Jocko Podcast - 224: In An Uncertain World, Stack The Deck In Your Favor. With Darryl Cooper.

Episode Date: April 8, 2020

0:00:00 - Opening 0:15:25 - Darryl Cooper from Martyr Made.  2:39:34 - Final thoughts and take-aways. 2:40:17 - How to stay on THE PATH. 3:07:26 - Closing Gratitude.  Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 224 with Echo Charles and me Jocker Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. There is seldom a Mexican standoff in battle. You either win or lose. And in many fights, a commander reaches a point where he thinks he's lost. He sees only his losses and knows only his own situation, not the enemies. the carnage surrounding him erodes his confidence.

Wellington at Waterloo thought he'd lost. So did Easy Company in the fight on the hill up north under Desiderio. Grant summed up the feeling best at Fort Donaldson during the Civil War. He said either side was ready to give way if the other showed a bold front. well we'd certainly shown a bold front but so had the men from china neary appeared again this time carrying a little unconscious chinaman i found out later that after i told him we needed a prisoner he'd taken it as a personal assignment he charged up the hill and stormed the top unarmed once in the enemy position he'd smashed this chink on the head with his fist and hot-footed it back to me

Unfortunately, the POW died before we got the skinny. He kept trying to pull one of the grenades off Neri's belt on the way back and Neri had stomped him, obviously a little too hard. So we got another prisoner, but then just when we needed him most, our interpreter, Kim, decided to bug out. Speed saw him running down the hill. He stopped him. I go, I go, said Kim, and edged away.

Jack didn't know what to do He was good and ready to waste him Instead he leveled his weapon and shot off Kim's hand This persuasive little tactic work And we bandaged up his hand and Kim decided he liked our company after all The word from the POW was just what we wanted to hear Our artillery had clobbered the enemy reinforcing unit And no one on the hill had any

fight left in him. I told Jim and the others to round up every gun that could walk, limp, or crawl. We were going to storm the top. 20 bloodied and battered raiders soon crested the hill. Its surface was covered with enemy dead. The Chinese defenders who hadn't been killed on position had chanced running the gauntlet of military shot, which continued to blast the back side of the hill, judging from the carnage on the reverse slope, few had made it. But an intact Bren gun crew was still raising hell among our tired band. There were more casualties until Jimmy and Evans went on the attack. They killed the crew but paid the price.

Jimmy lay like a broken reed next to the gun. He'd taken a shot in the face that ripped through his right eye and lower jaw. Evans lay nearby staring at Jimmy with wide lifeless eyes and a satisfied look on his heavily mustached face it was the look of a winner he probably just said to Jimmy we got the son of a bitch before a burst of enemy fire most likely the last of the fight hit him full in the chest and ripped the life out of him Near he switched on his radio to report the capture of Hill 400. Relief was en route. He was told, dispatched by a worried Colonel Sloan when we went off the air.

Oh, say, can you see? I thought, as in the dull light of the morning, we collected our scattered and broken fighters from the blood-soaked American-held hill. The inexhaustible brakeman was kneeling over Jimmy, pumping life into him with a container of Albumin. We had seven killed in action, 29 wounded in action, and one raider, Salazar, was missing.

The only two raiders who were not hit were Lipka and Sovere, the two gunners. Their machine guns had been out of range of the frags that had depleted our ranks. It was a strange turnabout. Normally the gunners ride in the death seat. We turned the hill over to the relieving wolfhound unit and continued looking for Salazar. We wouldn't leave the hill without him and any man who could walk joined in the search He'd been patched up after he and Smith had knocked out the machine gun, but no one had seen him since he'd returned to the fight A faint moan was heard in a draw on the steep left hand side of 400. It was Salazar, more dead than alive. He'd been blown off the hill by a grenade and somehow

with 29 slugs or shrapnel wounds in his body, that tough Texan, Hombre was still sucking air. The doc got some blood into him and we started down the hill. We carried all our dead and the wounded who could not make it under their own steam. Chink 82 millimeter and a little bit of and a 120 millimeter mortar fire continued to smash in around us, but it was ignored by all. After what we'd been through, it didn't mean a thing. Colonel Sloan had walked alone to meet us on Hill 400's forward slopes. He too ignored the incoming as he went from raider to raider, helping, comforting, praising.

Tears streamed from his eyes in that early morning light as he helped us down. He led us to the aid station and there I saw seven figures all lined up each covered with a poncho It's just a nightmare I thought but I didn't believe myself at all I went to each body And pulled the sheet back off the face one by one I cradled those men and rocked them in my arms Crying and mumbling and damning God because he had let me down now that curtain had fallen The shock of it all came on. Suddenly I felt empty. Every part of me ached.

My mouth was dry as a beach full of sand. Sloan helped me to my feet. He was a fine, caring man, and a great commander. A medic came up, looked at my wounds, and hit me with another seret of morphine. It doled the pain, but not enough. He told me to go, lie down in a litter so I could be evacuated. but I was not about to go anywhere. The welfare of my men was not a responsibility that could be delegated

until everyone had been cared for. I'd stay right here. Was an excerpt from the book About Face by Colonel David Hackworth is actually the first book that I covered on this podcast, and it's the book where so many of the principles that I talk about and that I utilize in leadership and life stem from. Like the fact that the welfare of your men is something that cannot be delegated. Or the fact that it was okay or at least normal to cry and mumble and curse God in my petty anger.

The fact that this kind of uncontrolled emotion didn't make me a lesser man. Your men your comrades your friends is raw pain and I learned that from the book about Facer Actually I should say that it solidified in my brain and when you read something Do it right if you read it right you take what you read and you overlay it with what you know and you make that Experience and that knowledge from what you read part of your own and you know when I read when I read books on this podcast, sometimes I get, sometimes I get hit with some emotions.

And I've always managed, for the most part, to keep it together. But the emotions that I, that I feel, they're not directly from what is going on in the book. I mean, obviously that's part of it, but it's not the story from the book. It's the memories that I have because as I read, I remember and I find myself there again feeling that pain and that loss.

And there's a thread of human emotion that runs from whatever story I'm reading into my own story. There's a connection. And if you trace that thread, then you can learn from it. And I learn from it. That's what happens when you read and you absorb a story correctly, when you connect the thread of history with your own experience and your own knowledge and and you make that connection. When you do that, you learn. You learn and you also, you begin to understand more.

Now, after a short time after we started making this podcast, someone sent me a message on social media. And at this point, it was pretty easy to respond and actually follow up. and take action on on things that people were saying to me because it wasn't a bunch of them and somebody just sent me a message on social media it said um said there's a podcast called martyr made you will like it so i at some point pulled out this podcast called martyr made and i listened and as i listened to that voice i heard that voice making these connections connections between the past and present connections between the emotions of people from the past and our emotions right now a voice that connected the emotions from from soldiers and citizens and terrorists and patriots and murderers and martyrs

the voice connect things and the the voice understood understood something and that voice read Then spoke and tied those threads together and that voice came from someone named Daryl Cooper is the voice and the mind and the emotion behind the podcast Martyr Made and I guess through the benefit of the interwebs We eventually connected and Daryl just has a very very handle on wrapping these connections together. And he's here tonight to talk with us about those connections, the story of what his life has been, and then the thread that connects him and us to the past and the present and the future. Daryl, thanks for coming on, man.

Thanks for having me. So, yeah, I remember somebody hitting me up and saying you got to check out this podcast. And you're opening for podcast one, episode one of Margar Made. I said, oh yeah, here it is. This guy, whoever told me to listen to this was right. And you actually put out that podcast. What was it? Early 2015?

That sounds right. Yeah. I can't remember. I know it. I know it was before I started my podcast. I know that because I looked at it the other day to try and figure it out. And then, you know, the more I found out about you and kind of your background and your backstory, it's pretty fascinating, in my opinion.

Let's go into it, man. Let's start at the beginning of your life. How did it start? Where'd you come from? I came from all over. I was born in Stockton, California. Stockton, 209. 209, yeah.

Right on. But I lived all over the place. I probably went to, I try counting them up every once in a while, but there's kind of gaps in my memory. I went to maybe 35, 36, 37 schools, K through 12. So we were moving around all the time. I had a single mother who was taking care of us. And, you know, we kind of had to scrape and scrounge and, you know, live where we come. could. And at the end of the day, you know, we always had food on the table. We always had,

you know, a roof over our heads for the most part. She took care of us. But, you know, there were some, there were some clothes shaves there at various times, and we had to kind of bounce around wherever we could. So I've lived all over California, from the south, all the way up to Eureka for a little while. I don't really remember much about that. But a lot of time in Stockton. I think I went to every school in Stockton at one point in my life. I think I went to 11 different high schools in four years. Like what's causing you to go from one high school to another high school? Just, you know, we were poor.

We kind of had to move wherever we could find a spot sometimes. Sometimes that meant moving in with relatives. Other times that meant, you know, friends of my mom. Sometimes it meant getting farmed out to various relatives while my mom kind of went on her own little odysies for a while and had to look after herself. And so just bouncing her. around. I lived up in Montana for a little while when I was in high school. I actually ended up graduating while I was up there. And that was a good experience. I kind of, you know, I was one

of those kids who is a lot of people like this. And I think a lot of folks who are comfortably middle class don't really, don't really even understand this. You see it down in L.A. There's a lot of kids who live in South L.A., for example. There may be 20-minute drive from the beach. They may have seen it once in their life. And that's kind of, that's kind of how we were. You know, you get confined to your little neighborhoods, you know, and you get on your bikes and ride around, you know, like latchkey kids, but your world's very, very small. And so growing up in kind of, you know, a lot of the rougher neighborhoods of places like Stockton and Central Valley, Bakersfield, different places, actually being able to get out and go spend some time in Montana when I was in high school. It was pretty life-changing for me. I got to kind of be in a lifestyle and around kind of people in a high-trust society that I had never been around before.

You know, I'd never been in a place where people don't worry about locking their car doors or where it's normal on a two-lane, on a two-lane street when people are passing each other to wave to one another. I just never seen that before. And it kind of opened up, you know, when you come from a certain world where social connections are very tenuous. Social trust is kind of low to be around a place like that where people are generally looking after each other. obviously crime. There's things that happen, but generally people are kind of looking after each other. It lets you know that there's a different kind of life out there. So it was very good for me. How did you get up to Montana? What was the situation that allowed that to happen? My grandparents moved up there at one point. I was probably in maybe late middle school when they

moved up there. And then at some point in high school, we would visit them for the summer and we would always really enjoy it. They had about 30 acres up there, a little farm. And then, uh, then, At one point, things were getting pretty hairy at home. And so we ended up going up, the kids, me and my sister, we ended up going up there and staying for a year, year and a half, before my mom ended up coming as well. And would your, how many sisters did you have? I had three, rather two at the time.

Yeah. So I was up in Montana. I was probably like 10 years ago, maybe eight years ago. And it was in the summertime. and I was driving out of Bozeman through big sky and I was driving back to California and it was It was the summertime and I wanted my kids to like sleep on the way whole way home so I left it Probably seven o'clock at night, but it was the summertime so it stayed light until about nine So I did the full drive down the what is it the one ninety one I did the full drive down the one ninety one

Which is just absolutely like be it's epically beautiful. Just beyond. It's just epic. And now my kids are falling asleep. So it's just me, you know, listening to Black Sabbath or something and just, just amazed, right?

And then by the time I'm making it to wherever, Idaho or something, and you start getting into the more open terrain, it was dark. And then I drove through the night. And as the sun started to come up, I was in San Burdue. And I remember, and you know, there's parts of the, what is it, parts of the 15 or the 215 through San Bernardino that turn into like a two lane.

It's not like a big highway and there's always traffic. And so I came from this just absolutely open mountainous, you know, snow covered hills, which there's snow covered hills in the summertime. Pine trees, animals everywhere. And then the next thing you know, I'm in San Bernardino. And, you know, it's just a totally different world, you know. And when you were talking about the different world that you live in, you know, and I grew up in a tiny New England town on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere. And you kind of think that that's what the world is. But, yeah, kids, and I think it's probably less like this now because you can see so much of the world through the internet and through media and through movies.

But, yeah, it was kind of like that was your world. So that must have been a serious eye-opener for you to get to go from, you know, central California to freaking Montana. It was. Yeah. And socially, especially socially. You know, coming from middle schools and high schools where, you know, on one hand, something like a fight on campus was taken very seriously.

They're armed cops on campus, right? coming from a high school that had almost 5,000 kids, a subway and a pizza hut, you know, on campus, and going to, you know, a school up in Montana where my graduating class had about, I think, 40 people. And, you know, in a weird way, a fight was not as big of a deal up there. The counselors and teachers would literally tell two of us to take it outside. But there was no threat that this was going to escalate into something.

Yeah, no one was getting shanked. Right. It wasn't even in anybody's, you know, mindset that that was a possibility. And so it was like going back a few decades, you know, in a way. And they still call soda pop up there on these little things. Well, there's parts of the country where that's just how. I just can't help. It's like Buddy Holly, like 1950s to me.

But it was, you know, there's a lot of things that it feels like going back a few decades, which in a way is kind of a sad way to look at it because the things, that are different up there are really that there are certain elements of civic society, you know, social trust and things that they take for granted, that we don't take for granted in the cities on the coast for the most part anymore. And so to say that it's like going back a few decades, you know, it's kind of admitting that we've lost a little something down here and that, you know, maybe there's something that's going to be encroaching, you know, on the areas that still have it. You don't like to think of it that way, but it's how it felt.

So when you were going from high school, how many high schools did you say you went to? I think 11. A couple of them I went to more than once, so I would change and then come back to another school. So how did you, who are you hanging around with? You know, it would depend. So when I would find, at the school in Montana that I was at, I had like a little group of friends that we would hang out with. We go, you know, one of them, their parents had a ranch with a bunch of land, and we'd go out there and play paintball. It was a great time.

And I had a good group of friends up there. A lot of the times when I was at my schools in California, the big ones you just get lost in. I would not really, I wouldn't hang out with anybody. I would be the kid, you know, in between classes. I've got my nose in a book and lunch period. I would go throw some shorts and shirts on and go run laps or run stairs in the football stadium or something, just kind of by myself. Did you play any sports? Off and on.

And I got to be a pretty decent wrestler by the end. I play football when I could. Track, cross-country, whatever, you know, depends on where I was. It was hard because, you know, it's kind of strange. It's a rule that never really made sense to me, and it still doesn't. I guess they're trying to prevent schools from bringing in ringers and stuff. But if you get into a school, there's like you have to have been there for a certain period of time before they allow you to participate in sports.

And a lot of times, I was changing schools every three months. You just wouldn't make the window. Yeah. So you, like, you say you were reading. Yeah. At what point did you figure out you were going to start reading books? Because I don't think I figured that until I was 28. You know, you couldn't get me to read a book.

When I was going through high school, that was like a crazy idea to me, just actually voluntarily sit down and read a book. It would be tough for me to figure out when that started. It's as long as I can remember, though. When I was five, six, seven years old, I got to the point where if you stuck me in, you know, if I was in a dentist waiting room and he had, you know, an old issue of good housekeeping, I'm reading the whole thing, you know, as long as I'm in there. I read dictionaries.

I read encycloped. read anything that I could find around. It's kind of, I kind of missed that actually. Like now with the internet, you never read anything random. You go find something that you want to read about and you click on a link and you go to the next thing. I would just read whatever there happened to be around. I would literally read the dictionary if that was what was there. It was a refuge for me, you know, in a life where instability was probably the defining feature, you know, when I was growing up, just gave you these, you know, I could be reading a serious. of books and something I could take with me from this school to the next school to the next school

and kind of stay in that world. And yeah, it really was a refuge. And, you know, the books I would read was that's where I would get a lot of my sort of models for behavior. Everybody does that to a certain degree. You know, they model themselves on their favorite heroes or whatever. But coming from a place where I didn't have a whole lot of role models around, especially not for any period of time. they really took the place, you know, of my real-life role models and kind of taught me how to behave in a lot of ways and kind of taught me the virtues and values that you should, that I should aspire to because I didn't have a lot of models for those things. In some ways, it becomes, you know, you can get pathological about that. You can get to the point where you're so sucked into these fictional worlds that, you know, I have friends, a lot of people.

It seems like mostly women, but men too, who they can tell you how many, they can tell you, how many, they can tell you. what flavor of birthday cake they had on their seventh birthday and what they got as presents. And I don't remember anything from like 10 years ago. And it's just, you know, most of the time throughout, you know, my whole life. And this is still a, you know, I have like a little bit of a Dr. Doolittle kind of thing going where, or Mr. McGoo, rather, where, you know, I'm always up in my head. You know, I'm always thinking about whatever book I just read or, you know, whatever book I'm about to read. And so I'm always kind of up here, and a lot of times I'm missing things that are going on around me.

And so you try to ask me about things that happened last week, or let alone years and years ago. There's whole patches of my childhood that are just totally inaccessible. You know, and not even things where, you know, somebody could be like, you know, that time and they jog your memory. It's just I was not present at the time. You know, my nose was in a book or that's what I was thinking of. And so I really kind of, you know, kind of used that as a refuge. Did you, you know, you said you had a single mom. What was it going on with your father at this point?

You know, so my father was gone out of the picture permanently by the time I was two. He was, my mom was 16 years old when she became pregnant with me. Had me when she was 17. And my father was a criminal and a drug addict and a violent guy and came from a violent family, you know. And he was in jail for the final time that I ever saw him when I was two years old. I have a couple, like, very, very brief kind of flashes of memories that I'm told for him, but I don't remember what he looks like or anything like that. And, yeah, so he was gone by the time I was two.

Right about that point, right before he left, he left my mom with my sister. So she was pregnant when he went to the clink. And, you know, at that point, my mom's 19 years old. Two of us so far, two kids. Dad's out of the picture for the last time. You know, she's got a 10th grade education. Did she, were her parents around? You know, my family's kind of a, it's one of those, I think it's a good American story, right?

There's various strains of immigrants, you know, my great-grandmother came from Serbia in like 1906 or something like that. My great-grandfather, her husband, came up from Mexico. You know, these two people from these completely opposite lifestyles and sides of the world somehow find each other, but they're both coming from, you know, my great-grandfather was a minor. You know, he would, his family would be in California and he's going off to Nevada, or Arizona, and working in silver mines and stuff, just breaking his back to provide just enough for his family to get by. It was a hard life. My father's side, you know, my father was a bad guy,

a million different ways, but, you know, he, I hear horror stories about where he came from. You know, he was sleeping on a park bench when he was 12 years old because his mom threw him out of out of the house. His uncle was teaching him how to shoot up when he was 13, 14 years old. You know, this is a, I don't hate the man at all. I never met him afterwards or anything like that, but I have sympathy for somebody like that. There's very, very few people, you know, discipline equals freedom and all those kind of things. Your uncle's teaching you to shoot up when you're 13 years old. You're climbing out of a pretty goddamn big hole, you know? And so you have like these sort of these, these family lineages that have just fallen into,

to whatever they may have been at one point back in the past. By the time they get up to about my grandparents' generation, it's just chaos, right? It's just no structure, no support system, no anything. And things had, you know, my grandfather, who was my mother and her three sisters, which are all four of my aunts, that's all of my mom's siblings, my grandfather came into the picture after they were all born. And he's their stepfather. He's the only grandfather I've ever known, but he was their stepfather, and he provided some stability.

He was a Navy chief. You know, he was an unreal old bastard at the time. He got to be a big soft teddy bear later on, but he did provide some stability. And that was starting to kind of come together around the time I was born in 81, but not really. You know, it was still like in its early stages. And so they were around, but, you know, they didn't have a whole lot of patience for, you know, my mom, the way she was acting out, she was already probably, gosh, in her teenage years when she was having me and, you know, her and her friends were already drinking and partying. She was probably an alcoholic by that point already.

My grandparents didn't have a lot of patience for that kind of stuff. And so they were around, sort of, if she wanted to shape up, but there wasn't really a support structure for her, especially if she wasn't, like, prepared to kind of fully conform. And so she was really out on her own from a very early age, you know, with kids and, And no real, she's 17 years old. She got a kid, you know what I mean? She's by herself. And then she's 19 years old. She has two kids.

Yeah. So when you're in school, like, are you, what, you know, what is it? You know, you're talking about how the world look like, you know, physically, kind of and socially on the outside. From your mind, what did you, what did your future look like? Did you see, you know, are you looking at people going, oh, well, I could do this or I could do that. I could go to college or I could go in the middle. or I could go in the military or I could, like, what were you thinking about day to day? Did you have any visions like that?

Not until pretty late. No. I, you know, one of the things about, I think a lot of people, when they look at somebody like you, and whether this is true or not, it's the impression that they get is that Jocko seems like this guy who, like, turned 18 or whatever, got out of high school and just, I know exactly what I want to do. And now, from now, this point on, like for the rest of my life, like, I'm going to just focus on becoming that thing. and everybody's like, God, I wish I could have like had something like that when I was whatever age. Most people go through their whole lives and they never have that level of a vision of what they want to become and then being able to focus on it.

And when you're coming up in a very unstable environment, one of the things that happens is your time horizon just get shrunk down and shrunk down and shrunk down until, you know, you're really trying to figure out how to get through the next week or the next day or the next you know, class or whatever it is. And thinking about the future, no, I mean, I can't remember as a kid, like, you know, maybe I watched Jurassic Park and, like, I want to go dig up dinosaur bones or something. But as far as, like, a serious vision for my life, no, no. Yeah, you know, I actually, at one of the Jocko live events that I did, I talked about this fact, and it's just pure luck, right? It's pure luck that at some point, you know, you watch Jurassic Park or whatever, and I

watched a full metal jacket or I watched platoon and at some point I watched one of those movies actually is probably apocalypse now I think that's the first the first thing when I was you know whatever probably you know eight years old or something apocalypse now made you want to be a soldier oh yeah that's just great jaccom but you know you see apocalypse now and you think okay you know I always you know I was always running around playing war I was always run around playing soldier so I had that in my brain, but I think when I realized, oh yeah, I was thinking about this the other day.

There was a friend of the family who had an older son who was a Marine Corps drone instructor. And when he came home for leave or something, and he had a Chevy like SS, right? A Chevelle. And he had a badass muscle car. And he was a Marine Corps drone instructor, And I was like, okay.

You know, I don't know how old I was, but I wasn't old. And it sort of made me realize that this idea in my head of running around and being like some kind of commando was a real thing that you could actually do. And then once I found out about the SEAL teams, cool. But my whole point in telling you all this is that, you know, you hear, like Jordan Peterson will talk about, you know, you've got to have an aim, then you know what you're trying to get after, right? So when I joined the Navy and like wanted to be a seal and then I wanted to be a good seal

That was my aim and you're a hundred percent right once that became my aim and once I figured out what I needed to do And the beautiful thing about it was in the Navy and then in the seal teams they told me this is what you have to do to be good To be a good seal you do this to be a good seal do you do that to be a good seal you do the other thing So absolutely I was lucky because you know I was a freaking You know crazy kid that was doing all kinds of really stupid, stupid things that just were not good for the world. And luckily, I signed that dotted line. It became, you know, went in the Navy.

But so I did have that. And that immediately I was like, okay. And even when I was, I think my mom showed me something where I was, you know, like, whatever, eight years old or something. And it was, what do you want to do when you grow up? And I said, like, soldier or Marine. Like, that was good to go, right? So that was whenever anybody talked to me about anything else,

I was kind of like, yeah, cool, I already know what I'm doing. So that was a real benefit. And that put my whole future into context because I saw this thing that I could do. And as I told Johnny Kim the other day, like when I joined the Navy, I felt completely liberated because I knew that I was good to go for 20 years, you know, or 30 years. I was like, yep, I'm good to go. I got a job.

I got a paycheck. I got to have friends. It's going to be cool. I'm going to have a mission to do. It's something to buy into. It was something to aim at. It was something to buy into. It was part of being part of like the coolest gang ever.

So what's not like? What's not to like? I think where a lot of people struggle, but there's probably two parts of it is one. It is trying to figure out what that thing is. You know, most people, they just, they have things that they're into. And they, I think what most people really long,

for is something that'll just present itself. You know, there'll be a ray of sunshine shining down on it and they'll just know this is the thing that I need to devote all my energy to. And now I can, there's your aim, right? Now I can just devote myself to this thing fully. I think that's why people, you know, get caught up in movements sometimes, right? Whether it's politics, you know, whether it's a jihadist movement or whatever. Like, whatever it is, it's something that like, here's the answer, do this, here's a clear path to becoming a better person quote unquote according to the following

value system, but how to sort of level up in this mode and for most people that doesn't come. For most people you have to kind of start trying things and really start working and then it'll unfold over time for you. It's not just going to present itself as easily.

And then the other thing is and this isn't just true of kids that came from difficult backgrounds like I did. It's true of more and more people where, you know, people talk about like class privilege. You know, your parents, most of the way that that applies is not that your parents are going to leave you a bunch of money. It's that you're growing up in a household where you're watching your dad get shit done. You're watching your mom get up in the morning and put herself together and go about her day and put

the house together, go to work, whatever it is. And you're just watching people encounter obstacles in their life and assess, execute, you know, orient themselves and overcome the obstacle. And, you know, there's just a growing number of people who, and I certainly was this way. You know, growing up with a single mom who was having a very difficult time managing her own life in any kind of, you know, just the most basic ways. I never saw anybody just sort of encounter an obstacle at a point where they could see it in the distance. You know, everything was a panic exercise all the time. Everything got put off until the last possible moment and now you have to react to it. it because it's an emergency if you don't.

Everything is an emergency all the time. And so you don't learn how to sort of structure your goals and how to systematically work towards them. And that's something that you have to learn. You know, I was fortunate enough that, you know, I had a couple coaches at various times for brief periods, but they made enough of an impact that, you know, things got, you know, that I had a different way of looking at things.

But even me, like I didn't start to get that until I was in the Navy. You know, probably I was 22, 23. You said you were a good wrestler. How good of a wrestler were you? Decent. I mean, I could hold my own. I had a winning record, but I wasn't any, you know. So you didn't make it to state anything like that?

Or did you? Well, yeah, I went when I was up in Montana, but those boys up there in Montana. It's not like this in California. No. Up in Montana, these kids all start when they're four or five years old. It's ridiculous. And like down here, if people start, seventh or eighth grade, like they've got a huge jump on people

because most people start ninth grade down here. It's changing a little bit now. It's changed a lot. I'm here to report that, yeah, these kids are getting after it. I mentioned how, you know, one of the things that happens when you're living an unstable life is that your time horizon just shrinks. You know, you're focused on getting through the next, on keeping your emotions together for the next half hour sometimes,

let alone like thinking years in advance about what you want to do with your life. And, you know, a lot of people kind of stay in that mode where they're just getting through the day. And they're doing that 365 times. And then that's a year. And then they do it more and more. And then that's a couple years. And now they're adults. And they don't even feel like they've made any decisions in their lives.

They feel like, you know, obviously everything that they've done has been a decision. But it's never felt that way. It's always felt like the momentum of their lives is just carrying them forward. And they're reacting to whatever the next thing is that's demanding a reaction. action, but they didn't plan for that thing. It's just presenting itself upon them at a time when they're not really prepared for it. They haven't gotten themselves. And so they're just making a decision in the moment that may or may not. Here's actually, I should not tell this story, actually. So one of my first memories, how do I want to talk about this? Okay, so one of my first

memories, like probably my first memory is just, my childhood occurs to me in flat. Just brief little flashes of images that people tell me are real, and so I believe them. When I was like two years old, I think, I was laying on a bed with my father. I must have been two or younger because he was out of the picture when I was two. And he used to like to cut wedges of green apples and put a little bit of salt on them and eat them. I was eating these with them, and we were watching a TV that was like on one of those stands, like up in the corner. So that's one flash. And then there's a couple other flashes like that.

And then there's a flash when I'm five years old, and I know it because I was in kindergarten at the specific school that I was at, and I had just shit my pants. And I don't know what happened before that, and I don't know how I reacted to the situation. It's just like the vision starts, and I've crap my pants, and then that's all I know, and then it fades out, right? And so when I was in the Navy down in San Diego, I had a friend who was riding a bike down a hill, and he fell and hit his safety. head, and so he was in the hospital getting concussion workups and everything for a few days. And he lived with a bunch of other Navy guys down on one of the really nice neighborhoods in Chula Vista, one of those nice housing developments down there, like two doors away, an Admiral lived, right? One of those neighborhoods.

And it's a Sunday afternoon, and he's supposed to be coming home from the hospital. My other buddy's picking him up, and so I'm going to go there and meet him just to see how he's doing everything. So I get to the house, and they're not there yet. and so I just call them up. The hospital's taken a while, and so I said I got a book in the car. I'll just read the book until you guys get here. So I'm doing this for a little while, and I'm drinking a 20-ounce coffee,

which is a terrible idea because pretty soon I start to get a little rumble, right? And so I call up my friend, and I'm like, Richard, any of your doors open or anything like that, like, is there a key somewhere? And I got to go to the bathroom. And he's like, I'll just piss in the bushes. I'm like, I got to do the other thing. He's like, I don't think so. You can go check.

And so I go check and garage door, all the windows, everything is closed. And now since I'm up and moving around, it's really starting to become a problem, right? And so we had another friend across the street. And so I run across the street and I knock on the door, pound, pound, doorbell, doorbell. And nobody's there. And I've run across the street now. So now it's getting worse. And I come back and I'm starting to panic.

I'm asking myself, can I get in my car and go drive and look for a gas station or something? But I don't know the neighborhood that well. And I'm not confident that I can do this. that. And then now I'm out in the middle of nowhere. I might be out of options. And so I'm literally, I go down like three or four houses knocking on the front doors, but nobody answers the door. And I run back to the house, and at this point, I'm starting to panic. And so I go into his backyard just so that I'm protected from full view or something, right? And I'm looking around and I decide I'm going to have to take crap in his garden, which is not a, it's not the worst thing

that ever happening, but you go dig a little hole, take a crap in the garden, wipe with some leaves, do what you got to do. And so I'm going over there, and I'm preparing to do this. And I'm preparing to do this, and I make this fateful decision. And my point here is I'm in this, like, panicking mindset. And I'm not planning anything. I'm just acting. I'm just doing whatever, right? And so I look up, and they have a backyard, like a balcony deck,

coming off the master bedroom. And I look up there and I say, I bet that door's not locked. And for some reason, I just decide I'm going to try that. And I go over and I'm climbing up. There's no stairs or anything. So I'm having to like pull myself up and climb up onto this back deck. And as I'm trying to pull myself up, my shoes are real loose. So I kick my shoes off.

So I've got just my socks on. And I'm at this point from the strain of getting up there that like if that thing's locked, I am crapping on my friend's deck. That's just all there is to it. Right. And so I get up there and I run to the door and I throw it open. Sure enough, it's open. And I just run into the place.

And I'm already pulling my pants and underwear down as I run into the master bathroom and literally doing one of those things where you're like, diving ass first towards the toilet, like, to kind of get there. And as I'm diving like that toward the toilet, I can't explain this decision, like, to this day. I look and I realize he's out of toilet paper. I can't, I can't do it here. And so I jump up and pants and underwear down around my ankles. I run out of his bathroom and out of his bedroom and down the upper hallway. And he has one of those stairways where it kind of, you know, it goes down like halfway and then there's a stopping point of platform and then it goes down at a 90 degree angle. And so I'm, I mean,

I'm just, everything is hanging out, ass is hanging out, and I run, and I just jump onto the second deck, turn, jump onto the ground floor, which is like the bottom right in front of the front door. My socks, because I kicked off my shoes, hit the tile, slide out, I fall down, bang my head, and crap everywhere. And I'm literally laying there. This is a true story. And so I'm laying there. And at that point, as I'm laying there, I mean, it's going up my back. Like, I'm laying on my back and it's just, right? And as I'm laying there, I had that vision. Like, it just came right to me of when I was five years old and I'd crap my pants. And it was almost like this mystical, like, thing that happened where it seemed like the two incidents were somehow

connected, right? Like I had had that happen and then it just my life had been like one, you know, this tumbling momentum up to this point that had led me to a place where I'm lying on my friend's, you know, tile floor with my crap running up my back and I'm just laying in it with my head ringing, trying to figure out like just going over all of the horrible decisions that I had to make to end up in this situation and all of the off ramps that I had to avoid it. Like I could have just gone to his garden. I could have just, you know, crapped in the toilet upstairs and solved the toilet paper problem. Like, you crossed that bridge when I got to it. But when you're in this mode where you're just making decisions based on immediate need and whatever, it's funny. Like,

I didn't mean for this, like, to fit so tightly. Like, it kind of came into my head when you mentioned it. And, you know, you're just making decisions. And then you end up in places that you really can't explain. And if somebody were to say, like, you know, well, you did this and you did that wrong and you did this, you're kind of like, yeah, yeah, yeah. But at the time, like, it didn't feel like I was making a decision. I was just, I was just going. And people do that in, like, their real lives, you know, and, oh, actually, so the funny part is the end of that story was I cleaned everything up and, like, I literally, like, I'm just, my head's ringing and I walk, I'm waddling over to my friend's bathroom to go clean myself up, just dripping. It's disgusting. And I'm like 25 years old.

I'm not a child. Okay. I'm an adult. You're like, this is literally 2006. You're in Ramadi right now, and this is what I'm doing. Okay. And like, and I get in there. I clean myself up and I do my best to clean up the floor, but he's got like the grout tile and you can't quite get all the smell out. And so by the time my friend gets back home with my friend from the hospital, I had, I had like gym clothes in my car. I'm just sitting in my car reading my book. Like doop-do-do-do-do. And so we go into the house and my friend smells their shit somewhere.

And he blames his dog and he starts shouting at his dog. And I'm just watching it happen. Like I didn't say anything. I didn't tell him for years after that. But yeah, people do that with their whole lives. Right. So instead of having, you know, just their head bringing and being splattered with their own with their own shit, you know, they have three kids and an alcohol problem and maybe a record,

you know, from something they did when they were 17 or whatever it is. And they get into this place where like now the enormity of trying to correct course is so overwhelming for them because they, not only are they in this hole, they have no tools, you know, psychological tools, emotional tools, anything to kind of navigate their way out of this. It's a lot of people like that now. I think that's why podcasts like yours, Jordan Peters, I mean, they resonate with so many people because they let people know that you can just take control of your life. Like you can just, you can just take control. You can start doing the right things like right now. And you know what the right things are. Maybe you don't know what the right things are in like a grand scale, but you know

how to, right, you know how to clean your room, you know, the little things that you don't do every day. You sleep in, stop sleeping in. Get up early. Get up at 4.30. You can do that, you know. And when you get up, go work out. Maybe you don't know what the long-term path is. But there's these little things that you can start to take control of.

And no matter how unstable or chaotic your life is, you know, you can start to control this little world that can start to expand once you do gain control of it. And, yeah. So, I mean, that's one of the reasons I really like, it's been 20 years probably. since I read about Face. But the passage that you just read, I made me think about, one of the things that I really liked that of

was the idea that you can be in a situation that feels extremely chaotic. And so that you don't really have anything stable to use as points of reference when you make decisions. But you can still carve out like a little zone of control and you can make decisions like, you know, you can take control of that little area

and you can be the person that once you've got control of your own life, maybe just the one person that's closest to you needs you to be. And then the two or three or four people closest you need you to be. And you can kind of start to, you know, no matter what the situation is, no matter how chaotic it feels, you can start to, you know, take control.

And yeah, like I said, it took me, well, I said 23, 24 earlier, but I'm still shitting up my back when I'm 25, so maybe I'll push that age of adulthood out a little bit past that. Now, you and I have talked about this a little bit, but, you know, one of the things that's, I think, makes you unique is your cognitive capacity. And, you know, for lack of a better way of saying it, you're smart. You're a smart person. And but when you were in school, like, did, what was the academic life for you like when you were in school?

I was a C student. I think I graduated with like a 2.4. I was one of those kids who, you know, I'm smart enough. I'm not a genius, but I'm at that level of smart where, you know, it can be a blessing or a curse. Just like, you know, you've got a high school athlete who has just been so naturally gifted that he, you know, in high school, he just never really has to learn work ethic. He just doesn't have to. And then he gets to college and it's like. like, oh, everybody's a badass here.

And then it doesn't work out the same way. Because you're not going to develop that overnight now at this point. You had to spend a lot of time doing that. And that's what everybody else has been doing. And so, you know, I, when I grew up, you know, my home life was chaos a lot of the times. I mean, really just chaos. And so I would come in and I would ace all my tests and I would, you know, write good papers when those were due. I'd win all the spelling bees, went all the math contests and so forth,

but I could probably count the number of homework assignments I did on one hand in 12 years. I just didn't do them. And, you know, you could learn some really negative lessons from that. You know, you can learn that you don't really have to work on a day-to-day basis because when push comes to shove at the very, very end or whatever, when the chips are down, you could just sort of throw things together and make it work, which works when you're trying to pass, you know, history. in seventh grade. It doesn't work when you have a serious job with a lot of responsibility

and people who are depending on you. It doesn't work. And so I feel very fortunate that I went into the Navy because it allowed me sort of a space in my late teens and early 20s to learn some lessons that if I had to learn them out in the civilian world, there would have been a lot of greater consequences, you know, for my growing pains. And so yeah, academics, I mean, I And it was, you know, my teachers generally like me. I kind of, depending on where I was, I could be a little bit of a clown, have some behavior problems. But, you know, depending on which parts of my childhood, I could be, I was a pretty angry kid. I could be pretty violent sometimes.

You know, there's a lot of violence at home. And I had two little sisters that I was looking after and kind of trying to provide some kind of stability for. And so I would do my best at home not to show any of. emotion really, not to show that I was being affected by things that were going on around, but then I would get to school sometimes and I would take it out on other people. And I was never a bully. I got bullied at home, you know, and so I didn't like bullies. But I would be kind of the kid who was waiting for an excuse. And, you know, I went to a lot of kind of inner city ghetto schools where I was the only white kid around and everybody else is in the same boat I am as far as the stuff they're

dealing with at home, you know? And so, you get a bunch of kids who were in middle school or early high school in an environment like that, and there's plenty of excuses to go around if you were looking for them. And yet even despite that, you know, I would get in fights and I would have some behavior problems, but, you know, my teachers generally they kind of, is another one of those, you know, a blessing and a curse thing, right, where they let me slide a little bit. My teachers would like me for the most part, but they would let me slide on things. they probably shouldn't let me slide on. Just like they let me slide on never doing my homework because

they assumed that they kind of knew that things were kind of crazy back home and they would make those excuses for me. And you know, you've got to learn at some point. And this is something I didn't get until I was in the Navy and had some good leadership there that you're going to reach a certain point in your life where nobody's going to care about your excuses anymore. It's just not going to matter. Like people will, they might sympathize or something, but that's just, it's not their problem. You're an adult now, which means your problems are your own, you know. And if you're looking around, when you encounter a problem for who's going to fix it without realizing that like, oh, I'm the guy.

Like, I'm a grown-up now. So I'm actually the one who's supposed to address this problem. Like, other people are supposed to be looking to me. You know, that's kind of, I guess, what I would maybe define as an adult, right? Is if you encounter something, rather than having, like, a dependent mindset where you're looking around it, who's going to fix this,

you realize intuitively, you're the one. You know, and that doesn't happen for a lot of people. for a long, long time in their lives, if ever, and it didn't happen for me until my mid-20s. And, you know, again, it's one of those things that maybe you just sort of have some set of experiences or something in you where it just clicks naturally. But, you know, I think for most people,

you pick that up by watching the adults around you take responsibility for their own lives. And if you're not exposed to that, that it can take a long time, you know. And it took some, you know, some ass-kicking's in the Navy from some of my leaders to kind of bang that into my head. People that I owe a lot to, you know, really owe a lot to. And I was a huge pain in their butts for a long time.

But, you know, I owe them a lot for sure. You, I guess maybe your senior year, you took the SATs and got a perfect score on your SATs. Yeah. Yeah. And I had, you know, I was graduating with, like I said, about a 2.4. And nobody really knew I was or anything. I was just a normal average goofball. and then I ace my SATs, and so I get called in for like a meeting with the school counselors and everything,

and they kind of talked to me about living up to my potential and all those kind of things. And, you know, I just wasn't at a place at that point where it was going to make much of a dent, you know, at that one place. Yeah, at that point in my life. Like I knew I was a smart enough kid, but when you're growing up in a home like that, I think, you know, one of the things that we, what we all struggle with is, you know, you grow up with a very limited sense of your own. I don't want to say your own capabilities because you have, it doesn't necessarily, not that you don't think you can do things or accomplish tasks or something, but a very limited sense of your own worth, you know.

You, you, every kid who comes up in a broken home, has this little voice. Maybe some people find a way to overcome it, but I think most people, they just learn to live with it and, you know, sort of put it in its proper place that's whispering in the back of your head all the time that no matter how things look around you,

no matter what other people are telling you, no matter how good your life is going, at the end of the day, you're basically worthless. You know, you come out of the gutter, and that's where you belong. And it's just, it's something that, you know, when you come from a certain kind of background that is going to be in there, it's like, you know, when a Roman general would be celebrated in a triumph,

and they'd be in their chariot on a parade and everybody's cheering for them, they would put, you know, a slave behind him to whisper in his ear that despite all this, you were only mortal, just to remind him of that. It's like a really pathological version of that. All glory is fleeting. Yes, yeah. And so, you know, the idea that, I think about when I have kids, the thing that I want to get into their heads, and I think about this all the time how I'm going to do it, right?

Is I want them to have in their heads that like, yo, if you want to be an astronaut, just pick the craziest thing. You want to be a fighter pilot. You want to pick the craziest thing. It is purely a matter of deciding that that's what you're going to do and then just focusing on it and step by step by step, just ruthlessly pursuing it. And then you can literally do whatever you want. You can do whatever you want. There's nothing that's closed off to you just kind of by the nature of life. You know, and when nobody kind of teaches you that,

and for whatever reason you don't pick it up in other ways, you know, maybe you figure out when you're 30 that like, oh, if I would have started focusing on this when I was 15, then, you know, whatever. But like most people get to the point where by the time they start to, if they come out of that state, you know, they've got so many obligations or a couple kids, whatever it is, that now your life is kind of on a certain track. And, you know, that's the thing that I would love to get into my kids' heads, that, you know, there are no limits to what you can do if you decide you want to do it. There's nothing that's just naturally closed off to you because

of who you are or what you are or anything like that. But, you know, that's something that kids have to learn. Or maybe it's the other way. Maybe they start out that way and they learn to think of themselves as limited. I don't know. But I think kids have a hard time, and I always give this advice to parents and to kids when I talk to kids is kids have a hard time connecting the fact that what they're doing now will impact their future. And the way that you behave right now is going to impact the way you, the where you end up in life. And I think that's a major connection that doesn't get made.

And then the other thing is when you say to yourself, well, what do you want to be when you grow up? And your answer is, I don't know. That's not a good answer because it's, doesn't give you anything to aim at, right? But if you say, I do, if the, the follow on for a parent, when you ask your kid, hey, what do you want to be when you grow up? And your kid goes, I don't know. Then what you need to explain to them is, okay, then I want you to have the most amount of options possible. And the way you have the most amount of options possible is to be a good athlete, do good

in school, work hard, learn to work good, work ethic, stay out of trouble. If you do that when you're young and you don't know what you want to do, when you get older, you'll have a bunch of different options to pick from. If you don't do that and you don't do good in school and you don't take care of yourself and you don't work hard and don't get good work ethic and you get into trouble, a lot of those options are going to close down. That's the way it works. And so you have to explain those things to your kids when they're and you have to explain it to them over and over and over again so that they get it because otherwise they don't. And you know, like I said, for me, I was super lucky because all my craziness, you know, all energy going in multiple different directions,

and most of them bad, all of a sudden, with the signing of one piece of paper, all of a sudden they all became focused in the right in a positive way. And that was very helpful to me and very helpful to you. But yeah, so before we jump in the Navy, so you get a perfect score on the SATs, which is insane, especially like I understand there's kids that get, perfect scores on the SATs. A lot of them go to, you know, a tutor and study and computer systems and they do all this stuff and they take all the classes and they study all these classes all the time.

You basically, obviously, you have the natural ability and then just reading, which makes me feel very vindicated or reinforced because I always tell little kids, hey, the way you get smarter is by reading. Read, read, read, read. That's what you do. It worked for you, apparently. Yeah, yeah. It definitely did.

I mean, did you get any, like, pressure? Like, hey, you need to go to college? Well, this was pretty late in my senior year by this point. And so I had kind of already decided that I was going to go to the state university where some of my friends were going at the time. And I didn't spend much time there. I went there for a year and realized that I didn't know what I wanted to major in. And I planned on going into the Navy afterwards anyway.

My grandfather was in the Navy retired as a chief. And so I just said, well, I'm not going to waste any more money here, any more time here. And so I joined the Navy. And it was, yeah, I mean, it was a life-changing decision. Did you join to do any specific job? Nope. I was at a point where... Undesignated to the fleet?

No, I, you know, I aced my ASVAB. And so, you know, they wanted to make me a nuke, but I couldn't go nuke. I couldn't leave for like 18 months if I was going to be nuke. And so they put me in as, you know, doing electronics. I could, you start off in the same school and you could be an ET or a fire controlman. And fire controlman sounded cooler.

Way cooler. And so I went down that, road and I've I'm very glad I did I've loved my job ever since you know as far as my actual the actual stuff I work on and everything I love it so when you join the navy what was boot camp like was it like a positive experience because you were getting structure and a paycheck and all those things especially the structure and and kind of like what you were talking about all of a sudden I had a game that I knew the rules to you know that was like it's kind of the thing when you grew up with instability is you just don't know what the rules are.

You don't know like what actions am I supposed to take that will actually lead me to a positive place because it just seems like no matter what you do, you know, it's not like you take a step forward towards some goal and then another step forward another step forward. It's you take a step forward and then the situation changes and you're in a new place and now you take another step forward and the situation changes in your new place. And so you can very easily get into a place. you can get a sort of learned helplessness in a situation like that where you're just kind of focused on trying to provide yourself a little bit of stability

in your personal, emotional world a little bit, maybe with my sisters at the time. And that's all you're really focused on. You just don't know the rules. You don't know the rules of the game. And when you get into boot camp, you know, I went in, when I joined the Navy, because I had some college credits, they said, we can make you an E3. And I said, well, what do I got to do that?

he said, you know, go get your transcripts and so forth. I'm like, I want to leave like as soon as possible. Like, I don't care about that. Just I want to get out of here. And so I left three days after I walk into the, you know, recruiters office basically. What year was that? 2001, January. So, um, oh, so it's pre-September 11th?

Yeah, yeah. And you were able to leave in three days? I might be exaggerating a little bit, but it was very rapid. I mean, it was, it was really rapid. And, um, so I was on the bus. And from the time I got there, I love. boot camp because it was where did you go to boot camp san diego no great lakes they didn't have anywhere but great legs okay and uh it was in january and my uh what r dc my drill instructor

was this guy who was he's in he'd already been in like 25 years he was a navy diver he had this he literally looked like pop-i he was kind of jacked and he had this screwed up real face recruit and uh he was his name was htc brian and he was just such a badass. He, I mean, you know, I grew up without a father, you know, and I have like an uncle and a grandfather who I would spend time with for periods of my childhood who were good role models for me and, like, provided some stability and like some idea of what, you know, a virtuous man looked like and strong man with his life together looked like, but like all of a sudden I had this dude who was like, he was just like a rock, you know, and he was, and the thing that the thing

that boot camp did for me that, uh, I think, this is probably the biggest lesson most kids who are just unstructured get out of it. Is when they would do things like, you remember, when they would do things like, you know, one drill instructor would come up and tell you to, you know, make your rack and do all these other things, like you got a half hour to do it, and he'll leave. And then another one will come and tell you to do a whole bunch of other stuff. It's going to take you 29 minutes. And so then you're done with that.

And, you know, the first one comes back and says, why isn't your rack made and da-da-da-da-da-da-da. He knows that you didn't have time to make your rack. The point is he's trying to teach you that the answer is not, oh, I couldn't do it because of such and such and so-and-so. The answer is, Roger that. I'll make my act right now. That whatever your excuses are, nobody cares. Nobody cares. And for me, that was the most helpful thing about boot camp.

And so I went in as an E-1, even though they offered me E-3. I went in as an E-1, but in boot camp, they made me the recruit chief petty officer to R-Pock right away. And then for all of the graduating divisions, I was the honor recruit. And so they made me an E3 anyway coming out of boot camp. And, you know, from then, like once I got into the technical school pipeline, you know, I was the class leader all the way through. I aced all my schools. And I was just like, you know, on point.

It was just, you know, it was nice to know the rules of the game. And to know that if I do the following things right, then people, are going to be people that I respect and whose approval I want are going to be happy with me. And, you know, just sort of the incentives and inputs were, you know, it's hard to describe when you come from such an unstable environment, how liberating it is to be in a place where, you know, there are known rules to the game and, you know, you know how to play it. It was very, very good for me. You know, that's a good leadership perspective there. You know, I talk all the time about how you got to like, you know, and not only do about this all the time, I do this all the time.

If you work for me, you got all kinds of leeway to move around and make things happen and step up and execute things. But occasionally I'll work with a boss who has got so much, who's so laissez-faire and so hands off that no one actually knows what's happening. And the same thing, I'll say, listen, you know, I'm talking to your front line or I'm talking to mid-level managers. They don't even know what it is that you want. them to do. And so, you know, we'll formulate a plan of, all right, here's the mission,

here's what we're trying to get done. Here's our goals. Here's our priorities. And they put that out. And then I'll go and talk to the, you know, the subordinate leadership. And they'll be so happy because it's just what you said. They go from not knowing the rules of the game. What are we focused on? What are I supposed to do? And how do I, how do I move through this system right now to like, okay, I got it. You want me to do these things? Thank you for telling me. So that is something that as a leader you have to be careful of and that's something that that definitely you know you and i had the same experience cool i'm playing a game now and i know the rules so what was when you how long was your fire control school explain what that is a little bit so fire control is not

being a fireman fire control is working on naval weapons systems and so i worked on the aegis weapon system which is uh the air defense and ballistic missile defense system we've got on all of our destroyers and cruisers right now. My school was about a year and a half. And so you start out in like a basic electronic schools. People, you know, a lot of people on the outside, they don't understand. They're taking people off the street

and basically making effective, they don't know what an electron is. They don't know why it is that when you plug something in, the lights come on. I didn't know any of that, right? I knew it was electricity. And they got to take you and turn you into somebody who can go, you know,

take a bunch of test equipment, a bunch of tools, and go figure out what's wrong with $100 million radar, right? And they do that in a relatively short period of time. I mean, Navy schools, the tech schools, I think people who come out of those schools are, college has got to be such a cakewalk, you know, for doing that. Like, we were in class for eight hours a day, and then we had a couple hours of mandatory group study sessions every night, and that was five days a week. Every weekend we had homework that was going to take four hours both days, you know,

eight hours total, something like that. We did that for a year and a half. And it was, you know, they pack a lot in. And, you know, if you really, like, focus on getting an education in there, they will make you, like, pretty competent in a pretty rapid period of time. And so that was a year and a half. And then I get put on, I was on a, I was learning about a brand new system. I went to the first ship that ever had it, right?

This variant of the spy radar, the age of spy radar. And so I get there, and the ship's keel has just been laid basically in Pascagoula. And so I get sent to San Diego. to wait for the ship to be built. And it's not going to be done for another year and a half, two years. And so I don't see a ship in the Navy until I've already been in, yeah, just over three years. So what did you do for that year and a half? It was pretty awesome, actually.

So we didn't have a lot to do. We didn't have, especially for like the first eight, nine months or so, we had very little supervision because we were some of the first people that got there. I think when my little group of Aegis Tech showed up there, the ship had an XO, a command. man master chief, one other chief who was out in Pascagoula and then us out here by ourselves. And that's basically how it stayed for a long time. And so we played the other base teams in softball. We had a lot of those like computerated, you know, little classes that you got to take on that teach you nothing because you never seen a ship. So like all these things you're reading

about have to do a seamanship. Don't mean anything to you. But then after I had started to, I had already done all the computerated like tests. I was done with that reason. There's nothing left for me to do. And other people start showing. up, you know, at this point. And I figured out that, you know, they have, like, they used to call like SS-E-W, and then they had, like, the bunch of advanced shooting courses, basically. They had the simunition one that they did on the pigeon down on Pier 13. I don't know if you ever seen the ship down there that you go on and basically play counter-strike on, you know. And I had already done everything. And so I just started asking them, can I go to this one again? Can I go to this

one again? I would go to these, like, eight, nine, ten weeks in a row just going to the shooting courses all the time. So it was pretty great. and yeah so that was a year and a half i got to the ship in 2004 just over three years that i'd been in at that point and um yeah i got to the ship and you know my attitude started to change a little but i had a little i had some setbacks when i was on the ship um i just didn't you know i i didn't work very well with uh i worked i worked really well up to that point where uh where i could be where there was a route for me to be the hot shot. You know, in boot camp, that's exactly what happened. In my schools, that's exactly what happened. And when I was at the pre-com detachment, that's exactly what

happened. Like, I was the man out there, you know, because it was just a limited group of people, and there was a defined, you know, number of activities that we were engaging in. And so when I get out to the ship, there's a much larger group of people. There's senior people, you know, I'm in E4. And I'm just another face in the crowd at this point. And, um, I'm just, um, I'm just another face in the crowd at this point and a junior sailor nobody cares right but I'm just you know I was immature still by this point I'm 23 I suppose and I just start having clashes especially with the chiefs mess you know just having wars with these guys I was one of those I was a pain in the ass I was a huge pain in the ass I look back on it now and I know some of my chiefs from back then I'm like dude I'm so sorry like I was such a

what were you doing just objecting that doesn't make any sense trolling you know like sort of like in a way where, you know, I never showed up to work drunk. I never showed up to work late. I never had any liberty. And so there's nothing like that, right? You were an even worse kind of problem. I was the worst kind of problem. And it took me a long time to figure out why.

And the fact that I never had any of those, quote, unquote, more serious discipline problems allowed me to think I was getting picked on, right, by a bunch of people who just didn't like me. Because I would look at these other people, this is actually what happened that turned me around. I literally had an overnight turnaround. I went to captain's mask three times in one year. I got convicted all three times. For what? Disrespecting a chief petty officer.

You went to captain's mask for disrespecting a chief petty officer? I was a problem. I was a problem. Give me at least a little bit of example. Only because in the SEAL teams, I don't know that I can remember. I don't remember anyone ever getting sent to captain's mask for disrespecting a chief petty officer for a couple reasons. The primary reason is you would just get, you know, catch a beat down.

Like that just, it's just not going to happen. You'd get beat down. Yeah. And I wish somebody could have just kicked my ass. You'd do that in the normal Navy. So you get captain. Give me an example. That is freaking insane.

You know, I don't think any of them were particularly egregious. Here's what I would do, right? Is I was actually like an artist at figuring out exactly where the lines were. I knew what the rules were. I know where the lines are. And then just taking all my clients. close off and tiptoeing along them like ha ha ha I'm not touching you I'm not touching you right like just I'm glad you went to caps pass I'm getting pissed off just being a pain in

the ass and like here's an example like one time is a perfect example of the kind of things I would do after the first Iraqi elections in 2005 you know the purple fingers and everything I know perfectly well that writing out an all-hands email is something that the captain, the XO, and the command match chief are allowed to do. Nobody else is allowed to do. You can't have every E4 writing out all-hand emails, right? No, you can't. And so I write up this long email with pictures of the people with the purple fingers and, like, telling everybody, like, you know, we've accomplished. And this is such a great thing that, like, the U.S. military has helped to make happen.

and da-da-da-da-da-da-da and fired it out to all hands. So, wait, you wrote a serious email. Yes, but I would say... But you knew it kind of was... Well, I would say that I did it because... I did it to be a pain in the ass. But I meant what I said, but I also was like, aha, like I can troll them here and they can't really do anything

because I'm celebrating what we've accomplished and like, you know, whatever. That's the kind of thing I would do, right? And once or twice, it's like, okay, yeah, yeah, knock it off. but I was persistent and I would, it got to a point where, and took one guy, first class, who I had just banged heads with for a long time before this. I hated him. And he hated me.

And after this, we got to be great friends, literally like he turned me around a one day. So the third time I go up, I got 45, 45, 45 days of restriction and extra duty, all three times, right, in one year. and we were on deployment for like five months of that year and we didn't count under way time. So I was locked on the ship for like nine months in one year. And because one of them had to do with like, you know, sending out the all-hand email for a good portion, I didn't have any computer access or anything.

I'm just in jail like on the ship. And the last time that it happened, it was. Wait, so what's the last time that what happened? That I went to Captain's Man. What was the last offense? Okay, yeah. So this is, yeah, so this is perfect because it just set everything up perfectly for me to get turned around. And it doesn't sound like that at first.

So what happened was at this point, they were so tired of my crap that they were definitely like just looking for a reason, right? And I knew it and I felt persecuted because of it, right, even though I'm totally being a pain. And so they found something like I was, I had done. I was the designated person in the division at the time who was supposed to do our maintenance on our damage control equipment, which kind of details you to like another division, the damage control division part time. And so there was a time where I was supposed to go do maintenance on our fire hoses. And after you're done, you put this sealant on them to protect them from the elements or something like that. And at that particular time, the ship was out and of the sealant. And so the guy, the damage control guy who was in charge of everything, that particular time, you told everybody, just don't worry about it at this time, go do your maintenance.

And so I went and did it. So a month or two later, I get written up for having gun deck this maintenance because I said that I did it in accordance with the card, but I didn't use this sealant. You can tell because they're all rusty. And so in that instance, I was able to bring like 15 other people who were all able to vouch for me and show that. And you did that? You did like, you went straight. What's that movie? You went straight.

What's the damn Jack Nicholson movie? A Few Good Men? You went like straight. You brought witnesses in? Did you do that? I had one person who was in my division who knew that I was telling the truth, and I was like, I can bring people in. And they knew that I was right. I convinced them at the time that I was right.

But I was also like I was, so this, I was completely innocent this time. Like, of this, right? Not innocent, but of this, I was innocent. And they still gave me 45, 45, 45. But all three of those times. So 45 days restriction and 45 days half pay? Special duty. No.

Oh, special. They never took any pay. And even though I went three times in one year, they never busted me down because they kind of knew that part of it was personal. Part of it was that I had a personal problem with some of these guys. But, you know, screw my personal problems. I'm subordinate. Like, they're chiefs and I'm not, right? So, Roger that.

This is like the worst. I'm serious. Like I'm saying this is like the most annoying leadership problem. It's so annoying. Especially when you have somebody who's smart enough to sort of. Totally. And just, you know, while I'm saying that, like, why? What I absolutely would have done with you is I would have put you on a fast track.

I would have put you in charge of things. Like I would have done things. Okay. So hold on. So I, uh, I'm up upstairs in one of our combat system spaces. And at this time, like, I'm really feeling aggrieved, right? So now that you've already been, you've been, you're under sentence. This is, this is later that day after I've been, uh, sentenced.

And so I'm really feeling victimized here because I'm actually innocent of this. And I'm still in that mindset, right? And I've got my chief up there. And my chief at the time, he's a great. great guy. He's a good chief, but he did not know how to deal with me. Like, he's just, he's too nice, and I needed someone to put a boot up my ass, and he was not that guy. And he's a great guy. I know him today, and he's just an awesome dude. And he's one of the people I apologize to on a regular basis. And so I get, I corner him basically, and there's other people in the

space, and I am just tearing him apart. Like, I do this, I do that, I do all this work in the division. And what about this person who showed up drunk? He didn't go to Captain's Mass. What about this person who didn't show up from Liberty and like miss ship's movement. He didn't go to Kamsmask and you're targeting me for this bullshit. That's where I was at. And from a perspective, I was right. And so I am just laying into him and he doesn't know what to say. And so this first class who is my LPO at the time and I don't like him and he doesn't like me. And it's funny because he, this was, this was, he was, he was, he was a, he's a very interesting personality. He's like, he's kind of a nerd,

but he was like kind of an alpha personality still. He was a sailor. He was a guy who took his job seriously. And like, you know, if you just caught him out on the street, he's not some like alpha personality necessarily. But like when he's doing his job, he takes it seriously, right?

So he sees me tearing up our chief, his chief too. And he's like, oh, God, like I gotta go save him. And so he runs in there and he listens to me talk for another like 30 seconds or so. And then he just turns it around.

And he starts lightening to me and I go back and forth with him. Crowds gather in other. up at this point. And then he says, are you seriously going to look me in the eye and tell me that you play no role in putting yourself in the position you're in right now? And I was like, I couldn't say that, right? And then he's like, I'll tell you what, like this isn't, this isn't World War II. We don't shoot deserters. Okay. This is a, this is a Navy these days where, you know, if you don't want to be here, I'll take you to the old man. He will sign it. You won't even

get a dishonorable discharge. If you want to leave, we'll let you. let you leave. And every day that you're not doing that, you're reenlisting for 24 hours. Every day you come in and show up for work, you're reenlisting for 24 hours because you can leave if you want to. Nobody's going to prosecute you for desertion or whatever. Like, you can leave. And so don't tell me that like this is such an awful and horrible place to be and everything is just wrong with it or whatever because every day you're volunteering to come in here. And when, you know, every time I kind of try to tell the story to people, it doesn't hit them as profoundly as it hit me. But at the time, it just, it made me realize that all of the, the entire

mentality that I had carried forward into that point, up to that point on the ship, it was just, it was all wrong. It was a completely dependent mindset where I was looking completely outside myself for the cause of all my unhappiness and problems and everything. And he just got me to see that it doesn't matter what situation is. Like the ship was a disciplinary mess. It was a tough place to like, If that's the environment you're adapting yourself to, it's easy to go awry, right? It was a tough play. It was our captain got escorted off by Marines, like as soon as we got back from sail around. What happened?

So we were in the Panama Canal, and the captain was an animal. He'd be a guy who, like, he was a guy who, like, seemed like he read about being a captain in World War II, and now he had his ship, and he's walking through the interior of the ship with a lit stogie in his mouth, and he's just being a captain, right? He was a great guy in a lot of ways, but he's a wild man. man. And we were in the Panama Canal coming over to San Diego. And when you park in the Panama Canal, sometimes they tie you off to these big, wide concrete buoys, right, that kind of keep you in place. And so we were doing that, and one of the Panamanians dipped the line, and it got caught up in our

propeller, and it sucked this giant concrete buoy down and destroyed our propeller and twisted the shaft up going all the way up into the ship, right? And so we get stuck in the Panama Canal for several days is we're like basically trying to figure out what to do with ourselves. Everybody's super stressed out. All of the chitters are completely full because when you're in the Panama Canal, you can't discharge so they have to bring on porta-potties. Those are all full. People are like, you know, leaving bags of crap, like, you know, in closet so they can go throw them overboard at nighttime because we're there for like four or five days. Everybody's superheated. And when we, when we're going to pull out finally, they tell us just go limp home, you know, on one propeller,

just go. And we go to pull out and I'm standing watch in combat and all of a sudden, as we're getting ready to go, I hear the captain come over the intercom, right, the one-MC. No like, you know, crew, this is captain or anything like that. He says, Master at Arms, this is the captain. Get up to the bridge right now. He has the Panamanian pilot arrested and confined. The pilot, the Panama Canal is one of the only places where The captain gives up control of a ship. There's a pilot who's Panamanian down there who will drive your ship like when you're either docking or leaving dock, right? And so he has this guy arrested and confined because he gets into a huge fight with him, drives the ship out himself, hits the pier on the way out,

and then has the quartermaster's docked the logs to keep it out. Yeah. And the XO at the time did the right thing. You know, he kept it, he logged it himself and kept a diary about it. And then when we got back, he reported it because, you know, on one hand, it's like, there's some people who thought it was disloyal. I'm like, there's a bunch of J.O.'s up there who their whole careers are screwed if they're anywhere near this. He saved all of those guys. He did the right thing.

And so, yeah, so it's a chaotic ship. There was a period like a couple of years in where I think a third of the leadership all got, you know, swapped out and booted off the ship for fratinization. All at once we had an external investigation because everybody was just sleeping with everybody. disciplinary problem. Oh, is there females on board? Yeah. Oh. Yeah. And so, but, you know, and yet, it was this guy, my LPO at the time, who really somehow, like, he, I'm not a type of person. It's easy to shut up, you know, like, especially if I'm, like, getting going, like, whatever. Like, I'm just, I'm coming, just like I was coming at that chief. And for him to be able to just shut me down like that, like, people who were there were, like, they looked at me like, oh, what's he

going to say now? And I just had nothing to say. And I went down to my rack. Now I'm on restriction. This is my first day of restriction. And I literally go down to my rack and I lie down and I can feel something working inside me. And I just, I just, I don't, I can't, it's hard to kind of really describe. But I woke up the next day and I was not just a different person. My job was a completely different person.

It was like I matured 10 years overnight where all of a sudden I woke up in the morning and I was like, oh, this is my life now. And it didn't feel like that before in the same way. I could be like, you know, when I was doing well in boot camp and school and everything, it's like I can be good at this game. I was going to say you're playing a game. Right. But, you know, getting to the point of realizing that like, whatever the environment is around me, like, I've got my own responsibility to like, you know, take care of my own circle here. And literally the next day, like, I just completely different person. This was late in 2005 and around early 2006.

So this is just a few months after I get off restriction for the third time this year, and I'm a second class at the time. Because we were a precom, we got everybody at once at the beginning. And so all of our leadership is changing out all at once. And they got to find another LPO. And this was just a few months after me coming off my third stint on restriction in less than 12 months. And they made me the LPO because I had turned around that much. And part of it was because we had this one guy on board.

He was an older guy who kind of joined the fleet late. He was like a bouncer in Texas, 65, 260, arnory dude. Really great guy, but an arnary dude. And he had kind of enough personal problems with other people in the division. They couldn't make him the LPO, but they knew nobody else in the division could handle him just on a personality level. And so they put me in charge. And it was exactly what you said. As soon as I got to a point where I realized that the well-being of these other people is now depending on me, you know,

or if I want to go start a fight with a chief, that's going to roll downhill on these other guys. as soon as that happened, I mean, my mindset completely shifted. It was a revelation. And so the next year, I was 2005. I got convicted at Captain's Mass three times. In 2006, I was the Destroyer Squadron Sailor of the Year and got a 50E Val. Dang. Yeah.

And our division was the hot division on the ship. You know, we gave out... You got a 50E Val? Yeah. That's insane. I was on fire, man. Like, I just, you know, it wasn't just that, like, I kind of realized, like, oh, I can kind of do the right thing now.

It was like a, it was like this revelation to me. I was eating it up. I was like, holy cow, I can just go do all the right things. And, like, I can take control of this situation. And then, you know, I don't have to wait for other people to sort of tell me it's all right or to tell me what to do or I don't have to, I don't have to be reactive. I can just actually go make things happen. And, you know, and it was just a huge revelation.

So I was just eating it up. And, yeah. And, you know, I owe that guy a lot. You know, I owe that guy a lot. And he and I, after that, we got along great. He was, this was before Don't Ask, Don't Tell got shit canned. And so he was gay. And when we would go in, we got to be, like, enough friends that when we would go into ports

in, like, Australia and other places and he would want to go off to, like, a bar somewhere. He couldn't tell anybody else, like, I would go with him because he had to have a liberty buddy. You had to have somebody go with him. And so I would go and like... That's a good friend right there, bro. Because you're pulling into port for the first time and however long, and you're going to go to the gay bar with the homes. And I would just hang out and like, yeah, dudes,

if you go to a gay bar in Australia, you know, those dudes are pretty aggressive. So you have to like, you know, kind of be ready to just keep cool. But, I mean, that's how close I got to this guy, you know. Really great friends with that guy. And to this day, like, I owe him a lot. And I owe a lot to all the people who put up with my crap for as long as they did because they had plenty of excuses to just be like, you know, this guy's not worth the trouble.

Get the hell out of out of here. They could have booted my ass out for a million different things. Not for, you know, again, I didn't punch anybody in the face or anything. But I just, I was not worth the trouble. What they were, the work and everything else they were getting out of me was not anywhere near, you know, the trouble I was given them. And it's like you said, in a way, it's the worst kind of trouble to deal with because, you know, what I finally realized was the reason that the guy who showed up drunk doesn't have to necessarily go to Captain's Mass and get hammered the way they were coming after me is after they come to him

and say, how dare you, this is wrong, whatever, he puts his head down and he says, Roger that. He submits to the authority of the chain of command. And that was what, it was my entire life was making a show of the fact that I did not respect the chain of command. Like, that was my whole goal on the ship was to basically like be a performance artist. at coming up with creative ways to flip off the chain of command. But doing it in ways, again, where I know where the lines are, I know what the rules are,

so that once you hammer me for it, I can say, this isn't fair, even though I'm totally provoking them, like 100%. And everybody knows it. They know it, but worse, all of the other junior sailors know it. And so if they don't hammer me, that undermines the entire authority structure. If they don't come squash me, they have to figure out how to get me to bend the knee. And because as long as I exist like that, like, you know, it could break down the discipline on the whole ship. And I finally understood that.

You know, I finally understood why they had to come after me the way they did. And, you know, it just, I took ownership for my own situation, you know. And but again, I took somebody getting in my face and shut me down. And if he hadn't walked in there that day, I don't, I know I wouldn't have learned that lesson. I would have just hammered my chief and walked off like, ha, ha, got him, and that would have been that. I never would have learned that lesson, at least not in that time frame. So once you were now squared away, it's now 2005, what was you,

you're going on to, how many deployments did you do on that ship? Two, and both of them, we were doing independent deployments actually supporting some of your buddies out in the Philippines. Okay. Yeah, we were supporting the SWIC and seal operations, you know, when they were fighting insurgents down some of the Southern Islands there. And since then, I worked for the DoD now, and I deploy with ships sometimes. And so I've gone on, I don't know, 10 or 15 deployments, at least for good chunks of them.

So I've been all over the place at this point. But, yeah, so that was 06 when they put me in charge of the division. And we actually didn't have a chief at the time either. So I was a second class for a while, and I was our acting chief. And there was a chief mess full of guys that hated my guts. and I had to learn to navigate that too. And some of those guys, it was personal enough by that point that, like, they didn't really care much

that I kind of turned my attitude around. It took some time. But, yeah, and... Once you turned your attitude around and you are now dealing with these chiefs, sometimes you see people slip back, right? Like, they get some chief that they didn't respect before, but now they try to turn over a new leaf.

And when they do, it's like that guy, they still just can't. can't put their ego in check enough to stand down. Were you able to stand down? Well, I would say to a degree, right? So I was the acting LCPO, and I was the second class, right? Which meant that we didn't have a real chief kind of defending our guys. And a lot of times my second classes and third classes would get stuck with extra work

that no other division wanted to do. and so to a degree like the, like I became very, very protective of my guys, like very, very protective. Because you got to remember, like, I'm now in charge of a bunch of people who watched me go to Captain's Mask three times last year. Right? And I got to navigate that leadership issue. Some of them are older than me. There's two first classes in the division. I'm only a second class.

You know, and I have to figure out how to deal with these 20, 25 people. And it's not like I can walk in one day and, you know, because I've ironed my year. uniform properly, come in and be like, now, everybody listened to me. Like, that's not going to work, right? And it's funny because as I've been doing this latest podcast series on Jim Jones, I've realized something that in a way, what I did is I started a cult. Not like a personality cult where they worship me or anything, but in a way where I definitely created like a very strong us versus them, us versus the rest of the ship kind of mentality, right? And it bonded everybody together. One of the things I'm most proud of, in my whole

life is that I would say 80% of the group that was in our division for those couple years to this day, this is 10 years ago, they're all still friends. Or there are at least like one degree of friends separated from each other. Like if we had to get together today, everybody would be like right there like they'd just seen each other. Created some very powerful relationships. But it was very much like a, you know, like when I would have somebody get in trouble, one kid got a DUI. Am I going to come up to him after I've been to campus mass three times last year and be like, well, how dare you? This is just unacceptable, mister. That's not going to work, right? And so what I would do is I would say, look, you know, things are pretty good in our division

right now, right? I give you guys each of the work centers. I give you guys a lot of leeway to run your own business and I don't like come over your shoulders all the time. There are a bunch of chiefs on this ship who would love to get on their evaluation that they're the CF, you know, is our division, that they're our divisional chief, right? They're circling like vultures. Now I can hold them off as long as you keep behaving, you know, hold off those hyenas. But when you misbehave like that, it gives them ammunition to, like, come after us. And so I would create this thing like they were out to get us. And some of them were, because some of them hated me enough, you know, but then, and after a while,

it becomes a little bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy. You create that us versus them vibe. And, you know, you can only go around thinking that, you know, other people don't like you so long before just you make it true right I always had to be careful that because I'd get the whole gang mentality going and it would be us against the world and you know every one in a while I'd have to pull back the reins a little bit because you know you got 22 year old jp. de Nell and like somebody says something bad about the task unit and he is ready to murder someone you know I have to I have to pull in the reins a little bit you know because it gets a little crazy in

in the dames. So what made you decide? Did you make first class then pretty quick? Pretty quick, yeah. Once I had that 5-0. Because you must have aced the freaking test and you had a 5-0-e-val. Yeah. I mean, they were only promoting 3, 4, 5% up to first class for my rate at the time.

But yeah, I pretty much ace the test and I had a 5-0-E-vow. So I made it pretty quickly. And then I got, because of the way that the schedule worked out, I was just like a little kink in the schedule. I got to know, I got to pick my, orders, my sure duty orders before I had to decide whether I wanted to reenlist, which is a beautiful thing. And so I ended up taking orders up at Port Wayneemie, which is where it's like the engineering place for the Aegis weapon system. And anytime we would do, you know, major

technical or training evolutions, guys from there would come out and work with us, the engineers who have been working with this stuff for a long time. And so they kind of knew who I was and I developed some relationships with them when I was still on the ship. And so when my orders came up, you know, they kind of helped me get out there. And yeah, it was a good experience too, because you get into a place like that where, you know, you think you're pretty good at your job, you think you have an idea what you're doing. And then you get around people who really know what they're doing, and you realize you're like a little baby, you know. And yeah, it's a great place to live. It's a great place to work. So I've enjoyed that as well. It's taking me all over the world.

A lot of freedom in my job, you know, a lot of ability to kind of operate independently. So it was good. And then at one point, so this whole time you're still reading a ton, I assume. So like in this job, for example, I would say I would be away from home traveling 70, 80% of the year. Like sometimes I'm going 10, 11 months a year. And a lot of that time is out on deployed ships or I'm out in a place like Bahrain or somewhere else where there's not a whole lot going on. and I would bring a suitcase full of my clothes and workout gear and everything and a suitcase full of books. And I would just read. That's all I would do when I was out there by myself. At what point did you start thinking about making a podcast? When some of my friends told me to make one so that I could leave them alone,

I was hardcore history fan like everybody else, right? and it takes a long time between hardcore history episodes, and you want something else to be there. And this was in the earlier days. 2015, there weren't like a hundred thousand history podcasts. And so I happen to be reading a lot about the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for the last couple of years, and I'm always talking my friends about it. And they're like, finally one of them said, why don't you just go start a podcast?

You're always complaining about hardcore history taking too long. Just go make one in between those episodes. And so I said, okay, I'll give that a shot. And, yeah, so I started working on that one. And that was another one of those, it was another one of those revelations where it's very humbling in a way. I got to the point where I had read maybe six or eight books on the pre-1948 period of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. If you've read six to eight books on a topic, like, it's pretty easy to. You feel pretty good.

It's pretty easy to think of yourself as an expert. Yeah. And so I start making like the first episode and the second episode. And by the time I kind of, you know, I'm outlining them and kind of putting them together. By the time I kind of get up to like episode three or four of like how I'm making my outlines, now I've read like 20 or 30 books. And I would look back at like the first episode that I had put together when I'd read like six. And I realized I didn't, it was it was hilariously bad.

Like not just like you miss this little point here or whatever, but I had no idea what I was talking about. And then when I, you know, I think all the time now, about like, it's really easy to get me to pontificate for hours about some topic that I read one book about. You know? And this is a topic that, like, I had read six or eight books on at the time and having to look back and realize that I knew nothing about it. Like the most basic kind of... Had you already recorded, like, number one? You just laid out the notes.

You've been like, okay, here's the direction of you. And I'm so glad that I took my time. You know, by the time I got through that entire six-episode series, you know, I read close to 100 books, parts of another couple hundred, almost 2,000, you know, academic papers and articles and essays and diaries and things. Like I just, I read almost everything that I could find on it to a point where I would get a new book and I would read it or a new paper and I would read it. And I would be glad if I would get like one more little tidbit out of that. And so I felt pretty good about that series when it was finished and a lot of people You know have enjoyed it obviously I'm glad I caught you early when you could still respond to emails

Was that you that sent me that I should listen to you? I don't think it was I don't remember I don't think so either I don't think it was I think it was somebody else which is pretty random Because I mean at that time I know when we started our this podcast 18 I saw this figure 18% of America was listening to podcasts so You were before that, so maybe it was 15 or 12% of people. So for somebody to have heard your podcast and then my podcast and then connect us on social media, that's pretty freaking impressive.

I never expected anybody to listen to it. Like I didn't, it just never, I'm not an authority on anything. I don't have any credentials, you know, or anything. And I, it just, it never occurred to me, everybody was going to be listening to it. And it was, yeah, it was a lot to handle when people started listening. into it and start writing me emails. I've gotten emails from Israeli Defense Force active duty guys running patrols in the West Bank who have written me and said that like this made me sympathized

with the Palestinians more, right? That's a dude who that matters. That's a guy who like is going to be dealing with these people tomorrow on patrol. And I've gotten emails from people from Arabs, Muslims all over the Middle East who said I never, I never thought about the situation that the Jews were in in that way before. And I'm like, it feels like it's a pretty heavy responsibility, but at the same time, like, it's, you know, it makes it so that, like, you really feel like, okay, I got to make sure that I'm saying things that I mean

and that I'm putting the amount of work in this that it deserves. So one of the things that I do, one of my recent ones took a long time, the Jim Jones one that I'm doing, because I just, I refuse to put out an episode until I feel like, I can at least have a glimpse of what it would be like to put myself in the shoes of the people that I'm talking about.

And if I just, if there's people in there that I'm going to be talking about who I just don't like, or who I, I just have contempt for them in sort of a cartoonish way, which is how I felt about a lot of the people in Jim Jones's movement for a while. I just don't like these people. They just elicit nothing but negative emotions in me. And I just refuse to make the episode until I could get through that, you know, and try to figure out what are the,

the circumstances that these people could be looking at that could make the decisions that they're making make sense to them at the time. And, you know, that can be really hard to do. Like, you know, I've been reading a whole lot about al-Qaeda and Iraq and all that stuff now. And I, that's, I mean, that's, I don't know if I'm going to get through that one, you know, when I read about Zarkali and some of these guys where it's just, this is, you know, it's another level of sadism. Yeah. And, um, I don't. I don't feel like I need to get to a point where I can empathize with them before I can talk about it. But I do at least want to understand, like, the social conditions and the ideological, you know, parameters that structure somebody's thinking in a way that, you know, that leads them to think that that's a course of action that makes sense, you know.

Yeah, and you obviously must be seeing connections between Jim Jones and just the cult mentality. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Because that's essentially what you're dealing with. And what you said earlier about, you know, when you're young and you don't really know which direction to take. And then all of a sudden, somebody shows up that, you know, like we've been saying the whole time, oh, you all of a sudden you know the rules of the game.

Well, when somebody shows up and says, hey, I got the rules of the game. Here they are. And this is what you need to do to win. Yeah. Then it becomes very easy to kind of sweep people into it. And they offer, I mean, I think one of the biggest things is they offer people one identity. You know, identity is something that in some ways we're not really comfortable talking about in society these days. We find it to be kind of dangerous. Social identity, the ways that

people tend to connect themselves with larger groups and movements, it's something that we look at is pretty dangerous for pretty reasonable. You know, we have reasons for that, right? We look back at something like World War II, and we see how, you know, a group of people starting to really, really serious about who we are and our identity can really go off the rails, right? And that... You say we're uncomfortable talking about that, but I mean... There's another side, right? Okay, I was going to say, because we've got, like, people who's number one thing in life

is their identity with whatever group it is. Right. And so, let's say maybe not that we're uncomfortable with it, but that it's something that is volatile, you know? And when we do talk about it, it's usually charged with a lot of emotion one way or the other. And so rather than, and it's usually attached to, you know, ideas of historical grievance and things like that. So we'll say that, you know, a group that has some grievance, it's okay for them to sort of identify in a group manner, things like that. But rather than just talking about it as a psychological need that people have, I mean, when you come up as a kid like I did, where, you know,

you're just kind of pasting an identity together out of random bits, people that pass through your life, of things you see on TV, book you read, you're just kind of pasting something together. It's not like a good, strong nuclear family is this little cocoon where you can start to develop, emulate your parents, ideally, if there's somebody that you want to emulate and kind of figure out, you know, where there's room for your own individuation and so forth. But you don't have that.

You're kind of just pasting something together, and you grow up in the idea of, like, who am I? or who are we as a people? I think one of the early Israel-Palestine ones when I was kind of talk about how the Zionists are pulling people from all over Jews from all over Europe and trying to get them to think of themselves as like, you know, this is a time

when like German Jews didn't really like Polish Jews and American Jews kind of looked down all of them in certain ways. And to pull all these people together, it'd be like, no, no, no, no, no, this is us. Like, this is who we are. We're a people. And it takes, it's a mysterious

kind of alchemical process, like how that works. And it can come apart really easily. I mentioned how what's the difference between, you know, what is it that makes America, you know, where we say, we don't just say this is America. We say we're Americans, right? And what's the difference between 300 million people who just happen to live near each other in the middle of North America and this place called America with people who are Americans who can cooperate and trust each other in various ways that allow us to sort of live next door? total strangers without killing each other, which we think of. It's like, well, why would we kill each other? It's like, well, go try that in most of history. If those people weren't members of your

tribe, you're not living next door to them. I have a Palestinian friend who, several years ago, we were down in a place in L.A. having lunch or breakfast or something, Sunday morning, beautiful day, and we're, you know, sitting out on the patio. There's just a bunch of people. It's a wonderful little meal. And all of a sudden I catch her just kind of looking around and I say, what's on your mind? What are you thinking about? And she said this place. She's from the Middle East, right? She says, this place, like here. This could never happen in my country. And I just kind of looked around and yeah, sure enough. Like over here, you've got at this table like, you know, two white people, two black people having a meal together. Over here, you've got like two gay dudes having a breakfast

together. Just all different types of people. They don't know each other. They're not related to each other. And they're just... All good. It's all good. It's totally stable and totally normal. And if anybody fell down, people would go to see what was wrong with them. And, you know, it's not that people don't care about each other in other parts of the world. It's at their, you know, their level of trust for people outside their group. And what is defined as us is something that's typically a lot narrower. You know, I'm sure this is, we'll talk about this in a future time when we get into, when you had to talk to the sheiks and Ramadi and stuff. I mean, you had to work through, you had to work through a whole tribal system that plays no role over here. You know, we just

don't have anything like that over here. And when we, when we have like little versions of it with like, you know, say like the Italian mafia back in the day or something where there's still this sort of in-group mentality and stuff, it's hard to keep that together in the United States. States. And a lot of the institutions we have are kind of designed to break down those subloyalties so that, you know, there's this broader national loyalty that we all kind of devote ourselves to. You know, the Hatfields and the McCoys have to figure out how to, you know, how to put their differences aside and get on the same landing craft and go storm the beaches in Normandy. You know, they've got to figure out how to do that. And we take that kind of stuff for granted because we're so

far along that process here, but, you know, you go to a lot of the world and it's not something you can take for granted at all. And I think that how I grew up kind of, it pushed me in the direction of being interested in those kind of things, you know, wanting to belong to something, trying to figure out what makes a community work or what makes a family work or what makes a country work as opposed to one that just doesn't work.

What's the difference? They're not better people over here than they are over here. They're just, you know, there's little thing, you know, do you trust your neighbors? You know, do you just have, you know, are your concentric circles of concern sort of expanded enough to the, you know, where they get to the point that they include people that maybe you don't know, but that you still consider at least relative to somebody way over there, like one of us, you know?

And where does that, where do those circles of concern end? you know, do they end at the tribe? Well, you're going to have a hell of a time trying to put together like a functioning nation state if that's the problem, if that's the case. You know, and, you know, if it ends it, a lot of people, it ends at themselves, you know. And I don't think people generally want to be that way, though. I think they want people and something to identify with and to belong to and to kind of hand themselves over to most people. I think most people, they long for something. to serve and something to give themselves to. But they look around and, you know, they just, again,

they're waiting for that beam of sunlight to shine down on it and just this is the thing. And that's usually never going to happen. And, but I think that's what people are seeking. You know, I think people want to sacrifice. I think people want to serve something. And, you know, they spend their lives looking for something and, or maybe not looking hard enough. Maybe that's the wrong way to look at it. they want it, but they don't necessarily go looking for it. And it's a, it's interesting times. It's interesting times because you can kind of get by without being linked into something. And so everyone can kind of get by without being linked into something.

But then they have a certain void of being linked into something. And then, you know, it's like when you go to prison. Like when you go to prison, you're going to join a gang. But, you know, pretty much you're going to join a gang. That's what's going to happen if you're going to survive. Period. Like, that's what's happening. You're going to, you know, and it's going to be by race.

That's what's going to happen. And then you'll get out and it's like, it's okay. You know, like that's a really interesting microcosm to look at. But in there, you need to do it to survive. So all of a sudden you get in there and next thing you know, you're getting bolts tattooed on your neck because you're, you know, you're going A, B. That's the way it's going to be. The thing is now all of a sudden you're part of a group. well in the civilian world, you don't have to be a part of anything to survive.

So you have some kind of, you have some kind of a void, right? Or I'd say it is possible that people have some kind of a void where they are looking to be a part of something. And that's why, you know, you get, whether it's, you know, ISIS jihadists. And by the way, those are people, some of those ISIS jihadists leaving normal, you know, first world, the countries to go and be part of a death cult. You know, that's why you get Jim Jones. That's why you get these things unfolding because there's some kind of a void that people have when they want to be connected to other people and they can't figure it out.

And when that light gets shined down, well, it's a light that's getting shined down by a bad person. There was an interview I saw. I never forget. They were interviewing one of the guys who had gone from Belgium, perfectly nice life in Belgium to go join ISIS and they asked him why he did it. And he said, Belgium is boring. And I think to a lot of people, well, I think to a lot of people, on one hand, that makes no sense to them.

But I think on the other hand, there's this deep recess where it makes some sense to them. I think people do understand it to some degree. It's like when, you know, it's like when you remember when sometimes, you could live on a dirt road maybe. So like, I don't know if you had direct neighbors, but like the power would go out, right? And the power would go out and people would walk out like on their front lawns and kind of look at each other. And they're like, whoa. And you almost have this sense. connectedness with your neighbors that you don't have on a normal day, you know, because

everything kind of shuts in. You kind of realize like, well, we're just here together, like at this point. I wonder what's going to happen. And it's kind of cool. Yeah, yeah. You know, you kind of enjoy it. I've been through plenty of power outlets now out of just, now that I'm in California. And you're right.

Power goes out. People are like, oh, let's walk out, especially I used to live on one street in OB where it was like a, it was a real neighborhood street, you know, a lot of families and all of our kids played together. And then the power went out and it was like, you know, it was like, you know, it was like, 30 seconds later, everyone's out in the front yard looking around and what's going on. Yeah, absolutely. And so I think there is something where our societies can become so overcoated and so structured

that people think they long for some instability. But that happens in countries where people don't know what instability is. Yeah, you know, and when it comes to like being part of a group, and again, for me, going into the SEAL teams, was me absolutely trying to become, or trying to become part of a group and then being part of that group and knowing what I had to do to be a better part of that group.

And, you know, going back to your earlier behavior, which I was saying was so, you know, I can picture it, I know it, and I did it. You know, I was one of those guys too. You know, I was one of those kids. When I was young, you know, I wanted to kind of test the patience of my boss, especially if my boss was a person, you know, whether it was my chief or my LPO or my platoon commander or my, you know, if they weren't quite the respected individual, then I would absolutely

push buttons. The big difference is in the teams, there's a way to deal with it really directly. like you're going to get tightened up and you're going to realize. And the thing that they put on you is like, oh, you, oh, you, eventually it goes from, yeah, even if, let's say no one respects the chief or no one respects the LPO or whatever. Eventually someone's going to say, hey man, that's the platoon chief. I remember someone saying that to me. No, no, no, wait. I take that back.

I said that to someone. I said, I said, that's the platoon LPO. And I said it as if, are you absolutely insane? Like you don't talk back to the SEAL platoon leading petty officer. I don't care. That just, that will never happen again. Am I making myself clear?

That's E5 Mafia scenario right there. That's E5 mafia scenario. So the other thing, and I know we're going to wrap up here, you're a straight up, what is it, autodidact? Yeah.

Straight up autodidact of the first order. Like, what is that? Autodidact Self taught Self taught you know what did you did you go to college at some point No I went for a little while and like I said I didn't know what I wanted to major and I was going to the Navy Was that post high school? Yeah right after I went for a year

But I just kind of took some classes did fine but didn't know where I was going with it so moved on And you and so you've you're self-educated everything that you talk about which is Vast You know I get I get emails from people who want to start podcasts all the time and they say, you know, I want to start a history podcast or this kind of podcast. Is there any, like, tips you can give me? I know I could never do one like yours, but, and I tell these people, like, I'm smart enough, right? I'm smart enough that if you're explaining something to me, I'll be able to understand what you're talking about. I'm not some

genius. I just pound away on it every day. Like, if I'm not happy with something, like I tell them if the fact that you like my podcast and that you're understanding and getting down with, like, the concepts that I'm talking about shows you that you can work with these concepts. Everything that I'm talking about, you're capable of talking about. It's just a matter of putting the work in and getting it done and showing up every day and grinding. And that's how I get my podcast done. I don't just whip these things out, like out of my genius brain or anything like that. You know, I just pound away on them.

Are you a fast reader? No, not really. I'm like a medium average. Because when I'm reading something, I tend to get in character, you know, so I'll kind of read like in the, like, if I'm reading a novel, I'll literally be doing the voices in my head but even if I'm reading a If I'm reading one of your books Like it's your voice at your pace

Speaking in my head And so So it's not exactly a speed read I'm the worst I read books which I have to do all the time And I'm reading at the pace That I basically talk Okay maybe not as bad

I mean I get it when I read When I talk a lot of times I talk slowly and a lot of times I have some pauses we'll say sure pauses pauses I don't have those pauses when I read but man I don't read as fast as I wish I I just read all the time I probably read for the last gosh for the last 20 years I've probably read six hours a day I read all the time you read six hours a day I would say probably cumulatively yeah like I mean I read if I have if I'm if I'm at work waiting for a meeting to start

and it's taken 15 minutes and I'm reading my book getting some time in you know are you paper books Are you digital books? Both. You know, I travel a lot for work, and so if I can get it on Kindle, sometimes I will. I prefer paper, but a lot of the stuff that I read is not available digitally. So I just have to order some old-ass book, you know, like that Amazon doesn't sell anymore. It's coming from some other seller or something. Yeah, I've got a pretty interesting library.

How many books do you think you have in your library? Last time I moved, because this is the worst part, is when you've got to move and you've got a big stack of books. Last time I moved, I gave away about 600, and I would say I probably have about 3 or 4,000 left. And when I get more room, I'm going to have more. Like I just, you know, and I'd say I've read like 70% of them. And I'll, you know, some of them I've got for reference. But I've got this fantasy where one day when I've got a kid, you know, I'm going to have this room that's just going to be wall-to-wall books. And there's going to be books kind of that are more adult level that are going to be higher up that they can't reach.

And when they want to like, give me that book up there, I'd be like, no, you know, when you're old enough to reach it, you can read it. And just make it this place so that, you know, there was no kind of, I wasn't in any kind of intellectual environment or anything like that when I was a kid. And so to have, like, one of my kids to be able to go into a room like that. And just, it's normal that there's like a room full of books and you can pick one up and there's so much stuff in it. That's like my fantasy. And so I get rid of books that I think I can probably get again really easily. You know, if I read, I don't think I have a copy of Moby Dick. If I want to get one, I can get it for $2 on Amazon.

I keep the ones that are going to be kind of a pain to get again. And, yeah, I love having them around. That makes sense, though, with six hours a day, especially if you're into reading. Because, like, you know, consider how you bust out your phone. Like, anytime there's dead space in your day, most of us are, like, busting out our phone, checking this, checking that, you know. But if your mind is all automatic, like, let me get back to that book or whatever.

Right. Oh, yeah, you'd be reading all the time, especially if you're actively, like, doing that. Like, that's what you're into, you know? So you, and that's in, so that'll be in addition to the time that you designate to read or habitually kind of read, you know? A lot of people, you know, they get those time trackers to their phones to see how much time they spend on their phone. And they're spending several hours a day. And, you know, if instead you're just pulling out your book and getting a couple more pages in, it adds up. And now I'll read for a few hours in the evening. Do you highlight? It depends. And so I'll highlight books that I've already read.

But if I'm reading it for the first time, then I don't do anything like that. What I'll do, I used to do that. And then I realized I wasn't retaining stuff nearly as well. I was building an external structure for me to be able to reference things, but I just wasn't retaining it as well. So the first time I read a book, I'll usually read a section or a chapter, and then I'll stop and I'll just write something up about it. And that'll kind of hammer it into place in my head. And then I'll read the next section and keep doing that. And then when, you know, maybe I'm putting together a podcast episode,

I'll go back to books I've already read and then I'm highlighting and underlining and marking up. How do you organize your books so that you can find them? I mean, when you've got, wouldn't you say 3,000 books? Probably. You almost need to go Dewey Decimal System. This is a serious. Because this bothers. Like with me, I'll be doing a podcast about World War, whatever, World War I.

And I'll be like, oh, there's this one part in this one book. and I want to intro with this and I'll be like, now I have to go find it. And I don't know how many books I have. I don't have 3,000, but I have enough that they're in multiple locations,

double stacked in, and it's just, it drives. I got to figure out the Dewey decimal system from my house because it gets crazy. I spent a lot of time around my books, so I kind of know where they're all at. I, you know, sometimes I'll just, when I'm waiting,

I'm letting the thoughts do in my head. I don't want to read anything necessarily to put it out. Or maybe it's a half-form thought that I'm kind of waiting for it to come together, looking for something to kind of attach it to. I'll just kind of walk around and look at my books and pull one out and flip through it and put it back. So I kind of know where everything is. It's like that's my world.

The books are like kind of ever since I've been a kid. Like that's been my world sort of. So it's like my primary point of reference in a lot of ways. And what about like just diving around on the internet? How do you discriminate? when you Google search, you know, whatever. Do you have any good methodology for saying? Because I, like, I'll be, I'll go down the rabbit hole, you know,

and I guess some people, I mean, I guess everyone goes down the rabbit hole sometimes on the internet. But I go deep on the internet and it's hard to discriminate like, okay, should I click this link or not? Do you have any advice? No, I'm not good at it. I have to be very, very, I have to be a fashion. when it comes to controlling my internet usage. Because I don't, to me, it's like, you know, it's not like, I don't, I'm not, like, addicted to it or anything, but I don't know how to, like, structure my usage.

Once I get in there and I start clicking things, there's always another one to click. And I just, I will end up where, oh, it's been three hours that I've been on my phone today. So, like, until recently, I didn't have a, I didn't have a smartphone. I just had a normal flip phone just until recently, like, literally, like, a couple weeks ago. And it was just because I just don't want that. didn't want it my life. I don't want it anywhere near me. I just, you know, it's, yeah, I don't want to get on that cliche topic, but like when you see a family sitting at a table and everyone's on their phones, I just can't deal with it. I grew up in a house with no dining room table, you know,

where everybody just kind of did their own thing. And like, so just when people aren't paying attention to each other and aren't being there together with one another, it just, it turns me off. And I find, man, I'll tell you one thing. There is nothing that makes me, me that deteriorates my mind, like my ability to recall and structure thoughts and sit still and contemplate something more than if I spend a bunch of time on the internet, especially on the phone. Like if I had a smartphone back in the day and I would fart around on it sometimes. So, you know, maybe I'm reading articles or whatever, but just something about the way that the information is coming at me, I would put the thing down and for the rest of the day, I would be

much harder to like sit down and actually read a book for like a long period of time. I got rid of thing a week or two later I could just sit down again read for three four hours at a time like I was a kid again and yeah there's something about them that it again it might be a discipline thing just have to figure out how to structure it the right way but I don't know I don't have any tips when I went to college I was an English major and there was times on the weekends where and one one semester I took five English classes and it was really dumb and I should have never done it because I would spend you know like eight to ten hours reading on Saturday and then eight to ten

hours reading on Sunday. I actually hurt my eyes for a while. It was it was crazy, but I did not, did not like it. I did not like it. Like sitting down reading for six hours for me and sometimes I still have to do it because of the podcast. You know, it's like, okay, we're doing a podcast. It's on this book. We're doing it in, you know, four days. And, you know, there's almost never been a point with this podcast where it's like, oh, don't worry. We don't have a podcast, do you know, you and, and Dan Carlin, who are like, oh, I'll put out of podcast whenever I'm damn well ready. That's, you know, a luxury that I don't have. I'm putting this thing out.

And so I've had to read books, you know, read really long books for me. And, you know, it's, you know, two 10-hour days. And I just, I'm not happy. And it is what it is because, you know, you kind of owe it. sometimes it's work and I kind of benefit a little bit because of the way I structure my reading I usually I don't just pick a book that sounds cool on a topic and pick it up and read it usually I'll study a particular topic right and I'll start diving really deep into it and the books that I read are sort of hanging ornaments on that tree and adding little pieces to

that puzzle and then as I'm doing that on that topic I'll start to have questions that are outside that topic, right? I start reading a lot about Jim Jones and People's Temple, and then you want to know more about the 1960s and, like, you know, the movements that this is coming out of. And so I'm starting to, you know, accrue all these questions that are kind of tangential to the topic at hand, and I'm putting them there.

And once I've kind of, you know, pretty soon I get to the point where now I'm getting impatient to go over to this other topic and move on to that, or maybe there's several topics. And so I'll wrap this up and then I'll go over there, and I'm already excited about this and moving into that area. And I've already got questions that now these books are answering.

And so it's like a path that I'm following. You know, it's not sort of just random, you know, random stuff. Yeah, the arc of the current episodes of Martyr Made, the arc, so it's about Jim Jones, but man, you are going deep and solid. Like I've explained it to like my family, specifically explaining to my mom and dad over, I guess it was over Christmas or something.

But anyways, I was like explaining what the podcast was, what it was about, and the path that you took and when you're talking about the Black Panthers, I mean, you know, when you go from Jim Jones and then that thread ties into the Black Panthers, it's pretty crazy. And, you know, what's his name, Reverend Devine? Yeah.

Yeah, Reverend Devine. The whole thing on Reverend Devine, I mean, it's, it's epic. It's an epic tale. And each one of them is just this thread that just gets pulled and pulled and pulled. And I mean, I'm tracking you. I'm like, oh, I see where this is going. Okay, oh, we're going to open that door. Is he open that door?

Oh, there is it's wide open. Wide open. And that's the thing that I think is cool. And I think that's what, you know, when I first started listening to Martyr Made, I, you know, since I read so much, what I realized is, I realized exactly. what you were doing I realized I was like okay every single one of those little footnotes every single because let's say I'm reading about a battle right hey you know what I opened up with today what I opened up today I open up with about face

which I've read a million times and I actually I actually talked about easy company under the command of of desidario right and the first time I read this was probably 15 years ago I don't know how long it was a long time ago but what I do is I pulled the thread because that's all it says it just says so did easy company under desidario in the fight up on the hill up north that's what it says well who's who is that well that's a thread that when I did when I was reading this section I was like I'm going to pull on that well it turns out you know army captain it turns out metal of honor recipient turns out you can find out exactly what's going on in that battle so when you start pulling these threads out it starts to

turn into a different level of knowledge and that's what I so even when when I listened to your first series of margermade, I realize exactly what you're doing. I said, oh, every single time he comes across a little, a little hanging piece of information that's not closed, he's going to pull on that thread until it gets, until he figures out where it leads to where it comes from, what the situation is behind that. And that's what, that's what really impressed me with what with your podcast. And that's why, you know, you and I are about to record some podcasts of our own kind of going off on a on a tangent it's a it's an idea that I had for a while which was well it was this I talked about it on this podcast where I talked about the fact that and I was I was

complaining about the school system and the educational system in America and my biggest complaint about the educational system in America well there's a bunch of different ones but my biggest one is that when you learn you don't you don't get taught the context and the listen everything that you learn is tied together everything every single thing you learn about anything in human history is connected there's a thread that ties it all together there's a thread that you can trace back and we never learn that thread and I don't care if you're talking about learning mathematics or straight sciences or philosophy or English literature they're all

connected they're all connected and if you can connect those threads for me that's how I learn right when I want to learn something I just don't want to to learn the facts because that's just memorization, I want to actually understand what's behind them. And that's where I think our educational system sometimes falls short. And then you transpose that onto our current news media, which our current news media, what do they do? There's no context or understanding. It's a two-dimensional picture of what's happening today. And people don't understand the thread that connects all these things, how they tie together. And that's why why, you know, when I had this crazy idea of like, hey, wait a second, if I want to talk about

things that are going on and I want to pull the thread on some of these things, I should get to see if Daryl Cooper can come down and give me a hand with it. So I guess, is that an announcement? Yeah, we're going to make another few pot. We're going to make a podcast. We're going to make a podcast. We're going to call it a thread. We're going to pull the thread on some things. And, well, it'll be out. I think it'll be out. Yeah, it'll be out when you're going to be a podcast. When you're listening this podcast, you'll be able to listen to another podcast called The Thread. What else, Darrell? What do we miss? I think maybe the last thing I would talk about is

it has to do with what you were just saying. The thing that schools leave out is they teach kids facts and they don't turn it into a story for them, right? And that's something that I think when we talked earlier about people having purpose or goals, or direction in their life. Another way of saying that is that they're inhabiting a story, right? There's something in the future that you're heading towards. That means that you've got a beginning, a middle, and an end. You're living in a story, and a lot of people are not living in any kind of a story. A lot of people ask me why I name my podcast Martyr Made.

My friend Danieli Bilelli, who has helped me out a lot with it, he's got the thickest Italian accent anybody's ever heard, and he cannot pronounce it for the life of him. So whenever he talks about it on his podcast, people always have to write him and ask him what it is. He tried to ask me early on. You change the name of this podcast. But I named it that for a reason, right?

So I mentioned earlier at the beginning. You asked me how many sisters I had, and I had two at the time. I have one now. And I had a sister in 2009, early 2009, that committed suicide. Me and my other sister, my oldest sister, two years younger than me, she and I are you know we made it out right we came out of a pretty dark and difficult situation we made it out she was up for homecoming queen her senior year and I was there at the football game watching her and you know it was it was a really incredible moment just knowing everything that she had been through

and come out of to see that like that was going on she was a good water polo player she was popular at school You know, she went on to college and doing very well. My youngest sister, you know, she didn't make it out. She struggled. She always struggled a little bit more, had things, handled things a little bit more difficult, had a little bit more difficult. And we lost her in 2009. And I had mentioned that my family, when my mom was first having me and my sisters, was not. really a family that was together. She didn't have a lot of support.

This is something that took time to kind of build up. And people, individual branches of the family, you know, this aunt and uncle, that aunt and uncle would start to get their act together. This one got their act together. But we were never really like together as a family. And my mom as well, she got her act together. For the last 20 years, she's, I'm very, very, I couldn't be more proud of her. She's been through a lot, a lot more than I have. And she suffered more than I have for sure. And, you know, she's doing very, very well now. She, you know, manages a Kroger grocery store and she's very into it. She'll, like, go to war for, like, Kroger grocery stores and how they're better than, you know, Albertsons or whatever. And I'm very, very proud of her. And so,

but we hadn't gotten to a point where all the different threads of the family had found their way back together again, right? People kind of gotten their individual acts together. But it was just, like, long-term kind of animosities and little bickering that had accumulated over the years when people were not sort of living, living their best lives, say, that it accumulated. And my sister passed in 2009. And my family came together. It was the first family reunion I think I could ever really remember, right? It was my sister's funeral. Everybody came together for that. And at that time, It was as if, like, that event, it was like everybody just kind of looked to each other and realized it. Like, whatever has happened in the past, like, none of that matters.

Like, we all, you know, we're a family. We need to look out for each other. We all love each other and we need to be a family again. And you think about, like, what is the difference between a martyr and a murder victim? Right. It's just a story you're telling about it, right? A martyr and just a person who dies. it's just you tell one story about one, another story about another.

What's the difference between, you know, it occurred to me that if my sister's death led to kind of the rebirth of my family, you know, and it really has done that. Everybody now, they're just happy. Grandkids are all playing together, and it's just a beautiful thing, that if that could come out of that, then, you know, her death could be turned into a sacrifice, you know, where something good could come out of something that really just by itself is just a horrible thing. You know, my sister struggled her whole life. She never really had anybody who, you know, was kind of putting her first in the way that, you know, like when the kids would get farmed out to different relatives

and stuff, I would go somewhere, my other sister, Lindsay, would go somewhere. And it was kind of rewarding to have us around. You know, we would do well in school and just like, whatever it was. There was some, it was a little bit rewarding. My youngest sister, she was just, she was harder. She had a temper. She was just kind of like a more wild personality. It was kind of just more of a, more of an ordeal than a, you know, and less rewarding. And so there'd be times where we'd get farmed out because things at home were starting to collapse, you know, really badly. And Lindsay and I would go to one aunt or another aunt. We get split up and Jessica, my youngest, would stay with my mom. And those are some pretty dark times. There's a reason

we were getting farmed out during those periods. And so she was always more attached to my mom. And Lindsay and I, the two oldest, we were always kind of, we didn't intend this, you know. It just kind of happened for whatever reason. We kind of bonded more and were closer to each other than either of us were to Jessica. We didn't exclude her or anything like that. It just kind of naturally, we were kind of closer. And she always knew that and felt. it, you know, that she, she, that Lindsay and I were closer to each other than we were to her, that when we would get farmed out to different relatives, like, you know, people were like, happy to take me and Lindsay, and they would have taken Jessica if it was like, look,

she has to go somewhere. But, you know, if she didn't want to come, you know, because she was attached to my mom, nobody was going to really, like, push for it or anything. And so she grew up her whole life, kind of always being, kind of on the outside and always being kind of thought of just not ever being anybody's first priority, you know, it's just something that a kid needs, at least for some period, you know. And she struggled with that, and, you know, I got out and I went to the Navy and I'm just happy to be out of the house and doing my thing in the Navy, and Lindsay's in college and doing well.

and we kind of know that Jessica's still struggling back home a little bit. She's back home. She's with my mom. My mom's totally cleaned up by this point, and she's trying to get my sister, you know, help her, help her get herself together. But, you know, she's struggling. She has a hard time. She gets pregnant with my nephew. And inexplicably, the doc, she has a bunch of back pain.

While she's pregnant with my nephew, the doctor puts her on Oxycontin. My nephew comes out, Jones and at birth. and she was never able to kick that, right? And it kind of degenerated in the common way, where she's hooked on that. And she starts becoming, you know, difficult to deal with for people who love her. My mom wants to help her, but she doesn't know if, like, you know,

at a certain point, are you enabling? You know, at a certain point, do you have to put your foot down? You know, she's stealing out of my purse to do things when she's at my grandparents' house. You know, she's trying to raid their medicine cabinet. And so she's got friends that, telling her, you know, and other people in her own mind, you know, just telling her like, look, at a certain point you have to give some tough love and it makes sense, you know, that is what

you have to do, right? At a certain point, you are enabling. And she did that one time when my sister came to the house. My nephew was staying with my mom by this point. And my sister came to the house one time in the winter. It's in Montana. It's a cold winter. And she was, wanted to stay there and my mom had like been preparing herself before she knew that like when the moment came she wasn't going to have the strength to say no right so she had been kind of coaching herself up like when it comes you just have to here's what you have to say here's the script you know unless you're willing to do this this and this then no da da da da da da da just you have to go stay with your friends or whatever it is and so she shows up and she wants to stay with my mom and my mom tells her you know

can't have you do it the last several times you've been long this and that, and she didn't have anywhere else to go that night. And so she went to the rescue mission there in town. And she took some pills and she died there alone. And it's just the most abjectly awful story. You know, I was in the Navy. I kind of knew something was going wrong, but, you know, I didn't, you're just, you're living your own life. And to say that, like, you know, when I look back on it, because I feel a tremendous amount

guilt, obviously, thinking to myself now in the aftermath that, you know, I should have just dropped everything and just said, you're coming to stay with me and focus on this 100%, right, just because what else matters when this is the end, but you don't think that that's the end. You're just kind of, you know, you hear that she's struggling, but she's not struggling that bad, right? And when I would call her, it would seem okay. So I just kind of, it was out of sight, out of mind. I was living my own life and wasn't focusing on it. And, and, you know, Nobody was focusing on it, and that was the point. Nobody was, other than my mom.

And it's just an awful story. It's a girl who was never put first, who came out of like a very difficult set of circumstances, and, you know, one out of three, she just didn't make it out. And yet, that horrible story that ended in such a tragic way, it saved my family. you know and it brought my whole extended family that you know when you know when I say like it wasn't just that like people had gotten in arguments with each other and this got him to put it aside it was that whole

the whole thread that had brought my family together my great grandmother coming from Serbia when she was seven years old my great grandfather coming out of Mexico just and then and it just degenerates and breaks down and by the time it gets to like the generation before me It's just this typical, like, American broken-down family scenario, right? That had just fallen apart. It had fallen apart. And that when we all came together for her funeral, that it was as if everything, like, everything was redeemed by, you know, during that period.

It was like everything that had been bad and broken was suddenly repaired. And something that it wasn't like a, no, not repaired. not the right way to say it because it wasn't like there was this there was this family there that had gotten broken up and now it got fixed it didn't exist before this was something that was born out of that tragedy and I realized that you know if I could this doesn't clear up all the negative feelings obviously but if I could see it in that way that her death could become a sacrifice you know something that she was the one who who gave her life whether it was you know, obviously she wasn't thinking of it this way, but she gave her life so that our family

could be born out of that. And that the stories we tell ourselves about the things we do and the lives we're living, you know, very often are the things that, those are really what define us, you know, and I think a lot of people aren't living any story, and they're very vulnerable to people who come along and say, I got a story for you. You know, I got something for you right here. Maybe it's Jim Jones. Maybe it's a jihadi. Maybe it's, you know, some racial group, whatever it is.

I got a story for you, you know, that puts you right in the middle and takes you seriously and makes you important in a way that you've never been to anybody before. Makes them very vulnerable to those things. And I think that something I hope we can do with the thread is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, tell some of these stories, you know, in a way that kind of, you and I have both been around the world a lot. Being around the world, it teaches you that whatever is going on that's wrong around here, there's a whole lot of good. There's a whole lot of good, you know, around here in this country, in our society, and the people around us, and there's an opportunity in that when people don't feel that way, and they look around here at their families or their communities or their country,

and they don't feel good about it, that that's just a story too. And there are better stories out there to tell that can frame your own life and your community's life and your country's life in ways that are a lot more fulfilling and I would say a lot truer than some of the ones that tend to be undermining. So that's something I hope we can do. Gold, and I'm sure we can. It's very humbling, you know, because I, my sister was a good girl.

She was a sweet girl. And, you know, I feel no sense of pride in the fact that, you know, I came out of rough circumstances and managed to, like, make it out, and now I'm, you know, securely in the middle class or whatever, however you want to frame it. I feel no sense of pride in that because I know people. people who were better than me and who were stronger than me and who had better hearts than I do, who didn't make it.

And that if there were a couple times growing up or in my early adulthood, when if I had zigged instead of zagging or even when I, where I just, I got purely lucky, you know, where I, you know, early 20s, I get into a big fight out in town and the cops decide that they're just going to let me roll out, you know. Whereas if I was, if I had maybe a darker color skin, that instead they'd be pulling my ass in and throwing me in jail. And then I'm not going into the Navy. And then I'm not, just a whole train of things starts to happen, you know.

Where I just got, I'm very, very, very lucky. I know people who are way better, way smarter, way stronger than I am, who ended up going completely off the rails. And it deserves has nothing to do with it. You know, did they deserve it? Well, they made decisions. Yeah, sure. I made decisions, but a lot of it just came down to pure luck, you know.

And it makes me very, it's humbling. It's humbling, and it makes me, I try to, as much as I know that, you know, you can get into a toxic mindset, self-limiting kind of toxic mindset by feeling like a victim. And so I, you know, I don't support that kind of thing, but it does make me very, I try to open up my heart to people who find themselves in difficult circumstances because I know that is an act of God but by the grace of God that that's where I could have been you know and I attribute none of it to you know my own

and again you have to make choices but very easily could have gone a different way with the same exact choices that I've made yeah there's there's always going to be some level of luck involved for sure And there's also like little tiny, minuscule decisions that you make for whatever reason that you make them. And sometimes those have a trajectory that lasts the rest of your life. And it could be good. Sure. Like when I decided to join the Navy, because let's face it, that's a, it seems like a really, really big decision.

And I guess it is. But at the same time, you know, there's a split second in time where you go, you know what, I'm going to do this. There's a split second where it's a coin toss. And you go, you know what? I'm going to do this. And I had friends that were right alongside with me. Oh, yeah, I'm going to go in. And they didn't go in.

And things did not work out well for them at all. And so when you look at like all these little decisions. And just like you said, I mean, what, you know, how many people's lives have been ruined by, you know, the one DUI that they got, which they crashed and they hit and they this, that, the other thing. How many people's lives have been ruined by whatever momentary decision. that they made that just, just, it went wrong. And, you know, you saw that in combat all the time. You know, I've said many times, there's times where I made bad decisions and, like, got home and said to myself, well, got away with that.

I never should have got away with that. I can't believe I got away with that. I got so lucky. And there's other times we make the right decisions and things still go wrong. And so there's absolutely some level of luck in there and what you have to, to do as a human being is recognize that and then every chance you get to lean that thing in the right direction you got to take it and as soon as soon as you recognize that in your life the better off you're going to be because the sooner you recognize all right this could be the bad decision

that I make this could be it you know I used to um occasionally if I had a seal who was working for me that was like I could see where he's heading and you know what I brief I'd give to him I'd give him this brief right here Hey this is what I want you to do I don't want you to do dumb shit I don't want you to do anything that's stupid

Do you understand what the words that are coming out of my mouth And that's kind of what they needed to hear Look I don't want you to do anything that's stupid Do you understand what I'm saying And that kind of thing because If you put that as a broad overarching When you're 21 years old If you say look at

I'm just going to try not to do anything that's stupid. That's actually some really solid advice to go off of. And if I wish I would have had somebody. There's a lot of decisions that I made that I look back now where they could have gone bad. And when I look back at them, if somebody would have just said, don't do anything. Hey, don't do dumb shit. Somebody would have told me that. It would have helped me out a lot.

It would have helped me out a lot to. And again, I was just, I got lucky along the way. And the time that I did something stupid, I didn't crash the car. The time I did something else stupid, I didn't fall into this crevasse that I thought, oh, it'd be cool. I'll jump over this thing or whatever the case may be. You make dumb decisions. If someone's saying to you, hey, don't do dumb shit, it's actually really, really good advice.

Because at the end of the day, sometimes it's a coin toss. And do yourself a favor and don't flip that coin if you don't have to. to and then to what you're saying when you look at somebody when whenever I see somebody like that's that I can see they're vended up in a bad situation it's like I know that there were some coin tosses in there that that that came up bad I know it that's what happens and the difference between you know me and that person that's strung out on meth you know sitting in this corner you know covered in their own piss there's some coin tosses in there and so minimize those freaking coin tosses

and then yeah you got it to look there's some luck involved make your freaking luck too you got to make your freaking luck because you can't rely on that coin coming up the way you wanted to so get up take control of what you know what you've been saying take control take ownership of what's going on everything that you can control control it don't let it go don't leave it up the chance you cannot afford to do that You cannot afford to do that. The coin tosses don't always go your way. With that, probably a pretty good place to stop.

Daryl, thanks for your service. Thanks for coming on. Thanks for putting out great, amazing information for people. And thanks for joining forces me to knock out some podcasts later. Thanks for having me on. It's been having us sit next to echo with those guns. and inspiring me to go with the gym today. So I was feeling a little lazy.

Echo. Yes, sir. We want to take control over what we can take control of. Make our own luck. We're going to manufacture luck. I think I said that to Laif Babin the other day. Oh, no. You know what I told Laf Babin?

I can manufacture time. Yeah. I don't follow. We were talking about something like, do we have time for this? Do we have time for that? And I was like, I can manufacture time. I will make. literally make time.

How can we ever have time if we don't make time? Or take time. Whichever. The Matrix. We want to control. We can control. What can we do? How can you help us? There are many ways, right? Fitness. Physical, mind and body. Fitness. Good way to get that coin to kind of fall

the way you want it to. Oh, yeah. Manufacture some odds. You can manufacture odds. Manufacture some luck. Yeah, yeah. So anyway. Also, capability big time. Capability reading as it turns out increases your capability big time. Yeah.

So does Jiu Jitsu, by the way. But I think we already knew that. So while we're doing our Jiu Jitsu, we're going to get a ghee, at least one, my opinion. And we're going to get that from origin. Factually the best ghee in the world. That's why we're getting them from origin. You also might want to support the entire economy of this country. By buying something that's made in America.

Literally now. Yeah. Especially right now. You might want to support the economy. You might want to support jobs coming back to this country. Rebuilding an industry that was all but dead, but it ain't dead anymore. No, it's not. I just bought two of those face masks.

You guys are manufacturing a black and a wife. Legit. Yeah. Yeah. That was a pivot. Can never be too careful. Doing your duty as an American. A little pivot.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, and it's like, that was good when, like, I was watching that video. I think there's more than one, right, about the face masks of stuff. Yeah. What Pete's doing. So it's interesting to see, like, you know, under these kind of, for lack of better term, extreme circumstances, what people and groups of people and companies are doing, you know, and you can kind of tell a lot about, I mean, a lot. I mean, what does that even mean?

But you can tell some things about some people. groups of people by what they do under certain circumstances. I think generally speaking that's true, right? Okay, here's a little background. So we have a company. It's called Origin. We make clothes. There is a virus going around America right now called the coronavirus.

Right now it is March 25th, 2020. So this virus hit. At first, I had a couple friends text me and say like, hey, you should make masks to protect. people from this and I was like oh and I talked to Pete my partner at origin and said hey man what do you think about making masks and he kind of looked at it said well I guess we could what's the real you know what's the real demand going to be blah blah blah and then a couple days later a few days later the government starts saying look masks don't help they don't help

and I'm like okay well I say hey don't worry about that masks don't help but I don't want to be the guy that's trying to sell something that doesn't work right so you know so we kind of abandoned the idea. And this all takes place in like a very short period of time. All this, because you guys track in this news story, it's been changing on an hourly basis. So then you fast forward two or three days.

And they're saying not only should you wear a mask, but you need to wear a mask. And also we've got people in health care and whatever that absolutely need these masks and there's no masks in America. Like, or there's a massive shortage. So now I go back to Pete and say, B, bro, it looks like these masks are needs.

And he kind of percolated on it and my mind was stuck in like, okay, we got to make a surgical mask like what you see a surgeon wear, right? Pete, he said, wait a second. And he said, oh, let's make, he took our rash guard material because this is the other thing. The CDC was saying, if you don't have a surgical mask, just take a t-shirt or take a piece of bandana. That's what they were saying. And so we said, okay, wait a second, we can really help here. But then Pete came up with the idea of making a mask from our rash guard material, kind of like, I guess the word is a buff. Have you ever heard this before? Okay, so it's basically like a neck.

Gator, that's another thing that gets called. I don't know what to call it. But most people call it a buff. And anyways, we put a little pocket in there so you could put a filter. If you can get one, if not, you can still just use the mask. And it does help. And the CDC actually has numbers out, like how much it helps. If you just put a t-shirt, it helps, you know, 20%.

If you put a bandana in a t-shirt, it helps 40%. Like, they calculate this stuff. So anyways, that's what's happening. We started making these masks. People have been buying them like crazy because, you know, we're getting orders from hospitals. We're getting orders from nurses. We're getting orders from doctors. Like that's, and then we're getting orders from normal citizens as well.

But so that's what's happening and the reason I'm not really I haven't really been promoting it is because It's it worse we're sold out like we're making them as fast as we possibly can and and and I mean Pete's make I think he's made four thousand of them today They're all already sold so we're gonna make him as fast as we can. We're gonna make as many as we can, but we're trying to get him to the right people and That's what's happening with that Yeah and those mask kind of important to when you think of the big picture because I mean the initial thought where it's like wear masks people be like well you know I'll just sort of you know like I won't I'll be careful with where I breathe or whatever or my immune system whatever but the mask is

kind of a two-way street where that protects you but it protects others as well and that's something they said from the get go I know from the get go they said actually we don't think that though yeah here's where here's where I was kind of like man I should have fought through this more from the get go they said you know masks don't help but it will have to prevent spreading it. If you have it, you should wear it. And I'm like, wait a second. You're telling me that this will help someone not give it to me,

but if I put it on it won't help me at all, are you crazy? Hold on a second. That doesn't make any sense. So I should have known that from the beginning, but I didn't suss it out correctly. Yeah. And that kind of goes with it where it's like, yeah, it doesn't help me at all.

So it's more like that's like a secondary thought, you know. But I think like I said, big picture situation where collectively, hey man, we're all in this game. The more help you can give everyone together. Everybody, yeah. And then so that's not to mention, okay, what are all these secondary effects? Like economy, people going back to work, all this stuff. And were you part of that problem? Are you part of the problem spreading this whole thing? Exactly right. If you're part of helping it out, okay, here comes the economy way quicker. Here comes people going back to work. You know, all the secondary stuff. But oh, you weren't, oh, you were just like you strong young guy who has a strong immune system.

You didn't care about any of this other stuff. You see what I'm saying? So it's like, man, you've got to wear that mask. And not even necessarily wear the mask specifically. I'm not saying that. I'm saying be part of the solution in this. Being part of the solution is that being, that's part of being an American. Yeah.

And by the way, another thing, like I just got this as we're coming in here. Pete put together a face mask, like a face shield with, what's a clear plastic like printer paper? What is it, lamination paper or something like that? He put together a mask with that. Yeah, I saw that. A mask. Yeah, you look like a welding. Yeah, you kind of see it and you go, oh, that's kind of cool, whatever.

Guess what? He's got, he just got an order. Like, based off of him stapling this thing together, the state of Maine just, I think it was the state. Some big governmental organization just ordered a thousand of them. A thousand of these things. Like, that's where they're at. They need protection. And so it's been very, it's been, it's been.

been awesome man very humbling to have a little role in trying to help us get through this and shout out to Pete to the origin crew up there to all the all the folks in the factory that are actually turning and burning and work in two shifts we might even have to go to three to make as many of these things as we can to get them out to America to help us get through this crisis situation The idea of some nurse or health care worker out there wearing one of those things that you guys made, like that's got to feel good. It's awesome.

Yeah. And like, I mean, Pete had them manual. The girls were making them like that Monday morning and filled up a box and got them to Boston Children Hospital. Like that, you know, ASAP because that's where they're at. And they're reusable. Like you can put them in the washing machine. You can't put a surgical mask or whatever, $2 surgical mask in the washing machine. in the washing machine, it'll be destroyed.

You can put these things in the washing machine all day long. What up now? Yeah, and far be it for me to be the superficial twink on this one, but it looks kind of dope, too. Yeah, it does. I run on the beach a lot, and it's windy on my beach a lot of the time. You're just posting up in the origin mask. Yeah, I'll wear that thing even after the bar.

Did you order a blackout one? I got a black one and a white one for me and my fiancee, yeah. That's what I got four. It's true. So it's been cool. Obviously, it's, and by the way, we're not the only company that's doing. This is a bunch of company that have pivoted to helping out, you know, and they're doing more advanced things.

They have the technology to make help with the ventilators and help with some of the other. But we're getting, that's what we're doing. That's what America is doing right now, which is awesome to see. In the meantime, we do still have rash cards. It's true. The best geese in the world, as you said. Factually. Genes.

American made denim. American made denim. And that's what's perfect. That's what's awesome. Had we had we let everything go, had Pete not rebuilt this, had Pete not maintained this loom? And maintain, more important than the loom is the people, right? The stitchers, the folks that actually have the capability to build things in America. If we don't keep them, who's going to do this?

for us. That's the backbone of America right there. That's the backbone of America. There's the folks on the front lines that have the skills to get this done. God bless them all. Send a little, send a little blessing up to Farmington, Maine to our people. Also supplements. We're at war. I'm not done. We're at war. Right. So the mask, that's QR. QRF, right? That's a quick reaction. course inbound sure yes outside the QRF scenario there are like you said American denim jeans also supplements keep your body physically in the game joint warfare cruel oil cold war cold war or where boost the immune system the

front line says it were you see him saying yeah there'll nobody take that name yet that's perfect I am always amazed and sometimes you you get an idea and you go Man that happened with the way of the warrior kid like I had that idea and I said how can no one have thought of this? Oh my gosh, I'm so lucky and I just wrote it and put out there Cold War Cold War probably a year and a half ago. I was like hey man talk to B little I said hey man I am on the planes all the time I'm shaking a bunch of people's hands all I'll line up and shake a thousand people's hands what's the germ transfer that's happening? right there. Come on. It's a major for sure. Ham out, as my friend Theo von would say. So, yeah, so Brian put together that formula for Cold War and, yeah, that's, and of course, you know, we put it out, say, hey, if you guys need some help, someone's like,

what are you doing? This won't stop coronavirus. I'm like, bro. No. No. You are not slinging the cure to coronavirus. I'm not slinging the cure to coronavirus. Now, now, that being said, Dakota Meyer, he's slinging the cure.

The cure. Did you see what he posted? He posted some jaco discipline go, Dax Savage flavor, and he's like, hey, it's me, Dakota Meyer. I haven't got coronavirus yet. Why? Because I drink Discipline Go. End the story.

Next question. See, I was thinking that too, let's face it as a joke. So, you know, the killer soap, right? Activated charcoal, whatever. So I'm using killer soap. I'm taking Cold War joint warfare. Super cruel oil discipline every single day with, you know, occasional mulk scenarios. I don't think I've had the coronavirus.

If I have, I'm asymptomatic. Yeah. Coincidence. You powered through that. Coincidence or Jock fuel. I'm just saying. I'm just saying. But, you know, obviously I'm not going to make that claim, you know, go as far as Dakota

Meyer. is good on that situation but nonetheless those are the facts of the case unless like I said the facts of the case yes I mentioned milk that is what we had this dessert in the form of a protein many flavors you know at this point it's like just choose your flavor ready yeah pretty much I mean with you very few exceptions

at this point yeah you're good to go so yeah check that one out if you're a warrior kid you can get some warrior kid milk yeah same deal because your kids are home from school by the way right now oh yeah they're not allowed to go to school and you could say oh Johnny you want some you want some high fructose corn syrup in your milk which will literally kill you or do you want something with protein in it that's going to make you stronger, smarter, better. Yeah and that's put you on the path and that actually is a real thing

nowadays even more than than before because you know how like you eat when you're bored you want a little treat you want a little you know you're not hungry you just want a one of those little you know little something. And bro, I can mok all day. Problem solved. I'll tell you. You have milk bars too, don't you? Yes, I do.

Well, I'm running very low because I have a little thief. Freaking kids. Yeah. Those are good, man. It's ridiculous. Yeah. I have to say no now. Oh, to your children.

It's just too much, dude. It's a miracle. It is a miracle. It's kind of a miracle to eat something that's that good and that good for you. That's kind of a miracle. Yeah. And we couldn't get any. to make them.

We had to, we bought the piece, we bought the, we bought the, we bought the factory line. We're making them ourselves. By the way. Yeah. Can't do it quick enough. Dang. I saw someone post on Twitter that, you posted something about the mask or somebody did. Maybe it was the origin account.

And somebody posted that the coronavirus is quarantining itself and the rest of our bodies to avoid contracting jaco. Yeah, there's a few funny ones that are. Yeah. I'm not talking to me smack about it. it. You know why? Because that's like this curse, right? Yeah, that's like the classic.

If you talk mad smack about it, you're going to get it. Meanwhile. It's going to put you down hard. Confirm case. And I do the big cover up. Yeah. We'd like be, yeah. Everything's fine.

Everything's fine. Posting pictures from like a workout I did six months ago. Yeah. Yeah. That's true. Also, Jock, by the way. And you can get all the stuff at the vitamin shop right now if you want to. If you're going out.

If you're not. Actually, can you? You probably can't right now. Oh, whoa. I have no idea. But vitamin shop, I think, is open. And also, all these products are available in Amazon.com. Just kind of FYI.

Yeah. And origin, main. Dot. That's the main spot. Let's face it. Yes. Also, Jocko Store. And it's called Jocco Store.

You go to jocco store.com. And this is where you can get more rash guards. American Made, by the way, 100%. By origin. We also have T. shirts, discipline equals freedom, good. Stand by to get something. You know, all these things that are represented.

Yeah. Def, just straight, Def Corps. Def Core. To the core. By the way. Yeah. You know, the things that are representative of the path that we're all on, by the way, we're on it. Straight up on it.

At some point, I'm going to see graffiti with the little Def Corps flags somewhere. Oh, little tags. Yeah. Yeah. That was, do you remember this? Somebody posted a picture of graffiti in some city and all it said was like at Joe Rogan at Jordan B Peterson at Jocko Willing yeah that was legit yeah my daughter does the the flag with the

she grabs my weightlifting chalk you know in the little bag you have the chunks she'll grab it and she'll put you leave your chalk all assembled into a block oh I try to yes in the bags like so yeah you grab the one it dissipates after it's like like being used up, then it collects this powder on the bottom, which is, you know, what you're talking about, right? That's no, I put the block in there and then break it into small pieces. Yeah.

No, I found where you grab the whole block and go like bar soap style. Yeah, that's good. I'm just imagining Echo's entire trunk full of weightlifting chocks. Oh, yeah, with the kids, yeah, that's what it takes, man. That's what it takes. Nonetheless, yes, jocco store.com. That's where you can get this stuff. See on the path.

Represent while you're on it, too, by the way. Also, uh, subscribe to this. podcast. Um, we also have another podcast now called the thread. We also have another podcast called the grounded. We also have another podcast called the warrior kid podcast. We also have, Darrell has a podcast called Margar Made, which I talked about a bunch. Just go, just go listen to it. Listen to the opener and then just, well, stand by because you'll be, you'll be sucked in. Don't you talked about killer soap. Yes, sir. You can get that from Irish Oaks Ranch.com. We got a young kid, a warrior kid making that from goat milk.

Man, quality too, man. It's quality. That soap is the best soap ever. Best goats. Yeah, the best goats, for sure. The strongest goats. It's black. The cleanest goats.

And yeah, have you ever seen black soap before? No. Yeah, so it's kind of a psychological thing. The bar is black. It's black because it's got activated charcoal, which Echo can tell you all about what that does. I'll tell you later. Yeah, I'll tell you later.

So it's got active it. So it's black. But then you wash with it and you still allows you to. Stakely. Stakely took on a whole new meeting right now. He was washing their hands everywhere. Oh yeah, big time. Plus it has like little what do you call exfoliant.

It's not quite. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. It's not like abrasive, but you can almost feel it. Like if you're not paying attention, you might not even feel it that much. But it's got the feeling. It's got a feeling. Here's what's cool.

A normal bar of soap, right? You pick it up, it's slippery, right? Yes. This thing's not. This thing's not. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You gotta start selling this to prisons. Yeah, that's a good idea.

That's a good idea. You might have something there, Darryl Cooper, for sure. But yes, Irishoaks ranch.com. Soon, if not right now, we're going to have it on joccol store.com. So, hey, man, just go out there, look for it. Get some. Boom. Also, we do have a YouTube channel for the video version.

of this podcast. A lot of people watching podcasts now rather than just listening to them. They're watching them. Put them on the smart TV. You've been kind of Johnny on the spot lately too, getting those YouTube ones up as soon as possible. It's a collective effort.

Yeah, between you, me, go of the kid. You know, we're trying to, you know, we're trying to make it happen. It's been nice. Yeah. Yeah, agree.

And, you know, the accessibility. If people want to see what Daryl Cooper looks like. Yeah. You know, handsome guy, you know, it's been working out, got a pump right beforehand. Respect.

You know, actually, you look different that I thought you looked. Yeah. Yeah. Did you never visual, never saw them before? I saw like, um, that one stupid-ass picture you used to me in the mask when I came on the podcast with Daniele. Yes. You used one from my website when in that mask. It's the only, you go through the comments on YouTube and it's like, great podcast, great podcast.

Look at that dumb ass mask he's wearing. Good comment. I must say, I agree with those comments 100%. Yeah, yeah. I was like, well, this is the only picture I got of this, dude. I guess we're going with it. There you go, yeah. What is that from?

I was going to a costume party. Who goes the costume parties? I don't have a lot of pictures of myself. Yeah, and the one you do have is you end up straight up costume. So, yeah. So when you appear in like a tuxedo or something too, is it like, I was in a white suit with this mask on like this, I don't know, like the eyes wide shut kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah.

Very disturbing. I remember that. So now that you're kind of mentioning that, I kind of remembered what. my expectation. It wasn't very like concrete, but it was just kind of a, you know, what do you call it?

Ambiguous expectation. And I'm thinking more along the lines of like a Chris Angel scenario. So you're saying, you know Chris Angel is, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. He does magical tricks.

Yes. But unless, you know, relatively normal. I can do pretty if I need to. Yeah, I believe you. I believe it. And the last one,

it looks like YouTube channel, boom. A lot of other stuff on their excerpts, whatnot. A lot of value. Oh, really? As far as YouTube goes, Okay.

You got to admit, on the grounded podcast, whatever flippant attack comment I made about you and your videos was pretty funny. And I forget what it was, but it was pretty good. We were talking about things blowing up or whatever, and I was like, oh,

that's like Echo's video or so. Oh, no, no, no. We were talking about affliction t-shirts with tanks and explosions and fire, and I was like, yeah, kind of like Echo's videos. Yeah, yeah, you guys were really happy with you guys. Going back to the well for that.

Themselves still. Going back to the well for that one. That's the story right there. Psychological warfare. You can get that on iTunes. Whatever. It's me. It's a little psychological hitter for you.

Help you get through those moments of weakness. Flipside canvas, Dakota Meyer, making some cool looking stuff for you. A bunch of books. Leadership Strategy and Tactics Field Manual. The Warrior Kid Series. How's your nephew like the Warrior Kid series?

Every little niece and nephew that I have loves it. That is awesome. Including a bunch of my. friends as well like I didn't have to when every time I've wanted to give them a copy of the books they've already got them yeah yeah Jock's a superhero man I think that's not Jock man that's Uncle Jake right there everyone likes Uncle Jake Mikey the Dragons too if you think if you're like I'd like to get the warrior kids series but my kids only four cool Mikey and the Dragons and then discipline equals freedom field manual get yourself

that and then the the first two books well I guess the first the leadership books Extreme ownership and the dichotomy leadership, which I wrote with my brother, Leibbabin. We got Eshlanfront Leadership Consultancy. We solve problems through leadership. Go to Eshlamfront.com. Right now in the lockdown, we're starting to spin up, or I should say we are pouring more resources into our online training.

So I've been doing a lot of online live Q&As, which is really cool. And I was a little, you get a little bit worried because you know, you want everything to be of the highest quality. And then look, sometimes connections aren't there, right? Like, fully. And we got a new system. And man, it's like, it's like I'm talking to people. You know what I mean? It's like I'm in the room with people.

It's pretty damn good. So go to EF Online if you want to check that out. EFonline.com. muster Orlando canceled muster in Phoenix Arizona September 16th and 17th Dallas Texas December 3rd and 4th Go to Extreme Ownership.com

If you want to come to those Hey listen Phoenix canceled And the way we what we did with Phoenix We gave people the option to cancel it Or Go to immediately just enroll In either Phoenix Arizona or Dallas Texas Wait you said Phoenix canceled

Orlando's canceled Orlando's canceled Orlando's can Did I say that like just now. I thought Phoenix was canceled two, but for this one, you see what I'm saying?

But yeah, so Orlando's canceled. Orlando is canceled. But what we did is we allowed people just to transfer their ticket to Phoenix and then transfer their, or Dallas. So like we're already at bigger numbers.

So everything always sells out. There's only going to be two instead of three. That's, you know, another, it's going to sell out quick. So check that out. Extreme Ownership.com. And then we have EF Overwatch and EF.

And here's just a real straightforward message, right? There's a lot of people losing their jobs right now, and there's a lot of people getting hired right now. There's just a massive transition in the job market. If you are a veteran, if you are a veteran, if you served, go to EFlegeon.com and enroll yourself. So that way, if your job changes, we will you you can you can be looked at and people can find you and pull you in and rehire you for a new job

They're looking for military people we know you have the discipline We know you have the the the wherewithal to get stuff done We know you are trainable So if you're a vet go to EF legion dot com and get your information in there and then companies We got a bunch of companies that are looking that's where they're if you're a company and you want to find good people and you need them right now go to go to EFlegion dot com and get yourself some experienced leaders. And if you want to check out more of us. If you want to hear more from Darrell Cooper,

he's got, like I said, his podcast, Martyr Made. He's on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook at Martyr Made. He's going to be on a podcast with me called The Thread. And on top of that, if you hadn't had enough of my grading, slow-paced voice, or you haven't heard enough of Echo's high-pitched meanderings, then you can still find us on the interwebs, on Twitter, on Instagram,

and on Yold Feisbourg. Echo is at Echo Charles and I, I am at Jockel Willink, and thanks again, Daryl, for coming on. Thank you. Much appreciated. Thanks for the effort that you put into your podcast, and thanks for sharing your story here, and hopefully we can continue to get after.

sharing people stories and helping people see stories in the right light. And to everyone else out there that's in uniform right now holding the line around the world right now holding the line. Thank you for what you're doing out there in uniform and to police and firefighters and law enforcement and paramedics and EMTs and dispatchers and correctional officers and border patrol and secret service. Thanks for holding the line here at home. top of that right now to all the doctors and nurses and all the medical personnel that are on the front lines here at home every day taking risk to fight illness thank you for taking care of us when we need it most and to everyone else out there the world is an uncertain place and sometimes the trajectory of your life comes down to a little bit of chance

and what I'm saying is don't take that chance very often and stack the deck in your favor and the way that you do that is by going out there taking control and getting after it and until next time this is Daryl Cooper

and Echo and Jocko out