spectrums of environmental conditions. You know, it's different.

It's different in New York City than it is where I live in upstate New York. I live like six hours from New York City in New York State. Now, if you get a DUI in New York City and I take away your driver's life, for six months. They're like, yeah, whatever, big deal.

They don't care because they have buses on every block. They have subways. They have Ubers. They have 1,000 Ubers at their freaking Beck and Call. But if you live where I do in a town of 200 and the closest, the closest Walmart is a 40-minute drive. The closest grocery store is like, well, we have one dollar store right there. It's a good dollar store.

Thanks a lot. But that's 20 minutes away. So if I have no driver's license and if I drove and it took me 20 months, minutes to drive to the closest place for me to buy toilet paper, which is a big hype now in COVID. But if you drive 20 minutes to get a roll of toilet paper, if I have no license, how long does it take me to walk? And you took away my license for six months? It's so different between New York City that I have a thousand Uber drivers.

I have taxis everywhere. I have subway and I have buses. I have transportation. You know, I have a million ways to travel. but if I'm out here where I'm living if I have no driver's license I have to walk everywhere or I've got to call up on my friends constantly

it's not fair yeah it's definitely not a level playing field when it comes to the differences between the states we live in and different countries and New York State is the worst because New York City is a hub of metropolitan everything

but if you drive an hour out of New York City you're in you're different and you're applying all the laws governor komo applies all the laws that make great sense in new york city but it totally like it hampers and it's punishing to everyone that lives an hour outside of new york city it's a punishment it's it's it's it's like what's that cruel and unusual punishment for you to make me do the new york city d y laws when i'm here south of buffalo and i'm five hours from six hours New York City doesn't make sense. It's cruel and unusual

punishment. Social justice, somebody should be standing up for me. The ACL they're taking away my civil rights, my civil liberties because I can't drive, so I can't work. I can't even get a rural toilet paper without walking for

four hours. It's a four hour walk to go get a toilet paper. That's cruel and unusual punishment. And you're going to do those same laws? Why doesn't the ACLU pick up that case? You can't apply the urban laws for the DUI taking away my driver's license. And I know somebody who's had her driver's license taken away for two years.

And it's hampered work. He's like failing. It loses his house. Loses everything because he can't drive. Yeah, the system's definitely not set up for you to win. No, you can win in the city. But outside of the city, the same laws, they just don't work. Right.

And they have to consider that. So why can't they make the laws like a per capita basis? So if you live in an area where per capita or how many people live in that area, if I live in a town of 200 and the closest city away from me is a town of 900, that's a city. It's huge. It's a metropolis. And they only have 900 people that I have to drive two and a half hours away to get to a city of 10,000 or more.

And you're going to apply New York City laws to me? dude come on yeah cruel and unusual punishment why doesn't a lawyer pick up that case that's a class action lawsuit against the state of New York because you love New York City

you're making Fuku money off New York City the Allegheny It's all about money right It's crazy Allegheny County has across the entire state Per capita percentage of DUIs is the highest in Allegheny County

per capita. It's crazy. Because we're all losing our job and you get another one. You don't know what to do. You're all drinking. The highest unemployment rate is Allegheny County. So the highest DUI, the highest unemployment, the highest taxes all on one county. It's a county where there's no city that's more bigger than freaking a thousand people. The biggest city in the entire county is like this, the metropolis of a thousand people. They live in a freaking 20-mile square. It's like if you studied it, if New York, somebody would take a look at this.

If you compared that one county to like Queens or Kings or the Bronx or Brooklyn, dude, there are millions of people in one county, the Bronx compared to Allegheny County, millions of people living in one square mile compared to we have freaking thousand square miles with, you know, 40,000 people total. But we have the most DUIs, most unemployment, and the highest freaking taxes out of all of New York State.

They're punishing us. That's cruel and unusual punishment. To live in this count. How close? Is this the same count? You get home in a free. And you think things are equal? The cards are stacked up

for everyone in Allegheny County to fail. The cards are stacked up to make us all get DUIs and unemployed and stinting our, And then we start driving because I had to drive. Then I get pulled over again. Well, your driver is suspended. You have one DUI.

Well, now you can't have a driver's license for five years. So made it even worse. So now I'm unemployed with no license for five years. No buses. No Uber. No nothing. How do I get around? I got a hike 20 miles to get a roll of toy paper?

God. What do you expect from us? You're going to put us on welfare. You're going to put us on food stamps. You're going to make us in the freaking thieving, drugging, drinking, DUI, unemployed, because there's nothing for us to do. And we can't get out. You can't dig yourself out of that whole one to get so deep.

No, totally. Allegheny County should be a study in New York State's ability to punish a whole population of people. That's what they did. Governor Como, I love New York City, hates Allegheny County. he hates us and we're the highest taxed county in new york state how far is that county from where you were raised it's the same county same exact county so you're you said you're 15 minutes yeah 15 well if you drive really fast yeah yeah if you drive normal speed limit it's about so eight to 23 minutes so another subject same county how how how would you say that your upbringing and your

childhood directed the rest of your life how much of your childhood had an effect on your decision to eventually join the Navy SEALs and do was it 15 combat deployments or 14 combat deployments it was 13 deployments like he's 13 yeah 13 I only did 13 only did 13 you're saying that you're saying that's not a lot no oh I would I should have done more I don't feel like I did enough really how many people do you know that have done that many combat deployments a lot oh okay three four three or four I don't know but

it's I don't know I mean I never tried to count okay it's not it's not a number that you count or like look at but I still don't think I did enough I still I still wish I could do some more but I grew up I grew up in rural it was very rural very self-ful efficient. We had farm animals, so you always had to get water

feed and take care of them. Always like doing crafts or taking care of it out and throwing hay bales. In grade school, I was throwing hay bales. So you've learned how to be like It seems like you were always very, very hands-on. Rugged individualism.

Very rugged. Hands-on. It was like MacGyver, you know, I'm a guyver to shit out of it. So I was in, I was going to load. the other day. So I was going to Lose the other day, and they made this new rule for New York City

that doesn't, it shouldn't apply to that but it's New York statewide rule that Governor Como came up with. At this date and time, everyone in public has to have a mask on. Because basically, if you live in New York City, you're living on top of another thousand people. If you walk into any 7-Eleven in New York City,

there's going to be 100 people in that store. Now, if you walk into 7-Eleven where I live, there's one person in there every 20 minutes. so your social distance where I live is natural. You know what I mean? So I'm walking into the lows and there's somebody standing guard

and I got big signs in there that New York State law, everyone must have one of those masks on in order to enter any store. It's a New York Statewide law. Yeah, it makes sense in New York City. But out here, in the entire lows there was only like four people.

So it's not very hard to keep 20 feet away from every person in a freaking store. Jeez. And so I didn't know, I didn't know this is going on, so I walk in there and I'm a mask on and I didn't want to let me come in. And so I'm like, well,

damn, I don't drop a half hour drive. No, it's more than that. It's 40 minute drive to go from Lowe's all way back home to go back to Lowe's to buy the electrical outlet that I need to get everything wired up. So it's freaking nuts.

So I'm sitting in my truck and I got to get this for you. Here, I'm going to go get the thing. Okay. Can you edit this real quick? Because I want to show you what I did. Yeah, yeah. It's perfect.

Okay. Okay. Okay. So I'm sitting in my freaking truck, and I'm like, I don't want to drive 40 minutes all the way back home to drive all the way back here another 40 minutes. It's like, day's almost over. So I remember the drill instructor.

It was an Army dude that was, was he, Australian, I remember Australian. But basically, you know, if you got a shit, just take off your sock and take care of business. Right. I was like, huh. So, Joe sort of said, you know, if you got a shit and you end and shoot, you know, take off your sock. So I took my sock off. Okay. Right.

And I cut it and I basically made it into a mask. So basically you cut it, didn't use your mask. Right? You did that right then and there. Yeah, right in my truck. So I just took it a knife out. But basically what you do is. is and here's a really good one here's a wool sock yeah so this one this one I'm

gonna show you how to do it really quick so basically okay okay okay all you're doing is cutting here and this is the thing is people are paying money for all these masks yeah paying all this money and it's freaking stupid man just just take off one of your socks okay well get a pair of socks because everybody always has those odd socks oh they always have tube socks well why do you always have like left socks so cut so cut the toe off one side okay cut the other I'll cut the tube off. So you end up with a heel right there. Oh, wow.

And then you cut two more stripes. Then you cut all on the one side right here. You cut three quarters away up. Don't cut all the way through it. But you see how you just made a strap? Yep. So there's a strap now. And you make a strap on the other side.

And you make a strap on the other side. And the thing is, now your coffee filters, because you want to throw this in the wash and wash because this is catching and this is going to be the dirty part, right? Right. But now you still have a sock there, right? See the sock? Yep.

There's still a tube in there. Right, right. You put coffee filters and stuff in there because that'll make it even catch more. Because the coffee filters are great. The coffee filters, a catch down to like 10 microns and even smaller. So you're going through cloth. Then the coffee filter can double them up. So it's catching like a lot of stuff.

And you put all that in between. And it's soft to get that. And you put that up in your ears. And you got a man. That's amazing. Can you still hear me good? Yeah, I can hear you. So you just put it up on your ears.

You know? So these are the hoot loops, right? That is amazing. You really are like McGuiver. So boom. And you have a coffee filter in here, and you have a mask on. So was that?

So I walk back into Lowe's and I'm like, yeah, yeah, whatever. I got a mask now, motherfucker. And they let it slide? It's a mask. Right. It works. No, it's probably a better mask than those ones.

They didn't give you, they didn't give you any shit and say that's, that's a sock. That doesn't count. They didn't say nothing like that. You didn't know it's a sock because it looks for fashion. I mean, it looks like a designer mask.

Here's your ear loops. And then you have the layers in here. So don't forget, the coffee filter in the middle is probably the most important part. So you want to have, you still want to have, you know, the tube part of the sock, where my arm is right now, that's that. Okay.

Put coffee filters, two or three coffee filters, whatever you want. Right. You can make it bigger or smaller. Like, I could have made that a little bit bigger. So, I mean, you can make it really wide to really wraps. You can make it really lot wide and then wrap these all over the back. You know, if you made it bigger. Yeah.

So different ways you can do it, depending on your ears, you want to go around the back. If it goes all the way out of the back, then all you got to do is just hook these together. you can tie them. So I mean, there's a few different ways you can do it. But basically use a sock because it's super soft. You use the material and there's your mask. Don't forget to put the filters in between to really filter out all the bad stuff. Okay.

Got it. Yeah, that's amazing. Thank you. And this takes no sewing skills. You don't have to buy it because you have a whole bunch of left hand socks, you know, because you always lose the right one. So in a dryer, you know, they always lose the one side. See, my problem is I don't have any tube socks.

I have like the little short ankle socks. You know what I mean? You need it. Well, you can do it with a sleeve too. Do you have long sleeve shirts? I do have long sleeve shirts. So with a long sleeve shirt out of your one sleeve, especially if it's sweatshirt is even better. Okay.

So if you have one long sleeve sweatshirt, cut the one sleeve, you can make three masks out of one sleeve of a shirt. Oh, shit. You're right. And it's the same thing. And all you have to do is use a pair of scissors and just cut, cut it into your big tube and it cut the little strappy parts in. Okay. You have as many masks as you want to sit in your house with no sewing skills

with no effort. Just don't forget to put the coffee filters in between. Okay. The coffee filters are key part of this. You can also do the chlorox wipes the hand wipes. So take the chlorox hand wipes and dry it out. But it had to be dry.

You can use the dryer things for that. But the best one is the cloaks hand wipes. Totally dry them out so there's no fluid. There's no in there. And then you can put that in between. That'll catch up. Okay. You see what I'm saying?

Yeah, it's amazing. There's a few things you can use, and if you multi-filter, I'm even better. So if you use a coffee filter and a dried-out chlorox bleach, okay. Have your sock, then the coffee filter, then the dried-out chlorox, then the outside of the sock. So then you basically have four layers. And you can always switch out the inside and get a fresh one whenever you need. Well, you want to throw those away.

Right, exactly. When you're going to go with them. You get back, throw those away and wash the sock. after every visit. And those people who are wearing the socks are wearing masks, not socks, the people who are wearing masks when they're driving in their cars, freaking idiot.

They're alone, driving in the car, so they're alone, they put their mask out at home, they get in their car, they've already put their hands all over it. You're going into the freaking supermarket, and they're walking around, they're getting people cough,

and you get stuff under, you're collecting stuff on your mask, then you wear it again in your car, and you go home, and then you finally take it off in your car, you're fixing the nose thing, Your hands are all over it. You put your keys in your car.

You get keys in your house. You walk in in your house. You take the mask off. All the germs and all the stuff is in the mask. Yeah. No, yeah. That makes no sense. As soon as you get done, take the darn mask off, put it securely into a plastic bag that you're going to throw away.

We're going to get on. Close it all up. Wash your hands. Then put your keys out of your pocket. Put them in your car and drive. But your mask and all the stuff you collected is all in a, contained plastic bag or in a bag that now you're thrown in your dryer

wash machine to clean off all the dirty fire You gotta be you gotta have some brain cells to be able to realize That you're not supposed to bring that dirty shit back To your house Don't bring the freaking car when you're alone In your car alone you're good

You're contaminating yourself Take your freaking mask off What do you think about Some of the people that are talking about How coronavirus is a biological a biological warfare weapon that was released from a lab in Wuhan. Have you been following up on any of that? What are your thoughts on?

I think if a country had intentions or a country had another country that was like playing economic games or economic war, economic warfare is taxation, as tariffs, economic warfare or a number of things they can do to adjust an economy to make another economy suffer. that's economic warfare. Now, if a barrel of oil falls below $1 a barrel, is it a dollar a barrel? No, it's $10 a barrel. If a barrel of oil falls below $10 a barrel in America, then there's no way for Russia to get the oil from the inland areas in Siberia and everything else. They have to basically drill, take the oil out of the ground, put it in a barrel, and transport it.

place to a ocean facility to put it on a ship to transfer it from the ship to all the way to America, it costs them between $12 and $17 a barrel to get it out of the ground and bring it to America. So every time a barrel of oil per barrel falls below $10 a barrel, Russia loses money for every barrel. It's economic warfare. Yeah. No. So think about that. So think about other tariffs or other regulations or other things.

or other things we set in place, there would be detrimental to a country's economy outside of the United States. Let's say it's Canada, let's say it's Mexico, let's say it's China, let's say it's Russia, let's say it's Switzerland, let's say it's Sweden, that there are vulvas. We do something with the car manufacturers that we benefit Ford but not Volvo. Is that economic warfare? So if a country had the ability with some biological with anything else to be able to put something out that would actually affect the economy of another nation.

And that economy of the other nation that did this to them, it did tariffs, or did that or did that. And now there's a biological, there's a flu-like symptom that causes, decimates another country's economy. Is that further economic war or is that biological war? And no, it is. It is, especially when you think about China, manufactures a lot of vaccines that we use in the U.S.

And with almost all of them. And if we're going to need a surplus of vaccine, if they develop this vaccine and they're developing and they're manufacturing out of China, we're going to need vaccines from China. We're going to need syringes from China. Yeah. And with how many millions of people are here? Yeah.

Well, why is it that in December before we really knew about any virus, we sent $10 billion worth of pharmaceutical stuff to China? from America to China. I think it was like $10 billion. It was a hundred. It was like it was a huge amount of money worth of pharmaceutical aid syringes, all the tubing, all this, all that, and antibiotics and everything else. We sent millions or billions of something worth of firms in December of this year. And then we found out about the virus in January.

And we were like, oh, damn, we just sent everything we had, all our surpluses. we already signed it all to China, now we have none. How did that happen? I didn't hear about that. And there's also a clause within the agreements and a tariff and everything else that if there's a clause written in there. When we signed the deal between China and America, there's a clause within the deal we signed with the tariffs and everything else trying to even play in field. There's one single clause that said any event of a act of God, the entire deal. deal is negated. That's spooky.

And that happened in like a month before the virus? Jesus. Or was it two weeks? It was two weeks before. We signed the deal two weeks before the virus announced. But didn't China know about this virus three months before it was recognized? I think it was November. So they had three months of warning. They bought up all the stuff in December. They signed the deal in January. Two weeks later, we find out that there's an act of God clause in this amazing deal we've

sad that negates the entire deal. And we already sent all of our pharmaceuticals and all the stuff we needed to China. Isn't there a little weird stuff going on? No, it's completely fucking spooky. This is not conspiracy. This is not conspiracy or spooky. This is actually black and white materials that you can look at. This was actually done in December. This is actually the deal assigned.

This is the act of God clause, which you can lose pandemic. It included flood, tornado, pandemic. Pandemic was actually cited as an act of God. And this is a pandemic, so the entire deal is negated. See, I don't even, I came and wrap my mind around, something like that. It's kind of odd. No, it's totally odd. Is that warfare, or is that just an act of God that somehow just happened?

I don't know. That's a good question. It's a really good question. Is there email traffic? That would prove one way or the other? Yes, there is. Are there government cablegrams, traffic, and things that happened? That would prove one way or the other?

Yes, there is. Are there letters? Are there doctors? Some of the doctors are still alive. Most of them have been killed already. Who were there at the ground zero when the pandemic started? Most of them were dead, though. That's kind of odd when you say.

Now, I'm not a conspiracy person. I want to see it black and white. I want to see the proof. And there is proof out there to prove this one way or the other. So I don't want to say one way or the other. This is not an act of a word, but it could be. I can't prove it one way or the other. I'd like to know one way or the other.

So let's see the data. Yeah, to me, it's just scary. I'm not really a big conspiracy person either. But when you hear stuff like that, it just, you can't help but just look deeper into it and try to figure out what happened and where shit's going wrong. Well, if you want to think about the future of warfare, you shouldn't be investing in, you know, ships and bombs and the big stuff or nuclear,

nuclear bombs and all the other stuff, the stockpiles of everything we have to blow stuff from destroy. That's not the future of warfare. The future of warfare is cyber, and that's why making a space command, the first thing we do, what, we made a space command? Why wouldn't you make a cyber command at the same level? and Joint Chiefs of Staff, because that's where it's all out.

So while electronics, it's all about that. Then after a cyber command, should have been like an MVC command, should have been nuclear, biological, chemical, and all the other stuff command, after cyber. Space would be third after cyber and after an NBCRE, or MVC burn, chemical, radiological, biological, all that. So with a seaburn command is, if I was a nation, I wanted to take over, let's say New York City,

wanted to, New York State wanted to take over New York City because New York State is just so sick of New York City. So if we just drop a couple of nuclear bombs in New York City and flatten it, well, we destroyed all the infrastructure. We destroyed all of the power plants, all the dams, all the water, everything else, and nobody's going to live within 100 square miles of where all those bombs dropped, right? But what if we let a biological virus into the city and it's half-life of the biological that we've released into the city,

had a half-life of like, let's say, two months, and it killed off 80% of the population. You would depopulate an entire city, and then the city would be clean in two months that you could move in and take over. Not a building fell, not a bomb, not in nothing, just to just get rid of all the people. How good would that warfare be for a nation

and wanted to take over another nation? You wouldn't have to worry about any of the infrastructure. You just go in there and clean up a little bit, get rid of all that. And within two months, you can move in. Yeah. Look at the cost savings. It would be in warfare, not to take a building down with a bomb, but just to get rid of all the people on it. Yeah, it really does seem, I mean, guns and bombs are...

It's the past. It's gone. All you have now is going to be cyber warfare and biological and chemical warfare. It's all that's left. What? And then all you need is the delivery systems. And delivery systems is all by drone anyway. So all you need is some drone pilots.

If you're good with the Xbox, then you're a drone pilot. You can deliver the biological chemical, we can do whatever you want. From your seat, you can just sit there and play the game. Okay, it drops. And you only need to drop them. You just crash your UV into target spot you want. Have you ever messed with those new drones, those DJI, like Phantom drones that have the cameras on them? Have you ever messed around with those?

The ones you can buy at like Walmart? Well, I started. flying drones in 1999, some of the first drones that were every year as militarized. I was one of the first person to do a coffer fire with mortar strikes out of a drone. So I had my little drone. I was flying around and I was doing cover fire, hitting mortars. So yeah, it was basically trailblazing drone technology in the late 90s, early 2000s, before 9-11. And when you launched your, how did you launch that drone? We did a hand launch, you throw them in the air.

we did catapult launches. We also would take them off from runways too. So I've flown drones, the big ones, the dual prop, the single prop, the turbo prop, the big ones, the big ones, the micro drones, the real little ones, and the real big ones. We did explosives on the drones. We did cameras. We did chemical biological testing devices on the drones so we could fly them through an area. and if it was contaminated, we were purposely crash it out in the ocean. If it showed back that it was not contaminated, we could bring it back and land it.

Because basically you crash something in the ocean, the ocean cleans it up, no matter what it is. So you don't want to bring it back if it has stuff on it. So you just crash it purposely because it got affected. It had stuff on it, don't bring it back. What were you, what seal team were you on when you were involved in the raid of Saddam's Pallas? Can you talk about that? I was on a seal team, and we raided a lot of palaces. as we were going through there.

And we stayed in this hangar, and it was all shot up. It was bullet-ridden hanger. It was pretty cool, a little hangar. And we also stayed in a place called the VVIP Lounge for the Baghdad Airport. So I will say those two things. A shot-up hanger and a VVIP lounge is the places I worked out of. That's about all I would say.

And if you know those areas, then you know who I was working with. but um i know the part of your book where you're you're talking about you guys were going down a river near the palace and you had to fly shat la rob i craft a uiv on a river and i really i still have nightmares about crashing uivs that caused problems i screwed up and i still have like really big um problems with that screw up like when i make mistakes i own them i say hey i messed up right I crashed a UAV and I cost lives. I cost us not to have the intel we needed.

And I don't know how many people I could have saved if I didn't crash that one UAV. So it haunts me. It haunts you, but I think it speaks volumes that you're able to own up to it. Because honestly, I mean, people that are able to fail and live with it and talk about it and share it with people. that is what enables you to succeed is to be able to fail and fail and fail and be okay you're going to miss you're going to miss a dozen shots but you're still going to make lots and lots of game winning shots yeah and i think that spoke volumes that really stuck with me in your book i mean we we all should and this is here's an example of somebody if i if i did if i messed up i don't admit it i've definitely had my my share of screw ups and sometimes it takes a long time to realize how bad you're screwing up and then when you finally realize it and then you're like, well, it's kind of too late now where you stew on it. And I would stew on stuff because I'd get so upset.

And I've stewed and I've messed up and then I've stewed on it. And then I finally realized and I was like, well, it's too late now. I wish I could go back in time and fix that. I would immediately say I screwed up and, you know, this is what I want to do to make up for my screw up. And let's get back into business. Let's fix it and let's drive on. And there's a few times. I wish I could have done that earlier.

You know, it would have been better. Here's an example of somebody who's screwed up and never owned up to it. And it caused someone, here it is. If you're a Navy captain on an aircraft carrier, you're the captain, you're the skipper. There's an Admiral Blubbubbub who's running a carrier battle group. But running that ship, the day-to-day running in every person on ship, 4,000 people who are working that ship, That 06, that captain, he's the guy. He's in charge. Now, let's say you had a young seaman, this young kid. He's 19 years old. And he's away from home. He's new in a Navy. He's really, it's tough. And his kid is having, you know, some issues. And he's not getting along with a lot of people. He's doing whatever. But he's a happy kid. Man, a kid, I have a video of the kid from a day before the incident where he's like, he's mopping the hallway. And he's dancing. around, he's dancing in music. He's just a 19-year-old kid. The captain hears that this kid

has some suicide ideations as he's really upset. The captain calls, a captain's call for the whole division and has like 500 people lined up in the hangar decks and he starts making fun of the kid in front of everybody by name to the entire 500 people standing there. It makes fun of the kid because the kid is weak because the kid is thinking about committing suicide, he's just faking it, and he doesn't know and a captain, the leader of that ship, is making fun of this kid by name in front of 500 of his peers. Then the kid attempts suicide on the ship

and didn't happen. The captain further makes fun of him and puts him in the brig, and then the kid gets sent to the brig and hang himself with his shoelaces in the brig and is dead now. Do you think that captain was punished or the captain admitted that, hey, You know, it was in front of 500 people. I made fun of the kid. I didn't really understand.

Whereas I'm not a psychiatrist. I don't know. Does the captain say anything that? No, that captain got promoted to Admiral. And that kid is dead. Who killed himself. And as an organization, if you can see that, do you see the bottom of that mug? Hicks strong.

Hicks strong, yeah. So look up the hashtag and hashtag Hick Strong. and look out at hickstrong.org, I think it is. We'll tell you the whole story. As you tell you about the mother and a father who makes these mugs, they're called hug mugs. Because the mother and father of that young seaman, you know, Hicks, who just breaks my heart. So Mike and Joe Lee are the parents. And they're at my house, and they gave me this mug because they asked all the sailors on the ship who were friends with their son before they killed himself.

They said, what could we have done? And all the kids were like, to the parents, is that you couldn't have done anything. It was the captain. Radiculed your son in front of everybody. And like everything was going on. They talked about it all. They said, well, is there anything that if you had, you know, what would you want?

And a lot of sailors said, we just sometimes just give a hug, man, give support. And she said, and I said, you guys drink coffee all the time. But what if I made a hug mug? What if we made hug mugs? And it says, a hug mug on the handle. That you have this big mug. drinking coffee out of this made custom made for me she made this one for me with this big sunflower on it on the other side it says courageous to remind me every day that we're all courageous so every

morning i drink coffee it's jo lee hicks a wonderful lady she gives me a hug every morning i drink coffee because i have a mug i'm going to drink a hug mug i'm going to drink i'm going to get a hug right now. That's beautiful. Now, giving each other a hug, caring enough. Not ridicule in front of 500 of your peers. Not getting promoted from Captain Admiral. What happened to the Navy? The Navy

ridicules and makes fun of a 19 year old kid and he ends up committing suicide. You're going to make fun of somebody because they're in a bad spot? That's not right. That's not the Navy I'm from. Own up to your mistakes and make them happen and make a change and fix them. That captain should have been

freaking court-martialed by the admiral and thrown out of the Navy. Somebody should look all this up. Hicks Strong. Mike and Jolie Hicks. They're my friends. It's a mom and dad who lost her son, lost a wonderful soul, lost her kid.

And I'd just say to everybody out there, just everybody makes mistakes, everybody does stuff. But that captain, immediately, as soon as he did that in front of all those people, found out the kid started to have some issues, should have gone down there with his division officer, everybody else, and then said something to the kid personally

with his officers and the chiefs, and said, you know what, son, I made a mistake. I didn't know. How can we make this right? And then in front of all 500 people, the people he said it all to should have made a point. He says, you know what? I made a mistake the other day, and here's a young seaman,

and we're going to make sure it's to take care of. We're going to fix this, and I was wrong. And I will take my punishment, whatever it is. I'm going to lose my ship. I will lose that. I'm going to get, I am in trouble because I made fun of that kid in front of everybody. I did the wrong thing. Then we'd have, you know, he'd be here still.

I would imagine that that sort of behavior happens a lot in the military, especially like the Marines and the SEALs. We're strong. We're tough. We're yelling each other. Right. I woke up at 2 a.m. this morning and did a thousand pushups. What did you do? You suck.

You're weak. I hate that attitude. I mean, I don't care all time you wake. up in a morning and how many pushups can do. Even David Goggins, the guy's a freaking monster. But you know, comes down to it, not everybody has the ability to do a thousand pull-ups.

But if you can do 100, man, rock on if that's what you can do. I'm proud of you. I'm never going to make fun of you because you can do a thousand, you can do 100. You can only do 10. It's your capability to strengthen weakness. You're still on a team. You just might not be the quarterback. You might not be the lineman. Hey, how about a defensive

hand? Let's try you there. There's a spot for you on a team. But those people that just like they do that macho making fun ridicule do you're going to ridicule me to make me better? No man, that doesn't make me better. How about a hug? How about a hug, man? It speaks volumes coming from someone like you because you are dominating and alpha personality that you were and the stuff that you went through is beyond masculine and macho. But wait, hold on.

You're saying alpha and macho. define alpha when I'm talking about alpha and macho obviously there are two different things but when I say alpha I'm referring to a trait to where you're someone who is a dominating force and someone who

is looked up to by many different people who are obviously going in the same direction and they look up to that person and that person is a strong example for them yeah so when you talk about domination talk about alpha we're talking about

like lions. You're talking about the animal kingdom. You're talking about strength. It's a primal thing. And we talk about alpha and macho is sometimes that has nothing to do with like how many pushups you can do. Right. Right.

You woke up at 3 a.m. and did 100 pushups. I don't care, dude. Right. When was the last time you helped somebody? When was the last time you did something good for somebody? When was the last time you actually had compassion and said, hey, man, I was walking past this person, man. And I saw that they were sleeping in their car.

And I was just like, dude, I'm in a hurry. but you know what knocking the window the car and then they'll put the window down and they're scared because they think they're going to be they're going to get beat off or something bad is going to happen and all you do is just slip in a $20 bill I think what I'm getting at I like alpha compassion

is there a way to be alpha compassion is that the Dalai Lama is that Gandhi yeah I think what I'm trying to get at I think the point I'm trying to explore is the fact that you've been through the peak of what someone would think of alpha or macho.

That's who, I mean, it's who you are. It's a life that you lived, right? But I want to redefine alpha to be alpha, Gandhi's alpha compassion, to make him at the same equal playing field that if you're,

if you're that dude, if you're David Gagons, who freaking love the guy, he's awesome, he's amazing. And he is an alpha, like, competitive and like just,

he's a monster. He's also like his mentality. He's just like, he goes. Yeah. But he should be at the same level as far as alpha measurement as I have a friend of mine, Mary, who's just this amazing spiritual leader, but she weighs like 90 pounds and she could probably do 10 pushups.

But shouldn't they be equals? Because there's one, it's an alpha domination of one whole thing and it's one thing. And you want to look at them the same. But nobody will ever look at them the same. Nobody will be on a talk show. You have a very unique perspective, and I think that you're able to look at it that way. Do you think that a lot of people with that mentality that think that that's how you need to be or people raising their kids saying you need to be a man, you need to be tough, you need to play football,

do you think that comes from insecurity that that may not be there? Maybe I'm insecure or I'm not confident that I am mainly, so I need to really project this image. I mean, that's 100% possible. It's probably totally true. But the thing is, when we're thinking about that, you've got to be tough. Well, I want to say you got to be tough when they're sitting there with their book and they're reading the chapter to do a report on to just finish the chapter. They only read halfway through it and they want to go outside and play. No, no, you've got to be mentally tough.

You've got to be tough. Just keep reading. Well, you didn't read it. Let's read it again. That's toughness. That's like an intellectual toughness. You know, the extra reading assignments during the summertime that you just want to play and have fun, but you need to get through these 10 books. During the summer, every summer.

Read 10 books every summer if you're in school. Get your list. You're going to read those because you're mentally tough. You're like macho. What's an intellectual machoism? Don't just measure it by how much you can run and jump and do push-ups and pull-offs. We need to start measuring a mental toughness at the same level as we do. How many push-ups you can do?

Or that you can go in a UFC cage and beat the crap out of somebody. You can go in a UFC cage and beat the crap out of somebody. Yeah, you're really tough. But look at Alan Turing. That guy is way tougher than a UFC fighter I've ever known in my life. UFC, UFC, UFs me. Alan Turing was the toughest man alive. Who was that?

Mentally and everything else. He's a guy invented computers. And in 1940s during World War II. Oh, oh, okay. He killed himself. He killed himself because he ridiculed. He killed himself because he got set up and he made to fail. He was set up for failure.

The guy invented modern-day computing. You got to read a story. Why did he kill himself? He was made to take drugs to chemically castrate him because he thought it was a deviant. He invented all modern day computing. All came from one person. Alan Turing wasn't an alien.

It was a man. Did you know that's what Nikolai Tesla did? Yeah, he was also a big part of that. So he's also one of them. Tesla was a huge part of that. But when you start thinking about computing in ones and zeros, It was ones and zeros, and the way the whole thing happens, it really came to fruition under Alan Turing. That was when he started doing the switches, and basically the transistors, the NPTs, the NPNs, the Ntons, the whole thing when it switches because of electrical change in a circuit, it switches here or switches there.

Right. That was basically turning. It was pre-transistor transistors. That's interesting. All computing is based on ones and zeros. Right, right, right. That was a Turing machine. It was a magic machine.

Real quick. Going back, Tesla didn't do that. No, no, yeah. He was way different. But I believe Tesla, he intentionally castrated himself so he could accomplish his goals and what he was trying to do in his life and that he thought were more important than his sexuality. Was that to diminish the animal instinct of sexuality? Yeah, exactly. Because they felt it was a distraction.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We were talking about mental toughness. In your documentary, you were comparing what it took for you to run through caves, screaming with an assault rifle. Versus what it was like to tell your friends and your fellow comrades, you felt like you were a woman. Like, coming out, like, explain the difference in the courage it took to do that versus the courage it took to be in combat. Let me put it this way. So this has been me my whole life. I've just

never been able to express it. But in my mind, in my soul, this is me. It's the way God created me. You might not believe that, but I know because this is how I felt my whole life. And it came from when I was like before I even had thought. So it's not something that was invented or as environmental or anything else. This is the life I was given by God. And this is how it worked. This is life. Life is very diverse in so many ways that people don't even know yet. Like we barely understand the DNA chain and, you know, chromosomes. And we've barely scratched into the surface of who we are as human beings. So we're going to define it and say, no, it's only one or the other.

That's naive. There's like a thousand levels between all of that, between male and female. There's a thousand million combinations. So who can say it's only black or white is this or that? It's male or female. It's not. So there's gray. There's a lot of gray between all that.

And I knew that at a very young age because I was, I am. You were dealing with it. So here's how I tell you to compare it to. Have you ever been scuba diving? All the time. I grew up scuba diving. Okay. So anyone else that are to scuba dive is going to totally get this.

So imagine you're living your entire life underwater with a scuba bottle on and a regular in your mouth. So when you're scuba diving and you're thinking about your breathing, you have to always think about how you're breathing. You always think about where the regulator is. If regular it comes out, I'm in trouble. I've got to get back in. You always think about the level of air in your tank.

You're thinking about your depth. You're thinking about all of it. At all times, your survival is critical upon everything with the apparatus to breathe. That's transgender. So my entire life from when I was born until February 28, 2012, I was underwater on breathing apparatus. totally afraid for my life at every second for every word I said every action everything I did on February 28th of 2012 I said the heck with it and I came above water I dropped my scoop tank I dropped it all off and I started living and not worrying about anything that's how it is to

come out because now I don't need to worry about anything because I'm above water now I'm not worried about how I breathe how I at what I say how would I wear I'm not worried about anything anymore like I was underwater. That's what it feels like. That's a beautiful analogy. That's how you should think about it. So for anyone, everyone that yourself, you're not transgender. I don't know, but you're living your life.

You've always been above water. So for you to look at me and I finally come out of the water and I go, holy cow, this is so amazing. You look at me and go, what are you talking about? because you never knew what it was like to be underwater. You never had to worry about every word, every action, how you dressed, what you did. You never had to worry about your survival depending on your life. And now that you're above water, now you start getting ridiculed because now you're above water.

And I go, no, it feels better for me. And then you're going to point in me and you go, yeah, but you look weird. You're not doing it right. You don't look right like everybody else. And I say, how do you know what it's like to live underwater? How do I know what it was like to live above water my whole life? I don't. So you have to think about it totally differently.

And can't you respect the fact that now I'm living and I feel better? Can you say, well, I don't know what it's like to live underwater and you're happier now at fear. So yeah, right on, man. Good job. Good job for you not to worry about every second of your life. Yeah. Congratulations, man. Welcome to Liberty.

You know? Yeah. Why can't people just say, hey, congratulations. Congratulations. You're living a half year and a full life now. Why can't you just do that to me? Instead, you got to try to beat me up in the street. You got to laugh at me, got to point at me, saying, you're a dude wearing a dress. You look ugly. You're the ugliest thing I've ever seen. You should kill yourself. Why are you doing that? People don't do that. You're a man or a woman. You're born a man. You can't be a woman now. Who is it to you to judge that? You've never lived underwater. Well, God says, your God defined something based on 2,000-year-old book that you can't wear cotton fibers with wool fibers or I should stone you right now. It's ridiculous how they judge me. It's based on stuff that doesn't even make any sense now.

There are so many things that you can cut out of Leviticus that would make our way of life in modern times impossible. By what you eat, by what you wear, about what you say, but what you do, by all of it, you couldn't live a life in modern. society based on Leviticus 2,000 year old scriptures well no, that's not really what God meant well then how can you cherry pick and tell me what God meant? Are you God? Do you really know what was going on?

Are you the creator? Who are you to judge? What type of people give you that sort of feedback? Do you get that sort of feedback with fellow veterans? I was told I was told I should kill myself just a week ago based on something. I had a veteran write a whole bunch of stuff

on a Twitter post I had. like all kinds of stuff and I was like all right dude but you have no idea what you're talking about well you don't know me I know you I was in your platoon you said that and I said dude you know I was covering up and I was underwater just trying to be normal in your eyes I said yeah I probably said a lot of stupid stuff because I was just trying to cover up and survive in your world I said I'm finally comfortable now and you're going to give me crap right my Twitter handle my Facebook handle, my Instagram handle, my Gmail, everything is the same. Valor for us. Valor for U.S.

Number four? The number four. V-A-L-O-R-4-U-S. Didn't you tweet it from? That's my social media. I get death threats. I get email. I get all kinds of stuff.

I've been beaten up two months ago. I got freaking attacked two months ago in a bar. three months no it's three months ago now before the isolation of COVID I had someone attack me in a bar where they tried to beat me out did they know who you were no they just saw dude in the dress you're ugly you shouldn't even be living and I was going dude just leave me alone man and then they started attacking me and yeah they they were on a floor pretty quickly yeah I would imagine they knew who you were they wouldn't have fucked with you no but it just doesn't make sense why don't you let me alone why don't you live me alone yeah it's it's sad it really is sad people are mean man

Man, people are mean. Speaking of Twitter, didn't you respond to Donald Trump when he tweeted something about transgender people should not be in the military? So President Trump tweeted out that transgender people should not be in a military in any capacity and wants to get rid of us. That's about 15,000 people in uniform today in uniform. So he basically wanted to, or transgender. So basically he wanted to kick out 15,000 people who nobody would. even know or some of them know, but they're doing a great job. And the problem was when he tweeted that, the Army was undermanned by like 28%. The Marine Corps was undermanned by like 15%. The Air Force

was like 5%. I think they were doing pretty good. But the recruitment numbers to go to boot camp and join the military were all significantly under, undermanned. So for us, the capability to fight a war on two fronts, if you had a European war and something going on in Asia or anything going to on, we can't do it because we are so undermanned because nobody wants to join because it's a shit place to go. Yeah. And you want to kick out an additional 15,000 people who are right now serving, doing a good job because of your prejudices.

It doesn't make any sense. So that's what I told me. I said, hey, look, I served 20 years. I did a good job. I served with honor. You never knew and it didn't matter to you and who cares. You're going to kick me out. That's bullshit.

Let's talk face to face. Let's talk about this. Did you get any response? No. But about six or seven months later, I met him face to face, shook his hand, and I talked to him. And I said, sir, served my country for 20 years. I did a good job. There's a lot of people just like me that want to serve, and we want to serve with honor.

And he said to me, as he was shaking my hand, thank you for your service, chief. How did he know I was chief? He knew who you were? Yeah. How did that make you feel? Well, he just said, thank you for your service, Chief. And I said, you're welcome, sir. Just a lot of us want to join.

And I'm not going to stop serving. I served to this day. I served in different capacity. I served by speaking to you. Maybe dropping a couple of nuggets of truth and having some people think a little bit. Yeah. Have your mental toughness, you intellectual toughness, your spiritual toughness. Tell you what, being a Muslim America right now, you've got to be spiritually tough.

but nobody cares about that toughness. They only care how many push-ups you can do. I woke up at 3 o'clock in the morning, did a thousand push-ups. Who cares, man? I know a guy who's a Sikh. Like a Sikh elder, the guy is amazing. You know who Sikhs are.

They're like religious, like spiritual leaders, man. They're tough. And he's a good friend of mine. So I don't care how many push-ups he can do it at 3 o'clock in the morning. I care about my really good Sikh. Ahmad. And I know another one, I'm in pushing, he was a seal. And he's freaking mentally tough.

He's way tougher than doing a thousand pushups at 3 a.m. All the above. I have a really good Muslim friend. He was a Marine Corps. And that guy is mentally tough. Way tougher than a thousand push-ups at 3 o'clock in the morning. I don't care how many push-ups you can do it 3 o'clock in the morning. Why don't you try to be in a Muslim Marine for a day?

That guy's way tougher than you. So spiritual toughness, mental toughness, intellectual toughness. Freaking tough toughness. Not what you do. You wake up in a morning and do push-ups. I don't care. That's weak. That's a weakest person ever said.

Because if all you can do is do a thousand push-ups at 3 o'clock in the morning, then you yell and thump your chest about it, I do you do a thousand push-ups at 3 a.m. Dude, that's one of the weakest people I've ever met. Because you've got to yell about it. You've got to tell everybody in the whole world how many push-ups you did. I don't care. Do a thousand push-ups and don't tell anybody about it.

That's tough. I don't care of you yelling. I don't care if you woke up a 3M, wake up at 3M and do whatever you got to do. Why do you got to tell anybody about it? The weakest person is one that does stuff and yells and screams and thumpster chest. They brag about it. At every turn, they brag. Those are the weakest people.

The toughest people do all the stuff and nobody ever knew they did it. I give somebody a homeless man. I'll give them a $20 bill. I'm not going to tell anybody or take a picture or do anything. and I'll do that a hundred times in a month. Well, shit, I just said it. Yeah. There's definitely going to be some people that even comments,

you just told all of us. That's okay. There's so much stuff that happens. You don't need to tell anybody about it. Just do it, man. That's toughness. That's real toughness. You know who knows that you did that?

You know who knows you did it and who it counts? It's you. You, just you. No one else. Not even a creator. The creator doesn't care if you gave somebody who needed some help, some help. People try to use bragging and saying they've done great things as acts to prop up something that's not there. And you can get more followers.

Yeah. I don't have followers because I don't, I try not to say very much stuff about myself. I write a lot of stuff on all my social media when I did something incorrect. I did something without thinking. I did something that was callous or, you know, in compassion. I didn't know what I was doing. And then I was like, darn it, I did that wrong. And then I go back and I try to fix it.

And I try to make it better. And I try to do something good. Where I failed. So every time I fail, I try to do better. I try to do something. Those are the things I post. So I don't have followers because I'm never out there saying, hey, I just did a 23-mile run in an hour and 20 minutes. I just did this or I did that.

I woke up at 3 a.m. Did a thousand push-ups. I don't write any of that stuff. I write about stuff where I screwed it up and then I tried to do better. So who's going to follow me? So I don't have followers. I'm not going to ever have fame. I think you know followers.

I try to defame myself and I try to make it a lesson. I try to give you some help by saying what I did wrong or what I felt bad about this or I wish I would have done that better. I try to do lessons with everything I do. You know what I mean? Yeah, it's important, though, because you do, I think you do have followers, but speaking to talking about the things that you do wrong and the things that you mess up, I think that's important for people to learn that and learn that it's important to fail. It's important to mess up.

Like wearing a sock on my face. Yeah, yeah. I totally messed up because I just, I went into a store without a face mask. And so I went and I said, hey, you got a shit. Take your sock off. Hey, I did that. I didn't wipe myself. I made a mask.

But I mean, it's just, I just do stuff. and I just try to make it, hey, I learned something. And I want you to know how to do this so that maybe you can do it. I learned it from somebody else. And then I made a couple of improvements here and there. And they're like, hey, man, my buddy Denny did something with a sock before me. And then I said, hey, but if you do it like this, do it like that. That's something.

And then, hey, man, that's. So all knowledge is like borrowed and approved or done that or done that. And then I gave a lot of credit to my friend Danny, you know, at Better Days, who came up with the first idea. and it was like, man, it's a great idea, and I want more people to know about it. And so now, and you can even change it so that you put your chin where the foot is is another way to do it. Oh, where the heel goes? It'll cup in.

I mean, improve it. Someone out there improve what I did and make it better because, man, all of life is about improvements. When the cavemen were here and they were, you know, fighting a T-Rexus, they did a lot of stuff. And we've improved on it. Nothing's new. No. Everything's been sad. You just said it different.

What do you think is the biggest point of pain in fellow veterans like yourself who have been in combat as much as you have? And how do you try to help them with what you've experienced with trying to let out bottled up emotions or bottled up feelings and get them off your shoulder? Maybe that's one example. But what do you see is the biggest point of pain or stress within? people like yourself who've dealt with what you've dealt with. Well, let me put it this way. If you go to the Veterans Administration and you see the number of people are registered and using the VA, the VA hospital and the doctors and prescriptions

and all the other stuff, and you look at the total number of veterans in the United States, the percentage of people that use the VA is like 20% of veterans. So the other 80% are like, hell no, I'm not going to the VA. You know why? Why are they going to the VA? I probably won't go to the VA shortly because I'm just, I'm angry. Because I went to the VA and I was like, hey, man, I'm in a really tough spot right now. And I'm having some problems and I just need help.

And I think I can get, I need help for about six months or a year. And I need a caregiver. I need somebody around to help me do some scheduling because I had traumatic brain injury and, and I, and I had some other stuff happened. And I just, I need some help for a little while. And I have this thing called a caregiver program. well, they'll actually pay me a little bit of extra money so I can pay a caregiver to come in and work with me for two or three hours a day to make sure my scheduling is good. I'm on time.

I'm taking my medications. I'm doing this. I'm doing that. It's like a checkup. And I went to the VA and I asked me, I said, hey, man, I'm in a really tough spot right now. And you have this caregiver program. You're going to give me like 400 bucks a month or 800 bucks a month. So I could pay somebody.

could come in like a qualified person that understands scheduling and pharmaceuticals and prescriptions, all these stuff I'm doing because I'm in a tough spot right now. So I could actually pay them to come in and be with me for an hour or two hours every two or three days or whatever. Come in once a week. I just go through my schedule, go through everything going on and make sure everything's good. You know, make sure I'm eating healthy. I'm not just eating macaron and cheese every day for a month straight, which I did. And it caused me to have this really bad cholesterol.

lots of charts. I was going to McDonald's eating McDonald's eating mac and cheese because I was just in that real bad funk. I was in a bad place. So I go to the VA and I go to this place. I had this caregiver program and I say, hey, I want to apply for this caregiver program. And they asked me to all these questions and

and man, I'm at SEAL and I'm, I answered the questions like a SEAL and I wasn't, I didn't go in there to limp in and I have a limp and I go in there and I'm just like, and I tell them, yeah, I'm okay. I mean, I'm doing okay, I guess. And I'm doing that in a downtime. So I didn't go in there and cry. I didn't go in there limping. I

didn't go in there unshowered for a week, which I did go for about a week and a half. I didn't take a shower, which because I was in a, I was in a funk and I couldn't get out. And this is the stuff that happens when you have, you know, PTSD and traumatic brain injury, stuff doesn't always connect. And so you go for a week and a half without shower and you didn't go out to the house? And like, you want to be self-sid isolate? What did it to myself? A lot. And so I'm talking to this caregiver program. And they deny you. me. And I actually went in and I asked him for help. Yeah. Because I knew it. It was in a funk and I had stuff going on and I needed some help and I want to get out of the funk. I want to, like, give me six

months of this person to come in once a week and help me out. That's what I was asking for. I said, I want somebody for six months or a year to come in for one or two days a week for like two hours and just check everything out and do that and do that. Make sure I'm not in that funk. Nothing's going on funky. They're not doing that or that. And they said, no. That's unbelievable. It would have cost him total for a year. It would have cost them, what, $4,000, $5,000 total? And you're talking about a VA that only serves 20% of the veteran population.

And they're the biggest health care. And they have millions and millions and millions of dollars. And they won't give me $4,000 over a year because I asked them for help. They deny me. So do you think I give a crap about the VA anymore? I think they suck. They basically said no. Yeah, that seems extremely unfair.

Next time I fall into one of those depression holes. And if anybody's ever had depression or anxiety or TBI or PTSD or anything, Survivor's guilt and remorse and all the other stuff that I have wrapped up and suffered. And it goes and waves. And I hit one of waves and now I'm in a hole. And if I got nobody around checking me, nobody around, I'm all alone, just sitting here. And when I start getting that hole, I can't climb out of the hole. It gets deeper.

It gets worse. Now I'm in the darkness. Now I don't shower. And a week and a half goes by. And I'm in a real deep hole. It's real hard to get out of it. And all I have is somebody saying, well, just buck up and man up. You just wake up at 3 a.m. do a thousand pushups.

You suck. You're the biggest pussy I ever met. You got that. And you got somebody going, what? Dude, I don't. And I got everything coming down on me. I'm going, man, I just, I just don't know. what's wrong, man. I can't. I look at myself and I go, man, I don't know what's wrong. I don't know what's wrong

with me, man. And all I asked the VA was, I just, I know him in a spot and I want somebody to help me with the tools, somebody who's educated in some therapy and some other stuff that when they start, seeing me getting a little bit of a hole before I start digging deep for when I get worse, before I says, stewing on it. They go, hey, man, you just, hey, try this out. Hey, here's some tools, man, here's some yoga. Why don't you try this practice out? Why don't you do that? And I go, man, that's a really good idea. I'm going to try that. They don't just tell me I'm a freaking wimp and I got a man up or I got to do that or that. And a VA says, no, we don't believe you because you're coming here and you look pretty happy because you're seeing me on a day I went to the VA.

It's not the day after a week and a half with no shower in a big hole. You're not going to ever see me when I'm in my hole. But when I got out of the hole and I said, hey, look, I've been in a whole like this year it happened five times this year and I see it I see a pattern I see some stuff going on how long was it last for shoot one time it was like a month and a half oh and so I finally get out of the hole and I'm talking to the V and I get out of a hole by myself because I start reading something I see something on social media because I'm on social media I'm on my Instagram I'm on my Instagram and somebody on Instagram says something they go hey you know know I've been there you know and this is what and they tell me just enough in one sentence on my

instagram but I see it it pops up and so I say hey I just followed you back because you follow me and I p.m. do you what are you talking about so personal message so now we're talking we're talking behind the scenes now and I go what what do you mean by that and I'm in a whole man I'm deep yeah and they say well what I mean by that is this and that and they gave me some really good advice as someone who's been there and I go holy cow that's really good idea. Now I'm out of the hole a little bit. And I said, what about this and this? Now I'm out of a little bit bit. And so I got out of the hole because I had a whole bunch of my followers who are on Instagram. We're on Twitter, who are some Facebook followers. But mostly Instagram really helps. Because I can see stuff and I see their pictures. I see what I'm at. And a picture is a thousand words. So I see them all happy. And I go and I said, man, you're look really happy with your hair. You know, like mine. I'm all like, I'm kind of ready. I don't really look that good. And you're like thinking about this. You're thinking about that. And I'm. And I'm like, I'm like, I'm thinking about that. And I. And I'm. And I'm. And I'm. And I'm. And I'm. And I'm. And I'm. And I'm. And I And I look at the picture and I see what they wrote. And I go, damn, that's kind of like me.

Because a picture says a lot. What they say says a lot. So Instagram was really good for me. But then on the same Instagram, I had a guy who was a Navy SEAL who I served with who started totally giving me crap. And it made me a whole worse. Totally like, I was like, man, why would they say that? They knew I am. They gave me a little secret little snippet that I know he was on my platoon.

I know what platoon he is. I know who he is. Because he gave me enough information that I'm able to figure out who it was. But they gave me a lot of crap. I didn't deserve. And then he did it even deeper. He started sticking the knife being even worse. And I was going, man, how do you know where I am in life?

Right. How do you know what's going on in my life? And now you stick that knife in as a friend? Dude, how do you know where I am with a shotgun in my mouth getting ready to pull the trigger? He could have been the one to pull the trigger through an Instagram post by giving me all like crap by the hate by the bigotry you don't know where i'm in life why would you do that to somebody dude just be nice man give a hug man how about a hug mug it's blind hate you don't have to really feel somebody you don't know where they are so instagram is good because i see pictures i see

stuff going on and i see that and you know what that guy the navy seal who i know who it was has a hidden name has hidden pictures you'll never figure out who he is by name by picture he's he's anonymous so he's an anonymous little wimpy dude hide behind a keyboard giving shit to somebody keyboard warrior little the most weak weak mind weak person a weakest person on earth is that person because he has no strength or integrity or honor you're going to do that to somebody behind a hidden war by a keyboard warrior you're going to try to make somebody kill themselves because you're so weak the weakest person i've ever met is that person well notice in a category of very very weak weak mind weak intellectual weak spiritual because you don't even have a spiritual awakening where you can see this or see that or understand humanity is diverse

we have a lot of stuff going on come on man how weak are you yeah i've come to realize that the people that leave those toxic hateful comments on social media they they it's coming from a place of self-hate they literally they have the lives they're living they're so unhappy and they're just projecting that and trying to make themselves feel better. It's like a, it's just, it's toxic and it's a cesspool. If you're in that hole and you're in a deep hole, you want to do anything to try to get out of that hole. And that's alternative therapies. So that's my nonprofit. It's called mindful valor. Because valor isn't thumb-chesting. Valor isn't how many push-ups or how tough you are or the UFC cage isn't valor. Mindful valor is about mindfulness. Mindful valor is about intellectual

integrity and honor and strength. Mindful Valors about spiritual strength. Mindful Valor.org is my nonprofit. Okay. So I get money to pursue alternative therapies to try to find alternative therapy in any way. Dude, if you live in Washington State and marijuana is legal, and if you smoke a joint and you're good and you're able to cope or do whatever you've got to do, then you can pursue other things. man that's good therapy if you live in new york like i do and you start doing yoga and it's something you can do and it works for you

man that's therapy it works for you then get out of that hole if you do like i have like a buddha right there and i have aromatherapy stuff going on i have my um himalayan salt black which i heat up and i burn and i have this i have stuff i have like a hundred different alternative therapies that i pursued Have you ever looked into? Some people in only some places, some of them are legal in other places.

But the thing is, is like, who are we to judge the legality of a God-grown plant that might help out a lot of people? Then, man, you should be able to do that, man. The laws related in that. And this is April 2020. April 20? Man, come on. April 4th in 2020? Man, that's like the creator told me to go smoke some herb.

Yeah. on, you know, this week, what was it, Monday this week, man? I think the whole world should have been stoned. Well, the worst drug for you. The creator said, April 4th, 2020, everyone should smoke it up. That was God-given right on a God-given day that said everybody gets stoned. Yeah. But there's laws, man.

Well, who are your laws? Man, your laws are man or laws of the creator? Are there spiritual laws that they made man laws? And only apply to some, apply to others. And what's up with a law? What's up with a law that only apply? to some people, not others. I don't like those kind of laws.

If you have a law that applies to black and not white, if you have a law that applies to female, not male, if you have a law that applies to someone who has this or that or that or that, you're making up laws that apply to being gay or straight. That's not a law, man. That's a bigotered way to persecute one person over another. And those laws are illegal. Those laws are illegal by the laws of man.

and the laws of God if they apply to one or not to the other. One of my favorite comedians quotes is the worst drugs for you are the ones that aren't taxed. Have you ever experimented with anything like MDMA for PTSD? Hug mug. I've experimented with hugging.

You get a lot of energy. No, hugs are great. I love hugs. When it comes into all that, I have not yet. Okay. I tried that. I'll try to do more study and to, some of that before I would even do it myself. I don't know enough about it. But I do know other people have done it.

I'm trying to get more information from them. Okay. Yeah. I've heard a lot about it. I've heard a lot of really good things about it. I've heard a lot of things. Yeah. I've also had good things about shock therapy.

You know, like 1940s, 1940s and 50s when they stick to big things on there and they send like 400 volts through your brain? Yeah. In the old days, they did it. It was kind of like a punishment. It was kind of like it was it was it was it was abuse. It was it was like criminal freaking torture.

But there's been there's been some advances, some studies, because we've learned so much that I know I know someone who did that the other day and I had had great great results. Shock therapy. Shock therapy, man. The old fashioned like Frankenstein shock therapy. Holy shit. That sounds brutal. The advances. The advances is not brutal at all.

It's actually it's therapeutic. That's a thing. thing is like if things are done wrong it can be very very helpful but if you do things i mean you can waterboard it man i mean you waterboard somebody and it's like good it's good for you know you know you only waterboard in the right way you kind of not just kidding yeah it's total torture sorry you to do that part of your training right yeah it hurts it's painful don't ever get waterboard it's really painful but the thing is like there's a lot of things that that if you do it the wrong way you can definitely harm people And there's ways to do things that can be helpful, beneficial.

We just need to figure out through science and through experimentation and through to be able to do something and have a repeatable solution, a repeatable outcomes to the procedure that are beneficial. So if it's beneficial to 90 people and 10 people, it really hurts, we have to figure out what's going on and we have to fix it. to find out because if you harm in 10 out of 100, that's, it's not really, it's not good. We have to figure out with drugs. There's a lot of drugs that are out there on a market that are legal, but it also harms

a pretty big part of the population if they're using incorrectly or you have to use correctly, but just for that person, it would have a chemical imbalance or chemical side effect. It's extremely harmful. So I think that the rigor in science needs to keep. It's legitimacy through equal equality in that way. I don't know if that makes any sense, but I think we get harsh on some things and easy on others because it's more money in somebody's pocket. Yeah, for sure. Pharmaceutical companies are huge.

They make a lot of money, but some of their stuff they use has never really been tested, and it still has some side effects. We still see it happen. Yeah, I mean, a huge problem, obviously, with places like the VA is they don't, they don't, they, They focus a lot on physical and treating you with pharmaceuticals and they want to just, you know, pill you up. But they don't really, there's not enough focus on mental health and mental treatment. And that's what affects the suicide rate. Here's the problem with the VA is the VA is huge. It's the biggest medical group in the world probably.

So they have a lot of money. It's the biggest money. It's the biggest one single spending item in the entire budget. So they have all those millions, millions of dollars. You know how they split them up? you have a physical ailment. So you have a broken bone. We've got to put a cast in there.

We're going to set it. Or you have mental something going on. You're going to send you to a psychiatrist. You're going to do this and do that. Right? So there's two huge, huge pots of money. It's always a competition between the pots of money. Okay.

You have a broken bone to set it. It's easy. You have to get an operation and do the operation to do this. You have to go see the psychiatrists and do that. But the psychiatry is like small compared. They want to see the problem and medical doctors. and in psychologists. So they're all competing, competing funds, right?

But it's a huge lot of money. It's a wrong way to look at it. So you get to look at the funds with the funds should also be split up to a third bucket of money. And that third bucket of money should be about twice of what the mental illness, mental counseling and all that. So whatever their budget is, multiply by two and take that multiplication of two out of the physical budget.

So the physical budget goes down by this much. This one comes in here. You know what that pot of money is called? What's that one? It's called wholeness. It's the whole person. It's a whole person therapy. It's the whole well-being.

So it's called whole body well-being that we go overall. And so that has to do with after you have a broken bone or whatever, you have to go into physical therapy. Physical therapy is part of whole being because that'll be yoga, that'll be massaging, that'll be a a hot tub therapy, hot therapy, aromatherapy. It's all the other therapies. Kind of like lifestyle. Lifestyle, yeah. It's a proper diet.

We want nutrition should be in the whole person therapy. So after you're fixed with a surgery with that, and that, and that, you're done. The metal doctor fixed you. He did surgery on you. He did brain surgery, foot surgery, bone surgery, intestinal, gastrointestinal. All the other things are part of this big physical budget, budgeting. Then you have the whole being, which is a physical therapy and everything after you get to surgery, plus for the mental well-being, you have the psychology and lay on a couch and do all that. That doesn't cover the yoga and doing group therapy or do aromatherapy or do M-E-M-DMA or do marijuana or do that.

The whole person therapy is drum circles, is doing a lot of stuff because it all contributes. It all contributes back and forth between metal. It's all in our woven, yeah. And it's also spiritual. Hey, dude. If you have your yoga dude and it's also a prayer guy, he's a drum guy, he does all that, I'm an ordained minister. And if you gave me a budget because somebody who's got an operated on there, like in a coma

for three weeks and they got operated on head at that, they had to go to a psychiatrist. You're missing a whole other part of that. I could have them talking to me for, you know, an hour a week and I'll fix everything in between that a psychiatrist is never going to talk about and a medical doctor is never going to know about. And I bring it all together in the middle. And I'm talking about nutrition. I talk about intellectual stimulation of that and that and get you fired up.

I'm talking about, hey, man, let's just go sit in a hot tub and do some aromatherap for a little bit. And let's have a talk. What was the last book you read? Let's talk about that book. What did that book mean to you and where does it go? So it's nice psychology and it's not setting a bone. I'm doing everything in between that makes you a whole. whole person.

Yeah. They don't have a budget for that. Nutrition is huge. It's huge. Massive. Bigger than mental and physical. Yeah. Nutrition, I mean, you are, you literally, you are what you eat.

In mindful valor, I can do all of that. I'm going to talk about your nutrition. I'm going to talk about your spirituality, intellectuality. I'm talking about your sexuality because your sexual well-being is also part of your whole being. And what are you up to, man? What's going on? How can you do that?

When was the last time you went on a day? You know, what's going on with your marriage? You have a boyfriend or girlfriend? What's gone on there? Let's talk about that for a little bit. So that kind of counseling is not psychology, one or one, fredian science, and it's not medical doctor or anything else. This is a whole different spectrum of healing.

Yeah. The well-being of you as a whole person. Maintenance. You're not going to talk about sexuality with a metal doctor or even more psychologists, because they're just going to talk about the Freudian crap and op-ed Opid, I had allah, Blittittada, spiritual. I want to go and talk to my priest about

freaking my last date. No, man. That's mindful valor, man. That's my realm. The VA doesn't fund that. Nobody funds that. That's why I have to have a nonprofit to get money to it'll bring somebody in and say,

hey, man, this is going to backyard. Hey, there's those deer over there. I have deer in my backyard right now through my back window. They're just grazing 15-year-old. It's away from me. Wow. And I find a lot of peace with that. I find peace with that.

Do you find peace with that? Let's just talk about the deer in my backyard. Mm-hmm. For an hour. That's wholeness, man. It's whole body healing. That's amazing. That's amazing.

I love that. That's what I do. That doesn't take any stimulation. You can have a cup of tea and your hug mug. A hug mug. And we can heal. I love that hug mug. We need to start funding that kind of stuff.

Yeah. It should be twice of the psychology budget and taken from the physical, because we'll be doing physical therapy and whole body healing. What do you have to deal with physically now? A lot. Really? I know you broke your back. You broke your back. I remember your Taliban birthday present.

Yeah. I've had a share of injuries. I had my wrist and my hands, I'll be sitting there. and my hand will just start aching. And I'll have like holding on to something. And then my thumb has so many issues. My thumb will stop working and I get these twitches and I just drop whatever I have. So if I have something fragile, I have something, you'll see me drop stuff.

And I'm just like, I just couldn't hold it. It just my hand didn't work. So that's both my hands, the arthritis and the aches. I have a lot there. And my elbow, I blew that elbow. That's why it sticks way out. I hit here so hard. It broke my ulna.

It's a radius in ulna. It shoved up through my elbow, and so it sticks out still through the elbow. How did you do that? Push it up through. It was a really big fall that happened in a country, we shall not name. But it was like a, it was a hurt. I just taped it with rigorous tape and put it back in place. And then I had like another one where it tore my shoulder out and did that, my knees and did that.

It broke that ankle somewhere else. I broken every finger in my hand, this rib. I fell through a roof in another country, and it hit air. and it broke one of my ribs. I climbed back up to the roof. As my feet would dangling through the roof, so I'm going, eh.

So that's another funny story. Oh, my gosh. It was a, it was funny. But, uh, my body armor broken at one,

one, when it cracked my body armor, broke, some ribs and stuff. And then you, you were falling off of a ship at that when you broke your back, right? That was a ship back.

It didn't break it like, like, like, like, it, like, it wasn't like that. It was,

it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, Um, fracture.

A fracture. It was, it was a partial fractures. Partial fractures. So a bunch of partial fractures that cracked everything up. But it didn't totally, and it broke one of the, um,

the cushioning, the, um, what do they call them? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know you're talking about.

And you have, uh, I have black discs. Yes. So I have black discs and I have gray discs and I have white discs. The white ones that are healthy with the fluid is so good. The gray ones that are fluid is kind of disrupted. It started getting a hold.

If the, if the, if the disc is, black and the x-ray you can see it. If the disc is black, that means basically all the flute in there that gives it cushioning has all turned solid, kind of. So it's just, it's like more

bone between bone. So I basically made a couple of black discs and I fashioned a bunch of bones. So I was still able to operate and I can still move around, but it's just really painful. So, because I was laying on the bottom of the boat and a bunch of the guys were kicking me as they were going past to get on the ladder. They were like, Beck, get up, let's go, man.

It would kick me on the way out. And so I'm laying her getting kicked, getting kicked. And I'm like, damn, all right. And so I got up and I jumped the ladder and I climbed up. And I was like, dude, stop kicking me. I'm going to get up. So I got up and it was like, ah, how it hurts. I don't know what I hurt someone. But I climbed the ladder with like 40 or 50 pounds. I had a rucksack on with it, you know, saws and stuff, all my ammunition and guns. So basically it's like doing 30 pull-ups with 40 pounds, 50 pounds on your back with the broken bones. So you're not able to use your feet when you're doing that?

Yeah, use your feet in your hands. Oh, okay, okay. But basically using your feet and your hands with all the weight on and you're getting up the ladder. But it's a lot of arms. To climb fast, you use a lot of arms. Because if you use all feet, you're not as fast. So basically you're skipping up with just doing pull-ups. So you're just skipping up really fast.

And you only hook in basically just a little bit of your heel on the ladder. So your heel is very fast. barely catching, then you're just doing pull-ups, and your heels are going, so it's real quick. You can eat up a ladder fast, if you do it right. Wow. It's been amazing hearing your story and the perspectives that you're able to give from your experiences. What is the message that you want to communicate to people, whether it be young people who maybe want to join the military or anyone in the world? What do you want your legacy to say about you? And how do you want it to help other people?

I mean, that's a huge question. I know. Everybody has a legacy, but most people's legacies are forgotten one or two generations after they pass away. So what's anyone's legacy going to be? Is it going to be written down? Is it just like this, a little podcast that's in video? This is forever. This podcast.

It's in bits and zeros. It's ones in zeros. It's bits and bytes. So this podcast is forever. The documentary film Lady Valor, which is about part of my life, is forever as part of my legacy. Part of my legacy is Mindful Valor Foundation, the nonprofit that I started. That's part of my legacy. I mean, that's what you have to consider is that it's just like going up the ladder.

So every rung of that ladder is part of your legacy. But is it the same? Or is it building and you learn? So every time I make a mistake, I say, hey, I own it. This is what I want to do better. And that's a rung up. It's the stabs of a ship. I wrote a book called The Book of Stabs.

So if you think about a rowboat, every part of that rowboat, those little, the runners are launched, there's a staves. And more staves you have, the higher up the gunnels, the higher up the sides of those boat go. So you can handle more and more harsh weather. So the more stabs you have, you have, the higher up the gannels you have, the higher up the the higher up the boat goes so you can handle bigger and bigger seas. The staff is also the wrong of a ladder. So if you're a kid, you're in grade school, you're building up a staff to play good with others.

That's your first stab. It's play well. Then you get another staff. Your ladder gets more and more rungs, more and more staffs. So I have this thing called the book of staves. And staff number one is this. Staff two is this. Staff three.

And each one of these are lessons that I've brought. learned in life. And it goes up to like staff 200 are all these little things that I've learned, all these lessons that I've picked up. And these staves put together make a pretty sturdy little boat that I can handle the harshness of the world's oceans. I can handle the harshness of the intellectual ocean, of the spiritual ocean, of the tough ocean. So all you're doing is building staves of toughness doing pull-ups and push-ups and waking up early in the morning, where your boat is pretty weak in other waters. You might be strong in the Erie, Lake Erie, but when you try to go to the Pacific,

you're not going to be very strong because you never did a mental staves. You only did one set of staves. So your staves that you have and you build up your strength should be a combination of mental staves, of toughness staves, of weightlifting staves, of nutritional staves, of spiritual staffs of, you know, camaraderie staffs, of colleague staffs. Your staffs should be so assorted and so diverse

that you can survive in oceans, in any ocean, in a lake, in a pond, on a stream, on a river. You can't just make a stab that survives the oceans. What are you going to do when you go in a river? So the book of staves is a combination of lessons. It's a combination of pearls

of wisdom that I've learned over the years the hard way. through stories and things that I know because I learned it. So I'm going to give you a little story. This is how it happened. This is one I learned. So the book of Stabs is one of those kinds of books. So that's why we talked a lot about toughness.

And I talk about the SEAL team training. You can get through SEAL team training if you're pretty mentally tough and you have a lot of physical strength with some luck you can get through. But there's other things you probably couldn't handle because you have no intellectual or spiritual. or you have no compassionate stabs to walk past something to see, you know what, that person really needs a hand. The captain at that ship, he had no compassion. He saw somebody in and needed it. That person was in a hole and having a really tough time.

And that captain did nothing more but dig that hole deeper and stuck that person deeper in a hole. And that person committed suicide. I would say that captain's one of the weakest people I've ever met my life. his ship would never survive into waters that I've navigated he caused somebody to kill themselves now when you think about your life and what your legacy is going to be you're a UFC fighter who freaking was super tough in a ring

and I can I won't name him but you probably know the person he's very notorious he's a tough guy man he's notorious and that guy is probably the biggest a hole in the world He has zero compassion. He has zero intellectual. He has zero spiritual. Or very little of all the above. But the guy is a winner in UFC ring,

but a loser with everything else. His legacy is one fold. His legacy is so a single dimension, it's pretty weak. I want my legacy to be across to all that. Doesn't he be super deep in one or anything else? But I want it to be pretty broad. I want somebody to listen to me.

And I go, damn. Intellectual, spiritual, pretty strong, made it through buds. Also think about stuff. also admit to make mistakes also tries to be better and all that stuff wow okay I get it

there's a guy who Fighter and a kid is really fun to listen to yeah so listen to fighter and kid podcast yeah it's a great podcast I implore you there's also I'm messing his name around he did the zombie cage fighter series

he's from Washington State why am I messing his name off man I'm sorry You have a computer open right now. Look up zombie cage fighter. Oh, Nathan Quarry, Rock Quarry. What's his name? Rock Quarry, Nathan, Rock Quarry.

Oh, okay. So here's, that's part of my traumatic brain injury. I have some memory issues sometimes. But I swear, man, look up Nathan. Rock Quarry. Rock Quarry! He is the coolest guy and his guy's a UFC fighting champion. He's awesome.

He's tough. But the guy has a spiritual toughness. That guy is an intellectual toughness. It's compassionate. He has his feeling. The guy is amazing. If I get to grow up and I can be like one person, I would be like the rock, man, rock glory. That guy is the coolest guy, man.

Look him up. If I am on your show, I really like this guy, man. And I swear, he's also on the same thing. His legacy, he'll have a legacy of, man, of compassion, of an intellectual giant. and he was a UFC fighting tough guy. You don't want to mess with the guy. Wow. But he's the coolest guy, man.

And that's what I want my legacy to be, just like Nathan Rockhorry. You know, that's how we need to look at it. If your legacy is one-dimensional, then it's not very much, you know. And that's why I talk about the book of Stabs. It's a book that I'm writing it. It's not published yet. But it's just Stabs, man. Build your Stabs up.

Have a lot of staves. and staves are twofold. However you want to look at it. If you have a tall ladder, you can climb up to higher and higher levels of consciousness, higher and higher levels of vibration. More staves is more rungs.

Stav is a rung on the ladder. However you want to look at it, you can look at it. But it's cool because staves mean two things. You know what I mean? Yeah. So I just climb high, man, do big stuff.

Or the staves are for your boat so you can sail on many, many harsh ones. You know. So I love that. That's beautiful. That's beautiful. And I definitely look forward to reading that book. Is that a cool way to leave our show?

That is a very cool way to leave our show. Kristen, thank you so much for doing this. I've learned so very much from you. I'm so grateful for you doing this and for everything that you've done for the country. If you want to follow me, follow me on Instagram. It's valor for us.

Because valor's not for me. And valor has no gender. Valor has no color. Valor has nothing. Valor is doesn't care. Valor is for us. Valor is for all of us. So valor for us on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, all of it. You can find me. I'll link that all below as well. Cool. Thank you. Thanks, Kristen. Namaste.